PS: Thank you for the reward of the book friend "Absolutely Spirited", and continue to ask for recommendation votes T-T

It is precisely because of the confidence that he can be detected by the enemy before the enemy, coupled with the news from spy reconnaissance that the US Navy has only 10 capital ships deployed on the east coast (although Wegener knows that the actual number may be more than 10, he still underestimates the US secrecy ability, thinking that there will be only twelve or thirteen at most, and underestimating the strength of the new US capital ships). So Wegener did not change the operational thinking of the High Seas Fleet out of fear of the overwhelming strength of the US Navy. The Second North Atlantic Naval War broke out precisely in such a situation in which both sides underestimated the strength of the other

In order to avoid being attacked by the German submarine forces in a decisive battle, to restore the sea lines of communication between the United States and Britain more quickly after the war, and to lure and annihilate the main force of the German High Seas Fleet, the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet took the escort aircraft carriers as the core and formed forty or fifty submarine hunting fleets, each fleet equipped with 1-2 escort aircraft carriers, plus several escort destroyers (the predecessor of the frigate), and even real destroyers, which were scattered in the vast North Atlantic, searching for and encircling German submarines everywhere

Under such a powerful anti-submarine Liliang sweep, even though the teardrop-shaped submarines were extremely well concealed, as many as eight were sunk by them this month, although the US military also lost 11 escort destroyers, 3 destroyers, and 1 escort aircraft carrier, but considering that the teardrop-shaped submarine construction was not easy, the US Navy's "hunting submarine warfare" still achieved initial success, and if we take into account the huge gap in the shipbuilding capabilities of the two countries, the Americans took advantage of a lot of advantage.

In this case. The commander of the German Navy, Dönitz, really couldn't sit still, and at his request, the high seas fleet almost poured out of the nest and sailed to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean to deal with the submarine hunting fleet of the American army. Historically, the U.S. escort aircraft carrier has encountered the Japanese main fleet and finally successfully escaped by releasing a smoke screen and aircraft harassment, but to put it bluntly, it is actually bullying the Japanese army's carrier-based radar with poor performance, and there is no airborne radar, and this method is useless at all when encountering the Germans, whose radar jishu is on par with the United States, and the escort aircraft carrier's speed is slow and far less robust than the fleet aircraft carrier, so the U.S. submarine hunting fleet meets the German capital ship. It's even more tragic than a mouse running into a cat, let alone fighting it. You can't even run away

And Wegener's bold move to disperse the fleet. In just two days, five US submarine hunting fleets were wiped out by the German fleet, losing a total of 7 escort aircraft carriers, 11 destroyers, and 29 escort destroyers. The number of dead and missing is as high as six or seven thousand. It is clear that this has been under the strict demands of Wegener for more than a year. The quality of personnel of the High Seas Fleet has made a great leap forward, and although there is still a slight gap between it and the three traditional naval powers of the United States, Britain, and Japan, the extent is quite limited

Although there is a lot of respect for this opponent. But Spruance, the new commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, will not show mercy, although because the ships built on the West Coast have not come, the speed of the two South Dakota-class battleships is too slow to keep up with the aircraft carrier formation, and an Essex-class heavy aircraft carrier has a power system failure and was towed back to the shipyard for emergency repairs, and the only capital ships under his command that can be used for the battle are 3 Midway-class giant aircraft carriers, 6 Essex-class heavy aircraft carriers, 2 Cypban-class light aircraft carriers and 4 Iowa-class battleships. But against a total of only 10 ships (the Americans did not know that the Germans had already completed the construction of two Soviet-class ships and had recently joined the formation of the High Seas Fleet. The German High Seas Fleet with capital ships, it was enough. Moreover, the Germans now made the mistake of dispersing their forces, which was all the more conducive to Spruance to break them down individually, so as to obtain greater results with fewer losses

However, not a few hours after the Spruance fleet left the base, a number of German fleets, which originally seemed to be scattered but were actually only more than 100 kilometers apart from each other, began to approach rapidly, gradually forming two huge ship formations, one in front and one behind, and at this time, the first group of US attack planes taking off from the 11 aircraft carriers of the Spruance fleet had already been dispatched. Although Spruance could not wait for the planes of the second attack wave to take off, Spruance sent out the first wave of attack planes because he was worried that the enemy's two fleets would be more difficult to bite after they merged, but due to the excellent number of aircraft and aircraft delivery capabilities of the US aircraft carriers, the total number of carrier-based aircraft in this batch alone exceeded 500

However, what Spruance didn't expect was that Wegener actually played a "big shift", his avant-garde fleet was not the aircraft carrier formation he thought, but mainly battleships, equipped with only one aircraft carrier, and it was also a small number of aircraft, but very strong former British aircraft carrier "Ark Royal". What's even more troublesome is that the "Ark Royal" is full of fighter planes, and all of them have already taken off early, entangled the first wave of attack planes sent by Spruance, so that it cannot change its target to deal with its own aircraft carrier group

For more than a year, Wegener has fully realized that aircraft carriers are the core of the future German Navy, but it is not easy to convert battleships into aircraft carriers, and even if they are refitted, the speed and number of aircraft carried are difficult to compare with the aircraft carriers designed from scratch, and the German Navy will lose the sea control that it has obtained with great difficulty because of the reduction of capital ships, so he did not rashly propose to modify 6 battleships. It's just that if the battleships and aircraft carriers are mixed, the enemy's carrier-based aircraft group will definitely give priority to bombing the aircraft carriers with relatively weak defense, and after the aircraft carriers are all sunk, the battleships will become meaningless live targets. Although the large number of anti-aircraft guns on the battleship can give the aircraft carrier strong protection, the expensive battleship can only be used as a bodyguard, it is too wasteful. Therefore, Wegener came up with a very bold plan, that is, to use battleships as bait to destroy the aircraft carrier formation that the US military had just regained its strength.

Everything was as Wegener expected, because the German aircraft carrier group was far away, under the entanglement of the German fighter group, it was impossible for this wave of US attack aircraft to temporarily change the target to attack the German aircraft carrier group hundreds of kilometers away, if they did not want to run in vain, the US military could only bite the bullet and attack the battleship formation in front of them first (to be continued......