The black clouds covered the sky, the wind was still noisy, and the vast sky and sea, which were originally pitch black, began to shine with the luster of the morning light at some point. Three large, slender and tall capital ships were slowly sailing southeast accompanied by nine slender and light medium warships, without any light ship escort around. On the towering triangular mast, the wide St. George's cross flag flutters in the air.

A middle-aged general with an angular face, standing on the majestic bridge and quietly looking at the sky and sea in front of him, is none other than the newly promoted commander of the fast fleet, Rear Admiral Thomas. The North Atlantic morning wind at the end of November was bitterly cold and unbearable even for a young sailor with a strong internal fire, but he stood at the top of the bridge, like a stake. In his heart, perhaps only in this way can he slightly relieve the guilt of not being able to participate in the battle group and the anxiety of waiting for the unknown battle report ahead, right?

The sea breeze was awe-inspiring, his clothes were dancing and he was breathing in the slightly salty air, and Thomas's heart was full of pain that could not be calmed. Four hours earlier, Jericho had ordered his destroyers to rush to the vicinity of the main fleet at full speed to support, but he had named the three battle cruisers and nine new light cruisers in another direction, and they were absolutely not allowed to join the battlefield. In fact, the Tiger and the Royal Princess can run up to 27 knots without overpower, which is not fundamentally different from those destroyers, and can operate with them. However, the risk of fighting at night is much higher than during the day, and one mistake can cause irreparable damage: the main force of the Grand Fleet must not be allowed to be caught up in this death vortex again. A destroyer of seven or eight hundred tons is not worth much, and it will only take more than half a year to complete mass production. And the main battle patrol is extremely cherished. Even if you lose the light patrol in it, it is an extremely unprofitable deal!

As a well-known admiral in the Royal Navy, he and Jericho have been friends for twenty years. How could Thomas not know what his old friend was up to? However, when the Grand Fleet was in danger, he stood by and watched, which really made it difficult for his heart to accept this bitterness. If Betty was here, he would most likely disobey the order and rush forward, fighting to the death with the Germans; But he was Thomas, and keeping the safety of these three Battlecruisers was the most important task Jericho had repeatedly told him before he set out, so how could he do anything that went against that? What's more, Jericho had already telegraphed him to retreat!

"Germans...... Damn the Germans! Thomas clenched his right hand into a fist and slammed it into the railing in front of him. I was filled with resentment. The Royal Navy, which has been crisscrossing the seas for hundreds of years, has now become a cowardly weak brigade that does not even dare to show its sword in front of its opponents, and the blazing sun over Britain is really about to become a sunset at dusk!

"Kick and kick ......" was grieving and grieving, and the sound of close contact between military boots and escalators suddenly came from my ears. Thomas's heart froze, and he turned around. A captain navigator was climbing rapidly up from the deck, as vigorous as a monkey; And the white page he was holding in his hand made Thomas's heart suddenly hang. After a short while, the officer, who ran up to the bridge for more than ten meters in one go, did not breathe without breathing, and handed the paper in his hand to Thomas. "General, a telegram from Trafalgar!" ”

Thomas took a deep breath. Unfold the telegram in front of your eyes. The captain officer in front of him could see clearly, and after only a few seconds, the muscles in Thomas's face twitched suddenly.

In the early hours of the night of 25 November 1913, the main British and German fleets engaged in their second large-scale encounter 70 nautical miles southwest of Ireland. After a full three months, the main force of the naval battle on both sides turned from a battleship with strong armor to a mine-striking boat with outnumbered guns, and the scene of the battle no longer had the majestic and neat method at the beginning, but directly returned to the chaotic struggle of human beings in the most primitive time, and there was almost no routine to follow. The reason for this is that the British Grand Fleet, which had been weakened by Yan zhòng, was no longer able to compete with the German fleet; The roles of the two sides switch between bait and hunter, and they play with each other in planning and navigation, and finally usher in the highest point of the accident with a chance encounter in the dark night.

After an indescribably chaotic fight, at about 5 o'clock in the morning, the lightning strike ships of the two sides from the fast fleet appeared next to their respective fleets with almost no time difference, and the brutal and fierce close-quarters combat was staged again. In the blinding night, neither Jericho nor Ingnoll could grasp the complete first-hand information, nor could they command the detachments as much as their arms, and the frequent contradictory reports made every commander feel broken. Eventually, as Jellico's fleet continued to flee away from the battlefield, the roar of artillery fire that had been resounding all night in the sea gradually fell silent as the morning dawn came. The sudden and precise artillery fire of the main fleets of both sides and the targeted attacks of the escort warships made the undefended lightning ships lose the conditions they could rely on to stay on the battlefield, and they could only choose to retreat quickly to save their lives.

The two sides began to gather the ships scattered across the sea and count the losses in the night battle. Groups of bleeding wounded soldiers were sent to the gangway of the capital battleship by the sudden roar of the traffic boat, because the temporary rescue room on the small battleship was already overcrowded, and even the medicine for simple wound treatment was exhausted. Some of the intact ships that joined later searched back and forth on the floating surface of the debris to see if there were still survivors struggling to catch their breath; The ship, which had been caught in the fire, was still afloat and refused to sink, and the friendly ship that had been fighting side by side with it a moment ago had to tearfully torpedo it for the last time.

The British battleship HMS Ireland sank. Although this battleship, built for the Turks, was the best in the entire fleet in terms of defense, the British designers' style of cutting corners was to once again trap their own soldiers. The torpedo that hit the amidships with the first shot was absorbed by the TDS next door, and did not cause irreparable damage; However, the second torpedo exploded in the bow of the ship without the absorption of TDS, and the ship's poor underwater compartment system, which was in the same vein as other British battleships, immediately demanded its own life. The sea rushed violently, the cabins were lost everywhere, and the tragic fate of the battleship was inevitable.

In addition, the two battleships Hercules and Collingwood did not survive the morning light of the rising sun the next day. After all, in this plane, Britain's warships were built almost a third faster than they were at the same time in history, reaching the pinnacle of what their finances could afford: and in doing so, the quality of the details of their ships was even worse than in history. An 82kg cotton mine in the body of the 23,000-ton Bold was still sunk due to the failure of the damaged pipe, and the 195kg high explosives loaded with the German 500-mm torpedo could not withstand these slag ships? Even the Trafalgar, in which Jericho himself was riding, almost became a dead man who sank by a thunderbolt: but fortunately, the torpedo that hit the British flagship happened to be a dud!

When the German torpedo boat was withdrawn, the British sailors jumped into the freezing water and carefully retrieved the torpedo stuck in the hull. Dozens or hundreds of British sailors were able to save their lives. The Ajax, which had narrowly escaped during the day, was not so lucky, and it was soon spotted after the arrival of the second wave of German torpedo boats, and a salvo of four torpedoes instantly destroyed the watertight system it had been struggling to support, and the battleship capsized and sank in less than twenty minutes. Had it not been for the timely arrival of 30 new British destroyer reinforcements on the battlefield and the effective containment of the second wave of German torpedo boats attacking the main force of the British Grand Fleet, the High Seas Fleet would have achieved even greater results.

Counting the losses of the previous day, the British fleet lost a total of 6 battleships, and another 14 destroyers were sunk. Looking at the large fleet that had withered and had been completely reduced to a second-rate scale, Rao was as calm and calm as Jericho, and he also felt a strong dizziness and sharp pain in his head, and he was almost unconscious. The only thing that sustained his belief that he did not take it upon himself to thank his countrymen was that he did not know the exact extent of the German fleet's losses. In the previous night battle, the numerical superiority of the British destroyers effectively compensated for the lack of lightning strike capabilities, and achieved several definite hits, among which it was determined that one German battleship was sunk. Maybe I didn't lose too ugly, and the situation didn't collapse to the extent I imagined.

Jericho didn't expect it badly. In addition to the Long, the 19,700-ton Nassau was also hit and severely damaged in the continuous night battle: none of the two 533-mm torpedoes hit the amidships where the TDS absorbed the impact of the torpedo explosion, and the battleship was severely flooded. Although the water ingress was eventually controlled, the rear deck of the battleship was almost level with the sea, and the power to sail alone was completely lost. In the subsequent return tow, the German fleet was again subjected to stormy weather; The Nassau, which had been blocked, was flooded again, and finally failed to make it back to the German mainland, and self-sank after evacuating all personnel. The losses of the German fleet increased from then to 2 battle cruisers and 2 battleships, and another 17 torpedo boats were destroyed, and the losses of torpedo boats accounted for almost a quarter of the total number of the German navy, becoming veritable cannon fodder for death.

"The era of belonging to the Grand Fleet is over. The Fast Fleet will be the central pillar of the defense of the British Sea. On the bridge of the Tiger battle cruiser, Thomas put away the telegram in his hand and whispered silently in his heart. After this chaotic naval battle, the strength of the main fleets of the two sides was further expanded, but the gap between the fast battle patrols was narrowed: with the successive completion of the Queen-class battleships, the Royal Navy still has the ability to make a last stand! (To be continued......)

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It's not that the author doesn't want to do more, but it's really limited in time, and he usually has to go to work during the day, and he has a bunch of other things on weekends