As soon as dawn was the phone at the Lübeck police station, a call from the shipyard claiming that a submarine was missing. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 At first, the police officer who answered the phone thought that someone was joking about how the submarine could have been stolen, but the other party repeatedly claimed that he was the Lübeck shipyard and hoped that the police department would send someone to investigate the scene, so the police on duty reluctantly made a report record. However, when the phone was hung up, the call did not immediately reach the home of Colonel Gaed Walter of the Crime Department, because it was so early that the police on duty thought that they would not be able to call until at least half past seven.

Before that, the phone of the Neustadt submarine base, which is in constant contact with the shipyard, also rang rapidly, and the shipyard first asked if the base had sent someone to drive the submarine away, and only after receiving a negative answer did it begin to stammering that the submarine that was repaired at the shipyard maintenance dock suddenly disappeared this morning. However, the Neustadt submarine base was not aware of this incident, and the U-38 was not affiliated with the Neustadt submarine base, and the duty officer at the base replied that the matter must first be confirmed by the captain of the U-38, perhaps they were ordered to leave.

The Germans were serious, and the German bureaucracy was extremely serious, but they had to deal with matters outside the column according to established principles, which made the most precious hours of the interception of the U-38 wasted in the adherence to principles.

The Germans were puzzled by the fact that in a bay on the Sealand Peninsula, more than 250 kilometers from the mouth of the Telavi River, the U-38 was rendezvous with Lin Zhun's merchant ship. Seeing the submarine coming, the naval cadets all stood on the deck and waved their hats with joy. Li Kongrong, who had slept hastily, looked full of energy, and he was standing in the conning tower wearing a white captain's hat. Unlike the elated people around him, he became increasingly concerned that the German naval warships were heading for the Skagerrak Strait, from which he was eleven hours away, and with the time it took to resupply, it would probably take fifteen hours.

"Hansheng!" Lin Zhun was the first to come over, and when he came over, he grabbed Li Kongrong's hand and shook it violently, his excitement was indescribable. He did so, and the other students saluted Li Kongrong, and when they got on the boat, they begged for 'permission to board the boat' in a delirious way.

"Don't make any noise." Li Kongrong raised his hands to everyone, "Now is not the time to be happy, the Germans will block the strait at any time, and we still have more than two hundred nautical miles there." Li Kongrong's sentence of 'more than two hundred nautical miles' poured down like cold water, extinguishing all smiles. He continued: "Put the batteries on right away, and the food supplies as well." Fresh water and diesel are not required. Right away! Fast! ”

"Yes, sir." Lin Zhun was the first to salute and receive the order, and then beckoned people to carry it.

Submarines and merchant ships were already on the hook, and the heaviest and heaviest of the supplies were batteries, with a total weight of 85 tons, a total of 1,120 pieces, each weighing 75 kilograms. Fortunately, such a heavy battery is carried by a boom, and at the same time, the battery density is large and the volume is small, and when hanging, these batteries are in two columns, one is next to one, and twelve pieces can be lifted into each time through the hatch of the command platform.

Li Kongrong has been measuring the speed of lifting the battery from the beginning, at the beginning it takes five minutes to lift once, but after a few times he began to become proficient, the lifting time was reduced to about two minutes and twenty seconds, and the two booms began to be used in turns. In this case, it is not the lifting that restricts the speed, the key is the fatigue of the crew, although there is a trolley in the boat, but the battery is too heavy.

"Master Jun, if you can trust it, let's try it." The Chinese sailors of the merchant ship, who had been curious and watching, heard that the sailors on the warship could not move, and when they saw Li Kongrong constantly shouting and cheering, they finally had the courage to shout, but their 'military master' made Li Kongrong get goosebumps when he heard it.

"I'm not a military master." Li Kongrong looked at the sailors standing on the opposite deck, many of them were still wearing short coats common in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, with a white towel on their shoulders, fortunately there were no braids, otherwise he would have thought that these were 'people of the Qing Dynasty'.

"It's a merchant ship introduced by the Sailor's Hall." Lin Zhun on the side explained. The plan to lease merchant ships in the Netherlands for replenishment was proposed by Li Kongrong and implemented by him, and the ship was introduced by Chen Shunqing of the Sailor's House, and most of the sailors were from Zhejiang.

"Okay! Come here. "The cadets of the Navy are all young people, and they don't work hard. These Chinese sailors were not tall and looked like coolies. Li Kongrong looked at these people and finally nodded. "But I don't have any cash to pay you, so I can only owe it."

"We ......" Hearing that there was no money to give, the leader of the sailors was obviously stunned for a moment, but he continued, "You were introduced by Chen Ye, and we can trust it." With that, he led the men along the wooden bridge between the two boats.

"Jinghu, you arrange it, pay attention to the balance between the beginning and the end." The submarine weighs just over 1,000 tons, and each battery has to be carried in both directions, and the trim is also the daily business of the chief engineer, who has to accurately calculate how much fuel he uses, how much fresh water he consumes, how much food he eats, and how much garbage he throws away every day.

Watching more than 20 sailors climb up the conning tower one by one, and then drill into the interior of the submarine, Lin Zhun smiled and said: "I have considered everything, the boom has been modified by two, but I didn't expect that everyone would not be able to move, I knew that I would bring those Lifu on the dock over, and it took them three and a half hours to load the boat." ”

"No one has done this before, and omissions are inevitable." Li Kongrong looked at the boom lifting the battery back and forth, and breathed a sigh of relief. He hoped that the batteries would be moved in two hours, which seemed too idealistic. "Did you bring any money?" He asked.

"No, the people who bought the embassy and the charter boat were all spent." Lin Zhun shook his head. He took these two dozen people to be interviewed by embassy personnel in the Netherlands, and he had no choice but to stuff money while preparing to break the net. He talked about the Dutch affair and asked, "How far can these batteries last, and will we get out of the channel with these batteries?" ”

"What else can you rely on without these batteries?" Li Kongrong looked at the rising sun, he only hoped that the Germans had not discovered the theft of the submarine, otherwise it would be miserable for a German plane to fly now. "We can't run into a single destroyer, most likely a dozen destroyers. You can't hide from torn clothes with waste oil, and the Germans know we're going to do that. Hitler's guy will definitely blow up the entire strait with depth charges if he loses such a big face, and don't even throw bombs, they just need to calculate the underwater range of the submarine and wait for us to surface, and the only feasible solution is to install batteries to increase the underwater range. ”

"How far can this submarine go underwater?" Lin Zhun also saw that this submarine was different from the Type 7 that he had seen before.

"If the speed of four knots is no more than 80 nautical miles, the range is less than 10 nautical miles than that of the 7 type, and if it is a light speed, it may be farther, but it will not exceed 90 nautical miles...... Li Kongrong looked through the documents in the captain's information cabinet to know the approximate performance of the IX submarine. During the sea trials, the U-38 had a maximum surface speed of 18.8 knots and a maximum underwater range of 87 nautical miles.

"How far can you go with these batteries?" Lin Zhun looked at the battery that was being hoisted into the submarine, interrupted Li Kongrong and asked.

"At least double it." Li Kongrong replied. That's more than 170 nautical miles. It is more than 120 nautical miles from here to Cape Skagen, the entrance to the strait, and more than 120 nautical miles from Cape Skagen's exit to the North Sea. As long as we can get close to the entrance to Skagen Point in the next few hours, we will be able to cross the channel from under the water into the North Sea and float up again at night to recharge. In just two nights, we will be able to stay away from the strait. ”

Li Kongrong said that he expected to escape the strait, but he did not say what would happen if the submarine did not reach Cape Skagen if it was discovered by the German Navy in the morning. Two booms take turns to lift the batteries on the deck of the merchant ship, and the crew of the merchant ship are veterans of hard work, and the batteries are removed by them as soon as they reach the inner deck, and the speed is also faster than that of the cadets. After an hour, only half of the batteries were left, but they would also be tired, and at this time, the naval cadets who had been resting for a long time hurriedly took over, and Gao Guangyou, who had been commanding on the deck, reported that the remaining batteries would take an hour and a half to move.

"It's too slow!" The time was already a quarter past eight in the morning, and it would be another hour and a half to nine and a half, and with fresh food, he would not be able to leave this place at full speed until ten o'clock to sail to the exit of the strait. "It must be done in an hour!" Li Kongrong gave a stern order: "Now Germany should have discovered the theft of the submarine, the reconnaissance plane may have taken off, and the destroyer has also been ordered, we must sink us, we must be fast, we must be fast!" ”

"Yes, sir!" Gao Guangyou answered loudly, and then he was about to convey the order to the boat. But Li Kongrong stopped him, he jumped from the anti-aircraft battery to the conning tower, and said loudly into the brass microphone: "I am the captain Li Hansheng, I know that everyone is tired, but don't think that it is safe in the Baltic Sea, every minute of delay will increase the danger of being sunk." The batteries must be moved within an hour, and the food is only hoisted with bread, sausages and vegetables, and everything else is eliminated. ”

Everyone stopped when Li Kongrong spoke, and the cabin was even busier after the order was given, but the most able to increase the speed was the chief engineer Su Jinghu, who ordered the crew not to move the batteries to the inner compartment again, but to open the inner deck and pile the batteries directly in the bottom cabin. If the bilge can't be placed, it's placed in the control room, the captain's room, and the radio room. Reducing the carrying distance made the speed increase again, and at 9:05 the batteries were all hoisted, and the food after that was extremely relaxed, and the submarine began to unmoored after five lifts.

"Thank you, brothers." The sailors were tired and sweating several times, and Li Kongrong, who had not given the money, could only say thank you except for the IOU.

"No thanks, Master Jun, please go. We don't say anyone who asks. The port of destination for the merchant ships was the Free City of Danzig on the German-Polish border, and even though it was unlikely that the Germans would board the ships for inspection, Li Kongrong told them not to say anything.

"Then we'll have a meeting later." The submarine began to speed away from the merchant ships, and Li Kongrong did not salute, but just clenched his fists at them.

"Sir, it takes six and a half hours to get to Skagen Point." After saying goodbye, Li Kongrong was not at the command platform, but went down to the control room. Liu Yongren leaned against the chart table and reported to him the next leg of the voyage.

"Turn on the radio." Li Kongrong nodded and said, at this time, the submarine was no more than two hundred kilometers away from Germany in a straight line, and he wanted to hear what the Germans were doing.

The radioman was previously made a cameo by Lin Huiping, but fortunately, it was only a short code name. Now it is Lu Ruping who is in charge of the radio room, but he is not a professional radioman, he has only studied hydrophones specifically.

The radio was in the radio room, and Li Kongrong ordered Lu Ruping to fumble and turn it on, and it took a little time for the radio to finally receive radio waves from Germany. The loudspeakers are full of enthusiasm, and the passionate music and vocals make people feel like they are in Berlin Brandenburg.

“…… Germany is moving towards revival, a historical trend that no careerist or hostile country can stop, and it is our great Führer who will make this country rise again......"

The radio host live-streamed the celebration in Berlin with a sound that almost ignited the diesel fuel in the submarine's tank. Li Kongrong didn't care about the host's excitement, he felt that he had miscalculated, with the Nazi style, such a humiliating thing as the theft of the submarine would never be publicized on the radio, they would only deal with it in a low-key manner and quietly make it public a few years later.

In the Baltic Sea, Li Kongrong thought about the low-key handling of the Germans, and at this time, the commander of the Navy in Berlin, Erich Raeder, had just received a report that a submarine was being stolen from the Navy that was being repaired at the shipyard.

Admiral Raeder was standing in the Prime Minister's House in full costume, with whom the Great Führer had just shaken hands. Looking at his lieutenant, he squeezed out a little smile: "This can't be!" It must have been the shipyard's fault, or perhaps Dönitz's men drove the submarine away in advance. ”

"Your Excellency, we have already called Colonel Dönitz, and he said that he did not give any order for the submarine to go to sea." More than an hour earlier, the shipyard had contacted Colonel Dönitz, the commander of the Navy's submarines, before the matter was reported to Raeder.

"It's not appropriate for something like this to happen today." Raeder cursed something in a low voice, but when he had finished scolding, he walked aside with his adjutant, and he ordered: "You immediately order the fleet to search the Baltic Sea, there is no need to find it." ”

"Your Excellency, Colonel Dönitz thinks that the Chinese Navy did this." The adjutant continued to report on the unfinished content, "He hopes to immediately send a reconnaissance fleet to reconnoiter the Baltic Sea......"

"No, it can't be!" Raeder shook his head stubbornly, in Germany, everything that can fly is under the jurisdiction of the Air Force, how can the theft of a naval submarine turn to the Air Force for help? What if Goering refused and laughed at him to his face? "Immediately order the fleet to go out to sea to search, they must still be in the Baltic Sea."

As soon as Raeder finished speaking, the music began to play again, and he had to leave his lieutenant and return to his place. The adjutant was not forced to be reconnoitred by the Air Force when he was ordered, and he immediately returned to the Admiralty. Here, Dönitz can't wait.

"Sir, in addition to sailing to the North Sea, they also have an option to sail to the Soviet Union, if it is really done by the Chinese." The Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Eberhardt Goth, pointed to the Baltic Sea charts. Although the time of the submarine's departure is not known, according to the speed of the submarine, it should have been one hundred and eighty nautical miles from Lübeck by now. To the east, it was only two hundred nautical miles from the Soviet Union, and to the west, it would also need two hundred nautical miles to enter the North Sea.

"No, I understand him, he will not go to the USSR." Dönitz remembered Li Kongrong's usual speech, and instinctively felt that it was impossible for him to go to the Soviet Union. "He's going to drive a submarine to fight the Japanese. Immediately notify the nearest destroyer to immediately go to the Skagerrak Strait! (To be continued.) )