Chapter 26: What Must Come, Will Come

"Attention, it's on the port bow! Distance 4200 meters!"

On a converted French tugboat, a young German naval lieutenant was commanding his gunners to adjust the cannons. Just over five months ago in Narvik, these gunners had fought as part of a destroyer squadron in a final, desperate battle against the British fleet. After the naval defeat, they picked up rifles and joined the mountain infantry for arduous and outstanding combat. Their brave and tenacious performance earned each of them a shiny Iron Cross medal on their chests!

As the "Operation Sealion" gradually unfolded, several newly built Z-class destroyers of the German Navy were still undergoing equipment trials. Due to a severe shortage of escort forces, the German Navy had to make use of some vessels requisitioned from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands for modifications—weapons included old naval guns from naval warehouses, as well as artillery and anti-aircraft guns used by the army. On this tugboat of less than 300 tons, an old 105mm naval gun and a twin 37mm anti-aircraft gun were installed. Meanwhile, some naval combat personnel were temporarily reassigned to operate armed tugboats, significantly enhancing the combat capabilities of these non-professional escort vessels.

Boom!

The sound of cannon fire from afar was unusually clear. This area of the sea was between Seaborg and the Isle of Wight, over 20 nautical miles from the Isle of Wight, yet the one firing was not the British fleet that had previously entered the strait. In broad daylight, a British submarine quietly surfaced and began bombarding a German transport ship sailing alone. On the sea surface, a German ferry with a displacement of no more than 600 tons was already ablaze!

The German gunners quickly loaded the shells, made slight adjustments, and issued a combat warning to the distant target!

The lieutenant stood in front of the helm compartment, gripping the binoculars tightly. After a moment, he frowned, "Another 200 meters further!"

On the deck, the gunners were reloading and adjusting the firing parameters in an orderly manner. Since the Germans occupied the Isle of Wight, the Royal Navy had gradually dispatched most of its submarines into the English Channel to attack German transport ships. However, due to facing mostly near-coastal and inland vessels with a displacement of no more than 1000 tons, and with southern ports heavily damaged by German bombings, torpedo resupply became increasingly difficult. British submarine captains preferred to surface and use deck guns to attack targets, resulting in such artillery duels occurring frequently in the past two weeks. However, compared to their German counterparts, British submarine captains had much less impressive records: if surfaced during the day, they could be attacked by the German Luftwaffe or naval escort vessels at any time; at night, German ships all obediently stayed within harbors protected by anti-submarine nets, rendering British submarines ineffective.

Boom!

The shells landed closer, not enough to directly threaten the British submarine above, but certainly enough to make the British sailors aboard this armed German tugboat take notice. In usual circumstances, the British wouldn't engage in combat, but what unfolded before the Germans surprised them greatly: instead of fleeing, the British submarine abandoned the wounded German ferry and swiftly approached in floating status, its deck gun rapidly firing at this armed German tugboat!

Are they engaging in a gun battle with us?

The lieutenant didn't have time to think much and immediately ordered the 37-millimeter gun mounted at the stern to join the battle. Back and forth between the two vessels, the gunfire ranged from 4000 meters to within 1000 meters. British shells hit the ship twice, while German gunners, unwilling to be outdone, first scored hits on the British submarine with the twin-mounted anti-aircraft gun, causing casualties on the submarine's deck. Then, the 105-millimeter naval gun scored a direct hit, blasting a large hole in its stern. The British submarine had no time to escape at this point, but at the last moment, it unexpectedly fired two torpedoes. Seeing no way to evade them, the German commander hastily ordered the crew to abandon ship...

A massive explosion instantly destroyed the German armed tugboat, but the wounded British submarine could no longer submerge. The gunners who came up continued to use their deck guns to shell the previously damaged German ferry. However, before long, several Stukas appeared, and with practiced precision, they sent the British submarine to the bottom of the sea in a single dive.

They're insane! The British are insane!

Clutching a lifebuoy, the lieutenant stared blankly at the scene of mutual destruction. If Narvik was an act of courage and wisdom, the behavior of this British submarine was irrational! Had the cruel war situation driven these usually cautious Brits to become like rabid dogs? Earlier in the morning, four British cruisers rushed into the strait, only to be sunk by the German air force before the German navy's escort vessels and submarines could even respond. Now even the British submarine had become frenzied. What even more insane things would happen next?

At 3:12 p.m. on September 8, 1940, when a Ju-88 routine flight passed over the western side of the English Channel, it suddenly spotted an unprecedentedly large fleet on the sea!

Four battleships and battle cruisers, 11 light and heavy cruisers, and 63 destroyers and escort vessels formed such a massive fleet, even outnumbering the entire current fleet of the German navy by half!

The intelligence quickly reached the German headquarters in Amsterdam. As the planner of the operation, Logan calculated with a pencil on paper, "They're a bit early, it seems the British still value their own homeland forces. With only a few thousand casualties, they're already in a hurry! If the casualties were all colonial troops, they might just turn a blind eye!"

"Hypocritical human rights!" Richtofen commented disdainfully.

"They'll die sooner or later anyway!"

Logan muttered a phrase the Germans didn't quite understand. The British had guessed the beginning once again: before the German navy sealed off the Skagerrak, more than 140 barges, ferries, and small cargo ships had already gathered inside, shuttling back and forth between the coast, transporting troops and supplies stockpiled on White Island to the landing site on the British mainland. German escort vessels and armed merchant ships withdrew from the Skagerrak, all of them now dedicated to protecting the transport ships shuttling between the southern coast of White Island and the northern ports of France. As a result, if the British navy only dispatched one or two main force ships, it would be completely insufficient to threaten the German landing site!

But the British still couldn't guess the ending, because they completely ignored the German's creativity and determination to create the third and most important landing site with limited resources!

"Conduct comprehensive reconnaissance of the Strait of Dover area. If British ships are spotted, try to sink them!" Logan's suggestion sounded more like a direct order.

Richtofen adopted every word of this "suggestion", following the original manuscript of Operation Sea God, launching the landing for the third landing site only after the main British fleet entered the English Channel, which was the highlight of the entire plan!

As the British main fleet entered the English Channel, it was like a unique signal to start. The German military machinery deployed around the strait began to accelerate. At various airports in northern France, ground crews were busy with final checks on Ju-87 dive bombers and He-111 medium-range bombers, all loaded with bombs or torpedoes. In makeshift operational offices near the runways, squadron commanders explained the latest battle plans to pilots and bombardiers using blackboards and maps. In ports like Cherbourg, Ar-95 and He-115 moored near the docks revealed their menacing profiles, with their bellies full of round torpedoes. Their engines occasionally started and stopped to ensure they were in top condition when ordered to depart.

At 3:28 p.m., the first squadron of Stukas took off from Cherbourg Airport and appeared over the British fleet. In the eyes of the German pilots, the British ships on the sea formed a strange arrowhead: over twenty cruisers and destroyers formed a goose-shaped array in front of the fleet. Any German aircraft attempting to attack from the front would have to withstand their dense anti-aircraft firepower. About a mile away, the central group, with four large warships at its core, followed, namely Hood, Queen Elizabeth, Malaya, and Revenge. Each of these gray-white warships was a coveted prey for the German navy and air force! Bringing up the rear was a fan-shaped array of cruisers and destroyers, with each gun on board aimed skyward, indicating that they had identified the impending attack from the air rather than the sea!

Following special orders from the operational command, German pilots "negatively engaged" like they rarely did: they avoided the most heavily defended areas of the British fleet and launched attacks from the north, bombing in a manner that appeared indecisive – barely diving before releasing their bombs. As a result, the fiercely defensive firepower of the British fleet hardly had any effect. After more than a minute of fighting, the Germans only lost one Stuka, their bombs falling aimlessly on the sea, splashing some British destroyers and luckily damaging one. With little effort from the British, they abandoned the destroyer, which was left drifting alone on the sea.

As the British focused all their attention on the English Channel, German long-range reconnaissance aircraft also began thorough pre-battle reconnaissance of the designated area: 24 modified Do17 long-range reconnaissance aircraft took off from northwest France, flying in a fan-shaped search formation over the vast Celtic Sea. This constituted the largest concentrated reconnaissance effort in the history of the German air force.

Shortly after, six Ju-88s took off from Cherbourg, flying over the Cornwall Peninsula in England into the Bristol Bay. The aerial reconnaissance showed that the British anti-aircraft guns in Cornwall had not increased in number, and there were only a few gunboats and patrol boats in Bristol Bay. Obviously, whether old or new, destroyers and escort vessels had already joined the sequence to escort the main force of the homeland fleet.