Between bold pursuit and cautious defense, Beinke was skeptical, but ultimately chose the former. As a result, there was such an unreasonable scene in the waters southeast www.biquge.info of São Miguel Island: The two capital ships of the United States and British Navy's top strength fought and retreated in front, and the German Mackensen-class battle cruisers, which were regarded by some as "chicken ribs" before the war, followed suit.

Beanke muttered in his heart, and after receiving the battle report from Sao Miguel Island, Natsuki, who was in the northern waters of the Azores, was also a little confused, if the American and British reinforcement fleet commanded by Rear Admiral King intended to take advantage of the bad weather to attack Sao Miguel Island at night, then it should be quickly resolved, using large-caliber naval guns to bombard the ports, airports, and towns in this place, and evacuate before dawn, so as to win greater gains with the smallest possible losses, But the opponent's actions tonight seem to be paving the way for a large-scale landing operation to seize the island, spending a lot of precious ammunition on an ordinary coastal defense fortress, as the saying goes, if something is abnormal, it must be a demon, Natsuki realized that the enemy must have another plan for this move, at first glance it seems that he wanted to design an ambush for the Benke fleet, but they had only arrived on São Miguel Island a few hours earlier, unless the United States and Britain cracked the key communications of the Allied troops, otherwise, they could not have such a precise plan.

The profound lesson of history Xia Shu has never been overlooked, in the last war, when he was still serving in the German Navy, the German army took some effective technical measures in the secrecy of communications, and from the perspective of the course of the war, these measures played their due role. During the two wars, on the one hand, he spared no effort to improve the communication equipment technology of the Irish army, on the other hand, he actively promoted the standardized communication network of the Allied army, and tried to instill the importance of communication security into the minds of every senior Allied general, but the influence of one person is limited after all, the so-called standardized communication is still in the experimental stage, whether it is in the British battlefield or the Azores front, the coordinated operation between the Allied armies can only use the German cipher system, This not only brings many constraints to the efficiency of battlefield communications, but also increases the possibility of leakage of secrets.

In view of the possibility of the leakage of the communication code, Natsuki decided to borrow the successful practice of the American army in the Battle of Midway Island in the history to test it, he broke the radio silence that lasted for two days, and sent a secret message to Beinke, ordering him to pursue the enemy only within the effective protection radius of land-based fighters, once it exceeds this range, no matter how favorable the situation is, he must decisively abandon the pursuit and retreat to standby, and he will personally lead the main fleet to raid Texel and shell Angra de Mercio as a powerful response to the enemy's invasion of San Miguel Island.

After the communication secret telegram was sent, Natsuki immediately sent a secret telegram to the theater command to "activate the K button", that is, he asked the radio monitoring and detection department to operate at full capacity, and then sent instructions to the submarine detachment to conduct strict reconnaissance and surveillance of the area corresponding to a specific code name -- these code names are easily found on the Azores theater combat map of the German Navy, but for those who do not have this combat map in their hands, they are a series of unsolvable codes.

After making the corresponding arrangements, Natsuki continued to lead the fleet to cruise about 200 nautical miles north of Texel Island. A few days ago, a German submarine operating in this sea area discovered the traces of the US and British fleets, but from the speed and route, it is impossible for the US and British reinforcement fleets to appear in that position at that time, ruling out the subtle possibility of a miscalculation of the German submarines, Natsuki believes that there is still a US and British fleet operating in the East Atlantic, and its scale and strength cannot be compared with Rear Admiral King's reinforcement fleet, but it is also a maritime force that cannot be ignored, and it is likely to shoulder special tasks such as breaking diplomatic relations and attacking. Rather than waiting for the loss of one's own shipping supply line to make amends, it is better to take advantage of the situation and seize a favorable position and wait for the opportunity to move.

To Natsuki's surprise, and at the same time beyond Beanke's expectations, the two U.S. and British capital ships shelling Sao Miguel Island suddenly turned around and started an attack on Beanke's fleet after sailing about 40 nautical miles to the east. Seeing that he was going to suffer a big loss, Beinke hurriedly led the fleet to retreat to São Miguel Island, if the sea was calm, the speed of the battle cruiser and light patrol could not outpace the new destroyer, and the bad sea conditions covered Beinke's retreat, and the American and British ships gave up the pursuit when the lightning strike was hopeless, and the two sides then broke away from combat contact.

Unwilling to retreat without a fight, Beinke sent the German light cruiser "Nymph", equipped with shipborne radar, to search for and track the enemy fleet, but found nothing. More than three hours later, Santa Maria, 80 kilometres south of São Miguel, was suddenly hit by heavy artillery fire, and the shelling from the sea lasted for two hours until dawn. During this period, the Allied alert ships deployed on the island of Santa Maria attempted to torpedo the enemy fleet, but were repulsed by the enemy's intensive artillery fire. The continuous shelling caused great damage to this island, which covers an area of only 97 square kilometers, with nearly 1,000 casualties among the Allied troops stationed there, three of the four military airfields seriously damaged, the loss of more than 100 combat planes and more than 200 artillery pieces of various types, and the transport ships that happened to be anchored here were also not spared, with a total of four ships sunk, nine ships injured, and tens of thousands of tons of war materials damaged.

Even after daybreak, the rain continued unabated, but even so, the Allied air forces stationed on São Miguel Island still launched a fierce counterattack against the provocative American and British fleets, and the German Admiral Beanke also killed the waters off Santa Maria Island after three aircraft carriers joined the fleet. At this time, two US and British capital ships and seven light warships had sailed to the southeast waters of Santa Maria Island, although there was no trace of the US and British aircraft carriers, but dozens of carrier-based fighters came to meet the Allied aircraft group, the two sides launched an unprecedented melee in the drifting heavy rain, all the usual formation tactics were invalid in this heavy rain, and the real competition between the two sides was not pure technology, but courage, luck, and intuition. Under the desperate cover of the US and British carrier-based fighters, the two capital ships successfully withdrew to the east.

The angry but nowhere to do anything about the Benque's fleet stayed in the waters of Santa Maria for half a day, and because the enemy fleet was nowhere to be seen in the vast rain, it had to return to the island of San Miguel. Natsuki, who watched the battle from afar in the northern waters of the Azores, was not as impetuous as some of his officers, but was extremely patient in gathering information from all sides and analyzing the current situation. Just after he informed Beinke that he was going to shell Texel Island, there was no obvious abnormality in the communications of the United States and Britain, and the Allied submarines did not find that the American and British ships in the waters off Pico Island had rushed to the aid of Texel. Xia Shu pondered carefully and realized that his own communication code was very likely to have been deciphered by the other side -- the minelayers entered the port early in the morning because they went to the surrounding waters overnight to lay new minefields, and the reason for laying new minefields was because the allies had a general grasp of the existing mine arrays through a large number of air and sea reconnaissance, and the minelaying operation was not early or late last night.

For most generals, the first reaction to learn of their own communication password leakage is to immediately change a new set of communication passwords, and then try to find out the cause of the password leakage, so as to achieve the effect of treating both the symptoms and the root causes. After careful consideration and deliberation, Natsuki once again broke the radio silence and issued a clear order to the theater command, requiring the entire Azores front to immediately adopt a backup codebook and try to use the pre-agreed cipherwords in communications, which was obviously not his full deployment. After activating the spare codebook, he ordered the accompanying heavy cruiser "Ruger" to assume his radio call sign and issue pre-made combat orders to the combat units at irregular intervals, so that the enemy would mistakenly believe that he was still in the waters north of the Azores, when in fact he was leading the fleet to the waters east of the Azores.

At the same time, a large convoy of more than 80 ships has been assembled in the southern waters of Ireland, participating in this large-scale sea transport operation not only German and Irish ships, but also 8 Italian light ships and 12 Italian cargo ships, the entire fleet carrying about 420,000 tons of war materials and 24,000 Allied soldiers, the arrival of which will provide a strong impetus for the Allied army's offensive operations in the Azores. Because of its significance, the organization and assembly of the fleet was carried out in a state of high secrecy, and the main escort force was the German-class battleships "Deutschland" and "Silesia", the Zeppelin-class aircraft carrier "Wiecchersbach", and the Confederate-class aircraft carrier "Alfonso XIII".

Due to the secrecy of the operation and the strong enough escort force, Natsuki was not worried about being attacked by the enemy halfway, but the series of actions that Kim and his reinforcements came in made him gradually turn his analysis to the eastern Atlantic. On the premise that the US-British coalition forces can decipher the coded communications of the Allied troops, as long as Kim has the same or slightly superior forces as the Allied escort ships, it is easy for him to take the initiative in the naval assault battle, thus forcing the opponent to transfer the sea and air forces from the Azores front line to the escort, and solve the dilemma of the US-British troops in the Azores battlefield through this way of encircling Wei and saving Zhao. If these are indeed the tactics of the American and British armies, then their mastermind must be a figure more difficult to deal with than a fox.

(End of chapter)