Add Bookmark | Recommend this book | Back to the book page | My bookshelf | Mobile Reading

Free Web Novel,Novel online - All in oicq.net -> Historic -> Great country sea soul

Part One Twenty Years Chapter 11 The Moment That Changed History (5)

Previous page        Return to Catalog        Next page

    "(Section 5 of "King of the North Atlantic", the fearless men who fell like meteors[5])

    At 12:32, the British battlecruiser HMS Indomitable merged into the Grand Fleet battle line. David Beatty and Heidi Silam unanimously issued the order to "pause the bombardment and adjust the fleet formation."

    On the British side, the botched performance of the Second Battle Fleet caused a disconnection between the First Squadron and the Second Squadron, and the Second Squadron and the First Battle Fleet. The battleship Canada and Bellerophon of the First Battle Fleet were damaged.  Seriously, it was difficult to maintain a high speed. In addition, the course maintained by the Grand Fleet did not allow them to merge with the ten battle cruisers of the fast fleet heading north as quickly as possible. For this reason, the Grand Fleet had to reduce its speed and shrink the disjointed battle lines.  , giving the damaged battleship a chance to breathe and slightly adjust its course while ensuring the engagement distance.  ¡¾¡¿ Please search Piaotian Literature, the novels will be better and updated faster!

    On the German side, long-term concentrated fire not only exhausted the officers and men of the gunnery department of each battleship, but also seriously reduced the bombardment accuracy and efficiency of the Ocean Fleet, and also accelerated the loss of the life of the main gun barrel.  In addition, the Ocean Fleet also needs to adjust its course and speed at this moment, so that the battle line leader can keep up with the British, and the German Iron Cross flag can work hard to suppress the survival of the British Grand Fleet located between the German battle line and the eastern coastline of Scotland.  space.  ""Please search Piaotian Literature, the novels will be better and updated faster!

    The Derfflinger-class battlecruiser III Oden, named in memory of General Bernhard von Oden, the captain of the large armored ship Scharnhorst who was killed in the Battle of the Falkland Islands, and others  Twenty-six capital ships began the final round of bombardment.

    A brief blast of firing sirens resounded over the German battle lines.  On the low forecastle of the Oden battle cruiser, the air near the muzzle of the Bruno turret arranged on a backpack contracted sharply. With the deafening sound of the gun, the black hole of the muzzle burst out with dazzling light and orange-red fire mist.

    In the North Sea, the Ocean Fleet side became quiet.  The tired German naval officers temporarily put down the business at hand and took off their military caps to wipe the sweat from their foreheads.  Either leaning on the gun emplacement, leaning on the shovel, or closing your eyes and gasping for air, to gather the strength to fight again.

    In the North Sea, peace is about to come to the Grand Fleet, but they still have to withstand the last round of German shelling.

    German large-caliber artillery shells rained down on both sides of the Grand Fleet battle line, creating clouds of water dozens of feet high in the ocean.

    The battle damage report has not been received for a long time. Just when the Grand Fleet headquarters was relaxing its nerves, thick black smoke suddenly rose from an inconspicuous position at the rear end of the British battle line.

    Yes, the battleship Canada, which had just won the Battle of Jutland and the Battle of Portsmouth, and the arrogant Ocean Fleet, with its stunning swan dance in the waters off the Tyne River, failed to keep this honor.  Off the coast of Orkney Islands, at 12:34 on June 21, 1917, this super-dreadnought ship, which was boasted by the designers of Armstrong Shipyard, opened a new legend for the Ocean Fleet.

    The battleship Canada was hit. At a distance of almost 14,000 meters, the Derfflinger-class battlecruiser No. 3 blew up what was supposed to be the strongest and safest command tower of a dreadnought ship with one shot!

    19141917 should be the most glorious era of the dreadnought.  There have been night battles and close combats like the Battle of Dogger Sands, and there have been typical decisive battles of big ships and cannons like the Battle of Jutland.  There were crushing naval battles like the Battle of Portsmouth and the Battle of Cape Sochi.  There were melees like the Battle of Ustica, Jutland-style T-shaped cross-head tactics, and Ustica-style naval battle-style anti-T-shaped cross-head tactics.

    However, even though these three years have created countless classic naval battles and achieved countless classic naval battle tactics, naval warfare in this period is still a "game involving statistics and probability."

    This sentence is Heidi Silem's prediction of dreadnought naval battles in "On Asymmetric Combat in the Age of Battleships".  This sentence can be understood as who can use more artillery to fire more shells in a shorter time to form a denser cross-fire area, or it can also be understood as the pursuit of survivability under a certain firepower density and subsequent counterattack.  control ability.

    The British are loyal supporters of the first theory.  Almost every battleship of the Royal Navy is designed with the idea of ??"maximizing firepower intensity and firepower density" in mind, cutting corners on armor weight and using the saved tonnage on artillery.

    However, the British who pursue maximizing output have obviously forgotten that the British Empire in the new century is no longer the leading industrial power it once was. Financial and military expenditures cannot support their use of numerical superiority to completely suppress the Germans in the brutal naval arms race.  Moreover, in actual naval battles, the Royal Navy never exerted their limited numerical advantage.

    Since the Royal Navy was unable to suppress Germany in both the arms race and actual naval battles, thenThe Americans cannot expect that the Germans will not fight back.

    At 12:34, this 350 mm armor-piercing projectile spanned 14,000 meters of sea and air. Like a divine help, five 14-inch main guns, two control towers, main masts, and two main masts were deployed on the short 201-meter hull.  He found a small iron box-shaped command tower on the compact hull with a chimney, and slammed it into it.

    The British maximized the firepower of the Canada battleship, so the sacrifice must be its protection.  Under the watchful eyes of the officers and soldiers of the Canada, the hardened cap of the German armor-piercing bullet rushed straight towards their command tower. After the ground shook, the 350mm armor-piercing bullet pierced the circle of the Canada's command tower at an almost vertical angle.  to 11 inches of side protective armor, which is approximately 280 millimeters.

    The iron armor-piercing part cut a large hole with a diameter of more than one meter in the side armor wall of the command tower. The fragments of the hardened cap that the armor-piercing bullet itself cracked and the iron fragments peeled off and splashed from the Harvey hardened armor were flying in the air.

    Before the officers and soldiers of the battleship Canada working in the conning tower could react, the armor-piercing bomb exploded in the closed conning tower.

    The warhead containing 18 kilograms of TNT explosives exploded in a narrow space, releasing terrifying power. The steering wheel, sand table, soldiers and documents in the command tower were overturned by the air waves for the first time, and then disappeared into the hot air.  In high temperature.

    After the explosion, the red-hot shrapnel continued to fly, collide and rebound in the command tower, making a heart-wrenching friction sound, until it lost kinetic energy and fell to the floor mixed with black blood mist and blackened by gunpowder smoke.

    Part of the air waves and shrapnel burst out of the portholes of the command tower, and the trestles on both sides of the battleship's command tower and the forward bow deck suddenly became a mess.

    In the previous battle, the officers and soldiers of the Canada, who had been shot three times in a row, two boilers and a coal storage bunker on the port side were destroyed, the generator set stopped running, and the speed could only be maintained at about ten knots, had no intention of giving up the battleship.  The damage control soldiers focused on the command tower with red eyes, carrying all the fire-extinguishing equipment and passing through the trestle, which was filled with sharp iron blocks, meat scraps, and filled with the disgusting smell of blood and burnt human bodies, and tried to get closer to the trestle, which was wrapped in thick smoke and fire.  command tower.

    The sailors wanted to save the Canada, but in the Canada command tower that was blown up by the Germans, was there anything worth saving?

    The captain was killed in action, the deputy captain was killed in action, the navigator was killed in action, the gunnery commander was killed in action

    The Grand Fleet Command issued a long death list for the battleship Canada.  Although a capital ship usually has a conning tower above the forecastle and a conning tower at the aft mainmast, after losing the conning tower, the crew can still rely on the aft conning tower under the mizzen mast to continue fighting. The question is who will take command. You must know the control  A capital ship and commanding one are completely different things!

    In order to save the battleship, Grand Fleet Commander-in-Chief David Beatty, whose formation and course had not yet been adjusted, had to cautiously advance the time for battle line bombardment, allowing the First Battle Fleet to open fire to cover the Canada's retreat.

    How could the First Reconnaissance Group give up this perfect opportunity? No need to be reminded by Heidi Silem. The flagship of the First Reconnaissance Group, the Mackensen, issued an order to focus the fire. Three Mackensen-class battlecruisers opened fire one after another.  The 380mm large-caliber capped armor-piercing projectiles soon formed a terrifying barrage around the battleship Canada.

    ¡°Perhaps due to excessive force in the previous T-shaped cross-head fire, the first reconnaissance group with the strongest combat effectiveness in the German Ocean Fleet performed substandard in the battle to encircle and suppress the Canada, and it has been unable to harvest the opponent.

    The German 1st Reconnaissance Group missed good opportunities one after another. At this time, the remaining ships of the British 1st Battle Fleet and the 4th Battlecruiser Fleet, the four battleships of the 2nd Squadron of the 2nd Battle Fleet, as well as the remaining ships of the German 1st Reconnaissance Group and the 1st Battleship  One Bavaria-class, four Helgoland-class, and four Nassau-class battleships in the team were impatient of loneliness and joined the melee with their own main guns.

    In this melee, the target of the remaining ships of the German First Reconnaissance Group was the crippled British First Battle Fleet, and the target of the German First Battle Fleet was the relatively loose formation of the British Second Battle Fleet, while the British  However, the people are concentrating all the firepower of the two main fleets to attack the first detachment, the weakest link in the Great Steel Wall of the German Ocean Fleet.

    In fact, Betty had already abandoned the battleship Canada when the Germans set fire to it.  David Beattie, who had been led by Sealem in this naval battle, keenly caught Heidi Sealem's only mistake and made a desperate choice to focus on four Nassau-class ships with only 300 mm main equipment.  Battleship.

    History has proven that Betty¡¯s gamble at sea using the almost undefended Second Squadron of the Second Battle Fleet as a bargaining chip was worthwhile.

    At 12:40, Canada was hit again, and fire spread all over the battleship.? The rising plume of smoke was thousands of feet high and could be seen by merchant ships more than ten kilometers away.

    No one will question the tragic ending of this battleship. However, at the same moment when the battleship Canada was hit, the third German Nassau-class battleship Rheinland was also hit and sank.  (To be continued.)
Didn't finish reading? Add this book to your favoritesI'm a member and bookmarked this chapterCopy the address of this book and recommend it to your friends for pointsChapter error? Click here to report