On September 15, 2782 (1941), a piece of news spread from Berlin to the world.

On that day, the combined British and American fleet, operating in the waters east of the Shetland Islands, suffered heavy losses from German air and submarine forces, and the result of the battle was a complete loss of face for the United States and Britain, and the losses were incomparable.

A total of six battleships, including the Prince of Wales, the Rodney, the Hood, and the Counterattack of the United Kingdom, the Mississippi and the Florida of the United States, were sunk, three battleships including the Maryland, the Nevada, and the New Mexico were severely damaged, the British Eagle, the Cyclops, the Ark Royal, and the United States' Hornet were sunk, and the three aircraft carriers Yorktown, Enterprise, and Athletic were severely damaged.

In addition, three heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, and fourteen destroyers were sunk, and three heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and eleven destroyers were severely damaged or damaged.

Such losses are painful, but they are not the most important thing compared to human losses.

On top of that, more than 70 merchant ships, all of which were carrying army officers and soldiers and weaponry, were turned into fish nests on the bottom of the sea. At this time, more than 30,000 officers and men of the British and American armies were eliminated, and two American divisions, one Mexican and one British, were directly incapacitated from combat effectiveness.

The reason for this battle was that Britain and the United States were preparing to use their naval superiority to attack Norway in order to open up the situation. If this plan is successful, it can open up a situation in Northern Europe, directly threaten the hinterland of the Soviet Union and Germany, and at the very end, attract the attention of the Soviet Union and Germany to Northern Europe, which will be conducive to the war situation in other directions.

The naval strength of the British and American sides was far stronger than that of Germany and the Soviet Union, so they were determined to succeed in this operation. In order to be able to land in Norway smoothly, Britain and the United States formed a large joint fleet.

They also invested heavily in this operation, a huge fleet of 16 battleships, 8 aircraft carriers, 11 heavy cruisers, 18 light cruisers, 49 destroyers, 34 frigates and 19 submarines. They escorted more than 180 transport ships, large and small, and carried more than 80,000 officers and men from four army divisions, as well as equipment and provisions.

It was difficult to hide such a large operation, and soon the German spies sent this information back. The Germans immediately deployed a large number of seaplanes and submarines in the North Sea for alertness, and at the same time mobilized a large number of warplanes to Norway, and the High Seas Fleet was also ready to defend against the British and American attacks.

At 7 a.m. on 14 September, the huge combined fleet sailed out of Sparka Bay, and German spies near the base immediately informed the country. Not long after they left the port, they were discovered by German submarines.

Unbeknownst to the aspiring British and American navies, a large number of German submarines were heading for the front of their course from all directions.

At 6 a.m. on September 14, more than 500 warplanes of the German Imperial Air Force and the Navy took off from the Norwegian Air Base and approached the skies over the Anglo-Soviet Combined Fleet in the waters east of the Shetland Islands at 8 a.m. local time.

On the flagship battleship Howe, the commander of the Combined Fleet, British Admiral Sir Somerville, received an early warning.

"Your Excellency, Commander, the radar officer reported that a large number of aircraft groups of more than 500 aircraft appeared due east. The staff officer reported. "From the direction, it should be a German fighter from Norway......"

"Immediately switch to the air defense formation, order the aircraft carrier to take off fighters ......" Somerville immediately ordered.

With such a huge group of aircraft, the radars on the British and American warships discovered it very early, and they immediately put up an air defense formation, and the aircraft carriers also took off fighters to meet them.

Not long after, the planes of the two sides encountered each other in the air, and the British and American pilots were very surprised to find that among the German planes this time, except for the escort fighters, they were all large land-based bombers with twin or even four engines, and there were not a single dive bomber or torpedo attack plane.

"What, no torpedo machines and dive bombers?" Somerville was taken aback.

"Sir, our current distance already exceeds the combat radius of German torpedo aircraft and dive bombers. If they want to attack us, they can only use large land-based bombers. The chief of staff explained from the side.

Truth be told, this discovery relieved British and American officers that it would be difficult for clumsy large bombers to hit moving warships against dive bombers and torpedo attack aircraft, which posed the greatest threat to warships.

After learning this information, the British and American generals all believed that this was the urgent eye of the Germans. Otherwise, they would not have hastily sent large bombers to carry out the mission before the British and American fleets entered the combat radius of dive bombers and torpedo attack aircraft.

After a while, the fighters of the two sides met and began a fierce fight. Soon, sharp-eyed British and American fighters discovered that those German bombers were carrying something similar to a small plane under the belly and wing. They reacted quickly and gliding bombs!

This discovery soon reached the flagship, and Somerville immediately ordered: "Immediately activate radio interference!"

Remote-controlled glide bombs are not unusual, and since the Germans used them once on the Maginot Line, the major powers have quickly come up with similar products. This kind of thing would be used to attack warships, and they thought of it as well. Gliding bombs use radio commands, which are easily jammed, and radio interference is not a difficult thing, and British and American warships have long been able to guard against this.

German bombers continued to maintain an altitude of 8,000 meters, and began to drop bombs when they approached 20 kilometers away from the British and American fleets. These gliding bombs, which looked larger than usual, spread their wings and pounced on the Anglo-American fleet at hundreds of kilometers per hour. The Anglo-American fleet also immediately turned on radio jamming.

It is worth mentioning that this was the first time that Germany used gliding weapons against ships.

But the Anglo-American forces made a mistake, the Germans used not gliding bombs this time, but gliding torpedoes.

The gliding bomb was worthless, but it was just equipped with a folding wing kit and controlled by radio. In order to prevent interference, a radio homing guidance head is also added, which can be routed to the interference source or the signal of the radar antenna.

China figured it out in the 20s. However, after experimental tests, the China Navy has found that if you want to target the ship, in fact, it is better to use the sound guidance torpedo with the gliding kit, and you can even throw it out without guiding. The reason is very simple, the working range of the passive sonar guidance head of the Chinese acoustic torpedo is 45 degrees to 60 degrees, tracking a fan at a distance of 2 kilometers, that is, as long as the target is within this sector area when the torpedo falls into the water.

And the Germans also thought of this trick.

During World War I, the German submarine U-238 encountered a Chinese anti-submarine aircraft and ate an anti-submarine torpedo. But this submarine was the "auspicious" in the German army, and Helem Simi was in command, so the torpedo did not explode, so it was inserted straight into the submarine hull, and it was brought back to Germany. The Germans were thus given a complete sample of an acoustic guided torpedo.

After obtaining a sample of a Chinese acoustic torpedo, they continued their research on this basis. The principle of sound guidance is not complicated, and Germany is an industrial power, and soon they came up with their own sound guided torpedoes. After 20 years of development, the level of sound-guided torpedoes of the Germans is now quite good, although it is not as good as China's, but it is much more advanced than other countries, roughly equivalent to the level of the 60s in later generations.

Inspired by gliding bombs, the Germans also created their own gliding torpedoes. The gliding kit they are currently equipped with has an error of about 2% in the case of unguided self-gliding (the gyroscope is not installed due to cost factors), which means that if it is thrown at a distance of 10 kilometers, it will deviate by about 200 meters when it lands.

This level of error is too great for a bomb, it is difficult to hit the target, and it is necessary to get close to it before dropping it, or use radio remote control to intervene to solve the problem. However, the same error has no effect on a self-reorienting acoustic-guided torpedo. Not to mention that the detection range of sound-guided torpedoes is large, even if the enemy ship is lucky enough to not be in range, these torpedoes will also search for targets in circles according to the preset program. Therefore, in general, in addition to using heavy bombers to deliver long-range throws at extremely high altitudes at distances of more than 30 km, this gliding torpedo does not need to use a radio-controlled version, as long as the unguided self-powered gliding version can be used, which can save some costs.

It was because of the full use of this type of gliding kit that the Luftwaffe stopped developing and producing low-altitude torpedo aircraft with very low survivability five years ago, and instead used any fighter that could mount a moving torpedo for lightning strikes, and the hit rate was unusually high.

According to the results of their exercise, the hit rate of the guided gliding bomb is about 70% when there is no interference, and it drops to 20% when it is disturbed, and the source of interference needs to be dealt with first. But gliding torpedoes are not subject to radio interference and have a hit rate of up to 90%. What's more, German heavy bombers could carry more than 2 gliding torpedoes, and because they did not need guidance, they could be thrown all in one go.

Naturally, this is not without drawbacks. The most fatal drawback of this sound torpedo from Germany was that it was too expensive, it cost four times more than a conventional direct-sailing torpedo and twice as much as an oxygen direct-sailing torpedo. Therefore, throwing one is equivalent to throwing 2~4 old torpedoes in terms of cost. Thankfully, its high hit rate makes up for it, and that's the only place to be comforted.

The Luftwaffe was so pleased with this gliding torpedo that as its own trump card weapon, it was named "Thor's Hammer".

During the attack, more than 230 heavy and medium bombers dropped a total of 665 sound-guided torpedoes. The U.S. and British navies did not expect that this time Hansyan would actually play a gliding torpedo, and he suffered a big loss when he couldn't deal with it.