At 14:12, just five minutes after the massive explosion of the Magnificent, the Orion-class Monarch suffered another catastrophe: a 305-mm shell fired from a distance flew like lightning, and thunder crashed into the stern of the battleship. While this area is undoubtedly outside the core compartment and has no ammunition to blast, the stern is where the battleship's torpedo pod is located!

Historically, the capital ships built by various countries during the First World War were equipped with underwater torpedo tubes. The original intention of the designers was to give these precious main battle cores an extra layer of offensive and self-defense means. However, in actual combat, the practice of equipping capital ships with torpedoes proved to be more than worth the loss: because with the rapid increase in the combat distance of battleships, it was difficult for these powerful underwater weapons to find an opportunity to show their skills in the decisive battle of the battle line that was more than 10km apart; The underwater torpedo compartment itself is outside the protection of the core module, and it undoubtedly faces the danger of being ignited and harming the whole ship during the battle. During Operation Albion on October 12, 1917, the German battleship Bavaria, which was the strongest battleship of World War I, was touched and exploded by a Russian mine off the Gulf of Finland and hit the bow torpedo compartment, almost causing a catastrophic torpedo explosion.

For this reason, at the urging of Qingying, the German dreadnoughts abandoned the design of having torpedo tubes under water from the very beginning. The former dreadnoughts, which were already equipped with torpedo tubes, also dismantled this weapon in the process of docking maintenance, and all personnel and equipment were transferred to the torpedo boat unit. In this way, not only a lot of expenses were saved, but the potential safety hazards of the capital ship during artillery battles were also eliminated.

The opposite is true. The British battleships kept this weapon at all times. Most of their dreadnoughts are equipped with three underwater torpedo tubes. Two of them are located on the amidships. The other one is arranged in the stern of the ship. Since the beginning of the battle, these sailors in the torpedo compartments have become the most idle group of the entire home fleet: the main German fleet is far out of the range of its own torpedoes, and it is not their turn to show their turn. When the German shells hit the aft torpedo compartment, the British torpedo crews, who were completely unaware of the outside situation inside the closed bottom of the ship, were still optimistically hoping that the battle would end with an unprecedented victory for the Royal Navy......

"Boom!" The waves of light exploded, the air was surging, the hot air waves after the explosion of the shells, and the dancing shrapnel swept across the small cabin; More than a dozen compression bottles filled with high-pressure air burst open in an instant. The fierce blast blast blasted the bulkheads around it to pieces. And under the constant stimulation of high temperature and strong pressure, 3 torpedoes lying quietly on the steel frame were also detonated, which pronounced the final fate of the Sovereign!

In an earth-shattering explosion, the entire stern of the Monarch was blown into thousands of pieces; The endless sea unstoppably flooded the ship's cabins, and the sailors on board all ran upwards in a daze. The movement was slightly sluggish, and he was swept away by the roaring sea water and drowned. The 22,000-ton steel giant ship tilted sharply backwards, and the bent and broken steel plates made a terrifying sound, and a large number of sailors began to jump into the sea one after another. After a while, the super-dreadnought, armed with 10 343-mm guns, quickly sank into the rough North Sea, with only patches of debris and oil trails floating on the surface of the sea. It also proves that this battleship has been so real!

The cannon fire roared, and the waves of light burst like neon waves. After more than an hour of shooting. The guns on the German battleships seemed to have found complete accuracy, and after forming a straddle fire, they continued to hit the British battleships near the average impact point. The British battleship St. Parrio, with a standing displacement of 19,600 tons, trembled under the thunderous tsunami of the 10 305-mm guns of the German Bossen; the sea of fire on its deck was cascading, and its hull tilted 9 degrees to the left and 3 degrees to the first made its right propeller only one step away from the water.

Although the Giant-class San Pario has 8 343mm guns, under the deck of the opponent's 150mm high-explosive shells, 3 guns are unable to fire due to self-and servo-mechanical failures. After nearly twenty consecutive hits of various types of shells, the fatal blow finally came. A 305 mm shell pierced the 280 mm armor on the front of its B turret, and more than a dozen packs of propellants stacked behind the turret were instantly ignited; And at this time, there was exactly a shell and several packs of propellant that were lifted from the blast door by the bomb lifter!

"Boom!" The billowing flames pouring down from above the turret instantly detonated the cannonball in the shaft; The British sailors in the ammunition depot only felt as if they had been struck by thunder, and the whole world shook violently. After a short time, when they came back to their senses, they saw the last scene of their lives: the blast door that had been closed according to the battle regulations had been squeezed and deformed by Yan Zhan, and a hurricane and tsunami-like wave of fire and clouds burst into the ammunition depot......

"It's truly a mesmerizing spectacle. A nearly two-hundred-meter-long cloud of blood-red flames and thick clouds of smoke engulfed the target ship, and dazzling light burst in it; A large number of debris was thrown out in all directions, and countless sprays on the surface of the sea were like scenes of a rainstorm. A long, narrow gray shadow that appeared to be a traffic boat with its belly facing the sky flew vertically into the air at a height of nearly 100 meters. Every sailor on deck cheered and shouted excitedly for the glorious victory they had achieved and that of the Imperial Navy; Although the ship was also hit by 7 343-mm shells, and the damage to the battleship was quite slight, it was obviously insignificant compared to the explosion and sinking of the opponent. Lookout Sil on the battleship Posen later recalled the situation.

"Long live the Imperial Navy!" Seeing the continuous sinking of British capital ships in the distance, the German staff officers on the Frederick the Great were overjoyed, and the thunderous cheers drowned out the entire command tower. Although Ingnoll was trying his best to control his facial expressions, his slightly trembling shoulders had already revealed his true heart. Before the battle began, although he already felt that his own fleet might take advantage of the defensive advantage in the battle, he never thought that the British battleship was actually a group of paper tigers with no appearance, and after a few bites, they appeared in their original form! If we continue to fight like this, it is entirely possible to win a tactical victory, or to directly break the backbone of the British Grand Fleet in a war!

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The battle situation of the capital ship group is gradually becoming clearer, and the vanguard fleet is gradually decided. Although the guns of the five German battle cruisers suffered considerable losses, they had formed an irreversible advantage over the four British battle cruisers in front of them. The rough-skinned and thick-skinned Lyuzov has steadily withstood the fire from the Royal Princess, and the 635kg heavy armor-piercing projectile, which poses the greatest threat to it, has already poured out the Royal Princess; The other German battle cruisers fought smoothly, beating the British battleship into the water at a stall, and licking the flames into the sky. The only thing that worries Hipper is that there are not many armor-piercing shells left in his battle cruisers, and there is no guarantee of high-speed shooting.

"Report, the British destroyers are starting to rush towards us at an accelerated pace!" The voice of a lookout was heard over the microphone. Hipper held up his binoculars and looked out, and saw a group of low-freeboard light warships cutting through the cracks between the scarred British battle cruisers and speeding towards his own fleet. Seeing this scene, Hipper's eyes couldn't help but flash a sharp look, and he said hesitantly: "David, do you want to use this trick to redeem the defeat?" Unfortunately, you're not the only one in the world who knows how to use torpedo raids! ”

"The order was given to the main and secondary guns of the battle cruisers to reload with high-explosive shells and begin to bombard the British destroyers; The 2nd Reconnaissance Fleet and the 3rd Torpedo Boat Detachment conducted close interceptions, and the 4th and 5th Torpedo Boat Detachments carried out torpedo counter-attacks on the enemy's main battle patrol. We also want the British to have a good taste of the torpedo blades that belong to Germany! Hipper muttered for a moment, then gave a loud battle order.

Artillery roared and waves of light danced, and under Hipper's orders, the German war cruisers began to concentrate all their firepower on these rushing British destroyers. Dense vertical and horizontal shells immediately exploded and whistled around him, and in the waves of water, there were occasional bursts of red and purple brilliant light. After all, the threat of torpedoes to large ships is too great, and these British cannon fodder with underwater demolitions cannot afford Hipper not to deal with them carefully. And just when the British battle patrol team was relieved by the changing objectives of the enemy's artillery fire, the German torpedo boats that rushed to kill made their hearts hang again. Although the Germans withdrew their heavy artillery fire, they sent a vote of Assassins for a torpedo attack; And the threat of heavy artillery and torpedoes to battleships is something that everyone with a little common sense of the Navy will see at a glance!

The German torpedo boatmen were divided into two teams, and galloped on the sea like sharp arrows; The slender and small body swam like a sailfish shuttle, and galloped towards the British fleet at a speed of more than 34 knots. In previous battles, they generally played the role of stake defense, and their tonnage and firepower were much inferior to those of British destroyers, which made them frequently fall to the upper hand in artillery interceptions, which they were not good at. And this time, they finally have a chance to show what they are good at. On each German torpedo boat, two twin 500-mm torpedo tubes were arranged on the center line in the form of deck rotating launchers, which were twice as dense as those of the British destroyers. In terms of single-shot power, the German G/6D 500-mm torpedo is also much higher than the British 533-mm Mark I. torpedo; Compared with the British modified version, which was only 102kg of normal charge, the German G/6D torpedo was fully loaded with 164kg of Hexanite high explosives, which was undoubtedly a fatal blow to the British battleship that lacked underwater protection! (To be continued......)

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