Under the scorching summer sun, at the northern end of George Strait, in the southern part of the Irish Sea, two Scharnhorst-class armored cruisers, which originally belonged to the German Navy, and now the main warships of the Irish Navy, the "Celtic" and "Long Live Freedom", are heading north together. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

On the bridge of the "Celtic", Colonel Phil Townshed, who had been appointed captain two months earlier, looked ahead with a spirited and serious expression. Born and raised in Dublin to a poor family, the 42-year-old Irishman completed secondary school at a mission school before leaving home to embark on a long career as a seafarer. Although his appearance is mediocre, his popularity is exceptionally good, coupled with his willingness to endure hardships and be good at thinking, he learned a lot of useful things from the crew of the same ship, and gradually became a technician from an ordinary crew member, and later got the opportunity to be an assistant to the captain for three years, learning the essentials of navigation and mapping, steering the ship, and managing the size of a ship. At the age of thirty-seven, he became a respected captain and the course of his life seemed to set the tone, but the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence changed everything. At the behest of his employer, he sailed a ship from Germany to Ireland to deliver supplies, but the ship sank when it hit a mine on the way, and Townsend nearly lost his life.

After being rescued by the Irish resistance, he simply joined the army, first helping to repair boats, and soon resumed his work, and the ships he controlled gradually upgraded from the original armed speedboats to gunboats, and the war of independence was nearing the end, the formation of the Irish Navy was imperative, Townsend and more than a dozen other people with seafaring knowledge and combat experience were selected to go to Germany for further study, and had the honor of becoming alumni of the King of Ireland. More than half a year at the Kiel Naval Academy was a real transformation from a civilian to a professional soldier, and his academic performance and academic performance were recognized by demanding German instructors. Upon his return to Ireland, Townsend was given valuable opportunities in his early forties in the Irish Navy, where there was a great lack of home-grown talent, and he was soon promoted from commander of a large torpedo boat to commander of a light ship detachment, then commander of a light cruiser, and finally to the first Irish captain of the Celtic.

A little over a month ago, the "Long Live Freedom" also welcomed its first Irish captain, Captain John Barber, whose experience is similar to that of Townsend in many ways, and it is rare that the two have similar personalities and are very happy to work together. The two Scharnhorst-class armored cruisers, which were built and commissioned at the same time, have maintained their inseparable sister ship nature for most of the time after completing technical modifications one after another.

Of course, the two Irish captains would not have known that if it were not for the flapping of the wings of Natsuki's butterfly, the two warships and most of the crew on board would have died in the waters of the distant Falkland Islands, rather than joining the Irish Navy to continue their legendary journey.

In the German Navy, the most remarkable feat of the two Scharnhorst-class armored cruisers was to complete a voyage of nearly 20,000 nautical miles and successfully return to Europe after being pursued and intercepted by the Allied navies. During the war, the two ships sank a total of 29 enemy ships, but they did not have a comparable opponent on the loot list, which is a great pity in terms of their huge construction costs and high expectations. If they had the consciousness of their own power, they would have hoped that they would be able to reach the top of the world like the dreadnoughts and battlecruisers of the German High Seas Fleet, tempered by steel, fire and blood.

After joining the Irish Navy, the two Scharnhorst-class became the most relied on absolute capital ships, and for a long time, the so-called volunteers of the German Navy were the actual operators of these two 10,000-ton warships, until the Irish Navy painstakingly trained the first qualified crews, and this situation slowly changed. By the time they sailed for the confrontation in the southern Irish Sea, the Germans and Irish sailors of the sister ships, renamed the "Celtic" and "Long Live Liberty," had roughly a four-to-four ratio between German and Irish officers and men, and the Germans had basically retired from command posts, either as technical backbones or as staff officers.

While German officials held important political posts in the Irish Army, the "Irishization" of the backbone of the army at all levels finally made the people feel relieved and down-to-earth.

Receiving the urgent task of rushing to the aid of their own ships, the two Scharnhorst-class armored cruisers quickly set sail from the port of Watford, and at a steady speed of 22 knots, they arrived at the designated sea area in only five hours, and their appearance immediately changed the confrontation situation between the two sides, and the British warships that arrived in advance were not enough 10,000 tons, while the two Irish armored cruisers were both large warships of 13,000 tons, and they had an overwhelming advantage in all aspects.

The officers and men of the two Irish cruisers were ready to confront the large British ships, but surprisingly, the British Navy, which had always flaunted its might and was invincible, did not send heavyweight ships in time until all the Irish fishing boats had retreated to their territorial waters. As a result, the Irish officers and soldiers who participated in the confrontation began to laugh at the cowardice and incompetence of the British, and ridiculed their down-and-out phoenixes for being inferior to chickens. Even if they suffered losses in the fishing dispute, it was impossible for the British warships to pursue the legitimate territorial waters of Ireland, and the British ships that followed had no choice but to stare outside the territorial sea line, seeing that the British ships were still lingering in sight, and the two Scharnhorst-class and the large torpedo boats that had rushed to protect the fishing were not in a hurry to withdraw. Soon a few lead-gray shadows appeared on the coast in the direction of the British, and the Irish ships received radio reports from their own reconnaissance planes -- a fleet of large warships, a medium warship, and four small warships had arrived in the east, and judging by their livery, their silhouettes, and the flags hoisted on the flagpoles, there was no doubt that they were British fleets.

Regardless of the intentions of the British fleet, the Irish ships present quickly took the "Celtic" as their temporary flagship and set up the formation that had been practiced together many times before. In the process, seaplanes taking off from Dublin provided a steady stream of reconnaissance information to their own ships. Not surprisingly, the large ship of the British is an old-fashioned former dreadnought, the 12-inch main gun is only a caliber bluff, the range, rate of fire, and accuracy cannot be compared with the current Scharnhorst class, and the protection design of the older generation of warships and the armor steel used are also difficult to resist the attack of the Scharnhorst class at an effective distance.

One of the operational plans drawn up by the Irish Naval Staff was code-named "Operation Boxer", which considered an armed conflict with the British Navy in the Irish Sea. According to tactical deduction, even in bad weather conditions and aircraft unable to support in time, the two Scharnhorst-class can still overturn two unmodified former dreadnoughts or three armored cruisers of the British Navy. The confidence of the Irish Navy Staff is not only from His Majesty King Joachim, who led the victories in the naval battles of Jutland, Flanders and the Faroe Islands, but also from the fact that the technical modifications of the two Scharnhorst-class ships took half a year to complete are not just repainted, although their overall appearance has not changed much, and the three major systems of weapons, fire control and power have been upgraded. Needless to say, the main gun, from 210 mm with 40 times the diameter to 203 mm with 55 times the diameter, the firing range has increased by one-third, which is enough to completely blow up the 40 times the diameter of the 12-inch gun of the old British ship, and the depth of 10,000 meters of armor-piercing shells reaches 240 mm, which is enough to deal with the main armor belt of no more than 228 mm of the British former dreadnoughts, plus the increase in the rate of fire brought by the semi-mechanized auxiliary ammunition feeding system, the effective promotion of the shooting hit rate by the improved fire stabilization system, and the full load speed of 25 knots, Before the new generation of heavy cruisers appeared on the stage of history, the newly equipped Scharnhorst-class sister ships were undoubtedly the best among the 14,000 to 5,000-ton warships.

The two Irish captains, Townsend and Barber, were not afraid of their fierce opponents, and the officers and men of the ships were even more eager to try their best to take advantage of this battle to completely subdue the British, so that they would be respectful to the Irish from now on, and would not make a mistake again. Without the burden of protecting the fishing boats, the Irish fleet was lightly armed and was able to make full use of the speed advantage to perform various tactics, and naturally had a psychological advantage, while the British fleet, because of its activities at the gates of the Irish, could not help but be attacked by Irish aircraft, submarines, and high-speed torpedo boats at any time, and could not help but be constrained and worried. The British naval officers and men had long since lost their former domineering spirit, and they nervously responded to the active provocations of the Irish, maintaining a defensive posture without advancing or retreating, and formed a strange situation of "front-field defense" on the sea more than ten nautical miles away from the former capital of Ireland.

It wasn't until dark that the British fleet departed.

However, the British government and military did not continue to give full play to the spirit of Ah Q, which they were good at, but consciously suffered a big loss, and on the one hand, they vigorously criticized Ireland's "fishing boat aggression" through diplomacy and public opinion, and on the other hand, they secretly dispatched troops and sent two super-dreadnoughts built after the war, the "Queen Elizabeth" and the "War Weathiness", to the Irish Sea to demonstrate. German officials quickly announced that the 1st Battleship Squadron of the High Seas Fleet had departed from Brest and moved from the Faroe Islands to the waters of northeastern Ireland, with the aim of avoiding any form of armed conflict between Great Britain and Ireland and thus destabilizing the European order. These two formidable naval battle formations stretched out like iron pincers to the north and south ends of the Irish Sea, and the two British capital ships that had been commissioned after the war were certainly powerful, but they were no match for the bloodthirsty tigers if they were to fight six German battleships and five battlecruisers head-to-head.

Forced by Germany's military deterrence, the "Queen Elizabeth" and the "War Wereary", lacking actual combat experience, gave up their attempts to enter the Irish Sea, but moved from the naval base in Portsmouth to Plymouth, shortening the voyage to the Irish Sea, and at the same time transferred two technically modified former dreadnoughts and a newly converted armored cruiser from the fleet defending the capital area, with the intention of suppressing the main ships of the Irish Navy, and the naval ships deployed on the west coast of Britain also carried out fishing protection operations like the Irish.

It is foreseeable that until the two sides clearly demarcate the fishing area, the competition for fishery resources will continue and become a tidal current that disturbs the stability of the British Isles.

(End of chapter)