"The left cruise motor starts, the right side cruise motor reverses, the torpedo compartment is ready, and the depth is 5 meters!" Seeing the prey sent to the door, Prien did not hesitate and immediately gave the order to attack. Since he occupied the attack position without turning on the main motor, the most dangerous step before the torpedo attack was overcome, and the only thing he did was to shoot the torpedo and turn on the low-speed cruise motor to escape. With the battery fully charged, the U-47 could sneak at a speed of 5 knots for two days in a row, and as long as the opposing anti-submarine ship did not have a sonar with anti-weather performance, Prion was completely sure that he would quietly flee after the attack.

The blades turned, the undercurrent rushed, and in a few breaths, the U-47 submarine turned to the predetermined angle of attack. Prion raised his periscope and made one last observation of his prey's tracks. After a brief and intense weighing, he chose the third battleship in the queue; This old capital ship, which has not yet removed its secondary guns, has its position and relative distance as the easiest choice for it to hit.

"Torpedo azimuth 171, speed 44 knots!" Prien quickly calculated the correlation number on the paper in front of him, and then reported the most critical set of lightning strike parameters to the torpedo bay. Before launching an attack, the submarine commander must accurately measure the opponent's navigation parameters and accurately calculate the amount of his torpedo launch advance, otherwise there is a risk that the torpedo will be missed. And for a submarine with a single target that can almost only be bought and sold with a hammer, wasting precious torpedoes and getting nothing is obviously an extremely disadvantageous thing. Although wire-guided torpedoes have begun to enter service with the German Navy, the number of such high-cost weapons is small, and the submarine must maintain a periscope posture in order to effectively control the torpedo according to the current torpedo track. The danger factor is completely different from the conventional maneuver of emergency diving after the torpedo is launched. Due to the limitation of rigidity. The periscope of the submarine could not have been done very long. This makes it necessary for submarines to be in a diving area only a few meters deep when observing the surface; And once discovered by the other side, the depth charges thrown by the anti-submarine ship can appear next to the submarine in a very short time!

A few seconds later, the sound of preparation came from the torpedo compartment. Prien stared at the hands of his pocket watch, and his heart beat quietly: although this situation had been practiced countless times in the military academy, when the actual battle came, there was still a strong sense of tension in his heart. When the slender pointer finally crossed the expected freeze frame, Prien's heart trembled suddenly, and he suddenly roared: "All torpedoes are fired in a volley at once!" "Hear the order. The torpedo men, who had already put their hands on the valve, immediately flipped the switch, and in a burst of obvious shaking, six huge objects weighing more than 1.5 tons immediately shot out of the two nozzles on both sides of the bow and rushed out of the two nozzles, and galloped towards the target not far away in a dense bubble.

Without the slightest hesitation, Prien gave the order to dive and maneuver immediately after the torpedo was launched. Everyone was holding their breath and waiting for the sound of a huge explosion of a torpedo hit coming from the sea. After a long minute of waiting, the roar of muffled thunder finally resounded in every corner of the submarine; And just a few seconds later, Prion heard three more thunderous roars of almost the same sound!

"We hit 4 shots!" Hearing this series of violent explosions, the hearts of all the crew of U-47 burst into ecstasy; If it weren't for the fact that they were still in a state of hiding for their lives, they would have been singing almost immediately. Prion was also overjoyed by the hits he had gained. Now his heart was full of gratitude to the friendly captain who had rushed to attack: if it had not been for his disturbance of the American fleet. With a low-noise cruising speed of 5 knots alone, it is almost impossible to get such an ideal attack opportunity! There's only one mission left for Prien. That is, after getting rid of the tracking of the American anti-submarine ship, the situation here was reported to the upper peak.

At 200 meters above sea level of the U-47, which had already dived into the deep sea, Admiral King, commander of the US Atlantic Fleet, looked at the tragic situation in the old battlefleet with a grim face. According to eyewitness reports from the ships next to them, eight minutes ago, six wide torpedo tracks suddenly appeared on the surface of the sea only 1,700 meters away from the Texas, and they came straight at the battleship at a high speed of more than 40 knots. Although the Texas tried its best to turn at the first time, due to the haste of the incident, it was still hit by 4 torpedoes one after another. The bow, stern, and amidships of the battleship were torpedoed, and the huge waves stirred up by the explosion resembled mountains and cliffs that appeared out of thin air; Since the ship has lost communication with each other, Admiral King has nowhere to know the specific damage to the Texas, but judging from the fact that it has already tilted more than 12 degrees to the left, the specific damage must be extremely serious!

"Go to hell, evil German submarine!" Seeing that his destroyer had begun to drop a large number of depth charges on the sea where the perpetrator was located, Admiral Kim couldn't help but curse through gritted teeth. Three months ago, it was these unscrupulous underwater thieves who went on a killing spree in the ports of the East Coast of the United States, causing the entire East Coast to be so angry that the maritime traffic between the ports was paralyzed. And now, it was this group of thieves who made a surprise attack at the beginning of their own expedition, and the Texas, which had just completed its modernization and modification for less than three years, had not fired a single shell at the opposing armed forces, and was first subjected to the heaviest conspiracy from underwater!

Although the USS Texas is a 25-year-old ship, and its speed has not been improved in the modernization due to the limitations of the original space and the installation of protrusions, it still has sufficient firepower of 10 356 mm guns, and can play a very important role in both shore bombardment and fleet decisive battle. Seeing the heavy damage suffered by this battleship with a standard displacement of 27,000 tons, Admiral Jin couldn't help but feel a convulsive pain in his heart. What made him even more nervous was that the whereabouts of his fleet had been exposed; If the Germans knew where they were, they would have countless warplanes flying over their heads!

"Order, Operation Torch was launched in advance, and we must not allow the fleet to be exposed to them in the encirclement of German aircraft! Sue Nimitz that the success or failure of this operation is all on him, and I will do my best to buy him time. Admiral Kim gritted his teeth and said to the adjutant in his characteristic high-pitched voice.

Since the Texas had already been hit by four mines and could no longer move with the fleet, Admiral King left a small group of destroyers to accompany him on his return, while he himself led the group onwards. He already had a vague feeling that even with the excellent management of his own sailors, it would be difficult for the battered old ship to struggle back to the port where it had departed. I can't bear to see the last moments of its sinking. Within three hours, the flagship aircraft carrier USS Essex received a telegram from its escort destroyer: the USS Texas had capsized, and they had picked up 714 survivors and asked whether they should continue to port or return to the fleet.

"Let the destroyer USS Smith return with the survivors." After a long silence, Admiral Jin finally spoke slowly. With one less capital ship on its own, does this gloomy start mean that the operation will end in failure? However, now he has no other way but to grit his teeth and persevere!

The sun sets, and the sunset is in full swing. The U-47, which had been on the radar for six hours, floated up in a certain area of the ocean, and there was not a single American ship around it. In the daytime afternoon battle, when the reacting American destroyers launched a retaliatory attack on it, Prien had already commanded the submarine to quietly sail away from the same place for nearly a kilometer with a low-noise motor; Although the deafening explosion has always shocked all the crew, the real impact of the submarine on the verge of explosion has been very limited. After a short time, they completely sailed out of the sea area that the American destroyers were focusing on. After escaping the search, the U-47 finally chose to surface to issue a report after sneaking for some distance; Although this may reveal his position, Prien, who has escaped from the tiger's mouth, is not afraid of this danger.

After several turnarounds, Prien's telegram was finally delivered to Sher during the night. Upon hearing this, Scheer did not pause in the slightest, and immediately ordered the fleet to be reorganized and assembled in the predetermined sea area early the next morning. Although in order to alleviate the pressure on logistics and maintenance, Germany, Austria and Italy only transferred their most elite warships to South America to fight, but even so, the lineup of the Allied Combined Fleet was still extremely strong, so much so that it had to be stationed at different anchorages in several groups. At present, the forces under the command of Scheer undoubtedly have a clear advantage over the single Atlantic Fleet of the United States: the total number of aircraft carriers has reached 14, there are more than 1,500 carrier-based aircraft of various types, and there are as many as 16 battleships, of which 6 are from Italy and Austria-Hungary. None of them have a main gun caliber below 400 mm, and even if all the capital ships under construction in the United States are completed, Schell is fully confident that he will have a Jutland-style naval gun duel with the other side!

In light of this, Scheer, who is already brave and aggressive, made a rather aggressive decision. The 14 aircraft carriers were divided into two echelons and used carrier-based aircraft to conduct a large-scale search of the sea area where the US fleet might appear: although this would inevitably lead to refueling in battle, with the presence of 10 large armored aircraft carriers in the high seas fleet, Scheer still had full confidence in the victory of the sea and air battle. In the battle almost five months ago, the survivability of the German armored aircraft carrier was perfectly tested: the Hindenburg, which had been hit by 9 bombs, was still undamaged and was repaired again in just one month! And once the other party is attacked by himself, the situation will not be so optimistic! (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the monthly ticket support of Shuyouya FAN, and the reward of Golden Crab and zhouyu1976~~~ In the previous chapter, the author confused Kim and Kimmel, and this chapter has been corrected, so I apologize ~~~

Anyway, yesterday's subscription volume fell below the average, and the author's update lacked motivation