Bismarck

After hearing the report from his subordinates, Major General Wilcox's face became even gloomier: It has been less than a quarter of an hour since the war started, and two destroyers are gone?

It seems... my main fleet is about to overtake me...

(PS: Just to give an example: In the history of World War II, the regulations of the landing flag language of British and American aircraft carriers were exactly the opposite. In history, several aircraft carriers such as Wasp, Raider, Glorious and Saratoga joined the fleet of "allies" for various reasons and participated in actual combat. It is conceivable that if they were not familiar with each other, what would the result be... I guess you can guess...)

Chapter 530: Eugen's T-Head

When Rear Admiral Wilcox learned that the Prince Eugen could destroy two destroyers in just fifteen minutes, he was filled with worry.

A distance of twenty-three thousand yards is almost twenty kilometers or more.

What would be the hit rate for hitting a target like a destroyer at this distance?

Wilcox didn't know what level the British were at, but he knew what the U.S. Navy itself was like.

No one will believe it, but although the U.S. Navy has a Ford-style fire control director with excellent performance and a certain level of training intensity, the U.S. Navy's artillery hit rate does not depend on the director or the training intensity, but on luck.

That’s right, just look at the face…

The U.S. Navy has not participated in actual combat for forty years since the Spanish-American War. Even in the Spanish-American War, it was far from a high-intensity war because Spain was already in decline at the time. Although research and training in peacetime have not been relaxed, and the Navy's military technology has certain unique features, the lack of actual combat experience and the "funding audit" of the Congressional Audit Office, no matter how hard the knowledgeable people in the U.S. military and political circles have tried, the accumulation of forty years has inevitably had a considerable negative impact on the actual combat effectiveness of the U.S. Navy. Among them, the concept of artillery training is one example.

Because until now, the US Navy's bombardment concept is still very rigid "uniform linear motion, 'steady' bombardment of the enemy in uniform linear motion", without considering the negative impact of evasion on the hit rate in actual combat. Although the British pointed out this problem in person during the First World War in 1917, after all, there was no actual combat test, and in the end this problem was not taken seriously at all.

Major General Wilcox knew that the hit rate of his four heavy cruisers at 20,000 yards was probably less than 3% even in exercises, and the dispersion was not small.

But what about the enemy?

The enemy's hit rate was so high that its speed was five knots faster than that of its own cruisers and nearly ten knots faster than that of its battleships.

Major General Wilcox couldn't help but feel a chill in his heart...

But at least for now, he could do nothing except urge his battleship to speed up as much as possible...

After all, knowing that Eugen's speed was amazing, in order to ensure the success rate of the interception, Major General Wilcox was forced to extend the interception depth to 110 nautical miles on the third interception line...

It was just to allow the intercepting forces at each level, even their own battleships, to have enough reaction time to intercept Eugen...

---

Just 200 kilometers north of Major General Wilcox, the Prinz Eugen, which had just destroyed two American destroyers, was speeding towards the south...

Looking at the rapidly sailing waves and counting the time that was passing by, Top gestured at the sea chart and asked his secretary:

"They should have started to gather their forces and rush here. There will definitely be a telegram. Eugen, have you heard anything?"

"Well... let me see..." Eugen, who was standing aside, agreed and really stretched out his ears like a little rabbit...

After living in Berlin with Bismarck and Zeppelin for a few days, the cute Eugen has begun to develop a sinister side.

Guided shells, self-guided torpedoes, artillery barrages, electronic jamming, and even a sign that read "C4ISR Command Center, No Entry" was made by Bismarck for her to take home and hang at the door of her own headquarters... Although she did not get the jammer from the Navy Department and could not use electronic jamming yet, Eugen was already indoctrinated by her two sisters' various crooked ideas and black theories. Top, who was standing by, was also stunned by how quickly Eugen was "led astray" by Bismarck and Zeppelin...

It really takes three years to learn good things, but only three days to learn bad things... In just these few days, not to mention Eugen, even I have become a bad person...

But that is worthy of Lütjens' combat experience in recent years. At least... at least the effect of the guided artillery shell is really good...

He couldn't help but look back at the two smoke columns in the distance. The wreckage of the destroyed destroyer was still burning on the sea twenty kilometers away... Top swallowed his saliva. Even though he was knowledgeable, he was secretly shocked by the attack efficiency of the guided artillery shells.

Over there, Eugen had already heard something...

"Top Top, I heard a radio signal 40 miles away. There seems to be a radar right in front of us. And there seems to be another signal at miles... Wait. There is also a radio station sending a telegram miles to the left."

After listening to Eugen's report, Top had an idea in his mind - although they were all encrypted telegrams, at least these were most likely the locations of the British and American naval cruisers and battleships.

Maybe they are already heading this way?

And if that's the case...

"…The British will not easily come to the American defense zone, but judging from the distribution of American forces and the distance from here to Iceland, there should be two destroyers thirty and fifty nautical miles away, and they should be retreating now…"

"But they should be concentrating their forces here now. There is no time to waste... But it will be dark in four hours at most. When it gets dark, they will only be able to communicate with each other through radar. However, it seems that the Americans have not yet fully popularized radar. In addition, the two defense zones are at the border, so communication may not work... Why don't we blend in with them first and try to get through after dark."

After thinking it over, Top made up his mind to fight: "Eugen, let's rush up and confront them. When you see anyone in the American cruiser fleet with radar, grab that one and beat them to death."

"Ah."

---------

The Prince Eugen and the American cruiser fleet, traveling towards each other at a speed of nearly 70 knots, soon came within Eugen's field of vision...

"Four heavy cruisers, in formation, about five thousand yards apart, thirty-seven nautical miles away, with a rate of change of 2300 yards per minute, on the reverse course?"

Looking at Eugen who was pulling his sleeve and then hiding himself behind it, Top once again confirmed the other party's information.

"Yeah, yes. By the way, the second heavy cruiser on the right has a radar..."

Although he had participated in actual combat and even drove away two British cruisers, Eugen was still very nervous when he had to deal with four heavy cruisers at the same time. He still had to report the intelligence: "The distance is only 37,000 yards now... Eh? They seem to be changing their course... Top Top. They are converging towards the cruiser with radar."

"It seems to be correct. That should be their flagship." Top chuckled, and gently patted Eugen's small hand with his rough big hand: "In three minutes, they will enter our effective range...Eugen, you should aim at their flagship now. Prepare to turn. In three minutes, I will change our course to 255 degrees south of due west. I want to give these American warmongers a T-sign and let them have a taste of what's new."

"Yeah, okay." Feeling Top's confidence, Eugen nodded vigorously.

----

"Reporting to the commander. The Germans across the way have turned. They are now heading approximately south-west, thirty thousand yards away."

On the heavy cruiser Northampton, the US radar soldiers were also reporting the situation.

"Thirty thousand yards? Do you think you can take advantage of your long range to seize the tank at such a long distance because our team hasn't gathered yet?" The commander of the American cruiser thought for a moment, but didn't think there was any big problem: "We'll keep charging and follow when we reach 203 yards. The mm shells are not very lethal to heavy cruisers, so we can still hold out for a few minutes..."

However, just when the commander of the American cruiser fleet gave the order, the observation post had already seen something flashing regularly in the northern horizon under the high winds and waves in the late autumn in the high latitudes of the North Atlantic.

It was not until nearly two minutes later that the observation post could see clearly that something seemed to have emerged from the clouds...

Wait. That is...

"Bombardment. The Germans bombarded..."

Before the observation post could finish his heart-wrenching shout, eight tall water columns surrounded the Northampton. And before the Americans could react, round after round of bullets, with explosions and flames one after another, completely covered the unfortunate American heavy cruiser...

(PS: The gunnery concept of American warships is backward, and it is true that the hit rate depends entirely on luck, because the gunnery is weak... Iowa was beaten ten to zero by the Vanguard in the post-war exercise, and one of the important reasons was this factor. In fact, whether it was Casablanca or the Pacific War, and even until the Leyte Gulf, the hit rate of American warships' artillery fire was generally only 1-2%, and it was not uncommon for it to be lower than 1%...Except for Washington who stabbed Kirishima in the back and had a hit rate of 63 out of 7 shots, and Iowa fired eight rounds of ultra-long-range straddle shots at Nobaki under aerial observation in its first battle (but it is very likely that there were too many straddle shots and the ship could not be sunk It's just that walking is too bad.) In all other artillery battles, as long as the distance is not within 20 meters, whether it is the Casablanca Battle, where the first hit was made in 1.9 minutes and the hit rate was less than 44%, or the artillery battles in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, it was the same. Even at the end of , Halsey personally supervised the battle, and a large number of American warships including Iowa and New Jersey fought a straggle that was out of line for nearly an hour, and they could even regard the opponent as "a heavy cruiser or a battleship"... Even Halsey himself helplessly held his forehead and said that this scene "is simply the best portrayal of the US Navy's observation ability and actual combat artillery"...)

Chapter 531: Eugen Don't Sink

The heavy cruiser fleet under Rear Admiral Wilcox did block the Prince Eugen, but the subsequent developments were far beyond the Americans' expectations. This thing seemed to be different from the script. Was it that the hunter and the prey were reversed?

If possible, they are prepared to question the director about what he meant.

At the very beginning, the flagship of the American cruiser fleet, the Northampton, was severely beaten at a distance of 30,000 yards, and the other American cruisers were all dumbfounded.

Thirty thousand yards! This extremely long distance is the theoretical maximum range of the old 203mm main guns of the American heavy cruiser!

They couldn't even fire their shells, while others had already made accurate attacks at this distance. I don't know how big the gap was.

Although the USS Pensacola, the heavy cruiser on the far left of the formation, which was the one closest to Eugen's course, closed the distance to within the effective range of 25000 yards in less than four minutes at a speed of 203 knots, and then turned around and began to fire at full speed, but in just these five minutes, the USS Northampton, which had been thoroughly covered by Prince Eugen's more than salvos, had been hit by more than ten mm shells, and its hull and superstructure were blown up in a horrible way.

The Northampton's armor protection was only 76 mm. Although it could barely grazed 203 mm shells with an angle of nearly degrees at a distance of yards, other than that, the cruiser's defense area and hull strength were far from comparable to those of a battleship!

Except for the main turret and an incomplete segmented belt on the waterline, the entire ship is almost unarmored, not much different from the British "Sheep's Hoof".

Even so, there is a chance that armor-piercing shells will bounce off when hitting the armored area, but Top is an experienced captain. He directly ordered Eugen to use high-explosive shells with instantaneous impact fuses without any consideration of bouncing off the armor-piercing shells!

It will explode if it comes into contact with anything, and it is guided...

This effect is really wonderful.

The charge of the German 203 high-explosive bomb was nearly 9 kilograms, and the lethality to the unarmored areas on the cruiser was quite large. Basically, on those thin iron sheets, a big hole was blown, causing heavy casualties to the personnel inside. In addition, the shock wave and fragments were powerful. If they happened to hit some cabins with many people, all that was left was a pile of body parts. By the time Eugen shifted his firepower to deal with the heavy cruiser Pensacola, although the main turret and underwater core compartment of Northampton were still basically intact, the superstructure, including the radar and the main and secondary gun director, was basically destroyed...

As for Peng Ruoji's ship, there is no need to say more. It can be hit directly by high-explosive bombs and made to cry for its parents.

Up to this moment, the American cruisers had just approached the effective range of the American 203mm main guns, let alone fighting back. At this distance, the US Navy, which did not have precision-guided shells, would have no idea where the shells would have gone after flying for such a long time.

What's more, although the Americans' formation was in a straight line, there were gaps between the ships, and Eugen's speed was at least five knots faster than the Americans. This speed of five knots was enough for her to gain an absolute positional advantage.

That is to say, except for the westernmost Pensacola, which was barely pulled within 25000 yards because its course was directly opposite to the "advance" of Eugen's course, the other two were still out of the effective range.

Even if they were to forcefully fire, given the Americans' hit rate and the current embarrassment of the distance exceeding the effective range, let alone the hit rate, it would be good enough if they did not interfere with the Pensacola's ranging and aiming.

Moreover, they cannot come directly over at the moment. They are now trying to find a way to bypass the Northampton that is retreating with thick smoke... This poor kid hasn't even entered the firing range yet, and the cannon just fired a random shot, but he was directly seriously injured and withdrew from the battlefield, leaving everyone stunned.

In other words, although it still looks like three against one, it is now almost the same as one against one.

Moreover, the armored defense of the Pensacola, which is equipped with four turrets and ten main guns, is inferior to that of the Northampton...

Although an American destroyer that had withdrawn from the patrol line had appeared behind the Prinz Eugen more than 28,000 yards northwest of the ship, looking at the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen that was killing all around, and seeing that the situation of both sides could turn into a same-ship pursuit at any time, which was the most disadvantageous to a torpedo war... Therefore, including Rear Admiral Wilcox, they were quite aware of the role that such a lone destroyer could play...

At this moment, the captain of the Pensacola's face was uglier than Zhang Fei's. He didn't know whether to cry or laugh. Such a terrible opponent was simply a nightmare!

I don't know if I can come back alive.

However, he still asked everyone to be vigilant and to prevent the tragedy like the Northampton from happening again.

However, this kind of thing was not something he could avoid just because he wanted to. Under the rain of shells that Eugen had expected, the Pensacola was directly engulfed in a sea of ​​fire, with explosions and fires everywhere, and it had not even fired a few shots...

The old people cry and the new people laugh, it is always relative. If God is not on this side, he will be on that side.

Top was so happy over there that he kept patting Eugen on the shoulder: "Good job, just keep fighting! Keep your distance from them and give them a shower with guided shells!"

Fortunately, Eugen is not an ordinary girl, otherwise she would have been knocked to the ground by him. Top didn't pay attention to how much strength she had, but she is a lovely girl.

"Wait a minute, Top! We don't have enough shells! Top, you should also pay attention to the number of shells! We have just used up one-fifth of the shells!" Although he was not afraid of being shot, Eugen, who was still a little dizzy by Top, quickly grabbed Top's big slap: "Besides, the reserves of guided shells are not much..."

"Eh? Is there any?"

Thinking back to the time when he was only focused on the fun of the battle, he didn't care about the shells consumed at all. However, when Eugen reported the shells consumed in the previous battle against the destroyer and the destruction of the Northampton, as well as the current battle against the Pensacola, the guy who wasted his own ship's shells could no longer laugh...

"Have each artillery gun used up thirty-six or thirty-seven rounds? This is a bit troublesome..."

Scratching the stubble on his chin, Top, who had been in high spirits, became a little depressed.

"Eugen, your stomach is still not big enough. There are so few ammunition to store."

Theoretically, Eugen's main guns have 150 rounds of ammunition per gun, and the number of modified guided shells will not exceed . Although Eugen can guarantee its hit rate even with conventional shells, who knows what will happen next...

Although Lütjens was watching, Raeder had no choice but to promise to assign two supply ships, but the Atlantic Ocean is so large, who can say for sure whether the supply ships will arrive on schedule...

"Forget it, Eugen, just get rid of this one first, and don't let the remaining two see that our firepower has weakened! Next time, you can reduce the density of artillery fire and pay attention to the hit rate." Looking at the Pensacola in the distance, which was already emitting billowing columns of smoke, Top made an estimate and finally decided that even if he had to swell up his sleeve, he had to deal with this one first in the same way!

At least I can scare the Americans who don't know what's going on by pretending to be strong. Otherwise, if the other two find out and get bold enough to entangle me, I'll be in big trouble...

Relying on the terrifying hit rate of guided shells and a speed of thirty-seven and a half knots, the Pensacola was hit by the same method as the Prinz Eugen that was evacuating the battlefield. It quickly left behind the other two American heavy cruisers that were frightened and dared not chase too close, turned south again, and continued its breakout journey!

There are still about three hours until dark...

-

"Damn it! How come the German cruiser is so powerful!"

On the battleship USS Washington, Rear Admiral Wilcox was filled with rage...

Well, the "ma" in MMP...

Looking at the telegram "requesting urgent tactical guidance" sent from the two remaining heavy cruisers, Major General Wilcox even had the urge to kill someone.

This is the first battle between the U.S. Navy and enemy warships in forty years, and this is probably the battle report I just received... However, what's the matter with this feeling that "society is really dangerous"!

Four heavy cruisers attacked one heavy cruiser, but they were beaten 2-0 in a quarter of an hour without any damage! Now the remaining Portland and Salt Lake City no longer dared to approach to engage in battle, and only dared to follow stealthily from a distance of 30 kilometers... When Rear Admiral Wilcox received this report, he almost tore up the telegram.

No wonder the British said that these German warships were probably blessed by Satan's witches...

"Where are the crew on that damn German ship now?! Report to me immediately!" It seemed that his cruisers were no match at all, so Major General Wilcox had to lead his battleships into battle himself.

"Report to the commander, they have turned south and are now seventy nautical miles away from us. They will meet us in about an hour!"

Wilcox nodded and continued to estimate the battlefield situation based on the nautical chart.

-

In the command room of the Prinz Eugen, Top and Eugen were also looking at the sea chart, judging the situation on the battlefield...

"We only have 70% of our ammunition, but we still have 90% of our fuel. However, if we run at full speed, the fuel will be consumed very quickly, so we can't take it seriously... There are two American heavy cruisers in front of us on the left, and there should be two destroyers behind them. There is Iceland on the right... It seems that the only way is to charge in head-on..."

Looking at the nautical chart, Top's brows were furrowed into knots.

Although the American cruisers only dared to stay 30 kilometers away, they were still following him! The turning space in the surrounding sea area was not very large. Most importantly, the main battleships in the rear of the United States that had been detected before were definitely rushing towards him under the guidance of the cruisers!

"Top Top, how about we break out to the southwest?" Eugen leaned forward, hiding behind Top's arm and looking at the sea chart: "The direction of the Icelandic coast over there shrinks to the southwest, can we break out there?"

"Don't even think about it. Reykjavik Bay is an important transit point and the starting point of the route to the Soviet Union. Do you think the defense there might be poor?" Top pinched Eugen's little face in anger and amusement, and teased his twin-tailed ship girl who was as cute as a little rabbit: "Don't you realize? Their posture is actually a bit like driving us into their pocket!"

"Really? Let me see... Eh? Yes..." After hearing what Top said, cute little Eugen looked at the nautical chart carefully for a long time, and finally realized that it was indeed true.

"What should we do, Top Top..." Eugen was a little uneasy, and the way she held on to her captain showed that she was a little nervous: "It looks like we are about to be surrounded..."

Top, who had already set his sights on the possible turning line of the Pan-American Neutral Zone on the map and had already started counting the time, was somewhat helpless when Eugen pulled him aside. Seeing Eugen like this, Top decided to scare her.