The steam engine vibrates, the waves splash, and an old-fashioned warship with a quaint appearance is slowly sailing in the vast North Atlantic. Two rows of air outlets are erected on the amidships, and the guns on the bow and stern sides are standard deck mounts. However, what makes people feel strange is that this ship, no matter how it looks, looks like a British "Flyer"-class second-class cruiser launched in 1899, but it is the American Stars and Stripes flying on its stern and mast; And the sailors who walked around the deck were wearing the standard Royal Navy attire!

On a simple lookout supported by a steel frame, the elderly lieutenant commander Ekman looked at the red and white St. George cross flag folded and folded by sailors, and his heart felt as if he had been knocked over a five-flavor bottle: bitter, sad, desolate...... In the end, it was mixed into unspeakable pain, which weighed heavily on his heart.

As a veteran sailor who has been with the ocean since the age of 16 and has served in the Royal Navy for more than 40 years, Eckman has witnessed the glory of this force. For as long as he can remember, St. George's fleet was the most powerful maritime power in the world; Even the capital ships of France and Russia, which ranked second or third in terms of fleet strength, need to wave flags or fire cannons to greet British fourth-class colonial cruisers. After entering the 20th century, the power of the Royal Navy was still at its peak: its deployment of only a few old second-class battleships in Hong Kong was enough to deter the Japanese Combined Fleet, which had won a great victory in the Battle of Tsushima, and did not dare to go beyond the British sphere of influence in China!

However, this brilliant piece of Qiē was shattered with the outbreak of this European war.

From the second month of the war, German submarines, like dragons, whales, and tiger sharks, began to hunt British merchant ships in the Atlantic. Even battleships are no exception. And with the crushing defeat of the British home fleet in the decisive battle in the North Sea. The German submarines even extended their fuel supply base directly to Fair Island. It greatly improved its combat efficiency in and out of the Atlantic. At present, even with the introduction of convoy escorts, British-flagged ships are not safe in the Atlantic, with an average of four merchant ships sunk by submarines every day. And the food, medicine, ore, munitions and other materials carried by these merchant ships were not only the wealth of the pound that Great Britain had so hard accumulated, but also the material basis for the country to be able to carry on the war!

In order to reduce the losses suffered by submarine attacks, British merchant ships began to fly the flags of neutral countries in large numbers, even the warships that escorted them. After a hasty camouflage, a huge flag of the U.S. Navy was hung. The British thought very thoroughly that it was unlikely that German submarines would fire torpedoes at the ships of "neutral countries" for no reason, and if the other side dared to go up to the surface for inspection, the cannons on their own warships would give these greedy and vicious Germans a taste of broken bones.

In this way, it really had an immediate effect. Although German submarines were well aware of the sudden increase in the number of "neutral" ships in the Atlantic, they did not dare to launch a torpedo attack rashly when they could not be completely sure of the identity of the other side. After four months of continuous climbing, the loss of British merchant ships finally fell from a sensational 760,000 tons in September to 620,000 tons in October. The British Navy, which was unable to destroy the German underwater forces, was in a state of flux. This experience will be fully disseminated; For a time, ships flying the rice character and the St. George flag were almost extinct in the Atlantic. The red, white and blue tricolor of France became the main force of the Allies in this sea.

Although Ekman no longer felt a great deal of grief and loss at the glory of the Royal Navy, he was forced to use the Barbarian Star-Spangled Banner, which he still spurned and despised. In addition, this time it was not the only warship that crossed the Atlantic. Lieutenant Colonel Ekman looked behind and saw a large number of ships slowly sailing in an anti-submarine queue, their bows surging in a large cascading wave: most of them were stubby, broad, and had an extremely wide forward deck for their size, and on the low bridge at the rear, there stood a slender and low chimney, which was the most typical cargo ship!

At present, in addition to the old second-class cruiser "Herax", which Ekman is on, there are 2 destroyers, 2 armed merchant ships and 19 ordinary merchant ships in this area, which form a standard escort fleet. Even if Ekman doesn't think about himself, he has to think about the many merchant ships behind him. These were British merchant ships that had departed from Boston Harbor in the United States, loaded with wheat, meat, poultry and various ore raw materials purchased from the United States. If continental countries like Germany and France can fight for a while after being blocked, Britain will kneel directly before it is completely blocked!

The only thing that made the old captain feel some comfort was that there was no danger along the way across the ocean; During this period, the flotilla spotted only three German submarines, of which only one wave launched a torpedo attack, and because the flotilla was adept at guarding, the two speeding torpedoes were avoided by the flotilla. At a time when German submarine activity was rampant, the transport fleet crossed the Atlantic unscathed, which was an amazing achievement! With less than a day's journey away, the fleet was about to arrive at the port in the west of Scotland, and Eckman's escort mission was over. And for the achievement of bringing all the transport ships back to China, Ekman could almost have predicted the rich reward he would receive, even if he was too old to be promoted, and it would be better to earn a share of the family to pass on to future generations!

"Buzz......" A subtle engine noise like a fly disturbed Ekman's reverie. He turned his head around to look, only to see a clumsy three-winged aircraft waddling from the northeastern sky. Ekman frowned slightly, and there was an inexplicable unease in his eyes.

As a front-line officer in the Navy, Ekman was no stranger to the new weapon of the airplane, but what puzzled him was that there would be a plane in the sky above him at this moment. It is important to know that the range of aircraft during this period was still very limited; Even if a pilot wants to make a one-way suicide flight, it is almost impossible for his own plane to take off from Scotland beyond 200 nautical miles!

The buzzing in the air became louder and louder, and the British sailors, who had long been tormented by the boring and tense life of escort life, raised their heads and looked curiously at the three-winged aircraft in the air, which was almost the first time they had seen a real aircraft. Soon, however, their expressions of interest turned to consternation: under their wings was painted the Iron Cross, a symbol of German power!

"How could German planes appear here?" Looking at the enemy aircraft that was circling over him repeatedly, Ekman was horrified and asked himself over and over again. Although the British Navy had completed the conversion of an old cruiser to accommodate aircraft last year and began work on the design of a seaplane carrier; However, in the context of the vigorous dreadnought race between Britain and Germany, this kind of "ugly duckling" that came out of that horn is simply a completely ignored existence. Ekman, who came from a traditional naval background, did not understand the reason for the German planes to appear here, and his response to this change was only to order the fleet to speed up. In his opinion, the German plane did not seem to be carrying any weapons, it did not seem to pose much of a threat, and as long as he drove back to port at full speed, he was not afraid of any conspiracy from the other side.

After loitering for nearly twenty minutes, the plane, with large pontoons hanging from its sides, seemed to run out of fuel and staggered away. However, only two minutes later, another plane with the same appearance flew from the distant sky and sea, and kept hovering above the heads of the fleet. There was nothing Ekman could do about it: there was not a single gun in the fleet that had an elevation angle of more than 20 degrees, and there was nothing to do about peeps from the air. All he could do was send flags to the transports in the rear, and let them burn the power boilers to the fullest, and sail at 11 knots "full speed" towards the target port.

This time, the German plane hovered overhead for an unusually long time; After more than an hour, the annoying fly, which had been buzzing incessantly, turned away again, and disappeared at the junction of sea and sky. However, before Ekman could breathe a sigh of relief, the loud cry of the Lord Lookout's spotting black soot in the northeast made his heart hang again, and soon Ekman saw a scene in the telescope that stunned him. Two majestic and majestic capital warships, surrounded by more than a dozen small ships, are speeding towards their own fleet!

"It's ...... Battlecruisers of the Germans! The telescope in Ekman's hand slammed to the ground, his eyes widened, and his old face was full of horror. At present, the visibility of the sea is good, and Ekman himself is a veteran professional soldier; At a distance of 18,000 yards, it was almost impossible to make a mistake in judging the size of the enemy German Navy. The thought of the German battle cruisers in front of him, who had destroyed the native fast fleet in the Battle of the North Sea, Ekman's hands and feet were cold, and his brain with declining physiological functions was even more intensely dizzy.

At present, the most powerful of the entire fleet, the Herax, is only a protective cruiser with a displacement of 5,650 tons and 152 mm guns, and even its design speed of 20 knots is currently only 18 knots due to its neglect of docking maintenance during its long escort mission. The reason why this old ship was stuffed into the convoy was to deal with the German camouflaged attack ships with a certain amount of firepower, but in the face of high-speed heavy artillery patrols, this old ship would not have any resistance at all! (To be continued......)

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