Having completed the task of destroying the French navy at Millsbeek, the Cunningham fleet immediately returned home. His fleet was planned to sail out of the Strait of Gibraltar overnight and then head south to attack two French battleships, the Richelieu and the Jeanbar, anchored in the Serbian port of Dakar in West Africa.

The Richelieu is currently the most powerful battleship in the French Navy, with a tonnage of 40,000 tons -- stimulated by the influence of the 40,000-ton Shane-class battleships, Britain, France, and the United States all used this as an excuse to abolish the 35,000-ton ceiling under the Washington Naval Treaty.

On this basis, the Americans built the South Dakota class, the British built the George V class, and the French built the Richelieu class.

Because the battleship of this class is a quadruple turret, the armor belt is greatly shortened, so it also saves a lot of tonnage weight for strengthening the armor, the ship's defense can be said to be the best of its kind in Britain, France and the United States, but the firepower is slightly weaker, only two quadruple with a total of eight 380 guns.

With the imminent defeat of France, the Richelieu has completed all the main works, and only some of the finishing works are yet to be completed. And the sister ship of the same class, the Jeanbar, had just finished installing the first main turret at this time.

As the German Army approached the shipyard where the two ships were built, the last choice of the two ships was to flee France in a panic before the Germans occupied the shipyard, take all the parts and equipment they could take with them, and finally dock at the port of Dakar in Senegal.

The Cunningham high-speed fleet heading south was preparing to deal with the French navy hiding in Dakar. At noon on 28 July, after receiving all the planes released by the second round of attacks, the entire fleet turned en masse and headed westward, preparing to leave the Mediterranean and head south.

At noon on the same day, in the Palace of Westminster (that is, the British Parliament Building) in London, England, Churchill briefed hundreds of British parliamentarians present on the results of the "catapult" operation, announcing that the Royal Navy had eliminated the "great threat" of the French Navy.

Historically, when Churchill did this, he received enthusiastic applause from all the parliamentarians. The British were able to do this at that time, and it was based on the premise that the Royal Navy was "the best in the world", and they did not believe that the Germans were capable of swimming across the English Channel. In the eyes of those parliamentarians, the elimination of the French navy at this time was not only for the safety of the British Isles, but also for the long-term interests of Britain after the war.

But in this era, the German Navy was pinching the British by the throat in the Atlantic. Churchill announced the victory, and was met with little applause.

"Winston. Churchill, this paranoid, he's crazy! ”

On the parliamentary table, the head of the Labour Party, Clement Brown. Attlee looked at the oily Churchill and whispered to his assistant.

Attlee became leader of the Labour Party in 1935 and remained leader of the opposition until 1939.

After the outbreak of World War II. After the British navy's crushing defeat at the First Norwegian Naval War, it was he and the Liberals who filed a motion of no confidence in Chamberlain's government, which eventually forced Chamberlain to step down months earlier than in history.

When Churchill came to power, the Conservative Party led by him could not achieve an absolute majority in Parliament, and could only form a wartime coalition government to unify the "voice" of the various parties in Britain, and later both the Labour Party and the Liberal Party joined Churchill's coalition government.

During World War II, there were three important committees within the British government that led the war effort. The first two were the Wartime Cabinet and the Defence Committee, both headed by Churchill and headed by Clement. Attlee served as his deputy. As for the third committee, the Committee of the Speaker of the Privy Council, it was headed by Clement. Attlee was the chairman, and the committee was primarily responsible for wartime civil affairs. This distribution was due to the fact that Churchill was good at military affairs, while Clement Attlee was good at civil affairs. In addition, Clement. Attlee would also answer questions from Churchill when he was absent from Parliament.

In the past six months, Clement. Attlee had always been a strong supporter of Churchill's leadership, but with the surrender of the French government to the country in 1940, there was a great deal of disagreement within the British cabinet.

Historically, it is precisely because of Clement. Attlee supported Churchill and allowed Britain to continue the war. Moreover, for five years, only two of them served in the wartime cabinet. But this plane, which corresponds to the surrender and defeat of France, is the background of the total destruction of the British Royal Navy.

After losing the Empire's most important war plane, the Navy, Attlee had wavered in his stance that Britain would continue to insist on the war. Britain's decision to continue the war in early July was the result of lobbying behind the scenes of the American envoy and the British military paywig, and stimulated by the Lend-Lease Act, when the Cabinet voted in secret and the British parliamentary government agreed to continue the war by only a narrow margin.

Attlee was well aware that the level of support and psychological acceptance of the British people for the continuation of the war had fallen to a very low level.

"Churchill, he's crazy. In order to wash away the stain of the Royal Navy's total destruction of him, this paranoid man is sending the British Empire to the gambling table without any recklessness, and he cannot be allowed to gamble like this again. ”

Attlee muttered to himself, and he sat coldly on the stage, looking at the leader of the Liberal Party not far away, and the other party was looking at him with the same eyes.

Attlee decided that after this cabinet meeting, he would ask the other person to have a good drink.

At 1 a.m. on 29 July, Cunningham's fleet was passing through the Strait of Gibraltar and re-entering the Atlantic.

The Strait of Gibraltar is located between the southernmost part of Spain and northwestern Africa (5°36' W, 35°57' N) and is 58 km long; At its narrowest point, it is only 13 kilometers wide between Cape Marroqui in Spain and Cape Cires in Morocco.

Unless the opponent's course can be known in advance, it is almost impossible for a submarine to ambush the enemy's fleet in the vast ocean.

The narrow window of the Gibraltar waterway happened to be a natural ambush battlefield for submarines, because it was the only way for the British Navy to enter and exit the Mediterranean.

The British fleet acted very cautiously through the Strait of Gibraltar. The British fleet in Gibraltar also sent a large number of patrol boats to patrol near the entrance to prevent a possible sneak attack by German submarines. Although these were only hundred-ton patrol boats, they caused great trouble to the ambushed German submarines, and when the Cunningham fleet passed Guò, it was precisely because of the interference of these patrol boats that the five German submarines could not occupy a good attack position.

Cunningham was of course well aware of the dangers of the Gibraltar waterways at night. But he couldn't go around the Mediterranean until dawn. Because after learning of the attack on Millsbeek, the British and French navies were already in a state of hostility, and the French navy's submarines were almost all in the Mediterranean, and they must have been dispatched to retaliate against the British fleet at any time. For Cunningham's fleet, the Mediterranean is full of dangers, and the sooner it leaves, the better.

The British army has been operating in the Strait of Gibraltar for a long time, and how they do not know the danger of the Strait of Gibraltar when it passes through Guò at night. When Canning's fleet was in Guò, the nearby fort of Gibraltar was lit with headlights, and all light patrol boats were sent to cruise around, ensuring that all possible ambushes were effectively monitored. And all the watchmen in Cunningham's fleet were also wide-eyed and highly concentrated. As for the destroyers accompanying the operation, they are even more in a state of first-class combat readiness, with sonars and hydrophones fully turned on.

Eventually, the Cunningham fleet was able to gain access to the Gibraltar waterway, which was the most vulnerable to ambush. Safely entered the Atlantic.

After leaving the strait, at 2:30 a.m., Cunningham ordered the fleet to turn south, by which time his flagship, the aircraft carrier Radiance, was more than forty kilometers away from the fortress of Gibraltar. Along the way, although the officers and men of his fleet were highly tense, they were finally safe and sound, and did not encounter the conspiracy of possible German submarines.

At 3:15 a.m., after the turn was completed, most of the sailors in the fleet returned to their cabins to rest. Commander Cunningham in the aircraft carrier command room was also preparing to hand over his post to his deputy. Ensign York, the officer on the lookout on his ship, suddenly saw several dazzling red flashes on the dark ocean on the west side of the fleet.

"Shelling! It's the shelling of demon warships! ”

Ensign York took part in the First Battle of the Norwegian Sea, when he was a lookout on the battlecruiser Counterattack, and during that naval battle he counted the number of shelling of the Scharn sisters, and was very familiar with the flashes of gunfire on both ships. In the dark of night, the fire of the sixteen-inch naval guns 25,000 kilometers away was too dazzling.

"It's the shelling, it's those two demon warships that are shelling us!"

After experiencing that disastrous naval battle, Ensign York suffered from a mild war syndrome, and after confirming that it was the flash of shelling from the Shane sister ships, he was mentally disturbed and picked up the phone on the lookout and roared loudly, and Commander Cunningham, who was about to leave the command room, also heard his screams in a state of gaffe for the first time.

Tens of seconds later, all the sailors in the entire fleet who had not yet fallen asleep heard the loud sound of the sixteen-inch 406-mm cannon shells exploding when they landed on the sea.

At the moment when the familiar sixteen-inch shells burst into flames, in the command room of the aircraft carrier Brilliance, Commander Cunningham's face was as white as paper, as if it were a replica of the Battle of Bergen.

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