Ignoring the sound of explosions and the tremor of the ship's hull, Franz von Hipper stood straight on the left side of the bridge, the beams of his own searchlights trying to shine through the veil-dense rain curtain to reflect the majestic silhouette of the enemy ship. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

With the results of the previous few hours, Hipper and his officers and men were worthy of national praise for the heroes of naval warfare, and the German reconnaissance fleet proved the superiority of the German shipbuilding industry with its indisputable performance. So, even in a less favorable situation, Hipper had enough reason to despise his opponent and muttered in a nonchalant tone, "It's these four big guys." ”

Hipper's chief of staff, Erich Raeder, who was still an outstanding young officer in the German Navy, continued: "The George V-class battleships, built between 1911 and 1913, were more survivable and fierce than the battle cruisers. It's hard to deal with on our strength alone. ”

"We are certainly no match for them." Hipper's tone sounded calm, and at this moment, an exploding flame reflected his face, and those shining eyes did not have the calmness of bowing to the wind.

Having spent more than three years with Hipper, Raeder became familiar with the commander's personality and way of thinking. At such a moment of urgent combat, even if he had different ideas, he would not arbitrarily persuade him, but while figuring out the intentions of his every decision, he would be a good staff assistant in a down-to-earth manner.

Suddenly, a bright yellow fireball flashed on the bow of the enemy ship, and Hipper raised the corners of his mouth slightly: "Oh, hit the target!" ”

As an upgraded and improved version of the Moltke class, the "Seydlitz" did not continue to use the 11-inch caliber triple main gun, but adopted a 12-inch gun with a diameter of 50 times, and although the number of main guns on the ship was reduced by half, the firing range and destructive power of the ship continued unabated. In the course of the confrontation with Betty's fleet, three of the ship's main turrets were damaged or malfunctioned, and after emergency repairs, these turrets were put back into service, but the armor damage that could be dealt with by temporary measures was bound to be a hidden danger in the new battle.

The "Daring" looked fine with a shot in a non-critical area, its port side secondary gun flickering like a full-beat signaling light, while its main gun abandoned its flashy salvo and fired at the limit of what was achievable in the current situation.

As one of the best capital ships of the British Navy at the outbreak of war, the "Daring" was armed with the powerful 13. The 5-inch naval guns, the whole ship arranged five twin turrets along the central axis, the firepower intensity of a single salvo has a greater advantage than the "Seydlitz" equipped with four main turrets, but the difference in the rate of fire of the main guns of the two sides has been shown in this fierce confrontation. In less than two minutes, the "Daring", which opened fire first, fired 26 main shells at the opponent, and the "Seydlitz" returned fire 29 times. However, at this time, the fortune on the battlefield seemed to be in favor of the previously devastated British side, and "Daring" had already scored 3 direct hits, and all of them were solid blows. Three violent explosions, every steel plate of the "Seydlitz" trembled, and every intercom tube came with a muffled explosion, and the one that hit the stern almost made it lose its ability to steer, and added more than 300 tons of new load to the proud German battlecruiser - the continuous pouring of sea water into the bilge caused the whole ship to tilt to the left by 2 degrees, and the draft of the stern increased by 1. 5 meters, and all this is not a fatal drag for the time being.

In fact, Hipper's flagship, the honor-laden but scarred "Seydlitz," surpassed its rival, the British George V-class No. 3 ship "Daring," by 2,000 tons in absolute tonnage. "Seydlitz" focuses on all-round defense, with the thickest armor of the whole ship in the bridge control tower, while "Daring" takes a focused defense, and the thickest armor of the whole ship is at the waterline. It is difficult to judge which was superior or inferior in terms of defensive design, and in the case of this naval battle, the German battlecruisers' resistance to sinking would have been overshadowed by the overall defeat.

On the sea with high winds and waves, the relative displacement of the two fleets moving quickly in the turbulence changed rapidly. In the blink of an eye, the distance between the lead ships of the two sides approached from 400 meters to 200 meters, because each side had no intention of forcibly ramming the other, which was basically the minimum distance between the two - from a purely technical point of view, at such a close distance, the thickest armor was like tissue paper. This pretty much means that whoever can hit his opponent more has a better chance of winning this hand-to-hand fight.

The next three minutes became the most difficult and difficult period for the Hipper's fleet in this naval battle, and if it were not for the German ship's damage management personnel and mechanics who worked tirelessly to carry out emergency repairs and troubleshooting, this might even have become the "black three minutes" of the Germans.

In this blink of an eye, "Daring" is like hitting the jackpot, and the hit rate has reached an unbelievable level. Although the No. 1 main turret in the bow was damaged and stopped firing, the remaining eight main guns fired two rounds each in a little more than a minute, and five of the 16 shells hit the "Seydlitz". To add insult to injury, the "George V", which was immediately behind the "Daring", also joined the shelling of the "Seydlitz", and soon 2 shells hit the target directly. Hipper's flagship resembled a string of ignited firecrackers, with flashes of explosion - a horrific spectacle that had only been seen before on a battleship that had been blown up. Don't say that they are British, and even on the "De Fllinger", which is following behind the "Sedlitz", the officers and men are desperate to think that their flagship is in danger!

One or two shots may have been a fluke, but with six shells, six violent explosions, the "Seydlitz" really suffered an unprecedented heavy blow. The once damaged No. 1 turret was penetrated, all 80 officers and men were killed, and the explosion broke through the fire door in the cartridge, and the fire reached the ammunition depot. Turret 2 was also hit, but the British armor-piercing shells exploded before they could penetrate the intact turret armor, destroying the turret and the turret's steering device with great force, and poison gas began to seep into the firing control command chamber, forcing everyone to evacuate. Orders to the firing room could only be issued by microphone, which was then transmitted to the turret by telephone.

Like the No. 1 turret, the No. 3 turret of the "Seydlitz" was damaged in the battle with Betty's fleet and took more than an hour of emergency repairs before it was put back into battle. This time, the British did not give their opponents another chance to repair it, and one main shell blew through its frontal armor, and before some of the surviving gunners could transfer, another main shell penetrated directly into it, completely erasing the turret from the battleship.

Four shells destroyed three turrets of the "Sedlitz", and the remaining three, although they did not target its only remaining turret No. 4, unceremoniously blew holes of varying sizes in its port hull, and the ship's water intake situation deteriorated rapidly. Compared with the last time he voluntarily withdrew from the battle, Hipper's ship really reached the point where it had to withdraw from the battle this time. However, the fire on the ship became an ideal target for the enemy ship to observe and track, and just when the "Seydlitz" was making a difficult right turn, the "Iron Duke", which was in the midst of four British capital ships, sharpened its knives and rushed up again!

Because of the damage to the condenser, the "Iron Duke" was three knots slower than the friendly ships, like a wounded wolf, dragging its bruised body behind its companions -- the firing control system was damaged, nearly half of the ship's guns were damaged or malfunctioned, and hundreds of officers and men below the captain Dafu were killed, and under the stimulus of despair and pain, the rage of people's nature broke through the shackles of reason. Seeing that the "Seydlitz" was getting closer and closer, neither the acting captain, the navigator Major Hatok, nor Jelico, who was still performing the duties of the commander-in-chief of the fleet, gave the order to evade, and the newly repaired forward main gun lowered the muzzle of the gun, and the only 6-inch secondary gun in the front of the port side was also desperately firing at the target, and then the 30,000-ton battleship, which was only traveling at a speed of 15 knots, made another cameo appearance as a mine-strike ship, and fired two torpedoes at the "Seydlitz" from the underwater torpedo tube at the front of the hull. The danger achieved another result that made the lightning strike ship groups on both sides humiliated......

Under the stormy attack of the opponent, the battle bridge of the "Seydlitz" became almost the only intact place in the superstructure of the battlecruiser, Hipper's posture was still straight, but his face turned from calm to pale, and his gloomy expression replaced the pride and anticipation of a few minutes ago, and when Raeder relayed reports about the damage to his ship and the damage to "De Fllinger" and "Goeben", he stubbornly gritted his teeth and persisted, despite his nervousness and anxiety.

In order to relieve the siege of their own capital ships, the accompanying light cruisers "Strasbourg" and "Rostock" fired all the torpedoes at the British fleet in one go, and the approaching Reims formation also fiercely attacked the British battleships with intensive firepower. In the most difficult minutes, Hipper's battlecruisers barely withstood the desperate frustration of Jericho's fleet with their monster-like survivability. Next, the scene of shell explosions began to appear more and more on the four British capital ships, Reims's "Helgoland" and "Oldenburg" first hit the "Ajax" with a fierce bombardment, the 11-inch caliber armor-piercing shell exploded many holes in the second armor belt, and the leaking heavy oil turned the internal compartment into a sea of fire in many places, and then two old German dreadnoughts equipped with triple main guns pointed the finger at the "Daring", not only damaging the three main turrets, but also destroying the ship's communication system.

The Reims formation took advantage of the British capital ships to attack the Hipper fleet and showed its skills again, and the two genuine German capital ships "King" and "Caesar" also copied up at full speed, and their first goal was to use torpedoes to smash the "Iron Duke" of the "King Albert", since it happened to fall behind the British fleet again, Natsuki gave orders from the temporary flagship and mobilized forces from all over the place to besiege the "Iron Duke".

The next few minutes were the last minutes of this fierce, tense, and tortuous fleet engagement, and they were also the few minutes that many of the surviving crew members of the "Iron Duke" will remember in their lifetimes. Including the latest battleships of the German Navy, as many as 5 German battleships bombarded the British flagship with stormy artillery fire at extremely close range, the secondary armor belt located above the main armor belt of the waterline basically became a hornet's nest, none of the upper fuel tanks used to strengthen the broadside defense survived, the upper compartments located above the deck and between the front and rear bridges were cleaned by shrapnel, the five main turrets were finally destroyed, the heavy waterline armor belt also had 17 large and small damages, and the bottom bilge was flooded with more than 5,000 tons. Approaching the extreme danger calculated by the Engineer, it miraculously escaped being sunk - under the desperate cover of a group of light ships, it fled north at full speed, eventually disappearing behind artificial smoke and rain screens.

In order to avoid a repetition of the unfortunate scene of the "King Albert", Natsuki ordered all ships to abandon the pursuit, the main fleet was retracted in an orderly manner, and some light ships cleaned up the battlefield and searched for survivors, and some organized a tight rearguard line to guard against the British fleet launching a counterattack at any cost.

(End of chapter)