"Is there any news from the submarine forces?" Jericho paced back and forth in the bridge command room, a thousand thoughts flashing through his mind. Due to the limitation of the range of aircraft, the main force of the three-nation joint fleet staying in the Gulf of Aden can only use submarines as the main reconnaissance weapon, and these days it is a process of hide-and-seek between the main force of the Chinese fleet and the European submarine force.

The Arabian Sea, with a total area of nearly 4 million square kilometers, is certainly not small, but when the eastern and western ends of this sea area are occupied by the fleets of both sides, the actual area of activity between the two sides is less than 2 million square kilometers. This area is still huge, but for the 600 submarines on both sides, it is really small.

Jericho took out seventy percent of the submarines in his hand for reconnaissance, and the remaining 100 or so submarines were intensively arranged by him on Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden, and the distance limit of space also made it difficult for Chinese planes to approach this area, so that the safety of the joint fleet of the three countries was guaranteed to the greatest extent.

At 8:33 p.m. this evening, a submarine spotted a Chinese fleet heading westward, but it could not keep up with the fleet that was maintaining a speed of 20 knots. After the telegram was sent, the submarine forces of Europe entered a catfish like a sardine, and they were all active in an instant.

Telegrams were sent from the submarine force, and the position of this Chinese warship was firmly in Jericho's hands, and more than 50 European submarines had been outflanked from all sides around it. It's like a school of sharks that smell fishy!

On the rough sea, in the distance, dozens of nautical miles away from the Chinese Grand Fleet, a German U-boat surfaced. Dönitz frowned as he looked at the glowing white light in the distance. He couldn't get very close, but he could tell that the Chinese had turned on all the lights of the fleet with all their might. This is the only way to make the light dozens of nautical miles away visible even in the dark of night.

What are the Chinese doing? What do they want to do?

Dönitz really wanted to break into the maritime alert circle of the Chinese. Take a good look and take a look!

The Chinese fleet, advancing westward, 'attracted' submarine after submarine at a speed of 20 knots. Then, after advancing for 3 hours, they made a 90-degree turn and changed from west to south.

As if a huge fat cow was being chased by a pack of wild wolves, as the sky approached dawn, there were already seventy or eighty European submarines in the vicinity of this Chinese fleet, and more submarines were arriving farther away.

"Your Excellency, the speed of the Chinese fleet is very fast, and so far, the submarine force has not sent any report on the results of the battle." Pemiste flipped through the papers he had at hand. There is no report on the results of the submarine forces, but he adds: "But the entire Arabian Sea is full of our submarines, and by 8 o'clock at the latest, there will be submarines facing and forming an encirclement of them." "To put it simply, there will be a submarine formation to encircle the front of the Chinese fleet. The results should have come at that time! Pemiste is convinced of this!

It's just that as the commander of the entire war, Jericho prefers to know where the fleet is going. Then he would be able to figure out what the Chinese were going to do.

"I hope that we can get some useful information as soon as possible, so that we can provide a strong basis for the battle plan we are about to implement."

Rear Admiral Edward, the staff officer of the Grand Fleet, also expressed his opinion at this time, and he believed that the sudden attack of the Chinese fleet at night was very good: "The sudden attack of the Chinese fleet has attracted half of our submarine forces to action. They chose to operate in the dark, the most suitable time for submarine operations, and I have to doubt the motives of the Chinese.

Your Excellency, Commander, they have left their original positions because of the pursuit of this half of the submarine forces. Our submarine defense network is completely disrupted. If the main forces of the Chinese fleet suddenly move westward at this time, our threat to them will be much weaker than expected, perhaps not even 30% of the original intended. ”

"You're right. If at this time the main forces of the Chinese fleet suddenly approach Socotra, it will be difficult for our submarines to threaten their movement. But the main fleet of the Chinese is still in place, isn't it?

The sky lit up immediately. These vacancies after the submarine pursuit is being quickly filled by submarines from elsewhere, and we need not worry about this problem. The Chinese fleet, which suddenly attacked, would have paid for its actions. But where they are going, I'm very curious. ”

When the opportunity comes, you can seize it. Jericho's words made everyone nod. "Inform all warships to get ready, and the surrounding submarine forces to do a good job of reconnaissance. No matter what the Chinese want to do, we must first prepare ourselves for battle. ”

"Your Excellency Commander, all warships and warplanes have completed all pre-war maintenance procedures and are on standby."

The voices in the command room stopped, and Jerry stared at the charts without saying a word, and the others all shut up. One by one, the operational staff officers who came and went in a hurry kept moving, and the symbols on the sea map represented submarines and the Chinese fleet one by one.

No one can figure out the purpose of the Chinese, everything has to be solved until the mystery is revealed, maybe it will be time after dawn.

The Sinai Peninsula, which was the core defensive area of the British against the Ottoman theater. The British Army, which numbered only a million troops, had 200,000 men here, and the French reinforced 100,000 men, and of course the French army had been transformed before the war broke out completely.

The war has been going on so far, and although the British Empire's huge colonies have provided great help to the British Empire, this help has come to an end, and the British Empire has suffered heavy losses in one war after another. Not only lost vital India, but also hundreds of thousands of purebred British Army.

Now the war that will decide the fate of Western civilization is about to begin, and the British army on the Sinai Peninsula is still holding on to it. The expansion of Chinese power on the peninsula does not seem to have worried them in the slightest, and hundreds of thousands of troops are 'watching from the sidelines'!

But for the Chinese side, the Sinai Peninsula is a place that doesn't need attention. Because the Chinese Navy after the naval battle. The Suez Canal will definitely be captured, and the Sinai Peninsula will be indispensable if the Suez Canal is to be captured.

The Sinai Peninsula is geographically Asian. It is a vast desert area with the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal on the west. It is bordered by the Gulf of Aqaba and the Negev Desert to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Red Sea to the south. It is about 210 kilometers wide from east to west and 385 kilometers from north to south. The size of two Hainan islands gave it plenty of strategic depth, and the arid climate and inconvenient transportation made it one of the most effective assistants of the British in defensive operations.

The vast dry area of the peninsula, known as the Sinai Desert, is separated from the eastern desert of Egypt by the Gulf of Suez and the canal, but the eastern part of the peninsula continues into the Negev Desert without significant changes in topography.

The only way to attack here is to move along the coastline, and the best and shortest route is, of course, the Mediterranean Sea. In the whole of the Sinai Peninsula, only the area adjacent to the coastline maintains a fixed water source and a certain agricultural and pastoral area. With a total population of less than 200,000 people, the output and environment of the Sinai Peninsula can be imagined. The British and French garrisons here relied entirely on the support of the rear, food, meat, dairy products, guns and ammunition, etc.

Along the Mediterranean Sea were the places where the British were stationed on their own initiative, and the core cities were Arish and the Felamai Hills. The former, which is crossed by the Arish River, is one of the few places in the entire Sinai Peninsula with abundant water, where the British have placed an army group. This is a group army formed with British white soldiers as soldiers, and it is a different concept from the Anglo-Indian army.

The British defense system was extremely rigorous. In Kuwait, a large sand table made entirely of realistic information has been placed at the General Headquarters. In order to obtain all kinds of information about the layout of the British army in Arish, the Kuwaiti garrison has been busy all these years, and the sand table in front of them is the biggest result.

The Wehrmacht's sandbox is extremely delicately made. There are special modules such as deserts, rivers, mountains, machine gun positions, artillery positions, etc., and with the combination of these gadgets, the defense system shown by the sand table is very intuitive. Behind two barbed wire fences about 1 km apart are trench belts on both sides. This is the trench at the very front. For the attackers, the first obstacles were the trenches and the pegboard-like anti-tank cones in front of the barbed wire, as well as the minefields laid by the British. And then there was an anti-tank trench. The trench, which was three meters deep and more than three meters wide, was full of sand. The sand in the Middle East is extremely fine. Often plugging tank engines or gun barrels, the sand can act like a swamp. And then there's the barbed wire. Countless mines were also laid during this period. After these defenses, the first main defense belt.

Arish is located in the coastal plain area, there are many low hills on its east side, which is the extension of the central mountain range of the Sinai Peninsula, and the British also have a certain army there, mainly to prevent the enemy from the north from making a detour to the flank, but in Arish itself, the defensive location is very advantageous, there is no undulating plain area at all, and the British army can only dig the trench deep when arranging, not to the back of the ridge. There were three trenches in the first main defensive belt, and the distance between them was less than 100 meters according to the sand table ruler. The first trench, as well as the few cement fortifications in front of the trench, were observation posts; The second line of fire was the line of fire, in which all sorts of machine-gun bunkers were found, some of them were made of steel plates, others of cement and stone; After that, the third line is mainly a hidden soldier hole, just as the second line also has an anti-artillery hole, this one also has a lot of machine gun bunkers and fortresses.

Behind this defensive belt, about two kilometers away, there is another trench defensive belt, and such a spacing takes into account the range of mortars. The distance of 2 kilometers was exactly within the range of the British mortars. This is another three-trench defensive belt, still with machine gun positions and caves; It is connected to the first defensive strip by a curved communication trench, and at each turn there is a defensive node, which is a reinforced concrete bunker. In addition to the defensive nodes on the communication trenches, the two-kilometer-long middle zone is also equipped with a number of machine-gun bunkers and firing points, which will be the pillars of fire to break the retreat of the front-line army, and the more they block the enemy's infantry attack.

Two defensive belts, six trenches, and countless machine-gun positions are a complete set of defensive warfare systems formed by the Europeans after years of war, just like the elastic defense theory advocated by the Wehrmacht, and the standard defensive positions built under the guidance have the same effect. In this system of defensive warfare, the real function of the front trench defense belt is only to dull the coordination between the enemy's infantry and artillery. In this era, there was no wireless telephone, and in the absence of effective communication measures, the enemy's infantry and artillery coordination could only be implemented according to predetermined steps, and once the attacking infantry lagged behind because of resistance, the advantage of infantry and artillery coordination would suddenly collapse. At this time, the defenders retreating through the communication trenches could use a dense range of machine guns and artillery to kill and wound the infantry, who were no longer protected by the barrage.

Learn war in war, the Europeans are not bad.

Behind the second defensive belt was the artillery position, the first line of defense in front of the city of Arish, which was 25 kilometers away from the city of Arish. After five kilometers there is another defensive front, then ten kilometers back, the third defensive front, and then the Arish defensive circle.

There was an army of British soldiers throughout Arish, and they had enough men to make such a deployment.

This is the change that the advent of tanks has brought to this time and space. If it weren't for the sudden rise of China, tanks and planes would not have been able to reach the current level of performance, and the first defensive front before might have been the outer defensive circle of the entire Arish British army.

It was the early appearance of tank units that catalyzed the military level of the whole world. The time is still not short from 1920, and this level of war is already comparable to the early stage of World War II in the original time and space.

……

It was dawn, and the red sun rose from the place where the water and the sky met in the east. The darkness is rapidly receding, and the most suitable time for the active submarine force has passed, but hundreds of European submarines are still tirelessly pursuing the Chinese fleet.

A whole aircraft carrier fleet. The Chinese have a total of five aircraft carrier fleets. If one of them can be hit hard, it will have an immeasurable benefit for the current situation.

Even if all the hundreds of submarines are destroyed, it will not hesitate.

Although no one really thinks that relying on the submarine force can really destroy this Chinese aircraft carrier fleet, as long as it can be severely damaged and sunk and damaged those four aircraft carriers, it will really be 'God bless Europa'!

Chinese's calculations were already clear: more than 300 planes covered the sky and the sun, and the Chinese aircraft carrier fleet, which had been chased and intercepted by European submarines all night, also released hundreds of planes......

Eight percent of the four or five hundred aircraft were bombers and torpedoes, and each plane carried depth charges instead of torpedoes and armor-piercing shells. With the aircraft carrier fleet as the center, with the cooperation of dozens of light cruisers, destroyers and speedboats below, it is like a flower blooming on the turquoise sea. (To be continued.) )