Major Fili was terrified by the overwhelming amount of shells that rushed over the low reefs at the mouth of the waterway, and the two American destroyers desperately fled into the waterway, whizzing shells around them in waves, and the three rounds of rapid fire brought more than just an atmosphere of terror......

In the darkness of the night, the remaining fire on the destroyer Durreton undoubtedly became an important mark, almost no calibration, a salvo of rapid fire was fired, the accuracy of the German fleet was not too guaranteed, but the victory was in the density of shells, and in the second round, a salvo was fired from the eight 210mm guns of the Scharnhorst, and the only result of this round of shelling was achieved.

A 210mm high-explosive bomb smashed into the sea from the rear position of the Durreston side, and after more than 20 meters of underwater propulsion, it exploded violently almost close to the armor belt on the rear side of the battleship, and nearly 60 kilograms of explosives in the high-explosive bomb immediately formed a huge pressure ring next to the battleship's armor belt, which was so close that it was almost less than half a meter...... The explosion passed through the almost incompressible seawater, instantly striking enormous pressure on the rear armor belt of the flanks.

The underwater armor belt on the back of the Durreton is only 20mm, which is not intended to deal with artillery shelling, and if it is hit by a torpedo underwater, not to mention a 750-ton destroyer, or a large cruiser of thousands of tons, it is almost a fate to sink...... Almost without warning, a huge opening opened in the bottom of the battleship, which was three meters long and more than half a meter wide.

By the time Major Filip received the news of the shutdown of the power compartment, the destroyer Durreton had lost most of its power, and the aft compartment was completely out of control. And this 750-ton destroyer. Although there is a watertight chamber design. However, the mere isolation of the hull into four areas simply could not cope with the terrible situation of the entire aft compartment being filled.

If the forward compartment was filled with water, there was almost no need to think about it, the destroyer would be sunk directly by its own weight in the sea, and after just a few minutes, Major Fili, after not being able to change the upward state of the battleship, made the final choice to immediately prepare to evacuate, and the Telly, who had just desperately escaped after dodging this dense fire. Rushed to the rescue.

By dawn, when the battleship Virginia, part of the First Pacific Fleet, approached the strait from the northeast, the entire strait had long since returned to calm, and despite the order to abandon ship, Major Fili, after boarding the Telly, had abandoned his plan to continue tracking his opponent, and continued to hope to tow the battleship out of the deep water and let the battleship run aground before silence.

When the commander of the battleship Virginia, Colonel Wilm, learned from the two destroyer commanders about the German fleet, almost at the first moment realized that they were encountering the German Spee fleet, which had attacked the French fleet earlier on Gran Nicobar Island...... And equipped with the Iron Tortoise of the Virginia. After encountering an opponent, it is not impossible to win. But it must be a passive situation.

At 11 a.m. on 8 September, an order from the U.S. First Pacific Fleet Command in Brisbane set up a temporary formation with the battleship Virginia as the flagship to conduct a joint search in the Tasman waters.

The Germans suddenly slipped out of the Indian Ocean to the waters west of Australia, and dealt a fatal blow to Wellington, the New Zealand town of the British Commonwealth, which was absolutely unforeseen earlier...... Rear Admiral Lucius, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, apparently had his own opinion on this, and he was very sure to the Australian and British allies that the Germans were preparing to attack the Australian coastal cities.

The problem is that Australia's major cities are on the coastline, especially Sydney and Brisbane, which are important anchorages for shipping, and although they have coastal defense batteries, naval anchors, and a large number of garrisons, it is a difficult problem for anyone to successfully defend against a German sneak attack.

Almost as soon as the Americans received the news, the Indian squadron of the Royal Navy reacted immediately, and Sir Persson immediately ordered Lord Dieters' battle patrol squadron of the Invincible, including the detachment of the two battleships Edward VII, to rush to Australia, and at the same time ordered the Royal Navy's battleship squadron of the London at anchor in Sydney to immediately cooperate with the Australian and American fleets.

When the fleets of the United States, Britain, and Australia poured into the Tasman Sea from all directions, on the night of the 8th, the war broke out again, and the Spee fleet did not enter the Tasman Sea at all, but detoured the north-south longitudinal route of New Zealand, shelled Christchurch, which was 200 kilometers away from Wellington, and completely destroyed this important agricultural export port of the British Commonwealth countries with almost no effort.

A large number of Allied merchant ships trading in Christchurch were destroyed in the port, and all the port facilities were blown up, and the skyrocketing fires burned night after day, and a staggering amount of agricultural trade was reduced to coke...... As Christchurch is an important port with Wellington, a large number of local products and South American agricultural products are supplied or traded locally, which directly contributes to the supply crunch in Australia in the next few months.

The unexpected direction of the Germans' attack obviously caused great trouble to the American fleet, which was now temporarily serving as the main force of the search in the Tasman Sea, and the detachment under the command of Colonel Wilm soon got the news, but he had just scraped together two battleships of the same class, the Fernigia and the New Jersey, and six Pauldin-class destroyers, and if he went to the Germans in this way, it would be a great disaster.

He immediately sent a telegram to the British's London detachment, asking them to move closer to him at once, and at the same time to Rear Admiral Lucius in Brisbane, asking for additional warships, as for the Australian Navy, in this formal naval confrontation, the Australian Navy, which had only a few old cruisers, was simply insignificant!

However, in the early morning of the 9th, the American fleet, which was sailing from the Tasman Sea to the west coast of New Zealand, had received news that the combined fleet of Britain and Australia, which was still hundreds of kilometers away from it, would not be able to rendezvous at least until the afternoon of the next day, and that Rear Admiral Lucius had obviously had different considerations and did not agree to send the flagship North Dakota and the battleship Mississippi.

At 4 o'clock on the 10th, when the combined fleet, which included almost half of the strength of the three Australian navies, rendezvous, this huge pursuit fleet already included 3 battleships (former dreadnoughts), 4 cruisers, and 14 destroyers, and the fleet commander also agreed that Lord Tsearson, commander of the battleship London, would serve as the commander of the battleship London.

Lord Tsaxon, after carefully weighing the forces at his disposal, and considering that Lord Dieters' powerful Royal Navy battle patrol fleet had already arrived on Cox's Island, and could reach the Tasman Sea in a week at most, it was clear that his first task now was not to annihilate the Germans, but to find them.

Before nightfall, the fleet commanders of the three countries were invited to the London for an emergency meeting, and Lord Zarson's plan was basically approved by the three parties, and after nightfall, the huge combined fleet of the three countries sailed southward, their goal was naturally to bypass the Fordshorn Strait south of New Zealand, and instead search for the German fleet along the coastline, which was the best plan that Lord Tserson could think of at present.

In the early hours of the morning, a telegram was received that the port of Dunedin, 230 kilometers from Christchurch and 300 kilometers from the Fovo Strait, had been attacked by the Germans again.

But for Spee, it is not important at all, the activities of his fleet are marked with the mark of New Zealand, this was originally the original plan, not to mention, New Zealand in the Commonwealth was originally the real enemy of the German Empire, and it was obviously a good idea to strike hard at the opponent, so Admiral Spee did not hesitate to increase the intensity of the attack, if it was not for the difficulty of supplying shells, he was even willing to spend a little time to land in the port.

At 2 o'clock in the morning of the 10th, the Speese fleet suddenly disappeared from the reconnaissance report of the British and American fleets, and when the combined fleet of the three countries arrived in the port of Dunedin at 1 o'clock in the afternoon of the 10th, the whole sea area had completely lost the news of the German fleet.

These inexplicable news deepened the confusion of Britain, and after the American side learned of the news, it stimulated the nerves of Rear Admiral Lucius, the commander of the first Pacific Fleet of the United States, and the sudden attack of the Germans on the port of New Zealand showed that the Speese fleet was not an opponent that could be easily predicted, so Brisbane could become the target of the opponent as well as Sydney!

In the eyes of Major General Lucius, Brisbane is even more likely than Sydney, after all, Sydney has a complete defense system against the sea, although the batteries are not advanced, but compared with Brisbane, which is almost unfortified, the only defense system here is that the port can temporarily arrange minefields......

In the evening of the same day, the joint search fleet of the three countries was broken up again, and the American fleet under the command of Colonel Wilm only agreed to leave four destroyers to participate in the search, and both battleships were required to immediately launch a search in the Tasman Sea to the east to prevent the Germans from crossing the Tasman Sea to attack Brisbane...... Of course, it is not for this reason that the Americans are open to the outside world, but under the pretext that they want to expand the search area.

However, the Spee's fleet did not receive this important news, because the Germans had already left the coast of New Zealand and were marching all the way to the northeast, quickly entering the South Pacific. (To be continued......)