The night sky is overcast and the sea is rolling, and this oppressive scene just sets off the cruel and unforgiving side of war. On the hillside north of Tórshavn www.biquge.info officers of the Faroe Islands Theater Command had already set up high-powered binoculars and dug a bunker in an open area to prevent British naval fire from approaching the area.

Including the old battleship "Braunschweig", which had just arrived, seven German warships stationed at Tórshafen were bombarding British mine-striking ships outside the harbor with heavy artillery fire, and the anti-mine and anti-submarine nets laid outside the channel could intercept torpedoes and trap submarines trying to sneak into the harbor, but they could not prevent enemy surface ships from forcibly breaking through. As long as a British destroyer breaks through these two anti-mine and anti-submarine nets, they will lose their original role.

At this moment, the British lightning strike ship group did not seem to have noticed that the Germans had deployed anti-mine and anti-submarine nets outside the harbor channel, and they were cruising at high speed on the sea not far from the port, avoiding the German artillery fire, and at the same time looking for an opportunity to shoot the light column of the searchlight into the harbor, so as to spy on the reality of the German Navy in Tórshavn. Night artillery at sea is different from day warfare, and is limited by the viewing distance, and the effective range of naval artillery often does not exceed three or four thousand meters, but this is not an unbreakable iron law. As long as there is effective firing guidance, the warring sides can still fight a long-range or even ultra-long-distance artillery battle.

The German warships in the harbor were largely stationary, and instead of turning on their shipboard searchlights, they used searchlights and artillery flares deployed on the shore to search for enemy ships. At the very beginning of the battle, the German ships deterred their opponents with heavy artillery fire, but the efficiency of the shelling was that there was no rain and hundreds of shells were fired, except that the British ships did not dare to get too close, but did not achieve any practical results. After about 10 minutes, the German gunners, who had fully warmed up, gradually found their senses, and first the "Cologne" hit the British destroyer more than 600 meters away with a round of broadside shots, and finally a striking target appeared on the flickering sea. Two large 1898-class torpedo boats hidden in the harbor stared at it for several rounds of rapid fire, and although the old 88mm guns were not very powerful, the British destroyer, which was hit twice by German fire, quickly withdrew from the battle in disarray.

Before the large British warships hovering around the periphery joined the melee, the "Braunschweig" was undoubtedly the supergiant of the ships participating in the battle. Like most battleships built at the same time, the aura of the German battleship has long been eclipsed by the appearance of dreadnoughts, as the British and German navies move from competition to confrontation, the outside world will inevitably put dreadnoughts and battlecruisers in the first place when measuring the strength of both sides, and the battleships built in the pre-dreadnought era have become insignificant. In several heavyweight naval battles after the outbreak of the war, the German Navy's dreadnoughts and battle cruisers had a brilliant god-class performance, and the British Navy's large number of former dreadnoughts could not change the unfavorable situation of their own main fleet. At the Battle of Jutland, the 3rd Battleship Detachment led by General Bradford was beaten by German battle cruisers; In the first confrontation between the Anglo-German navy in the Flanders Sea, the British Channel Fleet was beaten to the point by the German fleet; In the next two naval battles, the British lost the courage to confront the German fleet head-on, and most of the time they only hid far behind.

In terms of combat performance, the German Navy's former dreadnoughts were no better than those built and commissioned by the British, and their strategic role was equally lackluster, because the British super-dreadnoughts in Jutland World War I won an extremely valuable tactical opportunity for the German fleet, and they were praised as heroes and received numerous praises, and the "Braunschweig" was the lucky one who experienced that brutal naval battle. It and its sister ships entered service in the same year as the British Edward VII class battleships, but their standard displacement was 3,000 tons less, and their firepower, speed, armor, and seaworthiness were all at a disadvantage. Regardless of factors other than himself, Braunschweig could not compete with Edward VII, not to mention that Braunschweig only built five, while Edward VII built eight. If war had broken out between Britain and Germany in 1905-1906, the German navy would not have been able to confront the British navy head-on.

Prior to this night, the Braunschweig-class and their modified versions, the Deutsche class, had never had a direct confrontation with the Edward VII class or other British dreadnoughts. Now that the "Braunschweig" is defending against the attack of the British fleet in Tórshavn, it is possible to engage in an artillery battle with the opposing battlecruiser and the Edward VII-class dreadnought, the German officers and men on the ship do not expect to defeat such a formidable opponent with their own strength, but they know that Funck's battle fleet is in the nearby waters, even if the "Braunschweig" needs to fight three Edwardian VII class ships alone for a certain period of time, no one will fall into fear out of despair. This is because the heroic deeds of Scheer in leading the 2nd Battleship Detachment against the British Main Fleet deeply inspired each of them, and made them see the perfect opportunity to reap the immortal feats of the 2nd line capital ships!

Against a dozen or so British mine-striking ships, the "Braunschweig" could have had reservations, but Natsuki's direct order to this old battleship was to attack the enemy ship with all its might, and its firing position was close to the breakwater on the east side of the harbor, which was equivalent to infantry hiding in trenches and firing, and the shells from a distance were not easy to pose a threat to it, and the British fleet heading north may not have the courage to enter the Stramer-Noll waterway, as long as these British light-raided ships in front of them were eliminated, the threat to Tórshafen would be eliminated.

The performance of the "Braunschweig" lived up to Natsuki's expectations, its four 280 mm (11 in) naval guns loaded with howitzer shotgun, which was highly lethal to British light ships hundreds or even kilometers away, and its seven 170 mm (6.75 in) secondary guns on the single side of the ship continued to fire at a rate of 6 to 7 rounds per minute, and a single direct hit could cause fatal damage to a 1,000-ton British destroyer. In addition, the Braunschweig-class is designed with 18 88mm naval guns, which use 10-kilogram blasting shells with a maximum range of more than 11,000 meters, and can cross the breakwater to carry out rapid strikes against British destroyers outside the harbor - its maximum combat rate of fire can reach 15 minutes per shot, which is quite terrifying for light surface ships!

Under Natsuki's watchful eye, the battle at Tórs Harbor was raging. In the face of the intensive artillery fire of the harbor defenders, most of the British mine-striking ships that had lost their suddenness of attack were just scurrying blindly outside the harbor, and the two mine-striking ships and one destroyer that tried to storm the harbor were still two or three hundred meters away from the channel and were beaten into a leak by the rapid-fire guns of the German ships. Seeing that there was no chance for the lightning strikes and that the submarines could not sneak into the harbor with periscopes erected under the enemy's strict precautions, the British fleet, which was hovering at the southern end of the waterway, finally made a move -- a sharp whistle sounded in the night sky, and heavy shells fired by 12-inch naval guns came one after another, smashing into Tórshavn, which had not been in war for hundreds of years. At this time, the bunker dug by the German soldiers came in handy, and Natsuki and the officers and staff officers of the theater command hurriedly hid in the bunker, continued to observe the battle situation using the 15x artillery mirror made by the Gottz company, and radioed the movements of the British fleet to the Funk fleet waiting on the periphery.

Because conventional optical equipment was difficult to accurately measure the distance according to the light flare generated by the ship's gun fire, the "Braunschweig" was unable to launch a counterattack. Upon learning of this, Admiral Funk took the initiative to ask Natsuki for his permission to lead a battle fleet to attack the British fleet. Although the German fleet benefited from night battles in the Battle of Jutland, Natsuki was well aware that luck would not always favor one side. In order to avoid a catastrophe and turn a sure victory into an upset, he ordered Funk to remain on standby in the waters northeast of Knoll Island, and ordered the German submarines in the nearby waters to move to the southern end of the Stramer-Noll waterway as soon as possible to attack any ships they found there.

The British fleet was very careful to choose the southern end of the Strammer-Knoll waterway as the firing position, and before dawn, the German observation posts deployed on the islands of Strammer and Knoll were difficult to function, but the British fleet wanted to ensure the accuracy of long-range fire, relying on lightning ships approaching the port. Xia Shu ordered the communications unit of the Theater Command and the radio departments of the "Braunschweig" and "Cologne" ships to search for the enemy's radio communication frequencies and achieve the purpose of interfering with the enemy's communications by transmitting radio waves of the same frequency. Over time, this simple means of radio jamming began to work, and the British fleet did not completely stop firing, their artillery fire sometimes fell in the harbor, sometimes deviated from the harbor, and the constant adjustment also greatly affected their already undominant rate of fire. The long-range shelling lasted for more than 10 minutes, and about two-thirds of the four large British warships fired more than 100 rounds of large-caliber shells, and the remaining one-third landed more than half of them on the docks, breakwaters, and urban areas, and only one German transport ship was damaged by the dozen or so rounds that fell into the harbor, including the "Braunschweig," and none of the seven German battleships were damaged by the long-range shelling of the British fleet.

Having neither a clear understanding of the deployment of enemy forces nor a delay in opening the situation, the British fleet clearly did not dare to stay in one position for too long. At about 1 o'clock in the morning, the British mine-striking ships attacking Tórshavn retreated, and the British fleet also stopped long-range artillery bombardment, and soon disappeared into the night. In this battle, which lasted less than an hour, the British Navy's battlecruiser "Australia" and the three Edward VII-class dreadnoughts accompanying it were like timid rats, always wandering only at the southern end of the Stramer-Knoll waterway, and the adventurous spirit and fearless will of the past were nowhere to be seen.

(End of chapter)