Chapter Eleven: The British Counterattack (5)

  In early February 1915, the Devonport dockyard was a flurry of colour and champagne as both Royal Navy personnel and citizens of the British Empire celebrated the completion of HMS Warspite, the second Queen Elizabeth-class battleship.

  Although the performance parameters of the German Scharnhorst-class battlecruiser were closer to those of a fast battleship, the British media still stubbornly believed that the Queen Elizabeth class was the world's first fast battleship in order to boost morale.

  To be honest, the Queen Elizabeth-class battleship is a warship with excellent performance and outstanding advantages. Its standard displacement is 29,150 tons, using all oil-fired boilers, designed speed exceeds 25 knots, equipped with 4 twin-mounted 15-inch main guns, and the side armor belt and turret main armor reach 13 inches. In early January 1915, the first ship of the Queen Elizabeth class, HMS Elizabeth, was completed, and less than a month later, the second ship of the Queen Elizabeth class, HMS Warpite, was built ahead of schedule thanks to the efforts of the workers at Devonport Dockyard.

  By this time, the Grand Fleet's main force had grown to an intimidating twenty-seven dreadnoughts, including twenty-two battleships and five battlecruisers, while the German High Seas Fleet across the North Sea had only seventeen dreadnoughts and five battlecruisers. At the end of January, the Germans launched an offensive on the Eastern Front, and in order to tie down Russian forces, six capital ships of the Grand Fleet were blockading and intimidating the Gulf of Riga, while at the beginning of February, the newly repaired Moltke and the newly completed Deutschland followed Seydlitz on a cruise training exercise off southern Sweden. Wilhelmshaven and Jade Bay now had only thirteen battleships, and the Grand Fleet regained its long-awaited numerical superiority. The Royal Navy was itching to take back control of the North Sea.

  Since the mutual declaration of war between Germany and Britain on August 4, the Germans have been using their submarines and mines to force the Royal Navy into an asymmetric warfare quagmire. On November 1, 1914, the British battleship Audacious was sunk by a mine, on November 26, 1914, the pre-dreadnought battleship Bulwark was sunk by a mine off the coast of Scotland, and on January 1, 1915, the pre-dreadnought battleship Formidable was torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat off Start Point. These were just some of the losses suffered by major warships; in the busy English Channel transport routes, patrol lines, and from the Thames estuary to the north coast of Scotland, British light cruisers, destroyers, and merchant ships were frequently sunk or damaged, while under the cover of the High Seas Fleet, German light cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and even airships carrying only a machine gun or a few 50 kg aerial bombs could operate with impunity in the North Sea.

  It was not that the Royal Navy did nothing, the Battle of Heligoland Bight, the Harwich Force, which was responsible for defending the southern part of the North Sea, suffered heavy losses, and the raid before the Battle of Dogger Bank broke the last bit of morale of the Harwich Force. The British lost two battlecruisers in the Battle of Dogger Bank, even if the Indomitable and Intrepid were not present, a British fast fleet with one Tiger, two Lion-class and two Invincible-class battlecruisers was no match for the German battlecruiser squadron.

  In January 1915, the unfavorable situation in the North Sea was finally changed. The British regained their long-lost confidence in victory. Taking advantage of the Grand Fleet's advance to the east, the Admiralty put forward a plan to regain control of the southern part of the North Sea and cut off Germany's transportation lines in the North Sea.

  On January 26, two Minotaur-class armoured cruisers of the British Second Cruiser Squadron and four Warrior-class armoured cruisers sailed out of Scapa Flow to sweep the North Sea, sinking the German light cruiser München of the Third Reconnaissance Group patrolling off the Horns Reef.

  On 1 February, the battleship HMS Iron Duke was completed and joined Admiral Sir David Beatty's First Battle Cruiser Squadron to form a fast division of battlecruisers with HMS Queen Elizabeth.

  On February 3, the long-dormant Scapa Flow came to life. The British decided to substitute action for exercises and to bring those two Queen Elizabeths into fighting trim as quickly as possible through battle cruising and low-intensity sea warfare. Accordingly, Beatty's First Battle Cruiser Squadron put to sea again, five battle cruisers and the First Light Cruiser Squadron screening the two Queens along the Danish coast line.

  "Commander, just ahead is what the Germans call their 200-mile defense circle..." Vice Admiral Lampedusa of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron pointed into the fog-shrouded sea with a hint of flair. "Shall we conduct a firepower reconnaissance?"

  "Next time, then..." Betty picked up the telescope and tried to pierce through the thick fog behind which the young empire's determination towards the ocean was hidden. With a hint of spring in her voice, she said: "This is just the first long-distance sea trial for Elizabeth and Abhorrence when they form a fighting force, I will bravely charge into the Heligoland Bight defense circle built by my old friend!"

  ****

  In January, a German fleet consisting of six battleships and seven pre-dreadnoughts suddenly appeared, quietly blockading the Gulf of Finland, seizing and sinking Russian merchant ships, even making a show of landing in Riga Bay.

  The German High Seas Fleet put a lot of pressure on the Russians. Before the four Gangut-class dreadnoughts were completed, Admiral Essen had only the French-built pre-dreadnought Tsessarevich, the Russian knock-off of the British Glory, two St Andrew-class pre-dreadnoughts built after the Russo-Japanese War, and the British-built armoured cruiser Rurik II to hold the fort. The Baltic Fleet with four pre-dreadnoughts, five armoured cruisers, four light cruisers, sixty-two destroyers and twelve submarines was not enough to fill the gap between the German blockade fleet.

  In the face of such a menacing situation, the Russians had to resort to an iron barrel formation, all ships retreated to the Helsinki and Tallinn bases in the Gulf of Finland and Kronstadt, using destroyers, mines and coastal artillery to blockade the waterway of the Gulf of Finland. In order to prevent possible German landings, 200,000 Russian troops were withdrawn and reinforced in the Baltic Sea.

  Despite the mine blockade of the Gulf of Finland and support from the army, a mood of failure still spread among Russian sailors like the most terrible plague. The morale of the Baltic Fleet had fallen to zero, just like Russia's cold winter, and Admiral Nikolai Essen, the enterprising commander of the Baltic Fleet, was powerless against it.

  Fortunately, Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak stepped forward. The 42-year-old Kolchak was absolutely an outlier among the mediocre and conservative Russian naval elite, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Naval Academy, fluent in multiple foreign languages, and part-time oceanographer and cartographer for the Arctic expedition, insisted on using active tactics to keep the German fleet as far away from the coast as possible.

  On January 26, 1915, at the insistence of Golchakov, four Ilya Muromets strategic bombers bombed the blockade fleet.

  Ilya Muromets was the world's first four-engine heavy bomber aircraft, with a speed of 137 km/h (85 mph), ceiling of 4,000 m (13,124 ft) and range of 540 km (335 mi). The crew consisted of between four to eight members. It could be armed with up to eight machine guns, had flight instruments including navigation and bombing sights, and was the first aircraft fitted with an electrically powered bomb release mechanism. The aircraft's payload capacity was 400 kg (882 lb), which could be increased to 700–800 kg (1,543–1,764 lb) in overload conditions.

  This was the first fleet air battle in human history, although it foreshadowed the end of big warships with giant guns, but in 1915, the ability of bombers was ruthlessly humiliated. Although the training outline for the High Seas Fleet compiled by Wang Haitong had a new subject called fleet anti-aircraft defense, the well-trained German gunners were still at a loss when facing unfamiliar anti-aircraft warfare and set many firsts in the chaos: the first formation of an anti-aircraft array, the first time the 88mm high-angle secondary gun was adjusted to its maximum angle, and the first time enemy planes were fired upon.

  A ten-minute air raid, four Ilya Muromets strategic bombers hastily dropped a total of one ton of ammunition on the German blockade fleet and strafed with machine guns. The results were only a few scratches on the right armor plate of the Border Governor, a few feet of holes in the lifeboat of the Magdeburg light cruiser, and a few bloodstains on the stern of the destroyer B-98. A total of two German sailors were killed in the air raid and four were injured.

  Although the air raid failed, Colonel Golchak did not lose heart, for as commander of the mine-laying flotilla he still had a crack squadron of minelayers and Russia's long winter nights.

  ****

  Under pressure from the Army, Wang Haitie became the commander-in-chief of Operation Albion. Like Admiral Hipper at the beginning of the war, the neurasthenic Wang Haitie had to hold two posts simultaneously: Commander of the First Scouting Group and Commander of the Baltic Sea Blockade Squadron.

  The Albion operation has been going on for a month, the dull life on board and the Baltic Fleet's inability to put out to sea have made the officers and men of the fleet slightly slack in spirit. However, Wang Haitian saw the hidden fangs of the polar bear from the unusual air raid actions of the Russians. It is clear that the Russians have not given up their counterattack, they are waiting for an opportunity in secret.

  Wang Haitie tried to convene a meeting of the fleet commanders, but at the beginning of February, the news of the first reconnaissance fleet's battle cruise in the Norwegian Sea and the imminent completion of the Deutschland distracted him. On February 2, Wang Haitie temporarily attended the completion ceremony of the Deutschland, and on February 4, the Berlin Naval Headquarters named Wang Haitie to attend a high-level meeting of the Berlin Navy to discuss how to respond to the recent turbulent situation of the Grand Fleet.

  Wang Haitie, exhausted from the division of labor, had no time to attend to the specific affairs of the blockade fleet. Before leaving the ship on February 2, Wang Haitie strictly ordered the blockade fleet not to approach the Russian coastline and immediately entrusted the fleet to Vice Commander, Fourth Battleship Squadron General Wilhelm-Suhon.

  This resolution was reasonable at the time, but Su Xiong Lieutenant General disappointed Wang Haitao's expectations. After February 6th, this decision became the best excuse for those who deliberately targeted Wang Haitao, eventually evolving into a storm.

  On the morning of February 6, the Imperial Army Intelligence Department learned that the Russians were secretly transferring troops from the Baltic coastal defense forces. Generals von Hindenburg and Ludendorff requested that the fleet take decisive action to prevent Russian troop movements to reinforce the Eastern Front. In contrast to Admiral Schmidt's clear understanding of the essence of Operation Albion, Vice-Admiral Schmidt seemed somewhat feverish in his head. He ordered the Fourth Battle Squadron to bombard the western coast of ?sel Island and approach the coastline, making a show of landing operations.

  At noon on February 6, Wang Haitie boarded the supply ship to return to the flagship of the blockade fleet, Lützow. Dusty and tired, he found that the seven old battleships of the Fourth Battle Squadron had disappeared, and there were loud cannon sounds in the direction of Hiiumaa Island.

  Wang Haitie stormed into the fleet command tower, her anger palpable. Before she could even ask a question, Deputy Commander Su Xiongzhong hurried over, his eyes red-rimmed, and handed her a telegram.

  "General, what's going on? Has the Magdeburg light cruiser sunk?" Wang Haitian, with a bandaged face and an inexplicable knot in his heart, cracked a joke that transcended time and space. He hesitated to take the telegram until General Su Xiong spat out a few words that made Wang Haitian go crazy, finally changing his expression. With a loud roar, he snatched the telegram from General Su's hand.

  "Commander, I regret to inform you that Colonel Oden has made the ultimate sacrifice in the Falkland Islands!"

  Is Bernhard von Oden dead?! Heidi Wang's eyes turned black, and a dizzying sensation washed over her like a tidal wave. Even Su Xiong's quick reflexes couldn't catch the falling Heidi Wang. The command tower of the Lev Tsof battleship was in chaos, when suddenly, a muffled explosion sound came from the direction of the coastline.

  There's a warship that's been hit or has struck a mine! Having participated in and commanded two naval battles, the experienced "old general" Wang Haitian was familiar with this sound and involuntarily took a cold breath.

  "General, something's wrong! The Brunswick has struck a mine!"