Sunny days, light winds, and rippling waves. In the North Sea, this peaceful and peaceful weather adds up less than a hundred days a year. The British who live berth should have enjoyed this weather well, but when they wake up and find that most of the naval ships in the harbor, whether they fight or auxiliary ships, have left the berth, and suddenly feel an unknown feeling. After the Battle of Jutland, many British people hope that the brave and fearless British navy can turn the tide, but on the other hand, they are making the worst plans in their hearts: the winners on the other side of the North Sea will invade like a storm, destroying the fortresses and ports on the British coast with terrible artillery fire, and the black cross flag on the white background will become a nightmare that the British will never linger...

On those warships and auxiliary ships leaving the port, whether the regular British Royal Navy officers and soldiers or civilians who were called to join the coastal defense force during wartime, they all devoted themselves to the operation with a nervous and heavy mood. Facing the rising sun, they looked into the distance, and people kept illusions because of excessive tension. In fact, there was no enemy ship shadow at the sea level ahead.

It is not because the German fleet attack was false information. According to the deployment requirements of the British Fleet Command, the first warning ship to sail should arrive at the farthest position 150 nautical miles from the east coast of Britain at around 9 a.m., but due to aging equipment, hasty preparations, insufficient speed, and mechanical failures, only 3 protective cruisers and 8 destroyers arrived at the designated location on time. Most of the ships were still on the way, which made the relatively complete early warning system on paper full of flaws.

The first batch of ships were seriously lagging behind the established schedule, and the second batch of departing surveillance ships were not much better. The old destroyer "Purple Fox" is a typical representative. Looking back at that time, it and its ships of the same class were named "30-knot destroyer". It was the most advanced light ship of the navies of various countries at that time. More than ten years have passed, and 30 knots has been out of reach, and even maintaining a speed of 20 knots for a long time is very barely enough. Listening to the old steam engines making heavy breathing sounds, people can't help but worry that they may "strike" at any time.

On the observation deck and mast watchtower on the top of the "Purple Fox" bridge, the captain with a white goatee and his childish assistant both observed the sea with a telescope. There were a few faint band-shaped smoke in the sight. Below the smoke was vaguely identifiable ships. Lead gray belonged to naval ships. White or black were civilian ships recruited during wartime according to the naval laws. They were of various models and different conditions. Some were equipped with radios, while others could only use signal ballast to warn. Although the organization was not very rigorous, these ships were of considerable number and were active in local waters, echoing each other, fully demonstrating the resource characteristics of the British Empire.

"Look, there is something flying in the east!"

The sailors on the mast have the advantage of being far-reaching and the good eyesight of young people. Under his reminder, the old captain finally noticed those white flying objects that were different from clouds and seagulls.

"It's an airplane... Oh, an airplane without a pontoon must take off from land, and it cannot be from Germany here." The captain said to himself, speculation and analysis.

The sailor bent down and said to the captain whose hat brim was flush with the sole of his boots: "Do you think this is our plane?"

"Not sure," the captain replied.

Hearing the conversation between the two, a sailor on the deck gun position raised his head and said to them: "I heard that Betty's warship was attacked by German aircraft in Jutland. The 'Australia' was hit by a torpedo they threw. Fortunately, it was not very powerful, so it struggled to return to Scapa Bay. Later, because the dock there was not enough, it drove to Newcastle at night under the protection of a group of destroyers for overhaul."

The captain shook his white goatee and replied loudly, "Wow, these are all you heard from the tavern? That's a good place to listen to stories."

The sailor replied with a serious look on his face: "I don't think this is a story, sir. How could the German Navy defeat our main fleet without secret weapons? Just a storm?"

Captain Chen Suang said: "That's because they produced a very powerful genius, William II's youngest son, Hannibal of Germany. This man planned the Battle of Jutland, allowing the German fleet to concentrate its forces to hurt Betty first, and then implement a division and siege on Jelico. As for the aircraft, they can indeed be used for reconnaissance and throw a few bombs to scare people, but small aircraft cannot carry torpedoes and large aircraft are too clumsy and are not suitable for naval combat."

As the two argued, the sailors on the mast had already counted the number of those aircraft: "There are 6 of them in total, similar to the ones I've seen in Chatham, but there is a big problem... If it were our planes, we should be dispersed to reconnaissance, why maintain this compact formation?"

This sentence was like a bucket of ice water, which made every listener feel enlightened. The captain hesitated for a moment, and then called in a hurry: "Jim! Jim! Send a telegram! We found a German aircraft fleet 70 nautical miles east of the Tyne estuary. There were six aircraft flying in the opposite direction of us!"

When the young trainee telegrapher sent the telegram out in sweat, the six planes had disappeared from the end of their sight.

"That's the direction of the mouth of the Tyne!" murmured the young sailor on the mast.

The captain frowned and touched his white goatee. When he remembered that the battlecruiser "Australia" was undergoing an overhaul at the Esvik Shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, his pupils quickly magnified due to surprise, but then he returned to its original state: "No, it is impossible that their bombs pose much a threat to a 20,000-ton main ship, unless it is a special bomb equipped with white phosphorus, it is possible that it will cause a fire in the shipyard and affect the repair process of the warship... The Germans came from afar to interfere with the maintenance of the "Australia"?"

While this experienced old captain was struggling, the sailors on the mast discovered a new situation. A gray ship shadow appeared on the sea ahead. This discovery immediately made the atmosphere on the ship tense. Everyone thought it was a German warship, so the shells entered the chamber, the torpedo was deep, and the whole ship quickly entered the state of war. After about a quarter of an hour, they realized that it was a protective cruiser on their side. After a while, the "Purple Fox" chased him seven or eight nautical miles away. The two ships communicated with signals. The old cruiser's age was much larger than the "Purple Fox" and the ship's condition was not very ideal. It broke down shortly after it left the port, and its predetermined warning position was still 70 nautical miles away!

The friendly ship lost its chain in the middle, and there was almost no way to imagine except for flirting with it. In fact, the command center set up a cordon to consider not only the speed of each ship, but also the effective range is also a key condition that cannot be ignored. Compared with cruisers and later-built destroyers, the activity radius of the "Purple Fox" is pitifully small. At the beginning of the design, the shipyard made corresponding sacrifices to meet the hard requirements of the Navy Department. Therefore, when the better first generation of Jianghe-class and tribal destroyers were put into service, the destroyers built in the early stage quickly withdrew from the affiliated sequence of the main fleet and transferred to the offshore defense force and the Strait Fleet to serve.

When the Purple Fox crossed the friend ship and continued to move forward, the command headquarters still had no response to its request for instructions and telegram to the first cordon. Captain White Goatee and his crew did not know that the six German planes flying to the mouth of the Tyne were like lightning flashing through the night, allowing British Admiralty officials and local fleet generals to no longer have any luck with the arrival of the heavy rain. They immediately reversed the route of the German plane and estimated the general position of the German fleet, thereby adjusting the combat deployment and scheduled to be put into torpedo attacks.

The light ships set out from Roses and Chatham respectively, and the supply ships loaded with fuel were also gathered in designated sea areas, preparing to provide fuel for high-speed torpedo boats with limited range. Submarines distributed throughout the North Sea also rushed to the target sea area at full speed. The main fleet on standby in Scapa Bay also set off with George V's high-demand formation, but no one notified the old ships and auxiliary ships used for alert cruise to assemble to the war zone. Obviously, they were slow in speed and weak in attack, and could only act as cannon fodder in front of the fierce German fleet.

Before the German plane appeared at the mouth of the Tyne, Newcastle's garrison, police and local officials were warned, but they realized that they had almost no effective measures except prayer: the army had no air defense weapons and could only use a handful of machine guns; the police and local officials had no time to evacuate the people, so they had to avoid crowding in public places; the shipyard with neat factories and huge docks must be very eye-catching from the air, and the built ships and the battlecruiser "Australia" that were docked overhaul were like babies, no matter how terrible the enemy was, they did not have any ability to counterattack or dodge...

In the afternoon sun, six German planes found the mouth of the Tyne River and went upstream, and soon arrived at Newcastle. They were thin, light and flexible, as if they were elves in the wind, and they did not give people a sense of killing when they appeared like cannons or warships.

In the early 20th century, Newcastle was one of the largest shipbuilding and ship repair centers in England. It has convenient transportation and developed industry. Among the many factories and shipyards, the most large and representative of the Esvik Shipyard is the largest comprehensive factory under Armstrong, one of the two major shipbuilding giants in the UK. It can produce various types of naval guns and build various types of ships. Its export products are spread all over the world. Looking around the world, only the German Krupp is comparable to it!

In the Age of Fearlessness, Esvik Shipyard built the Palerolofon-class battleship "Ultra", the Orion-class battleship "Emperor" and the battleship "Admiral Lator" ordered by Chile (renamed "Canada" after being requisitioned by the British Navy), the "Osama Sultan" ordered by Turkey (seven-turret ships, renamed "Argincote" after being requisitioned by the British Navy), and the first ship for the British Navy.

The battlecruiser "Invincible". "Australia" was built by John Brown Shipyard. If it was to be repaired from Scapa Bay to Glasgow, it would be a long and dangerous voyage. As a member of the Deadly Class, the ship has only a slight difference in structure from the Invincible Class. The Esvik Shipyard not only has a suitable dock, but also provides steel plates, naval guns and most internal equipment except boiler turbines. The distance to the Scapaflo Naval Base is much closer than that of Glasgow.
Chapter completed!