On the battleship Trafalgar, Jericho was listening to the adjutant's frightened and anxious report with a blank face; When he learned that Betty had sunk to the bottom of the sea with the Lion, he suddenly felt a whirlwind of intense dizziness in his mind, and he couldn't help but suddenly fall backwards. The staff officers next to him were shocked when they saw this, and hurriedly held him up and called the military medical officer, and after a rush of rescue, Jericho's eyes finally opened again.

"We have completely lost this naval battle." Jerricho endured the intense pain in his heart, and struggled to speak in a tone that was still calm. At present, the British Rapid Fleet has suffered a devastating blow, and the main forces of the Grand Fleet have also suffered heavy losses in the artillery battle; By any measure, they were outright losers in this naval battle. Now, Jericho had no idea of defeating the German fleet in his mind, and he had only one immediate goal, that is, how to bring the remaining main force of the Grand Fleet back to port safely!

At that time, the waves were raging, the waves were rushing, and the overwhelming roar of artillery fire was deafening. With a loud and crisp sound, the Trafalgar's side was torn apart by a 350-millimeter shell; To the great joy of all the British officers and men on board, the shell did not explode in an extremely rare way. Soon, however, the hearts of the British officers in the conning tower sank again: although the blunt shell did not explode, it still used its tremendous kinetic energy to loosen the nearby watertight hull, and a small stream of seawater rushed in through the cracks, and it was impartially mixed directly into the boiler feed water!

With the precipitation and bonding of the salt crystals contained in the seawater during the vaporization of the furnace water, the heat transfer performance of the boiler heating tube surface deteriorates sharply. To prevent catastrophic bursts due to overheating of the pipe wall. The British stoker was forced to give the order to reduce the power load. Trafalgar's speed suffered as a result. At present, the stoker only dares to run the boiler to 85% of its output at most. And with the passage of time, the maximum speed of the battleship will irretrievably plummet with the further precipitation and accumulation of solid impurities in the pipeline!

The order was given, and the battleships immediately began to release smoke, and three minutes later made a right turn in accordance with Regulation No. 9. The destroyer fleet launched a torpedo raid to cover the main fleet from the battlefield. Jericho slowly stood up in his chair and calmly gave the tactical order, "Tell the commanders of the destroyer fleets that their torpedo attacks need not be overly focused on hits. It is only necessary to force the enemy fleet to turn the rudder to the southeast, away from us, to avoid it. The fleet headed 197, the target was the military port of Rosyth. ”

"Whew!" Thick smoke and foul smells filled the nose, and a cloud of grayish-yellow smoke rose from the port side of the Trafalgar. Although the current battlefield situation is chaotic and overlapping, and the signal flags raised on the Trafalgar cannot be recognized by the lookouts of each ship at the first time, the action of the flagship itself is the best order. In a short time, the British battleships on the field threw themselves into the smoke canisters they carried, and in the distance, a high wall of earth seemed to rise on the sea.

The same well-trained Royal Navy officers and men retreated. They strictly adhered to the fleet code compiled and formulated by Jericho, in the cruel actual battlefield of artillery fire and smoke. Orderly steering maneuvers at varying speeds. The Royal Navy's centuries-old dominance of the seas has finally been revealed, and its junior officers and sailors have displayed world-class combat qualities; However, it is a pity that the current Great Britain is no longer the dream empire that was unique in the world in industrial technology. With national income and industrial technology surpassed by the Central European empire across the Channel, Britain had to rely on a large number of shoddy bargains to maintain the foundation of its world's first naval power; And in the frontal battle of bayonets, these thin-skinned and big-stuffed paper tigers cannot become a solid foundation for the majesty of this world empire!

"The British are ready to escape!" The angry roar of a young staff officer echoed through the entire command tower of the Frederick the Great. Ingnoll raised his binoculars and saw that the British battlefleet had begun to release smoke, accompanied by a large number of light ships rushing towards his own fleet at high speed.

Seeing the large group of wolves rushing towards the British destroyers, Ingnoel's face couldn't help but change slightly. In the nearly two-hour battle, their lookouts had a full view of the lineup of the British fleet in front of them: this time the British home fleet was almost exhausted, not only did they dispatch all the capital ships, but the number of cannon fodder destroyers was also as dense as a swarm. Although the lightning density of these destroyers was only half that of the German torpedo boats, their huge base was still enough for the British to launch a shocking wave of torpedo attacks! In order to be on the safe side, Ingnoll still ordered the main artillery fire of the four battlefleets in front to turn around and turn around, in order to prioritize the threat of these torpedo-carrying ships; Anyway, the speed of the British main fleet is not high, and he can calmly pursue and sink those British dreadnoughts and even dreadnoughts behind him one by one.

The cannon roared, and a boiling column of water rolled up on the sea, and from time to time British destroyers were hit by shells; They either exploded into an inconsequential cloud of orange-red light, or slowed down in a column of water, and an unlucky destroyer was hit directly by a 350 mm high-explosive shell fired by the Caesar, which instantly turned into a brilliant firework of extreme splendor. While the German gunners were gearing up for a more precise strike after waiting for the enemy to get closer, the British destroyers fired their own torpedoes at a distance of 6,000 meters; And these torpedoes were undoubtedly moving at a slow speed, with a speed of only 30 knots, which was even far less fast than the torpedo boats in the German fleet.

Seeing this action of the British destroyer, Scheer, who was sitting on the Caesar, instantly understood the intention of the other commander. However, in the face of the British plan, he could only choose to follow the script formulated by the other party; Because if you choose to turn to the right to approach the British fleet, your battleships will meet the British torpedoes head-on, and almost 100% of them will collide head-on!

Under the command of Scher, the German Second Battlefleet was forced to carry out a wide range of divergence evasions; And the subsequent continuous firing of torpedoes also interfered with the normal course of the 1st and 3rd battleship squadrons in the rear. The wake was staggered and the waves were cascading and agitated, and for a while, almost all the German dreadnoughts were twisting their huge bodies to dodge the hundreds of torpedoes that suddenly appeared on the sea. The German battle line, which had been tightly organized, suddenly became scattered, and the captain became the busiest group of people in the entire fleet.

"Boom!" There was a loud bang, and a towering column of water soared into the sky like a silver dragon. In the middle of the 3rd Battleship Squadron, the unfortunate Pomerania was in the heart of the cross-coverage of seven torpedoes; Despite the full steam at the helm of the ship's commander, Colonel Boken, it was inevitable that the ship would be hit stern by a torpedo. The violent explosion destroyed two of the three propellers, and the propeller shaft compartment adjacent to the main engine was also filled with seawater; The Pomerania suddenly lost almost all of its power and slowly came to a halt at the surface of the sea after a sideways swing. The sea was surging and the pumps roared, and the German sailors began to do their best to plug the leak.

After receiving the news of the Pomerania's mine, Ingnoll only nodded slightly to show that he knew, but his eyes were locked on the British Grand Fleet in the distance through high-powered binoculars. After this round of torpedo assaults, the British fleet was able to escape for nearly 20 minutes at the cost of sinking several cannon fodder; At present, the distance between the two sides has increased from 10 km in the previous battle to more than 14 km, and the steering maneuver of the British fleet can be described as smooth, without the slightest stagnation and drag. While admiring the effective maneuver of his opponents, a glimmer of thought rose in Ingnor's heart to eradicate the troubles forever: these well-trained junior officers and sailors must be left in this sea as much as possible forever!

"Boom! Rumble! Under the order of Ingnoll, the German battleships began to accelerate one by one, and collectively turned two compass points to the right, continuing to bombard the British battleships. Fearing that the main force of the British Grand Fleet, which was in front of the enemy, might suddenly turn around and thus carry out a T-shaped cross-cut on the indomitable High Seas Fleet, Ingnoll did not pursue too aggressively, but chose to cut in at a more cautious angle to ensure that his fleet could respond in time and relaunch the battle line without losing the upper hand.

However, in this way, it was difficult to guarantee the accuracy of the German fleet when pursuing. And another factor that Ingnorr did not take into account also made the pursuit he was determined to achieve results for a long time. For the course of the German fleet was now from due south to southwest, and the direction of the sea breeze, which had been blowing incessantly since early morning, was still from south to north; A large amount of heavy soot produced by the German battleships during the high-speed pursuit was blown to the starboard side by this sea breeze. As the evening approached, the wind on the sea also eased, and the coal cloud and gunpowder smoke that faintly drifted in the center of the battlefield made countless ranging lookouts roar and curse angrily.

On the boundless sea, two fleets of astonishing size, one in front and one behind, were speeding towards the southwest in parallel directions. The German fleet fired as hard as it could at the middle and tail of the opposing ships, in order to leave some of the British capital ships behind; The British fleet, on the other hand, concentrated its firepower on a group of ships that were being pursued by the enemy, hoping to cause them to stall and no longer be able to pursue. While Ingnoll was anxious about the current stalemate, there was another unexpected change on the field. (To be continued......)

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