The Rise of the Third Reich

"Quick, quick, launch the flares! Prepare hedgehog depth charges and depth charges! Those guys who drive submarines are very timid and will dive when they see the flares. I know this best!" Otto, the captain of the destroyer Z38 .Knight von Kretschmer shouted the order to fire flares.

The former ace U-boat captain, one of the many aces of the German submarine force, Otto von Kretschmer, who has won a lot of medals and was knighted, successfully "cleared" and upgraded a few months ago. For the captain of the Type A destroyer Z38 in 1936.

According to Imperial Marshal Hersmann, this is the highest honor that can be awarded to an ace U-boat captain! Because the ace U-boat captain and his comrades were so capable that they destroyed all the enemy ships, they had to change their career to become a destroyer captain.

This is of course a joke, but it makes sense. Because there are not many British merchant ships on the North Atlantic now that would bother German U-boats to sink. On the contrary, the number of British and American submarines operating underwater is increasing!

The offensive and defensive posture of the Battle of the Atlantic has changed! Now it is the turn of the former ace U-boat captains to learn about the power of British submarines.

"Boom boom boom!"

Several flares were fired, and Kretschmer looked at the pale scene on the sea illuminated by the flares, and suddenly thought of a very strange question. Those British submarine captains who commanded submarines to set up ambush in the Strait of Dover might have been destroyer captains 12 months ago, and they might have used depth charges to attack the U-boats they commanded...

"The flares are about to be discovered! Emergency dive!" Lieutenant Colonel McIntyre, with the Victoria Cross on his chest, was really frightened by the flares fired randomly by the German destroyers. This British naval lieutenant colonel in charge of commanding an S-class submarine was actually a destroyer captain at the beginning of the war. At that time, like many destroyer captains who had recently switched to operating submarines, he was fighting on the Atlantic Ocean, fighting to the death against the evil German submarines.

But just when the British destroyers and German submarines were fighting inextricably, the damn Ju88 and Italian hunchback aircraft joined the battle, and there were also "Long-Legged Fokker" (referring to Fokker Zero) escorts. As a result, a 500-kilogram bomb sank Lieutenant Colonel McIntyre's destroyer and seriously injured him and sent him to the hospital.

And when he finally recovered and was discharged from the hospital, the Royal Navy had no spare destroyers for him to command. Moreover, German, French and Italian battleships are already rampaging in the Atlantic Ocean. Gone are the days when destroyers could protect the Atlantic route.

So at the suggestion of his superiors, he entered the submarine school and received a brand new S-class submarine after completing several months of crash training.

However, after becoming the captain of the S-boat, he was not sent to the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean or the Pacific to break diplomatic relations. Instead, he was incorporated into the Home Fleet to prepare for the defense of the English Channel.

On the afternoon of May 1, Lieutenant Colonel McIntyre was ordered to command his submarine to leave Portsmouth Harbor and go to the Dover Strait to lurk. As a result, on the way to the Strait of Dover, I was attacked several times by German Ju87 dive bombers. I was lucky enough to escape, but it took a lot of time and I didn't arrive at the designated location until around 7 o'clock in the evening. , but encountered dozens of torpedo boats towing balloons, and saw Dover's cannons bombarding those torpedo boats.

However, McIntyre did not use a submarine to attack the torpedo boats. Instead, he continued to wait patiently. Before long, a huge fleet of unknown ships arrived. This time McIntyre did not hesitate and decisively seized the opportunity to sink a four- to five-thousand-ton ammunition ship. As a result, destroyers were immediately recruited.

Seeing the opponent firing a flare, McIntyre quickly put down his periscope and ordered an emergency dive - because his submarine had just raised its periscope when the flare came over, and he might have been discovered by the German "cat-eye warriors"!

"Sir, the sonar found the submarine. The direction is 98 degrees, the depth is 5-10, and the distance is 500. It seems to be making an emergency dive."

The commonly used tactic when a submarine encounters a destroyer is definitely not to launch torpedoes, but to dive deep and silence. However, during emergency dives, the aircraft may sometimes be detected by the destroyer's sonar due to excessive noise. Kretschmer, who was originally the ace U-boat captain, certainly knew this "trick", so he just had people fire flares and hedgehog bombs to scare people.

Kretschmer's bluff soon paid off when Z38's sonar detected a diving British submarine.

"Prepare hedgehog depth bombs to attack, 3 rounds!" Kretschmer chose hedgehog bombs. Because the distance was relatively short, Kretschmer did not choose powerful depth bombs, but chose hedgehog bombs that could attack in a wide range. bomb.

The launcher for firing hedgehog bombs is installed on the bow of the Z38. It is mounted with 24 rounds. Each hedgehog bomb weighs 30 kilograms. It can all be launched in a very short time and form a 40-meter oval barrage more than 200 meters in front of the destroyer. As long as one hedgehog bomb hits the submarine and explodes, the other 23 will also explode together, forming a fire net. Normally two rounds of hits would be enough to destroy a submarine, but Kretschmer decided to hit three rounds first just to be on the safe side.

But unfortunately, the three rounds of hedgehog depth bombs were ejected and fell into the water without even making a sound (the hedgehog depth bombs are trigger fuses and can only explode when they hit the submarine shell), so they obviously missed the target. Just when Kretschmer was considering whether to try his luck with depth charges, the shells fired from the Dover Fortress had already fallen like raindrops on the water near the destroyer Z38.

It turned out that the British submarine attack caused several German transport ships to burst into flames, thus exposing the position of the entire fleet and allowing the British artillery at Dover to once again find the general target of the attack.

But relying only on firelight guidance and no calibration, it was simply firing indiscriminately. Except for two 4,000-ton cargo ships that were hit by near misses and sank, all the other shells were empty.

On the other hand, the British submarines ambushing the western exit of the Strait of Dover achieved three more results. Two freighters and a T-type landing craft full of soldiers and equipment were sunk one after another.

However, these British submarines also paid a price. Two S-class boats were sunk by the German Z-type destroyers using hedgehog bombs and depth charges.

…

"Seven ships and two torpedo boats were sunk, and more than 1,280 people were lost..."

After hearing the report from Lieutenant General Hermann Buckle, Chief of Staff of the Western Front, Marshal Schleicher, who had been awake all night, smiled slightly.

"Not bad, the loss is not big." Schleicher touched his bald head, "How is the weather in the English Channel now?"

"There is some fog, but it will disperse soon, and there will still be fierce fighting."

"Will the British send a fleet?"

"It's unlikely, but the Air Force and Naval Aviation are already prepared," Lieutenant General Bakker said. "General Jeshunek has prepared 6,000 aircraft and can launch an attack at any time."

General Jeshunek is currently the commander of the 3rd Luftwaffe of the German Air Force, and also serves as the commander of the Western Front Air Force Combined Command. Not only the German and Italian air forces and naval aviation units deployed in France, Belgium, and western Germany were under his command, but even the French Air Force, which had begun to gradually recover, was under the command of the United Air Force Command led by him.

Due to the concentration of large amounts of German, French and Italian aviation forces, Jeshunek now controlled unprecedentedly powerful air power. The fierce air battle that broke out over the Taiwan Strait on May 1 was just the beginning. The real war has just begun now.

"Mr. Prime Minister, the German troops did not land at Dover, but they still destroyed 8 armored turrets at Dover. In addition, last night our submarine attacked the German fleet trying to pass through the Strait of Dover, sinking at least 10 ships.”

"10 ships? How many are there in total?" Fatty Qiu had just returned from the train station to the fortress underground on King Charles Street.

The purpose of his going to the train station was to say goodbye to King George VI, who was going to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands for a "vacation". If the Germans really landed in Dover or somewhere else in England, then this "vacation" would be will be long term.

"I'm afraid there are 150 ships, or even more!" replied First Sea Lord Dudley Pound. "According to reports from submarines, the fleet that passed through the Strait of Dover yesterday included at least 3 aircraft carriers and 2 battleships. Dozens of ships are likely to be landing ships. In addition, our intelligence personnel also reported that there are currently hundreds of transport ships parked in the port of Brest, and at least one armored division has been lurked near Gibraltar. Intelligence personnel report that the port of Gibraltar is currently empty. We estimate that the main force of the so-called European Combined Fleet should be hidden in the Atlantic Ocean west of Brest."

"Haha, the war is coming." Churchill sat down in his seat, "Can you determine the direction of the German attack?"

"It should be somewhere west of the Strait of Dover," said Viscount Brooke, chief of general staff. "Cornwall and Ireland each have a 50% chance... Prime Minister, I recommend that you approve the army's entry into the Irish Free State."

"Enter Ireland?" Churchill lit a cigar and took two puffs. "How helpful would it be to enter now? The landing may be only 24 hours later. If the Germans want to airlift troops to Cork, it will only take a few hours? So Can we take over all of Ireland in a little while?”

"This is impossible."

Churchill exhaled a puff of smoke, "In that case, let the Germans go first...and then we will start a battle with them in Ireland!" He looked at the frowning Viscount Brooke and said with a smile, "There must be a large-scale land battle. The war is either in Ireland or England. If hundreds of thousands or millions of Germans do not land, the man in Moscow will continue to wait cautiously. If I want to choose a battlefield, then rather than on the land of the English, Might as well fight on Irish territory!"