In the depths of the night, the wind was not stopping, the icy waters were tumbling and surging, and the visibility on the pitch-black sea was very low, the British submarine with the number E-15 sailed alone and tenaciously in the waters northwest of the Faroe Islands. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 Since leaving Clyde Naval Base in west Scotland at the end of October, the new 800-ton submarine has sailed more than 2,000 nautical miles, first heading into the North Atlantic, looking for German raiders, then turning back into the northern waters of Ireland, staring cautiously at the surface of the sea, before receiving urgent orders to come to the Faroe Islands immediately. In this way, it remained on the chart like a headless fly, and the long voyage was a great hardship for the crew of Captain Danny Kingston. Even so, none of the 25 naval officers and men on the ship complained of grievances, and some of them gritted their teeth and stuck to their posts even if they were ill.

The country is in danger, and it is the responsibility of the husband. It is precisely because the British Navy has reached the point where it can no longer lose that the officers and men have finally abandoned the luck mentality of the past, and they have gradually realized that the victory or defeat of the naval battle is not only in the hands of the people in the flagship commander tower, but that every link and every ship may play a vital role in influencing the direction of the war.

The E-15 is bubbling and swaying in the wind and waves, and although it is currently the newest and largest attack submarine of the British Navy, it cannot escape the inherent limitations of submarines. Crews simply can't stand still without support, and even able-bodied seafarers feel uncomfortable.

The vertigo came with a feeling of disgust, and Captain Kingston, who was at the top of the submarine's control tower, leaned over the railing with both hands, bent down and gasped for air. After a short rest, the heavy head felt clearer. At that moment, the non-commissioned officer on duty with him patted him on the shoulder and pointed to the port side. Captain Kingston fixed his eyes on it, and at most two hundred yards away, a dark figure appeared on the sea.

"I don't know if it's our ships or the Germans." The non-commissioned officer said in a low voice.

The wind whistling in his ears, coupled with the sound of the waves crashing against the hull, Captain Kingston had not heard the sound of the ship until this time. He picked up the binoculars and took a look, but it was not as effective as direct observation with the naked eye.

"Prepare to confirm the identity of the other party with a light signal, all enter the combat position, and the ship's guns will fire at any time!" Kingston decisively ordered.

In terms of performance, the E-15 belongs to the E-9 class submarines can be called the best attack submarines of this era, they use Vickers type diesel engines, use twin-shaft propulsion, the maximum speed of 15 knots on the surface, 9 knots under the water, equipped with a 76 mm deck gun, 2 bow torpedo tubes, 2 side torpedo tubes, 1 stern torpedo tube, 10 450 mm torpedoes, with a full range of torpedo attack capabilities.

According to the 1911-1913 plan, 10 ships of the E-9 class were built, and after the outbreak of the war, the British Navy built another 38 ships according to the 1914 plan. In order to complete the construction task in the shortest possible time, in addition to the two major military submarine builders, Vickers Shipbuilding and Chatham Shipbuilding, the British government also mobilized many civilian shipyards to participate in the construction. According to optimistic estimates at the time, all of these submarines would be completed and commissioned by the beginning of 1916, but by November 1914, none of the E-9 class submarines that had been built during the war had been completed, and the E-9 to E-16 in service were all built before the war.

After the crew was in position, the signal corps used the signal light to send a specially coded light signal to the shadow of the ship on the port side, which is also the usual way for the navies of various countries to identify friend and foe on the battlefield. When the lights flickered, everyone on board waited nervously and anxiously, after all, the two sides were so close that if the other side was really a German battleship, it would be able to sink the E-15 with a single rush.

After the signal was given, the sea returned to darkness, and the minutes and seconds passed, but the hazy shadow of the ship did not respond. From the afternoon radio communications of our fleet, Captain Kingston and his crew had learned of the attack on our fleet by German carrier-based aircraft, which meant that the German fleet must be near the Faroe Islands.

The waiting time had exceeded Captain Kingston's psychological bottom line, and he knew very well that the safety of all the crew was in his own hands, and he must not risk everyone's lives. So he was heartbroken and gave the order to open fire on the gunners who were waiting on the deck.

The light of a single 76-mm gun was far from enough to illuminate the sea, and the column of water stirred up by the shells was as hazy as the black shadow of the ship, and it was impossible to determine how far the impact point had deviated from the target. The reloaded shell casings clanged on the deck of the submarine, and as the gunners loaded their shells, Captain Kingston gave the command to fire torpedoes to the port side through a microphone to the torpedo room.

A torpedo with a depth of 4 meters was immediately launched from the port side of the submarine, and when it was too late, a bright light suddenly flashed on the sea surface in the direction of the port side, which was a pillar of light emitted by the ship's searchlight, although it had no direct lethality, it was more dangerous than ordinary artillery fire. The gunners on the deck of the submarine hurriedly pointed their guns at the light source and fired the second shell quickly. In the blink of an eye, several more pillars of light appeared in the darkness, they were like a group of hungry guys holding chopsticks searching for delicious meatballs in the hot pot, swimming back and forth at a very fast speed, the pillars of light quickly fell on E-15, and found the white traces left by the torpedo on the sea......

"Torpedo! A torpedo was found on the starboard side! ”

In the depths of the night, heart-rending shouts rang out from the destroyers with the St. George's cross flag on their masts, and the sailors on the deck batteries turned their weapons around in an attempt to intercept the torpedoes with gunfire in the shortest possible time, but they soon realized that it was too late - the torpedoes were already very close by the time they were discovered. The sailors who witnessed all this were terrified to the extreme, although they knew that war and death were always involved, and the country and the people hoped that they could defend the country to the death, but at the moment when facing the threat of death, the fragility in the hearts of human beings still burst out in an instant.

"Left full rudder! Left full rudder! ”

On the bridge, the commander was desperately tearing his throat, the rudder wheel was turning rapidly in the first mate's hand, and the rapid turn of the battleship also caused the deck to tilt slightly, at this moment. The guns on the ship were evacuated, and the shells that flew out quickly stirred up large and small columns of water on the nearby sea, but in the hurry, the impact point of the light and heavy guns was still a long distance from the torpedoes in the water, and the waves raised by the shells did not help to change their course. Even so, the most feared thing of the sailors did not happen, the captain's steering order was very timely, and the destroyer's reaction speed was sharp enough, and the terrifying torpedo thundered through the bow of the ship. Seeing the white track formed by the bubbles so close, the nerve-fragile men on the bridge almost collapsed in shock.

Amid the shouts of the officers, the sailors operating the searchlight quickly locked onto the attacker, a submarine shaped like a black shark. In fact, in terms of appearance and contour, the German submarine was like a long and narrow single-edged saber, and the British and French submarines were closer to the cigar shape, and it was not difficult to distinguish the British submarine floating on the sea from the German U-boat: the Germans either installed one deck gun on the fore deck or only one on the foredeck, while the British E-9 class installed the only deck gun behind the ship's conning tower; The conning tower of the German U-boat resembles an oval-shaped sardine can, while the pit of the British submarine is accustomed to a stepped structure, that is, the lower half is wide and the upper half is narrow.

These conspicuous differences in appearance can be treasured in the mouths of post-war scholars, experts, and even military enthusiasts, but when the war is going on, it is impossible for ordinary officers and soldiers on both sides of the war to have such an accurate understanding of the enemy's equipment, and the light and perspective on the battlefield may also cause visual deviations. On board the British destroyer, which was torpedoed by the E-15, no one at the time explicitly questioned the identity of the submarine. In fact, the tragedy was doomed from the moment the lookout lowered his head to wipe his nose - he couldn't read the light signal from the other side, so he wanted to wait for the other side to send it a second time, while the officer on duty on the bridge was smoking with his colleagues, and some gunners in the gunsoft emplacement saw the signal light but could not read the contents. A coincidence of coincidence, a few minutes of hesitation, and a few seemingly inconspicuous accidental factors caused this disaster with far-reaching impact......

Soon, the destroyer "Lessander", which was part of the 11th British destroyer, sent a wireless telegram to the flagship: it had encountered a German submarine 70 nautical miles northwest of Strammer Island and was exchanging fire with it.

The E-15 under the command of Captain Kinster also sent a report to the Admiralty and the flagship of the Home Fleet, but due to the deviation of the bearing calculation, the battle location it reported was nearly 20 nautical miles away from the bearing marked by the "Lessander", which caused the commander of the Home Fleet to make an erroneous judgment: the "Lessander" and the E-15 encountered the outposts of the German fleet in the northwest of the Faroe Islands, and according to common sense, the German main fleet should be about 100 nautical miles northwest of the Faroe Islands.

By this time, Sir Jackson and his main fleet had been waiting for more than a dozen hours, the radio silence of the German fleet and the constant wind and waves that prevented them from finding the German fleet, and the nervousness was gradually replaced by deep anxiety. Jackson began to worry about the weather on the second or even the third day, as long as the wind and waves weakened, the German carrier-based aircraft would come in waves, and countless deadly aerial bombs would fall from the sky, damaging and sinking the British capital warships one after another......

Strike or retreat, and Sir Jackson stood at the crossroads he had drawn for himself.

In the waters northwest of the Faroe Islands, Captain Kingston decided to sink it in a surface engagement, realizing that the other side was only a light warship with not fierce firepower. While directing the crew to bombard the target with deck guns, he ordered the submarine to turn to the left, and a moment later, two torpedoes fired from the bow torpedo tubes sped away at a speed of nearly 40 knots, at which point the commander of the "Lessand", Major Marvin Johansen, commanded his battleship to rush towards his opponent, ready to split the belly of the blackfish directly with the sharp bow.

(End of chapter)