Since the U-44 was less than five kilometers away from the Counterattack in a straight line, Captain Wolf adopted a high-speed, narrow-sector attack strategy.

The G7A torpedo is 7.2m long and weighs 1530kg, which is a common thermodynamic torpedo - although mass production of the new electric torpedo has begun, it has not yet been distributed to combat units.

The G7A torpedo has three speed ranges, the faster the speed, the closer the range, and when fired at the fastest gear of 44 knots, its range is about six kilometers.

"Our battle cruiser is sinking, the British must have hit the ammunition depot......" Captain Wolf said indignantly: "Damn, the British must be buried with them!" ”

Four torpedoes rushed directly in front of the Counterattack at a set depth of ten meters.

The two sides were on the same page, and if nothing else, the Counterattack would be buried with the Albert two hundred and twenty seconds later.

U-44 put away the periscope and waited quietly at a depth of several meters.

However, the German submariners did not know that due to a flaw in the torpedo depth fixing device, the torpedo was actually sailing at a depth much higher than the set level.

Another objective factor is geographically - the geomagnetic interference in the Norwegian sea area is relatively large, which seriously affects the role of magnetic fuzes.

Captain Wolf and all the sailors waited quietly for the explosion, and everyone could not hide their excitement.

Everyone knows how terrible the attack of the U-44 submarine was, and the magnetic fuse made the "sideball" situation no longer exist, and at the same time brought more effective methods.

Set the torpedo to a deeper depth, about ten meters, slightly below the draft of the enemy ship, and the magnetic fuse torpedo will eventually detonate directly below the enemy ship.

In this way, the underwater protection system that the ship's designers racked their brains to devise would be ineffective, and the attack would be even more deadly.

As the minutes ticked by, the fierce artillery battle above the water continued.

The Albert from the ammunition depot of the third main turret emitted a huge column of black smoke, the back half of which was already submerged in the water, and the front half of which was warped.

One by one, the rubber lifeboats were released, thrown and thrown close to the sea, and the dense sailors jumped into the water to escape, and then struggled to swim to the lifeboats in the biting icy water......

Soon, three and a half minutes arrived as scheduled.

The hearts of the submariners of U-44 were in their throats, but a strange situation occurred - the expected explosion did not come.

Wolfe was deeply confused and surprised, thinking that it was a calculation error, but now he has no time to complain and blame, "Reload, prepare to attack again." ”

Heavy torpedoes still relied on manual loading, a process that took about ten minutes.

The deputy captain also felt inexplicable, so he took advantage of the reloading time to recalculate the attack on Zhuyuan.

By this time, the Counterattack and the Hood had already turned their targets and began to gather fire on the Franz.

[In the previous chapter, the reputation number and the counterattack were mixed, and 'Franz' was misspelled as 'Franz', both of which have been corrected.] 】

However, they had only fired a volley before they noticed a series of torpedoes fired by the German destroyers, and had to abandon the attack and start evading.

"A torpedo track was found a thousand yards from starboard! Captain! ”

"Right hand rudder."

Vice Admiral Walter, who was on the bridge of the Franz, was in mixed moods at the moment, and he could not guarantee that he would be able to deal a fatal blow to the British, which was somewhat of a stroke of luck.

Maybe you can kill the opponent in one volley, or maybe your own side will be killed in an instant, and it is more likely that both sides will be defeated, run out of shells, and then go away.

In the expectant gaze of others, Walter mused: "We can't be gamblers, now, retreat. ”

The slender hull of the ship began to turn, drawing an arcing wake full of white spray in the waves.

After receiving the order, the German destroyers dispersed and continued to fire torpedoes at the British fleet while using smoke generators to lay smoke walls.

Despite being harassed and blocked by the destroyers, Vice Admiral William still decided to pursue.

Now, with two against one, even if you have paid the price of sinking one, as long as the Franz is sunk, then the naval power of the German side will be significantly weakened, which is very cost-effective.

The British fleet was mostly preoccupied with the fleeing German fleet in the distance, and a few men were trying to help rescue the sailors of the destroyer Hunter.

But just then, the lookout post of the Counterattack reported multiple signs of unidentified bubbles on the port side, most likely torpedoes.

"Right full rudder!"

"Too close!!"

The rudder of the Counterattack had been deflected to the maximum angle, and the rudder worked well, and her steering was so rapid that the entire battleship was almost tilted by as much as thirty degrees.

The sailors clung to everything around them, the railings, the guns, the handrails of the hatches...... Try to stabilize your body.

It was too late, and the British sailors on the port side watched as the four tracks approached them at a rapid pace, and collided with them a few seconds later.

One of the torpedoes passed four meters in front of the bow of the Counterattack.

The other three torpedoes were all in the hull of the ship, hitting the bow, amidships, and stern of the ship.

"Knock !!"

"Wow-"

The warhead of the G7A torpedo is filled with 280kg of mixed explosives, which are high-energy explosives mixed with TNT, hexamethyleneaniline, and aluminum powder, which are much more powerful than pure TNT.

The water column caused by the violent explosion was dozens of meters high, and the 30,000-ton counterattack shook significantly.

In order to observe the effect of the attack, Captain Wolf consulted with other officers and men, and finally made U-44 very risky to observe the whole process through a periscope.

Fortunately, the British did not pay attention to the periscope on the sea a few kilometers away, which allowed the intently Wolfe to see the actual result.

Why did only one torpedo detonate?

"Huh?" He became more and more confused, but he still ordered first: "Dive to fifty meters, stop moving, and keep quiet." ”

The order was immediately executed, the ballast tanks quickly poured into the sea, and the entire submarine began to dive slowly.

The nearby co-captain, navigator officer, and boatswain all looked at the captain, who had always been calm and calm.

"I observed at least three torpedoes hitting the target, but only the middle one exploded." He stated it with great certainty.

"That's weird, what is the reason exactly?" The co-captain was equally puzzled.

In the first salvo, they used the theoretically best mode - a magnetic fuse torpedo with a depth of 10 meters.

After the attack failed, they were worried that the magnetic fuse was unreliable, so they switched to the traditional collision fuze in the second round of attacks, which was set at a depth of four meters.

Even so, it's two out of three? It's so unreasonable!

"This is most likely a quality problem with the torpedo itself, which must be reported to the superiors." Wolf glanced at the officers and men from left to right and ordered, "Return." ”

However, the boatswain seemed a little unwilling, "We can hide for a while, and then wait for the right opportunity to strike again." ”

Someone objected on the spot, "It's too dangerous, the British destroyers will definitely start searching, we have to get away from here as soon as possible." ”

Everyone knew that unless luck blows, it was impossible to sink a capital ship with a single torpedo.

Originally, it was a unique good thing to launch a sneak attack in such a troubled waters, and the counterattack could have been said to be in the bag, but it turned out to be such a bad thing, you can imagine how depressed the submariners were.

The navigator was relieved: "We are not fighting alone, the war is national and collective, and now that it is dawn, our planes will definitely sink them." ”

After weighing, the U-44 submarine did not return directly, but took advantage of the chaos to come to a dozen nautical miles away.

The submarine surfaced to the surface and followed the British fleet from a distance, using radio contact while charging to report the current course and situation.

The attack from the "unidentified submarine" caused the Counterattack's No. 4 and No. 6 boilers to malfunction and shut down, and some steam pipes also leaked.

In addition, hundreds of tons of heavy oil have been leaked, as well as a large amount of water has been ingressed.

Fortunately, the underwater protection system and the watertight compartment worked well, and although the maximum speed of the Counterattack was reduced to twenty-one knots, there was no risk of sinking at the moment.

On the orders of its commander, Vice Admiral William, the Counterattack turned around and returned to the sea, escorted by two destroyers.

William Whitworth was very entangled at this time, on the one hand, he did not want to let go of the retreating German fleet, and on the other hand, he was worried that the Hood alone would not be pleased.

Do you want to accept it when you see it?

The Hood and the remaining destroyers continued to pursue more than ten nautical miles south, exchanging fire with the German fleet with little success.

Lieutenant General William then ordered the return of the ship so as not to encounter possible reinforcements from the opposing side.

But at this time, the air defense observation post noticed something unusual.

"Report, Your Excellency, 120 directions detected a formation of German aircraft, about twenty bombers."

The jingling of battle sirens and the terrible anti-aircraft sirens sounded through the fleet, and the British sailors, who had just relented, were exhausted, but now they could only muster up their spirits and rush to their respective positions.

However, the German planes did not appear to be targeting the Hood, as they quickly skimmed at an altitude of 2,000 meters and headed straight northwest.

Now the British finally understood that the goal of these bombers was only the Counterattack, which was badly wounded and broke its leg!

For some reason, Lieutenant General Wilhelm suddenly thought of an oriental proverb - it is better to break one of ten fingers than to break one.

Ten minutes later, when the first attack formation arrived, the Counterattack and the two destroyers guarding her began to put up a senseless resistance.

The Royal Navy can only rely on 40mm bangbang guns and Vickers MkIII 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine guns to fight against incoming German bombers.

In the sound of "bang" and "click", a round of 40mm high-explosive shells and 12.7×81mm machine gun shells were fired into the sky.

Fifteen Ju-88 bombers and eight Bf-110 fighters of the 7th Bomber Wing of the Air Force took off from the newly occupied Forneb airfield and flew over western Norway before rushing to the area.

The seemingly ferocious firepower is actually of little use and extremely ineffective - the Bang Bang Cannon, although powerful, has a slow rate of fire and a curved trajectory; And the effectiveness of anti-aircraft machine guns is even worse, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a sound.

What's more, with the same .50 caliber, the power of the British 12.7×81mm bullet is inferior to the American 12.7×99mm bullet.

"They're coming!"

"Beware!"

"Boom-poof-knock!!"

The first six Ju-88s carried out conventional horizontal bombardment, dropping 12 SD500 500kg semi-armor-piercing aerial bombs on the Counterattack.

Unless the bombs are dropped at an ultra-low air, the hit rate of horizontal bombing is really impressive.

More than a dozen bombs missed the Strike, but some near-misses also caused some damage to her, making her condition worse.

The next second round of attacks was still all off.

Seeing that the second round of bombardment failed to get a hit, Major Friedrich, who led the team, chose to change his mind and instead attacked the counterattack, which he saw as a dying struggle, with dive bombing.

The structural strength of the Ju-88 bomber was good, and it was not a problem to carry out a dive attack.

The Counterattack was constantly maneuvering to evade, sometimes turning left and sometimes right, leaving a snake-like curved track on the surface of the North Sea.

"Your Excellency, the Air Force will take another half an hour to arrive, we ......"

"Boom!"

The last 3 bombers attacked the Counterattack at an angle of about forty degrees and managed to make a hit.

Two 500kg semi-armor-piercing bombs hit her, one in the middle of the hull and the other on the back mast.

The dive bombing greatly increased the hit rate, and the other bombs, although they did not hit directly, also hit close to the point, and also caused effective damage.

"Smack!" Amid the sound of broken cables and twisted steel, the backmast toppled to the left, snapped completely, and fell into the sea.

Friedrich confidently said: "These Englishmen must pay a price, they will never return to England." ”

The first wave of attack formations ran out of bombs and returned the same way.

The apparently dense anti-aircraft fire caused only minor damage to a few aircraft, with the exception of one that was more serious – the left engine caught fire and had to be cut off from the fuel supply.

About twenty minutes later, the second wave of attack formations arrived.

The scarred Counterattack was still putting up as hard as it could, and even though black smoke was billowing everywhere, the speed was only fourteen knots.

Her current lower speed has significantly reduced her rudder efficiency, and she is no longer able to make agile evasive maneuvers.

After throwing all the bombs, the German aircraft group left leisurely.

This time, however, it was a bit unlucky, as a Bf-110 swooped down on a nearby destroyer – its right wing was blown off by a 40mm high-explosive bomb.

“…… The C3 compartment has been completely submerged, the backup generator is operational, the port side is probably already flooded with a thousand tons, and the stern is also flooded with 400 tons, and the pumping machine is a little lower than the flooding...... We'll only hold out for a couple of hours at most, Captain. ”

In the second wave of air raids, the counterattack was directly hit by 3 aerial bombs and 5 aerial bombs were missed.

On the same day, at 13:49 Oslo time, the Counterattack sank.

The old ship, which entered service with the Royal Navy twenty-three years ago, reached its end in the silent and icy seabed at 57°1' north latitude and 3°7' east longitude.

A little later, a Bf-110 fighter on a reconnaissance mission flew over here and, while taking pictures, also sent back a telegram to the General Staff of the Workers' Navy:

「…… A large number of oil stains and floating debris were observed, confirming that the Counter Attack had sunk and that the Royal Navy fleet's operation to rescue the overboard crew had ended, and that they were heading in the direction of 330. After the report, I salute the brave naval and air force fighters who participated in the battle."

(End of chapter)