V4CH38: Attack

　　The Royal Navy heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire, a 13,300-ton displacement behemoth, was perfectly protected by her 110mm thick armor and built-in mine protection compartments, while her eight massive 204mm guns were enough to send enemy ships of her class to a cold hell.

　　The powerful steam engine inside her provided 80,000 horsepower, which allowed her to perform dazzling maneuvers like a destroyer and gave her a top speed of over 30 knots.

　　"This is the perfect cruiser." Captain Cartson, the captain of the Devonshire, looked down the bridge at the powerful guns pointing straight ahead and sighed with glee as he imagined himself commanding the elite warship and sending those damned Nazi ships to the bottom of the sea one by one.

　　"Captain Cartson, how far are we from our destination." A voice pulled the captain back from his hallucinatory dream.

　　Feeling a bit dissatisfied, the captain turned his head to find out who had broken his beautiful dream.

　　The first thing that entered Cartson's eyes was a straight fawn-colored uniform with two neat rows of decorations on the breast pocket, and the fiery red collar badge and that beautiful crown with a diamond-shaped star emblem on the shoulder testified to the identity of the owner of the uniform.

　　"Ah, Lieutenant Colonel Sanders, what brings you here, why do you want to see me?" Cartson immediately said with a smile on his face.

　　"Nothing much, Captain." Sanders knew that his previous questions were in vain, this naval officer did not listen to anything at all.

　　"I just want to ask when we will reach our destination."

　　"Oh, my dear Lieutenant Colonel , at the rate we're going, I guess we'll reach our destination early tomorrow morning." Cartson replied with a smile.

　　"Well, Captain, you know the importance of the mission we are undertaking, and I hope to be able to land this night. Is it possible for you to speed up our advance and whether we will be able to reach our landing site before midnight tonight?" Sanders frowned and asked.

　　"That's hard to do, Lieutenant Colonel. You must realize that we are on the edge of enemy-controlled waters and near a underwater minefield laid by the Norwegians. Any trouble here wouldn't surprise me." Cartson said as he turned to look out the window at the vastness of the sea.

　　"If possible, I would certainly like to use the fastest speed to pass through this place where there are hidden dangers everywhere. But the present situation does not allow me to do so. We have to guard against enemy submarine attacks, and intelligence says that the enemy may send submarines to patrol these waters. If we go at full speed, we won't be able to use our underwater listeners, and our own noise will completely drown out the sound of the German submarines.

　　The noise from the ships running at high speed will probably expose our position to those submarines. We are not worried about which German submarines that are not afraid of death will dare to attack us, but they will draw those damned German torpedo boats and planes over. You know it would be dangerous to be attacked by torpedo boats and bombers in such a place. I'm not willing to take that kind of unnecessary risk with my ship, so for now we'll just have to go at this speed." Cartson looked as if he could not help.

　　"But Captain Cartson, you have to understand the enormity of our mission, even London is taking this operation very seriously." Sanders thought that borrowing the name of command might add a little urgency to the stubborn Commodore. But he was clearly failing, and Cartson didn't look like he cared one bit about that.

　　"Commander, I know the importance of this mission, and I know how it will help our empire. But this is the ocean, not London. This is my ship, this is my fleet. You are responsible for your mission, and I am responsible for my ship and crew. On land you are under the orders of your War Office, but at sea you are under my command, and the timing of this mission does not specify when and where we must arrive, and those who made the plans understand the difficulty of navigation at sea. My mission is to get you and your men safely to Norway and then to get you safely back to England. The fleet must reach its destination stealthily and safely, and this speed is the limit of my ability to accomplish this task. I must bring this valuable fleet back to England intact, now that the Royal Navy has little strength left to expend." Cartson said seriously.

　　"...understood." Sanders knew he could not convince this naval officer, he had to give up his opinion for the time being.

　　"Then I'll take my leave, I still have to get my soldiers ready for the landing, by the way, you said we were arriving early tomorrow morning, is that right?"

　　"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel, I can assure you of that." Feeling very uncomfortable with this Army officer who not only pressed himself with London, but also tried to interfere with his command of the fleet, Cartson raised his binoculars and pretended to observe the situation at sea, and replied coldly without looking back, adding a hint of impatience to his usual gentle tone.

　　Sanders, hearing the meaning of the captain's tone, did not want to make a fool of himself, so, he turned around and left the bridge after giving a standard military salute.

　　As Sanders walked down the stairs inside the bridge, he found his adjutant waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs with several other officers.

　　"Sir, how did the questioning go." His adjutant asked.

　　"We will land early tomorrow morning, have all enlisted men ready, and after dinner all officers will meet in my room to discuss the details of the landing."

　　"What! First thing tomorrow morning, then don't we need to move in daylight? What does this captain think, landing in broad daylight under the noses of those Germans, that's asking us to die!" The adjutant said loudly.

　　"Enough, Captain Willis, you need to watch your tone, you are attacking a senior officer." Sanders stopped his adjutant from continuing to complain, then he lowered his voice and said, "Let's talk about what we have in my room, it's a bad influence to complain about a decision made by a senior officer here, is that understood?"

　　"As you command, Commander." The adjutant nodded his head in agreement.

　　Sanders led his men out of the bridge and headed down the deck toward the officers' quarters at the stern.

　　"Now I'm feeling really bored, we're just walking back and forth in S-shape at sea, and I doubt we'll actually reach our destination tomorrow morning." One of the officers looked at a destroyer that was turning in front of the side of the battleship and said.

　　"I take the captain's word for it, he will be responsible for what he has promised, I say that the Royal Navy regards honor as their life, he will surely fulfill his promise." Sanders also turned his head towards the destroyer and looked at it.

　　Suddenly, a sharp alarm sounded violently from that destroyer in the distance, which still sounded heart-rending even from such a distance.

　　"What's happening, have we found the enemy?" The Army officers turned around and gathered at the deck railing, all of them looking suspiciously at the battleship that was whistling madly.

　　"Alert, alert, all hands to your stations, all men to their battle positions. Alert, alert." The first officer's command came from the huge speaker at the top of the bridge, followed by a deafening battle alarm from the Devonshire.

　　The deck of the battleship instantly became busy, and countless sailors came out of their hatches, large and small, and rushed to their respective posts. The gunners hurriedly took out the shells from the ammunition boxes and then desperately turned the steering wheel, the 40mm guns pointed straight up into the air and searched back and forth for enemy planes. The huge turrets of the secondary guns also began to rotate slowly, pointing their muzzles in any direction where they might encounter the enemy. The sailors shouted encouragement to each other, no one asked, no one doubted, all were excited to be in the battle, the Royal Navy still maintained their pride and high morale. The whole battleship was now like an enraged hedgehog, showing its sharp spikes in all directions.

　　"Where is the enemy? Why don't I see them?" Captain Willis asked to Sanders.

　　"I don't know, I can't find anything." Sanders also looked puzzled as he looked at the destroyer that had stopped turning and was desperately trying to turn around in the other direction, not understanding what was going on.

　　"Excuse me, are we encountering the enemy?" One of Sanders' officers asked eagerly as he pulled an old sailor who was running past them.

　　"I'm not sure, you'd better go to the officer's room, it's not safe on deck. Please let go of me, I have work to do, sir." The old sailor fought to free himself from the officer's grasp and hurriedly ran toward the stern of the ship.

　　"He's right, let's go to the cabin, we're not helping anything by staying on deck except getting in the way of the soldiers."

　　Sanders led his officers in the same haste toward the nearby officers' mess. Sanders noticed that the Devonshire's deck had suddenly begun to shake, and the warship had apparently picked up speed as the Devonshire was now struggling to turn.

　　"Now I feel something is wrong." Sanders stopped in his tracks, the soldier's special premonition of danger making him feel that there must be big trouble this time.

　　"Boom!" A dull explosion sounded from not far away, and Sanders hurriedly turned his head to look at the place where the explosion occurred. As a result, he only saw a thick column of water falling from the side of the destroyer that was panicking and turning in front of him, the destroyer's hull was obviously twisted by some force and then returned to its original shape, but the ear-splitting noise of steel rubbing together still came clearly into Sanders' ears. The sight before him stunned the lieutenant colonel.

　　"Is it shelling?" Sanders searched the nearby sea with both eyes to find out where the shelling was coming from.

　　At that moment another dull explosion rang out from the destroyer, and a similarly huge column of water rose from the side of the battleship again. The splash even exceeded the height of the mast.

　　"It's a torpedo!"

　　Sanders finally understood why the battleship had turned in such a panic; she was dodging a threat approaching from the bottom of the sea. Unfortunately she discovered this threat too late, and after a last ditch effort was unable to avoid the catastrophe.

　　"Oh God, there's a German submarine here!" Sanders shrieked, "We're being attacked by a German submarine."

　　He stared dumbfounded at the poor destroyer, which had now been torn in half by the torpedoes, the stern half submerged in the sea, the bow part lifted out of the water and continued to rise slowly, and the red bottom covered with gourd vines could now be clearly seen below the battleship's draft line. Those sailors who survived the wreck cried out as they fell from the gradually vertical deck into the sea and were then sucked into the hull by the vortex that swirled around the ship. Those sailors who escaped the wreck were trying hard to swim out of range of the wreck, knowing that the next vortex would be much larger and would be the destroyer's last struggle.

　　The Devonshire did not slow down as she continued her steering motion, and Sanders watched the destroyer shudder violently on the surface, then sink with an unbelievable speed, accompanied by the wailing sound of twisted and broken metal.

　　Devonshire drove past the wreckage of the poor destroyer as fast as she could, there was nothing she could do for the sailors struggling for help in the sea now, because the underwater demon that had sunk them must still be there peering at the situation, and she couldn't risk being attacked and stop to save the poor men. The sailors could only desperately throw life-saving gear into the sea and shout encouragement to their comrades who were struggling in the water.

　　"Damn German submarines, these poor sailors, can't we help them?!" Looking at the tragic scene in front of him, Willis called out to Sanders in grief and anger. But Sanders did not answer his question, he looked at the men and scowled, his eyes full of hatred and anger, he swore in his heart that one day he would pay this blood debt to the Germans.

　　At that moment there were two more violent explosions coming from the direction of the stern, these two explosions were almost simultaneous, but what was strange to Sanders was that it sounded as if they came from different directions.

　　"Commander, our other two destroyers, they've been hit too." One of the officers shouted loudly and snappily. Somehow, he had climbed up to the platform of the aircraft catapult high up on the stern of the ship, and now he was pointing at the smoke crutches rising from the two destroyers not far away and shouting.

　　"How did we get into this mess." Sanders muttered as he looked at the two battleships, which were a full 1,500 meters apart.

　　"This must be it, we must have encountered more than just a submarine... God, we were so foolish to enter an elaborate ambush."

　　Sanders remembered that his father had told him about the same encounter in World War I. His father, a naval officer, had ended up in an ambush circle of two German submarines while his convoy was transporting supplies to France, and the entire convoy had been sent to the bottom of the sea by the Germans. Every time he talked about that terrible night, the old man's eyes would be filled with fear, followed by tears, he was the only survivor of that massacre, where he lost all his friends and men and his pride and confidence.

　　Was it his turn now? Sanderson felt his scalp tingle

　　"This is not the Great War , and this is not a defenseless merchant ship, this is an elite warship of the Royal Navy. What happened to my father must not befall my own head!" Sanderson consoled himself, but when he looked up at the two burning destroyers, he could not help but begin to sweat again.

　　The Devonshire had already been panicked by the successive blows, and now she had lost most of her escorts, and what was worse was that it had all happened in just two minutes, which made the heavy cruiser a bit overwhelmed. The once fervent morale disappeared without a trace in front of this harsh reality.

　　The only two options before Devonshire now were to abandon their struggling compatriots and speed away in the wrong direction. The second option was to lead the remaining destroyers to fight the German submarines to the end to save their compatriots and the glory of the Royal Navy.

Sanders ran desperately for the bridge, trying to stop the stubborn Cartson before he made that stupid and wrong decision. For in his mind he had a vague feeling which path the captain would choose, a path that could push everyone into hell.

　　Sanders felt a strong sense of foreboding in his heart, and what worried him was that he had always been very accurate in this kind of foreboding.

　　If there was anything else that could frighten Sanders now, it was that he... could not swim.