After sailing out of Danzig Bay, Admiral Lukins gave a new order from the "Deutschland": the fleet maintained an escort column and sailed at a speed of 20 knots in the direction of the Øresund Strait in Denmark.

In spring and summer, the mist on the sea in the early morning gradually dissipates by 9 o'clock in the morning. The weather was fine, and on the calm Baltic Sea, the German fleet was sailing westward in neat columns. Messerschmitt and Focke-Woolf fighters of the German Navy's shore-based aviation units, which took off from airfields in northern Germany, began to appear over the nearby seas and escorted the fleet.

With the defeat of Denmark, Norway and France, and the fact that the weak Soviet and Russian navies were blockaded in the Gulf of Finland, the German navy could not find any rivals in the Baltic Sea at present, and the British navy was defeated, and the Germans held absolute control of the entire sea and air over the Baltic Sea.

Under the pressure of the German air force stationed in the Netherlands, Germany mainland, Denmark and Norway, it was difficult for the British air force to enter the Danish Jutland peninsula east of Jutland for reconnaissance or bombing. Today, British intelligence officers who tried to monitor the movements of the German fleet, in addition to obtaining intelligence from northern Germany and Danish ports, had to rely on the ports of Denmark, Norway, and southern Sweden to obtain maritime intelligence through visual surveillance or under the guise of Swedish fishing boats and freighters.

However, the Reich Foreign Office and the pro-German Swedish government secretly signed a memorandum aimed at ensuring the safe navigation of German naval vessels. According to this agreement, during the war the Swedish Government was to inform its own ships to avoid entering the waters of the southern Baltic Sea near German soil, and that the German navy could detain Swedish fishing vessels in the waters near German ships if necessary, even if they were located in the open seas. However, the German government is obliged to guarantee the safety of Swedish citizens and property, provided that foreign espionage sites are excluded. In principle, it shall return the ship to the Swedish Government within a period of no more than one month, and pay a certain amount of compensation to the Swedish citizens of the place of detention.

Although this memorandum cannot escape the suspicion of bullying the weak with the strong, it does have a certain effect. At least the British spies who sailed on Swedish ships would not be able to convey the latest movements of German ships to higher intelligence services in a timely manner, even if they were able to get through the scrutiny of the German navy.

At present, fierce fighting is raging on the battlefield of Soviet Russia, and the Axis armies, with the support of superior equipment, have launched an offensive on all fronts, and the Soviet army is struggling to support under the fierce attack of the German-Austrian army. With the rapid attrition of Air Force fighters. If the United States and Britain could not receive aid in time, the Soviet and Russian air forces would probably be exhausted within half a year.

If air support is lost again, the collapse of the Soviet army is only a matter of time.

The purpose of the German-Austrian navy in launching the Icelandic campaign was to try to prevent the United States from passing the nearest Arctic Ocean route and to provide a large amount of material assistance to Soviet Russia in a timely manner. Of course, the Americans were also able to reach the Bering Strait and enter the White Sea from the other end, but that route was much longer, and after entering mid-October. Due to the freezing, it will not be able to navigate.

Although Germany and Austria still held on to the Atlantic shipping routes, the Royal Navy took the opportunity to transfer some of its main forces to North America to strengthen the defense and anti-submarine forces along the American coast. Since the beginning of the all-out offensive against Soviet Russia on the Eastern Front in the spring, the Axis powers have moved most of their air power into the Eastern Front, and the pressure on Britain has been greatly reduced, and with the support of the United States Navy, the British and American air forces have attempted to use the Shetland Islands and the Faroe Islands and Iceland they occupied to re-establish an air cordon against the German naval chain of islands in and out of the North Atlantic.

The German-Austrian Navy developed the "Operation Lighthouse" battle plan. It was an attempt to capture Iceland, which was occupied by the U.S. military, in order to break the strategic intentions of the United States and Britain.

After two days and nights of sailing. The entire fleet crossed the Skaggerrak Strait and sailed into the fjord near Bergen. The coast of Norway in early summer is stunning, and the glacier period of hundreds of millions of years ago cut the mountains along the coast into deep canyons, creating a unique fjord landscape in Northern Europe. The blue cliffs, black cliffs and clear deep blue waters make for a strange and wonderful picture.

At sunset, most of the crews who took turns came to the deck and. Quietly look at the green cliffs and fjords. The fierce battles that took place on the coast of Norway two years ago are already difficult to see traces of war here.

Outside the portholes, the sky is already starting to darken, and the top of the mountains on both sides of the fjord appears brilliant at sunset, after 12 hours of sailing along the Norwegian coast. Bergen, the first destination of the trip and the starting point of the battle, arrived at the main German fleet.

After consulting the commander of the fleet, Admiral Lukins, Rear Admiral Lindemann, the captain of the "Deutschland," in his capacity as commander of the 1st Battlefleet, gave the order to anchor and anchor the entire fleet, and nearly 60 warships of the entire fleet began to park their main engines in accordance with the air defense formation, and dropped the main and secondary anchors to anchor in the fjord.

Several patrolling destroyers and frigates patrolled back and forth at the entrance to the fjord.

For the German Navy, which was determined to seize Iceland, Norway was only a departure point before the start of the war, and before the arrival of the main fleet, the transport fleet of the German 2nd Marine Division had already assembled in Bergen and Stavanger, waiting for the order to depart.

The German Navy was practically only equipped with one Marine Division before the war, and the nobles of the Junker Officer Corps in the Imperial German Army did not like to have a dedicated land force in the Navy. However, due to the outstanding performance of the Austro-Hungarian Marines during World War I, the Army was forced to make some concessions and allow the Navy to create its own Marine Corps, but the size was always limited to the size of a single division.

However, the German Navy also found a workaround according to the way of the Austrian Emperor before World War I, and even turned the Marine Division into a super-large establishment of three brigades and nine regiments, plus the division's artillery, aviation and auxiliary units, the personnel of the German Marine Division exceeded 50,000 people, which is almost equivalent to the personnel of an army corps.

After the outbreak of the war, the German Navy formed two more Marine Divisions on the basis of the 1st Marine Division. At present, the 1st Marine Division is fighting in the Dutch East Indies in the Far East together with the Far East Fleet, and in order to carry out Operation Lighthouse, the German Navy General Headquarters has sent all the only two Marine Divisions at its disposal to the battlefield.

In the war room of the flagship "Deutschland" under the cover of night, the steel battleships in the Bergenfjord are like giants in a state of sleep, and the senior generals of the fleet headed by Admiral Lukins are carefully studying the details of the "lighthouse operation" with the commander of the 2nd Division of the German Marine Corps, Rear Admiral Ruyt, who has just boarded the ship, and his entourage.

An hour earlier, the fleet had received an order from Marshal Raeder: Operation Lighthouse had begun as scheduled!

The marines, with the support of the combined German-Austrian fleet, had to land in Iceland in the northeast as scheduled and establish a landing ground. This was followed by the complete occupation of Iceland after the arrival of army reinforcements. At the same time, the United States has realized the importance of Iceland's strategic location and is sending additional troops there. Both eyes were on Iceland at the same time, making the sparsely populated island in Europe, near the Arctic Circle, suddenly a strategic point for the warring sides to compete for. (To be continued......)