Chapter 6: The Falsified History (5)

  I'm sorry, alibbcy. I've been too busy lately and couldn't find time to write. As compensation, there will be two updates on Saturday, including the Battle of Dorgesh-Sha and at least 7,000 words. Whispering under the starry sky, haha, you guessed it right, a condensed version of the landing battle, as well as an impending chaotic battle that will catch everyone off guard...

  November 14, 1914, 3:00 AM, Scapa Bay, Orkney Islands.

  The night was deep, the waves gently rocked the Lionheart war cruiser, swaying the tens of thousands of tons of steel monster lightly, accompanied by the pure white moonlight in the Northern Hemisphere, and the North Atlantic seemed to be playing a lullaby with all its might.

  Due to the wartime blackout, the Lion-class battlecruiser was pitch black. The commander's cabin door at the rear of the island superstructure was closed, but through the portholes and a thick layer of curtains, the sailor on night watch could vaguely see a faint light.

  Although the night was deep, David Beatty was still at work. A thick batch of German naval telegrams deciphered by the Naval Intelligence Department lay on his desk, and Beatty leaned back in his chair, his thick fingers tapping out a rhythmless beat on the steel plate of the cabin, his bloodshot eyes fixed intently on a small rust stain on the ceiling, repeating a sentence over and over again with a look of abstraction.

  "What does Doggerland represent?!"

  Although the Navy's intelligence department had brought in linguists, mathematicians and technical experts to work on breaking German naval ciphers, progress was slow. The German naval intercepts passed on or loaned to Betty were still largely incomprehensible, full of doubts and guesses, but the recurrence of place names in these intercepts made Betty sense that something fishy was going on.

  "Xī Lài Mǔ, mò fēi... nǐ yǔ wǒ xiǎng fā yí zhì?" Bèi dì jiāng tā de líng guāng yī shǎn wú xiàn fàng dà, qiāo gōng jī shì gāng bǎn de shǒu zhǐ tíng dòng le yī xiē, bō yún jiàn wù hào rán kāi lǎng.

  ****

  "On the morning of November 14, 1914, Vice Admiral Hipper led a decoy fleet consisting of Moltke, Von der Tann and Blücher out to sea. The task assigned to us by the vice admiral was to destroy any ship flying the British flag on the North Sea. I and my Moltke were determined to carry out the vice admiral's spirited combat order, but from the narrow Heligoland Bight to the wide Dogger Bank, we did not find any floating object related to Britain except for neutral and national merchant ships. At 7:23, the furious Vice Admiral scolded the patrol fleet in the Jade Bay, then forced the temporarily assigned intelligence officer and communications officer of the decoy fleet to send a telegram with absurd content to the Navy Department, and ordered the decoy fleet to turn around, targeting the farthest end of the German naval patrol line. In the next five hours, we did something that no nation had done in hundreds of years, which made me proud!"

  Excerpt from the long voyage diary of the cruiser "Mao Qi".

  ****

  "My cruiser squadron discovered three British minelayers in the southern sea area of the Heligoland Bight 100 miles defense line. In order to avoid the threat posed by the British minelayers to the navigation route of the Heligoland Bight, my fleet decided to drive them away and destroy them."

  On November 14, 1914 at 7:39, the German Navy's General Staff telegraph room received a telegram from the battlecruiser Moltke, which was on a "fighting cruise". The telegraph operator translated the chaotic code combination and was immediately dazzled by the **unbridled content of the telegram.

  "General Xilaimu, even if switching concepts is your style and acting arbitrarily is your habit, you still can't be so blatant and lawless..."

  The telegraph operator's complaint caught the attention of the duty intelligence officer, who took over the telegram and glanced at it casually, only to feel dizzy and shocked, and still felt frightened after signing his name on the telegram paper.

  The duty officer walked towards the office of the Chief of Naval Staff, scratching his head and grumbling to himself: "Our Heligoland patrol fleet has already taken the British coastline as its patrol line. Under this tight net, can the British minelayer still infiltrate the 100-mile defense circle of Heligoland, which exists in name only? Slyem, if you want to provoke a fight, at least come up with a more plausible excuse!"

  The intelligence officer was certain that this leaky telegram would be rejected by the Chief of Naval Staff, General Hertzendorf, without mercy. The duty officer admired the offensive-minded Wang Haitie and decided to help him out. However, before the duty intelligence officer could articulate the reasons that had been swirling in his mind, the calm and rational Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Haining-Feng-Herzendorf, surprisingly agreed to Wang Haitie's request.

  "It's time for General Ingelhorn to make his move......" The duty officer left with a look of astonishment, and the office returned to calm. General Khartzenov pulled open the blinds and gazed out at William's Charlottenburg Palace, saying coldly.

  ****

  November 14, 1914, 50 miles northwest of Harwich Port, England.

  British auxiliary vessels and trawlers are laying anti-submarine nets off Harwich, while HMS Chatham and Melbourne patrol to the left and right.

  Since the outbreak of war, frequent mine strikes and submarine ambushes have made British ports windy, and on November 1, the sinking of the battleship Audacious in the desolate Bay of Wille has pushed this fear to a climax. As a result, observers in the lookout towers scattered along the long coastline of Britain almost report the discovery of U-boats every day, even patrol boats off the west coast of Ireland often come to join in the fun. In order to prevent German mine-laying submarines and disguised mine-laying ships from visiting, a three-dimensional anti-submarine alert system consisting of destroyers, torpedo boats, flying boats, and anti-submarine nets has been built from Scapa Bay in the far north to Sunderland Harbour in the northeast and Falmouth Military Port and Portsmouth Cadet Base in southern Britain.

  Under the guidance of technical officers sent by the Navy Department, robust British sailors braved the chilly sea breeze in the North Sea on a clear morning and lowered the anti-submarine net with explosive tubes vertically into the water. Divers were responsible for securing the anti-submarine net in place. After three days of laying work, the threat from German U-boats was like a shadow following them everywhere. At 9:00 am, the anti-submarine net at Harwich Port was finally laid out, and the entire Harwich fleet could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

  "Harwich is safe..." Rear Admiral William J. Napier, former commander of the Second Cruiser Squadron and newly appointed Commander of the Harwich Force, said lightly to his staff on the quarterdeck of the light cruiser Chatham.

  Just as Major Napier was confidently giving orders, a humming noise like cutting through iron blocks spread through the air. The old soldiers who had participated in the Battle of Heligoland Bight panicked and scrambled to find cover, while the newly recruited soldiers and the officer cadets from Portsmouth stared blankly at the sky with cold hands and feet.

  At 9:17, a blazing fireball plunged into the sea surface about 10 meters away from a trawler, immediately bursting with dazzling light, deafening roar, flying shrapnel and soaring water column!

  A 50-ton trawler was torn to shreds in an instant under the impact of the explosion, without even leaving a small piece of plank. The Melbourne cruiser, which was more than 30 meters away from the trawler, shook violently under the impact of the shell, and the new sailor who was stunned like a wooden chicken was thrown out and disappeared into the whirlpool. The old soldiers hiding behind the machine gun shield felt countless shrapnel dancing past their foreheads, continuously hitting the weak steel plate of the cruiser, making a piercing screeching sound, and laughing savagely as they sank into flesh and blood.

  "305 high-explosive shell! That's the flagship of the Pacific Fleet!" The relaxed expression on Admiral Napiers face froze instantly, he could no longer recall the sincere expectations given to him by the Navy Department in times of crisis, he could no longer recall the longing of the Harwich fleet officers who had lost their backbone and mainstay, he could no longer recall the sentimental feelings of a scholar that he had felt just seconds ago. The second and last commander of the Harwich Fleet, like Rear Admiral Reginald Tyrwhitt in those years, was left with only despair in the face of tragedy.

  The second salvo of 305mm heavy guns came in succession, sweeping away the upper structure of a thousand-ton auxiliary warship, and high-quality steel was twisted into various shapes by shell fragments; The anti-submarine net fixed with floating anchors and steel cables was shaken left and right by the full-metal storm impact produced by high-explosive shells.

  The boiling sea and the bloodthirsty air brought Lieutenant General Napier back to his senses, he hastily issued a retreat order, reported the German sneak attack to the Admiralty, requested Admiral David Beatty's 1st Battlecruiser Squadron to counterattack, and let the Harwich harbor battery open fire to cover the retreat.

  Harwich Harbour is located on the east coast of England at the confluence of the River Orwell and the River Stour, approximately 20 km from Ipswich Port and opposite Felixstowe across the river. As a key military location, Harwich Harbour has an important military port in the southeast of England with well-equipped defensive facilities, including a seven-storey circular reinforced concrete gun emplacement built in 1543, four 305mm fortress guns, eight 234mm coastal defence guns, as well as satellite gun emplacements on either side of the circular gun emplacement and 105mm quick-firing guns.

  According to the Dogger Bank Ambush plan, a decoy fleet led by Wang Haitian would launch a surprise attack on the British coastline, stimulating the sensitive and fragile nerves of the subjects of the British Empire, forcing the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron to counterattack. Surrounding the British coastline with small-scale harassment battles apparently did not meet the psychological expectations of the great opening and closing of the Zhainan, so Wang Haitian did something that no nation had been able to do for hundreds of years - "bombarding the homeland of the Empire where the sun never sets, sending a naval landing force to fight on the island of Britain."