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Part One Twenty Years Chapter 11 The Moment That Changed History (10)

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    "("King of the North Atlantic" Section 7, The End of the Union Flag[2])

    Starting from 12:34, when the command tower of the battleship Canada was hit, the second round of firefights in the Orkney Islands naval battle has been going on intermittently for forty minutes.

    During this period, the Canada, the Rhineland, the Posen, the Bellerophon, the Neptune, and the Royal Oak were sunk one after another. The German and British admirals had already made separate long lists for this round of battle in the Orkney Islands.  battle damage list of battleships.

    Of course, the British could also add the battlecruisers Hong Kong, Indomitable and New Zealand to their already brutal list of capital ship losses.

    But even so, both sides still had no intention of stopping. The two nations that had placed all their bets were already red-eyed. The battle continued from the Revenge to the Indomitable, and then from the Moltke to the Bavaria. In this battle line,  Online, almost every sea was exploding and trembling, and the North Sea was artificially creating a boiling effect by the arrogant steel monsters.

    The Germans are setting fire to the second detachment. Facts have proved that no matter the navy or the army, as long as the Germans are serious, not even God can stop them.

    In the contest between the Centurion and the Baden, the Joe V-class battleship Centurion, equipped with 10 15-inch main guns, was not a single enemy of the latter at all.

    ¡®The Germans¡¯ gunnery was extremely accurate, but luckily they didn¡¯t hit many.  I raised my head and observed the whizzing shells. They looked like lead blocks wrapped in blazing colors. They seemed to be piercing into your eyes, just when you couldn't help but close your eyes.  They either explode near you, sending up dozens of feet of water.  Eitheror send your soul to the ocean directly'

    Centurion lookout Keane commented on the tragic situation after they ended the concentrated fire on the German first detachment.

    Maybe it was the Baden's fourth round of full turret and half-gun fire, maybe it was the fifth round. In short, just when the Baden had just completed its muzzle turn and was wasting time and effort on the main gun 'calibration', an accidental shot  The 380mm armor-piercing shells that touched the "waterline main armor" on the port side of the Centurion ended the Centurion's service career.

    There is no need to elaborate on the difference in the protection power of the Joe V-class battleship. The bulky large-caliber armor-piercing projectile hit the 12-inch waterline with the main armor on the Centurion battleship design drawings, and it was easily torn apart.  There was only an 8-inch armor belt, which passed through the weak dome armor layer and two watertight cabins with a smooth trajectory.  It almost hit this expensive super-dreadnought ship.

    Perhaps it was the smoke wall phenomenon caused by the Centurion's long-term bombardment, or perhaps it was the Centurion's own rolling. In short, the German lookout did not accurately detect the hit of this round, but reported "Port side close bomb"  '.

    As time went by, the wall of smoke on the port side of the Centurion became thicker and thicker. The battleship Baden, which was extremely difficult to observe, gradually lost the opportunity to continue attacking the battleship Centurion, and was embarrassed at around 13:17  The ground temporarily stopped shelling.

    The Baden people were very upset about this.  They felt that they had tarnished the reputation of the German navy's superb gunnery. On the other side of the battlefield, the anxious British complained that the German gunnery was too shocking.

    After the Centurion was hit, tons of seawater poured into the depths of the battleship's hull, blasting out watertight compartments that were seriously lacking in structural strength.  Three to five minutes later, the Centurion battleship took on nearly 4,000 tons of water.  The main engine was shut down, all water pumps stopped working, and the ship's hull tilted toward the port side.

    Second Lieutenant Frese, who emerged from the telegraph room, recalled the last few minutes of the Centurion thus:

    ¡®At that time, the whole ship was leaning heavily to the left, and I stumbled to the bridge.  Before he could grasp the handrail, he was pushed down by the people behind him and fell down the stairs of the trestle onto the port side deck.  Then he fell into the sea water uncontrollably.

    Fortunately, the hull of the ship was seriously flooded. The port deck of the battleship was only about two feet away from the sea, so I was not knocked unconscious by the sea water.  At this time, many people gathered around me. They were hesitant about how to climb aboard the warship, but I half-jokingly pointed at the Centurion and said that it was hopeless, just like the Bold in 1914.  ¡¯

    Lieutenant Fleiss hit the nail on the head. At 13:17, the seawater flooded the port side deck of the Centurion. The captain, who tried every means but still could not prevent the sinking of the Centurion, could only choose to abandon the ship and ordered the sailors to open the ship.  Sea valve.

    It was not until the target ship, which was completely stationary on the sea, sank rapidly that the battleship Baden reacted.  Afterwards, the dutiful captain of the Baden awkwardly grabbed the logbook, not knowing how to record the destruction of the Centurion:

    The captain of the Baden, who was not sure how the battleship Audacity was destroyed, felt that the British Joe V-class super-dreadnought, which had visited the port of Kiel on the eve of the war in 1914 and declared eternal peace between Germany and Britain, was too dissolute to "kill with one shot" -  ¡ªIn the captain¡¯s impression, no matter how bad level 5 Qiao is, he isAs a first-rate battleship with a 12-inch waterline, main armor and a standard displacement of about 26,000 tons, the British shipbuilding merchants would not have the conscience to cheat on their own people.

    Behind the battleship Centurion, the battleship Magnificent of the fifth detachment of the First Battle Fleet, observation petty officer Roy seemed to have a premonition of something. He took out the pen and paper that was supposed to be used to record combat data and wrote in the rear command tower.  Written a letter home.

    ¡®Kate, you must not have imagined what kind of environment I was fighting in.  Our newspapers and governments always brag about how powerful the Royal Navy is and how majestic the dreadnoughts flying the Union Jack are, but the fact is that we can fail miserably even in the offshore battles of the British Isles.

    Another round of shells whizzed past our heads. The 380mm shells projected from the Baden would explode somewhere outside the starboard side of the Magnificent if nothing unexpected happened.  As an observation officer, I could only hide in the rear control tower of the Magnificent, secretly glad that I was still alive - even though the Germans maintained a main gun fire rate of two and a half to three rounds per minute, at least within these twenty seconds,  We are safe.

    After the flagship Royal Oak sank, the surviving fleet commander Sir Doverton Sturdy jumped over the sunken battleships Canada and Bellerophon of our fifth squadron, and moved his incomplete headquarters  Enter the command tower of the Magnificent.

    It was both the Magnificent¡¯s honor and its misfortune¡ªthe sinking of the Royal Oak, the Canada, and the Bellerophon.  Orion had no choice but to become the flagship of the Second Battle Fleet, also because of the sinking of Royal Oak.  We naturally became the prey of the 350mm main gun group of the second team of the German 1st Reconnaissance Group.

    Before the second round of firefight, we had already opened a distance of almost four kilometers from the second battle fleet.  When the three battleships in front of the Magnificent were sunk one after another, the distance was further widened. In other words, our First Battle Fleet and Fourth Battle Patrol have become alone.

    Although the ship is in poor condition, we can only try our best to catch up and shorten the distance, so that the Magnificent can move forward at full speed.  At this time, the outside of the rear conning tower was filled with the sound of the wind breaking through the sky, the roar of the waves hitting the ship's side, the roar of machines and the sound of our own cannons.  Even the explosions that the Germans fired at us were muffled.

    The shells splashed on both sides of the Orion's hull, and there were water columns all around, even higher than the mizzen mast watchtower where I once worked, and then splashed all over the Magnificent.  Occasionally, there was a flash of light in front of my eyes, and something got through the narrow observation hole and passed by me.  It wasn't until I saw Lieutenant Giggs lying in a pool of blood that I realized it was shrapnel flying around.

    From beginning to end.  I didn't even hear the explosion.  Originally, I was still congratulating myself that the Magnificent had managed to escape this dangerous straddle attack, but the sudden tilt of the hull made me realize that maybe I was too optimistic about the future of the Magnificent'

    At 13:19, British observation petty officer Roy, who had retreated to the command tower below due to damage to the rear mainmast armored watchtower, hurriedly dropped the last words in his letter home.

    ¡®A damage control officer came in and said he needed help.  My dear, I can only continue this letter home after the battle is over, wishing me good luck'

    ¡°Roy didn¡¯t know that was his last word.  He put away his letters home.  It was wrapped tightly with a piece of tarpaulin and finally placed in an iron box.

    No one knows how Roy died.  In 2012, diving enthusiasts accustomed to peace and quiet pulled out this iron box from the sea mud during an expedition to the Orkney Islands, and found a letter from home covered with age-mottled seals in the waterproof tarpaulin.

    It took the British government a lot of time to find Roy's love interest, Kate.  Send late letters home.  But being late is being late, at that time.  Kate has been away from this world for more than 40 years. Roy and Kate were not married, they had no children, and Roy had no brothers or sisters.

    The romantic tenderness of the war years has always been just the obscenity written by writers. It has always been so sad and painful!

    At 13:20, the gunfire stopped.  The mass of death and the cries of the wounded floated on the ocean. Torn pieces of cloth, corpses of soldiers, burning oil and crackling wooden blocks rose and fell in the sea water.  The sea breeze swept across the lonely sea surface, cleaning up the strong smell of blood and gunpowder smoke above the sea level. Sailors with white flags flying in small boats shuttled across the blood-stained sea, holding long poles to look for possible survival.  compatriots.

    In this way, the smoke-filled Beihai temporarily calmed down.

    This temporary tranquility is not because the two steel fleets are exhausted or afraid of war, but because the smoke wall generated by the continuous bombardment begins to seriously interfere with the sighting of the two fleets, forcing them to temporarily put down the anger in their hearts and accumulate strength to wait.  The final battle and the withering sorrow.

    Summary of the second round of fighting, both Britain and Germany suffered heavy losses.??.

    At the front of the battle line, the British battleship Marlborough was hit by a 305mm water bomb from the heroic battleship Prince Regent Louis Pod, causing serious damage to the underwater part of the bow; the British battleship Revenge and the battleship Bavaria were unusually strange  The two ships exploded each other's armored chimney bases, and the other ships also suffered varying degrees of damage.

    On the German side, the battleship King Albert could not withstand the 380mm green bombs installed on the Iron Duke-class battleships. The upper armor belt and other non-important parts of the hull were hit one after another, and it was teetering on the surface of the North Sea.

    ¡°Compared to the painless battle at the front, the battle between the squadron and the rear was much more brutal.

    On the British side, they lost a total of five battleships: Canada, Bellerophon, Neptune, Royal Oak and Centurion, bringing the number of battle-damaged battleships in the British Empire to an unprecedented eight.  One battleship, the Magnificent, was about to be destroyed, and on the German side, they also handed over a total of two battleships, the Rhineland and Posen.

    In view of the fact that both David Betty and Heidi Sealem set "severely damaging and completely annihilating a combat squadron of the other side" as their own combat goals in this round of firefights, and the main casualties were also concentrated in the battle line squadrons and rear squadrons.  , so the naval community also defines the second round of the battle of the Orkney Islands as 'a battle that took place in the rear of the battle line'.

    "The battle that took place in the rear of the battle line" came to an end, and both sides got a fifteen-minute break, taking advantage of the smoke wall to dissipate to make final adjustments.

    "Compared to the end of the British Empire, the cards in Heidi Silam's hands are obviously better than those of her opponents.  But the Germans did not have all the advantages. The fast fleet on the south side of the battlefield, led by General Lampard, was approaching the main fleet of the Grand Fleet at full speed, while on the north side of the battlefield, four American battleships were also leisurely swimming.  On the way south, the two emerging naval powers, Germany and the United States, were destined to compete in the North Sea.  ".
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