"The army has encircled the main forces of the coalition and will be annihilated in a few days, and the high seas fleet should act accordingly to determine the victory of the empire on the ocean. Today, we have the strongest lineup, the best warships, and the most elite soldiers, and this strong strength makes us sure to achieve a complete victory like the decisive battle in the North Sea! Scheer shouted to his subordinate staff officers in the command tower.

On 21 May, when Guderian's troops had crushed the counterattack of the French tank divisions and began to gallop across the French plain with motorized groups, the German High Seas Fleet, which had completed the replenishment, also carried the cold winds of the Arctic and roared south from Iceland. In order to ensure that the take-off and landing of aircraft on aircraft carriers did not interfere with each other, the German fleet, which had 10 heavy aircraft carriers, opened a distance of more than 30 nautical miles horizontally; Viewed from above, there are nearly 200 warships scattered on the blue sea, and the various wake streams are colorful and surging, which is a spectacular sight.

To this day, although German submarines hunting in the Atlantic still found no sign of the American Atlantic Fleet coming to Europe's aid, Schell had decided to launch the most aggressive attack on the British sea lines first. With the combat radius of hundreds of kilometers of aircraft carrier-based aircraft, he can completely suffocate British shipping with the cooperation of submarines; And as long as the lifeblood of Britain is choked, there is no fear that the British and American fleets will not come to fight a decisive battle with themselves! At that time, it will be a stage for our own air forces to give full play to their might. If the weather is good, Scheer is even confident that he will lose most of the opponent's main force in a single battle, and even if it encounters bad weather, the abundant power of his aircraft carrier can make it quickly sail out of the storm-ravaged area. Wait for another attack.

The wind howled. The big wave is empty. The prevailing climate in the North Atlantic has always been one of eternal harshness and cacophony; However, compared to their predecessors in the last battle, the ships of the current High Seas Fleet are completely unafraid of the test of this weather. Even a destroyer with a full load displacement of only 2,600 tons can maintain a low upwave at low cruising speeds. On an aircraft carrier with an average freeboard of more than 11 meters, the crew felt even more stable; Due to the storage of the armored flight deck, the German aircraft carriers with low GM values had a slow and calm roll.

After two days of sailing, the German fleet had already advanced 600 nautical miles to the south. Due to the wide formation of the fleet, the destroyers in charge of perimeter guard had already detected the existence of British submarines on two occasions. Faced with the situation that his position was at risk of being exposed, Scheer only released the reconnaissance force step by step. At the same time, the search for Allied convoys to and from the North Atlantic began. It has been nearly half a month since the outbreak of the war, and the British convoy should have been established; Although this was a headache in the eyes of German submariners, it was an ideal situation for the German surface fleet, which had aviation at its core. Because once the aircraft finds the target, then it means that a whole fleet of merchant ships becomes prey; And under the roaring bombardment of a large number of planes that followed, this group of slow merchant ships could only act as lambs to be slaughtered!

On May 24, the first rays of morning light illuminated the dark ocean from far away in the east. After two days of wanton rage, the irritable sea finally calmed down, the blue sea swaying and shimmering in the morning glow. It's not too late. More than a dozen Ta-152 carrier-based fighters began to accelerate with the neighing of propellers and flew away in the cloudless clear sky. Because the BF-109 and its successor, the FW-190, both land-based fighters, have the characteristics of small landing gear and short range. In this case, the German Navy decided to set up its own door and develop a single-engine fighter for aircraft carriers, and the Ta-152 was born.

As a sea-based fighter, the Ta-152 focuses on solving the problems of land-based single-engine fighters in landing gear strength and range. With a maximum load of 5.5 tons, the fighter can reach a range of 1,600 km, which is undoubtedly of great significance for aircraft carrier fleets that require long-range strikes. Although its maximum speed has dropped from nearly 700 km/h to 640 km/h of its land-based counterpart, and the weight of the external bomb has been reduced from 1 ton to 750 kg, its performance is undoubtedly guaranteed to be competent for the all-important naval and air combat. With a large allocation from the German Navy, the mass-produced Ta-152 soon completely replaced the BF-109, which was much to the dissatisfaction of the aircraft carrier commanders, and became the standard fighter configuration for German aircraft carriers.

With a strong lineup of 10 aircraft carriers, Scheer did not hesitate in terms of reconnaissance forces, and nearly 30 fighters took to the air one after another, searching for the south and west. At the same time, the seaplanes carried by battleships and heavy cruisers were also involved in the search operation, and these cannon fodder were designed to assist the aircraft carrier reconnaissance force at the beginning. In less than two hours, the exciting news came from the aircraft carrier's radio that a fleet of 22 merchant ships and four escort ships appeared in the sea area 400 kilometers south-west and was heading east at a speed of nine knots.

"Damn the British, they actually moved the shipping line to such a southerly location!" Looking at the marks made by the staff officer on the chart with red and blue pencils, Scheer said with exasperation. In order to avoid the threat of the German fleet stationed in Iceland, the British convoy chose a route from Portugal to the north along the Bay of Biscay, and the ocean north of Ireland was almost extinct. In addition to the anger, Scheer felt a little glad in his heart, relying on the powerful air strike capability, the current high seas fleet is also fully capable of dealing with the response made by the Entente to change the tide of the war!

With the issuance of Scher's order, the German naval and air swords, which had been sharpened for fifteen years, finally ushered in the first opportunity to unsheath. After warming up the aircraft, the fighter was sent to the flight deck at an altitude of more than 10 meters by a broadside lift, and the ground crew immediately began to refuel and hang bombs on it: since the target was a merchant ship and an unarmored anti-submarine escort ship, the Do-22 torpedo plane did not go out, but let the JU-87 dive bomber, which also shines in land combat, take on the main force of the attack. In a short time, the two Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers responsible for launching the attack each prepared 16 fighters, of which the number of JU-87s accounted for three-quarters; In order to avoid accidents, Scheer still sent a certain number of fighters to escort the bombers with weak self-defense capabilities. When all the preparations for take-off are completed, the folded wings of these warhawks are deployed; In the envious eyes of the officers and men on the capital ship, these aircraft flew rapidly towards the target hundreds of kilometers away.

Because the merchant ships were so slow that by the time the German fleet reached the front line, the disbanded and fleeing British fleet had not yet sailed 25 nautical miles. The German pilots were thousands of meters in the air, and they could see every movement in the vast ocean below. After a strange cry of excitement over the radio, the two squadrons of Stuka swooped down and swooped down towards their respective targets. Eight fighters flew low and fired intensively at the four only escort ships with their 20-mm cannons and 13-mm machine guns, and a dozen British sailors in open-air positions were immediately swept away in a pool of blood. After a while, a terrible scream roared in my ears; The British seafarer looked up in horror and saw a small black dot approaching him sharply!

"Boom!" With a loud bang, red light exploded, and a huge fiery red cloud suddenly burst out of a British merchant ship, and a large number of molten and broken fragments rushed in all directions. For the unprotected civilian ship, the 250kg bomb dropped by Stuka was a scythe in the hands of the Grim Reaper, which instantly destroyed the life of the 4,000-ton merchant ship. The mast broke, the chimney collapsed, the entire ship burst into flames tens of meters high, and the inside of the hull was flooded with water due to the torn steel plates. Just a dozen minutes later, the ship sank into the sea in a cloud of smoke and fire, leaving only a large cloud of floating wood chips that proved that it had been stored. Whether it is loaded with mineral raw materials such as iron sand and copper ingots, or war necessities such as guns and ammunition, they are now forever buried in the deep seabed without seeing the light of day.

The warplanes flew by, the motors beeped, and soon the attack became a one-sided aerial killing. More than 20 merchant ships were accurately hit by the bombs dropped by Stuka one after another, and turned into irretrievable burning floats in the deafening explosion; Even three of the four old anti-submarine destroyers were not spared, and they became the first Allied warships to be sacrificed under the Stuka bomb. The only lucky one survived the blow of the German air force thanks to a dud bullet. When the German fighters returned home in the unwilling strafing fire, the British captain got up from the deck as if he had been amnestied, and while giving the order to flee at full speed, he frantically warned the friendly fleets around him by radio. The fearful British seafarers on the ocean soon discovered what made them despair: with German carrier-based aircraft in the seas so far south, there was no safe place for the entire North Atlantic route to Britain!

"We must not sit idly by and watch this unfold any longer. The Royal Navy must be dispatched to stabilize the situation in the Atlantic through a decisive battle in Guò; If more than 90,000 tons of merchant cargo are lost every morning, we can immediately declare an unconditional surrender to Berlin! Tovey, the commander of the British Home Fleet, clenched his fists and said with urgency, "Now that the American fleet is sailing in the Atlantic, we should meet them and engage in a decisive encounter with the Germans." (To be continued......)

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