Standing on the command platform of the cruiser Glasgow, the old Captain Captain Hawke looked at the red and white St. George's Cross flag fluttering on the mast, and his heart was bitter and depressed.

A veteran of the Battle of Jutland in World War I, Captain Hawke served in the Royal Navy for over 40 years and has seen the power have a glorious past.

When it was still an ignorant youth, the Royal Navy was recognized as the most powerful maritime power in the world, the most domineering era, and openly shouted the slogan of "two strong standards". At that time, even the French and Russian capital ships, which ranked second or third in naval strength, could not compare to the Royal Navy's self-respecting and proud style.

In the era of dreadnoughts, in the face of the challenge of the emerging German Navy, the British Empire at that time also shouted the slogan of two to one in that naval arms competition.

After the outbreak of World War I and the Battle of Jutland, which shocked the world, the Royal Navy lost tactically to its opponents, but strategically broke the backbone of the challenger German Navy, forcing it to retreat back to the port and revert to the "Tsunzài Fleet", and finally sank in the Rainbow Operation as an end.

However, the Battle of Jutland was only the last glory of the Royal Navy. After the end of the vigorous First World War, the British Imperial Army, whose national strength had weakened sharply, was no longer able to conduct another naval arms race as it did with the German Navy when faced with the challenge of the emerging power of the United States.

Once upon a time, the Royal Navy of the British Empire was dominated by me. The momentum of leading the world has disappeared little by little in the intrigue between politicians and politicians. The Royal Navy, which once looked down on the world, actually wanted to use guò as a means to ensure its maritime supremacy by "sitting on an equal footing" with its competitors.

The fifteen-year naval holiday after the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty was a disaster for both the British Empire and the Royal Navy.

In fifteen years, not a single ship has been added!

The development of naval technology has almost stood still, and in many respects it is facing a serious loss of technology. The shipbuilding industry of the British Empire shrank even more as a result.

The Anglo-German Naval Treaty signed in 1935. It's a stupid agreement. After that, the unshackled German Navy was revived, and the two new battleships it had built with the permission of the Anglo-German Naval Treaty became the most troublesome enemy of the Royal Navy today.

October 1939. The Atlantic Fleet headed by two German Scharnhorst-class battleships. Led almost all of the German Navy. Pour out of the nest and play a big game in the Atlantic.

For the British Royal Navy, the numerically "weak" German Navy. Coming out of the nest like this is simply "self-defeating". However, when the Royal Navy was preparing to encircle and suppress the German Atlantic Fleet, it was embarrassed to find that all the battleships in its hands were old, and all but three battlecruisers were facing the embarrassment of not being able to beat and outrun the opponent in a heads-up.

According to the intelligence of all parties, the Royal Navy knew that the total number of ships of the German Atlantic Fleet was about eleven, which was not a small number, but it was not small. The biggest headache is that this is a high-speed fleet with a speed of more than thirty knots.

When the Royal Navy prepares to hunt down this wretched fleet that is doing evil in the Atlantic, it is depressed to find that all the ships in its hands cannot defeat the opponent. As for the three battlecruisers that could catch up with each other - there were lessons learned from the Battle of Jutland, and no matter how arrogant the Royal Navy officers were, they didn't dare to expect their three old battlecruisers who had reached the age of "old women" to confront the opponent's cutting-edge fast battleships.

Sending out battle patrols to hunt down the opponent's Atlantic Fleet is pure suicide.

Sending a battleship to hunt down an opponent who is four knots faster than him is more of a self-inflicted act. In the past month, the Royal Navy has sent eight battleships and aircraft carriers to form a pursuit fleet into the Atlantic to chase and kill the opponent, but after a month of pursuit, they have not even touched the opponent's side.

However, due to the strong blow of the German Navy's surface fleet, the British transport fleet could not use the method of dispersed transportation, and could not use the method of escorting ships in formation. As a result, these transport ships, which were scattered to run the "single gang", became the best prey for Dönitz's "Sea Wolf" submarines.

Today's Royal Navy is under much greater pressure at sea than it has historically been. Historically, when Britain and Germany started the war in 1939, the German Navy had only more than 50 submarines in its hands, and a considerable number of them were outdated and old-fashioned submarines, with backward performance and short range. And in this plane, due to the appearance of Hannah the Traverser, after the war began in October, the number of submarines sent by the German Navy to the Atlantic Ocean to directly participate in the operation of breaking diplomatic relations was as high as 70, and the performance was far better than the same period in history.

Under the blows of the surface fleet and underwater submarines, by November 20, less than a month and a half after the start of the war, the British lost a full 410,000 tons of transport ships in the Atlantic! That's a terrible number. You must know that the British lost only 112 ships and 430,000 tons of tonnage in the city for nearly four months from September to December 1939. Now, it has only been less than a month and a half, but it is equivalent to the loss of four months in the same period in history.

Thanks to the "help" of the surface fleet, Dönitz's "Seawolf" achieved better results than in history. The British Empire simply could not afford to sustain the losses of such a transport fleet for a long time. Eliminating the German raiding party that had broken into the Atlantic had become a difficult problem for the Royal Navy.

In order to determine the specific location of the opponent's fleet, the Royal Navy assigned a large number of light cruisers and destroyers to "search for the enemy", but the opponent's fleet has "aircraft carriers", which can strike at ultra-long distances. As a result, not only did they fail to "search for the enemy", but one light cruiser and two destroyers were easily blown up and sunk into the Atlantic Ocean under the saturation attack of the opponent's dive bombers.

I can't find it, and I can't catch up. The dispersal of the fleet is to give away the heads, and the concentration is played by the opponent by relying on the speed advantage of the monkey, which is the embarrassment faced by the Royal Navy in the Atlantic.

Fortunately, Germany lacked a fixed supply point in the Atlantic, and although it was possible to replenish the fleet at sea through guò camouflage merchant ships, there were not enough of them after all, and it had limited time to continue fighting in the Atlantic. After more than a month of wandering at sea, the German Atlantic Fleet had to return to port for resupply and repair.

If you want to completely annihilate this enemy who has infiltrated the Atlantic and is arrogant, the time is now. The Royal Navy in the North Sea region, assembled a full ten battleships. The main fleet of four aircraft carriers and all three battle cruisers carried out a "gate-blocking" operation. As soon as the whereabouts of the returning Atlantic Fleet were discovered, they rushed up and wiped them out.

Due to the fact that the main warships of the Royal Navy were generally inferior to their opponents, in order to be able to catch this gang of "cunning" German pirates. The "tactic" developed by the Royal Navy was the torpedo machine on the aircraft carrier Tongguò. Attack the opponent's two battleships first. Wound him, causing him to enter the water and slow him down, then send his main warship to catch up for a decisive battle at sea. Annihilate this arrogant group of "German pirates" by means of siege.

However, when it was decided to send aircraft carriers to participate in the pursuit and pursuit of the enemy, the Royal Navy faced the same embarrassment of aging ships and varying speeds.

The USS Ark Royal, which was just launched this year, has a maximum speed of more than 30 knots, but it can move simultaneously with the three battlecruisers.

And the other three old ships of the Glory, the Brave, and the Athletic God are all "embarrassed goods" whose speed is less than 25 or even 23 knots.

If you take these three aircraft carriers to participate in the search and arrest operation and are dragged by them, according to the barrel theory, the search ship can maintain a speed of 23 knots or even lower - it is impossible for a warship to maintain the maximum speed for a long time, because this is extremely harmful to the boiler pipes, and after a long period of high-speed action, the combat effect of the power system will inevitably be greatly reduced, and it must return to Hong Kong for overhaul and replacement of parts and maintenance after the war.

With these three aircraft carriers, dragged down by their speed, the efficiency of wanting to hunt down the Atlantic Fleet will be affected by Yanzhòng,

And abandoning these three aircraft carriers, just one ship of Ark Royal and three battle cruisers traveling together, will face a shortage of troops, and there is a danger of "taking the initiative to send people to the head", after all, the opponent has two high-speed aircraft carriers and two high-speed battleships, and the result of one against two is no different from sending him to death.

On 17 November, the Royal Navy's light cruiser USS Southampton was in the Atlantic Ocean when it was suddenly attacked by German naval aviation near Iceland, and 20 JU87C dive bombers suddenly appeared over the warship without warning, and within two minutes the ship swallowed 12 250-kilogram shells, one of which hit the ammunition depot and detonated the stockpile, and the Southampton sank within minutes. In the icy winter months of November, and without the support of friendly ships, all the sailors who fell overboard froze to death in the icy Atlantic Ocean in a very short time.

Before sinking, the Southampton sent an alarm message, revealing the approximate location of the arrogant German pirates.

When the news reached the British, the Royal Navy used a force ranging from surface ships to submarines to long-range reconnaissance of the vast areas of aviation, with the Danish Channel between Iceland and Greenland being the focus of the British search.

On 21 November, a British Hurricane fighter spotted the German task force in the Danish Strait. He preemptively sent back this valuable piece of information before it was shot down by carrier-based aircraft in the German assault fleet.

It is clear that the German attack on the fleet was intended to pass through the Danish Strait, then to the Norwegian Sea, to break through into the North Sea, and then return to Germany.

The Royal Navy stationed in Scapa Bay in the Orkney Islands was overwhelmed by the information, and over the next ten days, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force sent a large number of ships and aircraft to conduct a dragnet search in this part of the Norwegian Sea.

In November, the weather in the North Atlantic is extremely harsh, and there are very few days when the weather is suitable for aircraft sorties. Whenever the weather permitted, the Royal Air Force's long-range reconnaissance planes from the Faroe Islands spotted the German fleet several times, proving that they had entered the Norwegian Sea.

According to various sources, the German fleet, which had passed through the Danish Strait, had entered the Norwegian Sea and was waiting for an opportunity to break into the North Sea and return to Germany on the side close to the Norwegian coast.

Upon receiving the news, the Royal Navy rushed out of the nest and pursued the returning German raiding fleet with all its might.

However, it was not an easy task to find a small and powerful fleet in the vast Norwegian Seas. And it is even more difficult to catch your own fleet when they are not as fast as your opponents.

The main reason is still that: the opponent's strength is not big or small, and the speed is "too fast". The fleets of the Royal Navy, if scattered, would not be able to defeat them; Concentrated, although there is an advantage in strength, it will cause the mesh of the "capture net" to be too large, and it will not be able to catch the opponent at all.

What's even more a headache is that the aircraft carriers and carrier-based aircraft on the ships in the opposing fleet are extremely lethal to the search cruisers that are released. It is possible to easily spot a light ship of the cruiser class and destroy it within visual range.

Three days earlier, on 22 November, the light cruiser Linsen had been searching in the Norwegian Sea when it suddenly encountered a surprise attack by more than 20 dive bombers flying from the northeast, and within two minutes it had eaten several 250-kilogram bombs and sank quickly.

The combat radius of carrier-based aircraft is at least more than 200 miles, and the location where the Lin Xian was sunk is enough to draw a large circle with a diameter of more than 500 kilometers, which cannot help the Royal Navy lock the exact location of the German fleet. Although the climate in the North Atlantic is harsh and the use of aircraft carrier-based aircraft is greatly restricted, as long as there is a "window period" suitable for carrier-based aircraft to take off and fight, light warships will scatter and try to search for a fleet with aircraft carriers, and the result will be similar to suicide.

In the next two days, three more destroyers and one light cruiser suffered a fate similar to that of the Lin Xian. Although the "losses" are still tolerable, the importance of naval aviation in naval warfare has once again surfaced and has become a problem that the navies of various countries have to face.

The threat of aircraft carriers forced the British to no longer dare to arrogantly disperse the search ships and use them, and could only rely more on aerial reconnaissance from land-based airfields in the Norwegian Sea.

As for aerial reconnaissance, starting on 21 November, British reconnaissance planes taking off from airfields on the Farok Islands have been dispatched as far as the weather permits. Eleven warships were no small target, and despite the harsh climate in the North Atlantic, it was not difficult to spot their tracks.

However, the scene encountered by the Royal Air Force in Hangzhou Bay in the past has reappeared again in the Norwegian Sea, and the pair of "eyes that monitor the entire battlefield" have once again appeared. (To be continued......)

PS: I'll update the rest of the part after twelve o'clock.,I'm going to the field tomorrow.,I can't update and write tomorrow.,I can only split this chapter into two chapters to update it first.。 In the next ten days, the frog will celebrate the New Year on his wife's side, which is a backward countryside, it is difficult to access the Internet, it is very troublesome to update, and I can't interact with readers.