Today is a good weather, on the cold North Sea, it is rare to have a sunny day in the winter, the airship troops who have been rushing all night in a row are full of spirits, yesterday received an urgent order to set off, except to carry the necessary things with nothing, in the North Sea in the harsh winter season, flying fast in the sky, this is not a pleasant thing, for anyone, this is a very painful thing, but the British soldiers of this era are still quite tenacious, after waking up from the thick cotton clothes, I immediately got into action.

The non-stop sound of the horn sounded on the airship, and the well-rested reserve pilot, instead of the pilot who had flown continuously all night, everyone else also began to move, looking at the rising sun, all kinds of observation tools were set up, and they all remembered their mission, which was to find a small fleet of about 20 ships as much as possible, which was their goal for a whole day.

The powerful navy of the British is not an ornament, they have already marked the direction in which the German fleet may have fled, and even the direction in which it may turn, in the short time that the airship has taken off and prepared, and these have also been marked, and it can be said unceremoniously that if the search plan of the British airship force is followed, the German fleet will have nothing to hide.

The first 60 airships to arrive will be searched, and there will be 60 airships behind them, which will be urgently transferred from the army after 4 hours, and they will be responsible for checking and filling in the gaps to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

60 airships, if 50 nautical miles as a dividing line, is enough to explore the range of 3,000 nautical miles. And 60 kilometers an hour, you can search a very large area in a short time. The English Channel is only as wide as it gets, even above the North Sea. 3000 nautical miles is also a very large number. Searching alone is ideal, it is impossible to be completely like this, the solitary airship, a little lonely, after discussion, the 60 airships are divided into 12 squads, the distance between each squad is about 40 nautical miles, so that with a width of 480 nautical miles, plus the distance that can be seen on both sides. It's enough to see everything around, and if the other party is still in this area, they can't run at all, at most a day, or simply a morning, and they can find each other's traces.

The British airships dispersed, seriously carrying out the tasks of the navy, and they were scattered, and they could be in a short meeting. Searching a larger area of the sea is more efficient, from yesterday's battle to the present. It's been more than 22 hours, and if we delay any longer, maybe the German fleet will run away. At this time, the British airship troops did not yet have the concept of war. The duel of airships is almost no longer an ordinary dead end. What it doesn't know is. In the middle of the night, the heavily armed airships of the German side had already flown towards them, and a battle was destined to break out.

Different from the equipment carried by the British airship, the German airship unit pays attention to all the firepower, the airship firepower, the northwest has a natural advantage, when the war against Russia, this problem was seriously considered, so the simple turret, protection and machine guns, these are the standard configuration of the northwest airship, and the aiming system has been added later, although it is mechanical, but it can make the machine gun hit the target more accurately, with this, the firepower accuracy of the airship has been almost increased several times.

They did not choose to look for the British airship directly, but first found the direction of the fleet, with the more reliable German radio, it should be very easy to find this, this is also the first reference for the German airship troops, coming to fight on the North Sea.

Compared with the open cabin of the British airship, the German airship is a closed cabin that can be closed, in the severe winter when the high-speed airship, the closed cabin and the open cabin, not only the loss of power is less, but also much warmer, the same high-speed rush, the British side is wrapped in a thick coat of malaise, while the German side is a smooth and comfortable rest, nervous to get up.

In the early morning or so, the airship found the position of the fleet, and successfully turned with the fleet, the fleet had gone through most of the voyage, and was already close to the German side, and even after knowing the actions of the British side, the German side took the risk of making an adjustment, not to choose the closer Baltic Sea, but to continue to test a little, the Kiel Canal, compared with the complex and huge Baltic Sea, or the narrow and more controlled Kiel Canal is safer.

The Kiel Canal, as one of the most important canals in Germany, connects the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, which can reduce the voyage of the Baltic countries by hundreds of nautical miles.

Since the beginning of the war, the staff has not stopped analyzing the British side, after knowing that the opponent's airship will be responsible for exploring the fleet, next, you can reverse the direction of the opponent's search, there are two important reference points in the middle, one is the fast fleet, he represents the attack fleet, if the British airship force discovers the German fleet, the airship force is unlikely to attack the fleet directly, but will entangle the fleet, reduce the speed of the fleet, and then transfer the nearby fleet to attack the fleet, Create enough opportunities for those who pursue the fast fleet.

The fast fleet is too large, and there is no listening device, since last night, the submarine boldly followed, the speed is only in the middle of the catch, let the submarine forces in front of the relay, in fact, the German side has locked the 12 fleets with listening devices, all in the other direction, not with the fast fleet. As for the fast fleet, no one will think of encircling and killing, it is almost equivalent to sending them to death, at most one or two torpedoes, and then they will be tortured to death by the escort fleet, and they will not even be able to touch the core capital ships, which is equivalent to more than worth the loss.

However, because of this, the fast fleet did not arrange even one to listen, after all, among the heavily protected warship groups, the outermost destroyers may go up to attack torpedoes at any time, and even use their own bodies to resist torpedoes, in this case, it is better to hand over the anti-submarine to the special anti-submarine fleet.

The fast fleet is one point, and the other point is several fleets that are surrounding, they are all three teams of the anti-submarine fleet together, plus some ships, and the threat to submarines is greater for the time being, but the submarines are not close, and they can know the approximate location if they observe from a distance.

At sea, the difference of a few nautical miles may make two ships and two fleets pass by in the night, but in a clear day, this is almost impossible, and this time the determination is to guide the direction of the airship, and to this extent, the error tolerance rate is higher. After these two positions are determined, plus the location of the airship, according to the current actions of the British Navy, with a little speculation, you can get the approximate position of the British airship, which is definitely more accurate than the position of the British, not that Germany is far more accurate than the British in this aspect, but because the Germans have a card far above the British.

The British have been dominating the seas for more than hundreds of years, and from their unilateral implementation of the principle of two powers, even after the age of dreadnoughts, you will know the arrogance of the navy, and their desire to fight like knights, not intrigues, is what makes them pay a terrible price now and in the near future.

The position came out, it was not very far, it was good to move towards that position, and the staff quickly calculated the general direction, and directly transmitted the coordinates of latitude and longitude and nautical charts to the airship troops.

It is precisely because of knowing the general direction that the German side did not choose to separate, but gathered together, of course, the squad is still scattered, large airships, each of which is hundreds of meters long, huge like a warship, if all gathered together, it is an absolutely huge target, the airship is a new thing, that is, under the impetus of the northwest, it has entered the field of combat, to a certain extent, even if it is the northwest, it is not familiar with the tactics of the airship, this is a new thing, It needs to be studied again and again, and even in battle.

Aircraft tactics do know, after all, what is popular in later generations is airplanes, what two-plane formation, four-plane formation, group bombing and the like, these are all familiar things in later generations, but airships, in addition to the role of advertising, what else is there? Even because the northwest has a large number of planes, any effort on the airship is in vain, wasted, facing planes that are three, five, or even 10 times faster than flying, the airship's huge body and slow speed are just a target, a target that will not have any effect.

The Northwest exported airships to the German side, but did not export airship tactics to the German side, the only thing that Germany knew about the northwest was that intensive firepower was the key to victory, which was also confirmed in the follow-up actual combat, in order to knock down the opponent's British airships, 120 airships were installed with relatively dense firepower, and on the other side, they faced for the first time was just a airship scattered into 12 formations, only 60 ships, and even the firepower was not completely installed. It seems that the first air duel of the First World War, from the very beginning, was tilted in favor of the German side, and the British side was doomed.

The German airship group, after reaching the position of the fleet, turned to the northwest direction, after several confirmation adjustments, found the target, took advantage of the night, flew in the direction of the target, and the British airship troops that were probing in the fan-shaped direction to this side were just 380 kilometers away from them, at a speed of 60 kilometers per hour on both sides, at most a little more than 3 hours, they would encounter it, and it was only 7 o'clock in the morning, and this battle was inevitable and almost impossible to miss. (To be continued......)