The end of July is the time of the year when the spring flowers bloom, and it is also the time of the year when the climate in the Mediterranean is more suitable for fleet navigation. The fleets of Britain, Germany, and France, which had converged in the Strait of Gibraltar, conducted a five-day exercise in front of all Europeans. Although there was no aircraft carrier that the Europeans most desired to join this huge fleet, the elite of the navies of the three countries gathered, and more than 40 huge dreadnoughts, battle cruisers, and super dreadnoughts lined up in a neat three-way column, rampaging across the ocean, which still boosted the morale of the officers and men of the navy of the three countries and strengthened the confidence of the people of Britain, France and Germany.

The movement of this new fleet was entirely due to the westward arrival of the Chinese fleet. From North America to East Asia, now the Chinese fleet is about to cross India into the Arabian Sea when it sets sail from East Asia. How can the Europeans not shake?

That's four aircraft carrier battle formations, and a large number of transport ships, seven divisions of China's elite floating into the sea. If they had landed in Persia or on the peninsula, would the Suez Canal still belong to the British Empire?

With this open gate, the entire Mediterranean Sea was leaked in front of the Chinese army, and they could easily join forces with the Ottoman fleet to completely expel the Europeans from the Eastern Mediterranean. Then Greece will surely perish, how will Italy and France deal with themselves?

The British, of course, wanted to keep the Suez Canal and keep the eastern gate of the Western world. Therefore, a large number of warships gathered the elite forces of the entire European navy and dispatched. More than forty dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, which represent unimaginable wealth. More than 200 warships of various types obscured the entire Strait of Gibraltar.

They will go east, to Egypt, to Suez. Go to the Gulf of Aden and have an absolutely fateful battle with the Chinese in the Arabian Sea.

Joining this huge fleet were an overwhelming array of fighter jets. Thousands of aircraft accompanied the fleet, and they were in North Africa and Southern Europe. Walk between the Mediterranean Sea. This is only part of the fleet that will be thrown into the war.

For the Great War in the Gulf of Aden, the Germans, the French and the British, as well as the remnants of the United States, as well as volunteers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and other countries, the Europeans have invested 2,500 warplanes of various types.

Use aircraft to fight the Chinese's aircraft carriers, hold the gateway to the Western world, and use high-speed main fleets to find opportunities to sneak attack the Chinese's warship clusters. Dark nights and rainstorms are the only hope for Europeans and their friends to pray for.

The commander-in-chief of the combined fleet was the Englishman John Brown. Rushworth. Jellico. Admiral. The deputy was the German Reinhardt. Cal. Friedrich. Feng. Schell, and the Frenchman Georges. Leg. The latter was the French Minister of the Navy, but he was not really in charge of command, and it was François, the former deputy commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, who really led the main forces of the French fleet to fight. Lieutenant General Darlang. This Frenchman, who was just forty years old, the Frenchman who made a name for himself in the Mediterranean theater, was only a major four years ago.

John. Rushworth. Of course, Jericho felt that Darlan was very glaring, but on the battlefield, this general who had withstood the test of war was better than George. Legg, the Minister of the Navy in the Cabinet, is more reliable.

A war. The myth of the first promotion was created by Darlang. He was in the Mediterranean for 3 years, walked a distance that 99.99% of the world's soldiers could not complete, and was promoted from a small major to a deputy commander and lieutenant general.

There are not many times when life is proud, and Darlang has definitely been proud in the past three years.

Jericho wasn't perfect. So he thought so much about Darlan, and he didn't see the situation of the Franco-Italian combined fleet on the battlefield in the past few years, and the soldiers and friends under Darlan didn't know how many dead and wounded. Jericho doesn't look at Darlan from a 'humanistic' point of view. His eyes were full of Chi Guoguo's interests.

Sit in a tall command seat in the bridge command room of his own flagship, the Elizabeth, through the porthole of the battleship. Watching his massive fleet sail through the waves is what Jericho thinks is the proudest time of his life.

Able to unify the essence of the three navies. A total of forty-four dreadnoughts, super dreadnoughts, and battle cruisers are at your disposal. This feeling was irresistible to the soldiers of Jericho's time.

Giant ships and cannons, line bombardment, this is the dream that countless European old-school admirals are most eager to realize. Originally, this kind of fascinating naval battle could have taken place in the last war, but the submarine became the master of the sea in that war.

This time, dreadnoughts, super dreadnoughts, and battle cruisers have been all over the European powers, and the number is much greater than that of China, where they originated, and the unshakable superiority at sea belongs to Europe and the Western world, but it has been knocked out of dust by China's new gadget - aircraft carriers.

At this time, Jericho was listening to the intelligence officer's briefing on the fleet's passage through the Strait of Gibraltar while holding a military telescope to watch the arrangement of the fleet's ships. After an exercise and nearly half a month of running-in, although the fleets of the three countries still have clear flags, at least there will be no more incidents between each other. You must know that when the navies of the three countries assembled for the first time, there was really a lot of chaos.

Half a month has made the distance between the navies of the three countries smaller and smaller, and the order of the entire fleet has become more and more stable. Because they are not familiar with each other, for various reasons, in order not to collide with each other, the fleets can best make the distance between each other as large as possible, and such a queue is of course fine west of the Mediterranean. There are no Chinese submarines here, and there will be no Chinese planes. But if you cross the Mediterranean, especially into the eastern Mediterranean, the greater the space required for the entire fleet to disperse, the easier it is for Chinese submarines to exploit loopholes, and the easier it is for Chinese aircraft to penetrate the defensive circle.

Under the threat of submarines and aircraft, the more scattered the navies of the three countries become, the higher the danger. This is one thing that is very clear.

Therefore, Jellico ran in with the German and French fleets in the safe sea area west of Gibraltar for half a month, and then the army advanced eastward towards the goal.

Darlan, who was 'looked at differently' by Jericho, was also standing on the bridge of the Lone class battleship Paris at this time, looking at the Lone Pull not far away, which were the two capital ships under the command of the Eighth Fleet under his direct command. In addition to these two Lone class battleships, there are two France-class super dreadnoughts under the Eighth Fleet. And then there were two former dreadnoughts.

The so-called Franco-class super dreadnoughts, which were designed and built by the French with the help of the British. Normal displacement: 26000 tons. Full load displacement: 29200 tons. Speed: 24 knots, endurance: 8000 nautical miles / 12 knots. Armament: 8 twin 15-inch/42-caliber main guns, 12 6-inch/45-caliber secondary guns, 2 76-mm anti-aircraft guns, 4 twin-mounted 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, 12 40-mm anti-aircraft guns;

Overall combat performance was slightly inferior to the British's Queen Elizabeth-class battleships. But compared with the lone class made by the French themselves, the French class is more than one grade higher. The French only built a total of three such super dreadnoughts, and this time two were dispatched, leaving only the Sun King to guard the house.

This is not to say that the French are out of money. Nor is it to say that France is out of steel. In the original plan, a total of six ships of the French class were to be built, just like the British. But the first batch has not yet been completed, aircraft carriers have already appeared in front of all of Europe, and powerful battleships have turned into useless steel coffins at sea overnight. The British immediately halted the last Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, and only five of the six Queen Elizabeth-class battleships that had been planned to be built were completed. And the French were supposed to build six Franco-class battleships, which were only half done.

In recent years, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and other European maritime powers have all concentrated their efforts on building submarines, and surface combat ships have almost stopped working. However, all the warships returned to the field and reworked for a while. Each warship was equipped with anti-aircraft guns and large-caliber anti-aircraft machine guns.

Although the leaders of the entire European naval community all came from the era of giant ships and cannons, and all of them were absolute lovers of battleships, in the face of the reality of war, all countries were very sensible to stop the construction of large surface warships. There are no comparable aircraft. There are no aircraft carriers galloping, and no amount of surface ships is just a steel coffin on the ocean.

Who really thinks that this great alliance of the navies of the three countries is the willingness of the Europeans themselves?

It was a last resort. The Chinese are already about to seize the Gulf of Aden. The Suez Canal is enough to reach the tentacles, and the European Navy is no longer afraid of the threat of aircraft. You have to go up to it, too. At this critical juncture, the Navy must come to the front line.

So. Don't look at how majestic and majestic this fleet of more than 200 ships is now, in fact, they are very weak-minded.

At the joint operations meeting, Jericho told the admirals of the three navies in this way: "Although China's aircraft carriers are amazing in combat, they carry a limited number of aircraft. On the sea, all forces were thrown into battle, and we had forty-four capital ships, as many as forty or fifty former dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers of more than 10,000 tons. It is to let the Chinese planes bomb as much as they want, and they cannot be blown up in one battle. As long as our warships can exchange fire with the Chinese at close range, victory is in our hands. ”

It's nonsense, more than 200 warships, and only a small number of officers at the highest level in the entire fleet know how many submarine units there are, such a huge force, which could sweep the coastline of the entire world ten years ago, such a powerful force actually said: I have rough skin and thick flesh, no matter how sharp the enemy's knife is, it can't let my blood go before I get close to it, and then as long as I get close to the enemy, the enemy will die!

So that's all. Jericho said such a thing, and it was certainly not what he really thought of in his heart. This is the combined fleet of Britain, France and Germany, not the fleet of one country, and the commander-in-chief can be deployed at will. Here are three countries to belong to, they all have their own battle patrol formations, battleship formations, heavy patrol formations and even destroyer formations and torpedo boat formations, they have their own fleet sequences, even if they have just changed to a new vest, but the command system is still the same, and the substantive problems have not been solved at all.

Such a fleet would not have been able to 'go into battle' like the Battle of Jutland in the original space-time. They couldn't carry out orders perfectly, and neither the Germans, nor the British, nor the French, could trust each other completely, especially the Germans vis-à-vis the British and the French.

None of the commanders of the fleets of the three countries wanted to suffer important losses themselves, but only thought about the losses elsewhere. Under such circumstances, to lead an entire fleet to the vast Arabian Sea and fight against the Chinese fleet is to seek death.

Jericho is definitely a great naval veteran, he will only keep his warships firmly protected in the Gulf of Aden, and he can allow the Chinese fleet to dock in the Persian coastal harbor. As long as you don't fail, protecting the Gulf of Aden and protecting the Suez Canal will be the biggest victory for Jericho.

At noon, the sun hung high in the sky, shining on the vast fleet of ships sailing the calm waters of the Mediterranean, and the steel ships reflected the sunlight and shimmered. The majestic hull looks even more majestic and majestic in the telescope, and the long waves left by the warship sailing on the sea become a long snow-white belt under the refraction of the sun.

"Pass my order, and the whole fleet will form a new ring-shaped dense defense formation." When the fleet passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, Jericho put down the binoculars in his hand and immediately gave the order to the herald next to him to reorganize the fleet. Even if this was right at the exit of the Strait of Gibraltar, even if it was right under the nose of the British fleet, Jericho, as the commander of the fleet, did not dare to be negligent in the slightest, and just now in order to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, the fleet passed in a column. The fleets of warships have formed defensive queues after passing through, and now they must be changed from defensive queues to overall ring queues.

Like a huge disc floating on the sea, one is the iron cross of the Germans, the tricolor of the French, and the last is the rice flag of the British. The time was too short, and the level of trust between them was low, so Jericho could only form a defensive circle in this way.

In any case, this is conducive to the maritime defense of the ship group.

"Did all the planes take off? Strengthen anti-submarine attack vigilance. "It is not easy for a large fleet to change formations on the surface of the sea, it will take a long time to complete.

The British garrison planes in the Strait of Gibraltar had already taken off, and Jericho had to ask again. In the eastern part of the Mediterranean, submarines have already opened their way, and there are many destroyers and light cruisers patrolling the periphery of the capital ship group. An order was given to let the water reconnaissance aircraft on the cruiser take off for reconnaissance.

In accordance with the orders of the War Department, the Eighth Fleet, which was directly under the jurisdiction of Darlang, was deployed in the northeast direction. The forty-year-old lieutenant general stood on the deck in the wind, looking at the eastern sky, his face full of solemnity and worry.

He fought with the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea for three years, took advantage of some advantages, and destroyed the Ottoman light aircraft carrier in two night raids, which is the biggest capital of Darlang all the way to the present. But I have also suffered more losses, how many times have warships fled in embarrassment under the siege of enemy aircraft, and even sank directly into the ocean. It was only the apprentices of the Chinese who were fighting, and the planes and warships they used were even more Chinese obsolete rags, and now Chinese came in person, their combat effectiveness was ......, and Dar Lang didn't dare to imagine it! (To be continued.) )