The decisive battle against the Third Reich

If you just look at the data, Montgomery is right.

Although the French Toulon fleet captured by the German army had 78 ships, many of them were submarines, and quite a few of these submarines were not used... The German navy lacked everything except submarine crews. This was caused by Germany's use of submarines The UK decided to impose a large-scale lockdown.

This has resulted in the fact that only five of the captured submarines have been put into use but have not yet become combat effective. The reason is that most of them are novices who need time to learn and train.

In addition, some of these captured warships are French destroyers left over from World War I... Because France did not pay attention to naval development after the war, it was difficult for Darlan to balance both large and small ships in a short period of time after taking office. In the case of a serious shortage of destroyers, France had to No reactivation of vintage World War I destroyers.

These destroyers had a high failure rate and insufficient firepower, so they were directly eliminated by Redel.

After this calculation, the total number of German naval ships is 45, including six minesweepers, and there are only 39 combat warships, which is much less than the more than 50 warships of the British Mediterranean Fleet.

If you take into account the British Navy's combat experience and familiarity with the equipment, the British Navy has nothing to worry about.

But perhaps due to his sixth sense of long-term naval battles, Lieutenant General Tovey always felt that something was wrong with this battle.

However, in the end, Vice Admiral Tovey ordered the fleet to attack according to Montgomery's orders.

Fleet A quickly crossed Houwariya (the narrowest section of the Tunisian Strait) and entered wider waters. Group B fleet followed closely, and Group C fleet stayed in the Huwari area as a rearguard.

Not long after, Group A fleet received a reconnaissance report from aerial seaplanes and discovered the enemy fleet... At this time, cruisers usually carried their own seaplanes, used catapults to take off, and landed on the water to recover after completing the mission.

Commander Major General Weber quickly ordered the battle formation to be prepared for battle.

But what is surprising is that after waiting for ten minutes, no enemy ship appeared.

"What's going on?" Major General Weber asked.

"General!" the pilot replied, "They've stopped!"

"Stopped?" Major General Weber arrived and was confused.

The German fleet should have blocked their way forward, but now it seemed that they were willing to let them pass.

When Major General Weber reported the situation to Lieutenant General Tovey, Lieutenant General Tovey ordered: "Go forward, but be careful not to get too close to the enemy!"

"Yes, General!"

Fleet A formed a battle formation and headed toward the enemy ship at a speed of 20 knots.

At a distance of 21,500 meters, Major General Weber ordered to fire under the guidance of the reconnaissance aircraft, but because the distance was too far, no one hit after a round of salvos.

Qinchuan only heard the whistling of artillery shells in the sky, and then shells exploded into sky-high water columns around the warship.

"Steady!" Redel ordered, still staying still.

This is unusual in a naval battle, as the harder to hit targets are moving targets, where the best thing to do is move quickly and make a serpentine maneuver.

"This is an old trick of the British!" Redl held up his binoculars and looked in the direction of the shells, although he couldn't see anything: "They sent the vanguard, some faster light cruisers and destroyers. The purpose is to attract us to fire, and once the battle begins, their air force will bomb us indiscriminately!"

Qin Chuan nodded to express his understanding. The key to this lies in the loading of the 130MM dual-purpose secondary gun: the shells used to deal with fighter planes and warships are different. To attack warships, grenades or armor-piercing projectiles are used, while to attack aircraft, Delayed fuse shells are required. Of course, this has been changed to "proximity fuse shells" at this time.

If it is attracted by the British vanguard and goes into battle, the warship's main air defense force, the 130MM secondary battery, will be confused because of the problem of the shells or it will be impossible to take care of both the sea and the air.

At the same time, because the enemy light cruisers and destroyers were moving at high speed, it was difficult for the German ships to hit the target even if they fired.

Therefore, the British are attracting the German navy to fire, and their air force should be flying in or hiding in the clouds to watch.

On the other hand, naval warfare in this era was more of a battle outside visual range.

That is to say, both sides have aircraft carriers and use reconnaissance aircraft to find the location of the enemy fleet. After finding it, they send carrier-based aircraft to bomb the enemy fleet indiscriminately.

In this mode of naval battle, the warships of both sides usually cannot see each other's warships, but compete in the air, ship-to-ship, and the battle in the cannon and giant ship mode is a World War I tactic.

But naval warfare in the Mediterranean had its own peculiarities.

First of all, Mediterranean countries usually do not have aircraft carriers... France and Italy do not have aircraft carriers. In fact, both countries have aircraft carriers under construction, but they were not completed because they were not completed when they surrendered.

Although the United Kingdom has an aircraft carrier, it is only a battleship converted into an aircraft carrier. It carries only 21 carrier-based aircraft and can play a very limited role.

Secondly, the Mediterranean is relatively small. With the cooperation of shore-based airports, fighter jets from both sides can easily find the location of the other side's fleet and coordinate with it (this is also the main reason why Mediterranean countries have little demand and enthusiasm for building aircraft carriers).

As a result, the probability of ship-to-ship combat within visual range of both sides increases exponentially. Just like now, the German fleet will inevitably engage in ship-to-ship battles with the British fleet in the Tunisia Strait.

It's just that both sides are patient and testing... The German army does not dare to act rashly because of the small number of aircraft, while the British army hopes that the German warships will engage in ship-to-ship battles first because of the heavy losses suffered by the aviation force.

"Woo..." Another round of shells hit the nearby sea from a distance, and the impact points were denser, but they still missed.

After thinking about it, Qin Chuan said, "Maybe we should fire!"

"What?"

"We should fire!" Qin Chuan said: "Let the other party think that we have been fooled, so that their air force will appear!"

Redel nodded, and then ordered: "Get ready for battle, move forward at full speed..."

The fleet turned on full power and headed towards the enemy ship. Then, under the guidance of the reconnaissance plane, it fired rows of shells at the British fleet. I don't know whether it was luck or the German reconnaissance plane accurately calculated the route of the British fleet. The first One salvo hit a British cruiser.

"We hit it!" the pilot reported: "It hit the enemy ship's catapult, and the aircraft on it was blown to pieces and burst into flames!"

Obviously, this was a plane that was fully fueled and ready for takeoff, otherwise there shouldn't have been a fire.

However, Lieutenant General Tovey did not feel sorry for this loss. On the contrary, he was relieved because the Germans finally responded, so that he could let the air force attack.