Rulers of the Ocean (3)
The moment the two fleets clashed, the fleet moving in column formation rapidly shifted into a line abreast. Naval guns were mounted on the broadsides, not the bow. Only by turning the ships sideways could they unleash their maximum firepower. Thus, both fleets naturally wheeled around and began trading devastating salvos.
Yet once again, the French fleet was slightly faster in its maneuvers. This was a massive engagement involving over ten battleships and dozens of warships. The battlefield did not span a mere kilometer or two. Furthermore, turning such massive vessels required an immense amount of open water.
"Mines! First, second, and last, watch out for mines! This whole area is a minefield! Even if we have to take a few hits from their shells, we must avoid the mines!"
"Suspected mines dead ahead!"
"Evade! Veer off and turn the ship!"
Several smaller warships that had moved too hastily were already dragged to the watery depths, claimed by mines, torpedoes, and coastal artillery. These were the home waters of France and Italy. The Franco-Italian coalition had entered the battle with flawless, intimate knowledge of these seas. No matter how meticulously the Germans had scouted, they could never match the familiarity of the very people who had laid those mines and positioned those coastal batteries.
"There are German battleships that haven't completed their turn yet!"
"Concentrate all fire on the German battleships still caught mid-maneuver!"
Under the onslaught of the French Navy, which was already primed to unleash its full fury, one German battlecruiser, two light cruisers, and numerous destroyers and torpedo boats were torn to shreds. Yet, the firepower of the invincible Kaisermarine was not to be underestimated.
In the opening stages of the battle, the Franco-Italian allied navy held the upper hand. Their tactical movements were flawless. Despite being clearly outnumbered, they concentrated their strikes on the weakest points of the German line. At the same time, they kept the German battleships firmly in check. Through perfect fire distribution, they rained shells evenly across every single German capital ship.
An alliance between Italy and France meant that communication mishaps were practically inevitable. Yet, despite this, they coordinated with absolute precision to hammer the German navy.
"We have honed ourselves for this very moment—to crush the German navy!"
"This battle will be the turning point! Show them exactly who commands the second-greatest fleet in the world!"
Even so, the German navy's numerical and qualitative superiority was not so easily overcome. Just fifteen minutes into the engagement, the German navy lost a battleship when its magazine was detonated by a mere five direct hits. They also lost several other warships, including two battlecruisers. Nevertheless, the German fleet's retaliatory fire remained devastating. The French Navy took twenty-four direct hits in return, losing a battleship of their own.
"W-we've been hit by a torpedo! We're dead in the water!"
"Do not panic! Maintain the formation!"
The German navy calmly held its line. In the Mediterranean, a sea now crawling with enemy vessels, strategic retreat was no longer an option. Even if they had to sacrifice the entire Kaisermarine, they had to use their superior firepower to grind the enemy fleet to dust.
Seeing that the Germans refused to break, the French Navy eventually buckled under the sheer weight of the German firepower and chose to make a strategic withdrawal.
"Admiral! Should we pursue?"
"Damn it, let them go! Pursuing them now will only expose us to torpedo attacks and cost us precious ships for nothing!"
The Kaisermarine could only watch the French fleet slip away, left staring blankly like a dog that had lost its quarry. The next clash occurred that very night.
"Sortie the fleets from Algiers, Marseille, Sicily, and the open ocean simultaneously! Surround the Germans!"
If both sides fought flawlessly, the force with the numerical and qualitative advantage would inevitably emerge victorious. In other words, no matter how brilliantly the allied fleet fought, the odds favored Germany. In this situation, the French Navy had only one viable strategy: maintain a tight grip on reconnaissance superiority and sow chaos through a chaotic melee to create unexpected variables.
"Seven Franco-Italian battleships spotted dead ahead!"
"Wherever the rest of their battleships are, it is finally our turn to seize the advantage!"
Deciding to exploit their numerical superiority to destroy the enemy battleships piecemeal, the German capital ships closed the distance rapidly to engage the French fleet at point-blank range. According to their scouting reports, the risk of torpedo attacks was minimal here. It was the one area where the Germans could operate with relative freedom.
"The French have finally made a critical blunder."
"If we win this battle, the French fleet will never dare to trouble our Kaisermarine again."
"Charge! We are the true rulers of the Mediterranean!"
In truth, however, the blunder belonged to the Kaisermarine, whose reconnaissance assets were severely lacking. After a brief skirmish, the Imperial German Navy achieved the seemingly brilliant result of sinking one enemy battleship and heavily damaging another without taking any damage in return. But they were entirely blind to the fact that multiple enemy battleships were converging from all directions to encircle them. To make matters worse, it was night, rendering visibility near zero. As if the heavens themselves were aiding the allied fleet, a thick fog rolled in.
"T-torpedoes incoming from the rear!"
"What?!"
"Three battleships emerging at bearing 115!"
"Another battleship emerging from our rear!"
Naval warfare always boiled down to a single, absolute winning strategy. Ever since the paradigm of naval combat shifted to artillery duels, it had always been the same: crossing the T. A fleet lined up abreast pouring concentrated fire onto a fleet caught in column formation! With this maneuver, even a vastly inferior fleet could guarantee a crushing victory. Attacked from both the flanks and the rear, the Kaisermarine was inevitably forced to face the French fleet while trapped in a column.
"D-damn it! Order all captains: ignore the formation! Turn your ships independently and return fire on the French!"
Indeed, the Mediterranean was the backyard of France and Italy. The German navy was dragged into a chaotic melee, precisely as the surrounding allied fleet had intended. But with their formation shattered, they were left utterly vulnerable to ambush attacks from torpedoes, submarines, and torpedo boats.
Torpedo boats darted in to target the battleships, while destroyers scrambled to intercept them. Cruisers hunted down the destroyers while swarming in packs to threaten the capital ships. The battleships, though slow, hammered the entire battlefield with their colossal firepower. A fleet capable of executing such seamless coordination was the definition of an elite force. In fact, in some aspects, the German navy was even more elite than the British Royal Navy. Yet, once plunged into a chaotic melee, this organic coordination was completely paralyzed.
"Two French battleships destroyed!"
"Concentrate all fire on their battleships! Without their capital ships, they are nothing!"
The Germans focused their guns on the highly visible enemy battleships. Melee or not, the firepower of a battleship was terrifyingly potent, and the French capital ships suffered devastating damage under the German onslaught.
"Three torpedo hits on the German battleship!"
"German battleship is sinking!"
"Launch torpedoes while the battleships draw their fire! Torpedoes are our only hope!"
But... if a battleship's guns were so all-powerful, why would it ever sail with an escort of smaller vessels instead of roaming alone? The colossal battleships had lost their escorts. Stripped of their protection, these multi-million-ton behemoths became easy prey for tiny boats that cost a mere fraction of their price.
"Ah, our fleet...!"
"The Kaisermarine is falling!"
"Retreat! Retreat immediately!"
"Even if we retreat..."
Half of the sixteen battleships Germany so proudly boasted of had vanished beneath the waves. Combined with the losses of other warships, it would take at least twenty years to rebuild the fleet. And they could not even retreat. They might somehow break through the immediate encirclement, but... how could they possibly pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, which was choked with torpedoes and coastal artillery? And how could they shake off the pursuing allied fleet? Admiral Hupper and his chief of staff, Erich Raeder, felt their minds go numb as their dreams of commanding the open ocean dissolved into sea foam.
"Admiral, please give us our orders..."
"Raeder... what am I supposed to do? What in God's name can I do?!"
"Admiral... you already know, don't you?"
"..."
"Our Kaisermarine must die here. Even knowing that defeat is absolute... we must die here for the sake of a greater victory."
Erich Raeder wept, praying for the souls of the sailors who were about to be dragged down to the abyss. But tears were the privilege of a subordinate, not a commander. Admiral Hupper raised his voice, his tone solemn and commanding.
"We die here! We die for the Kaiser! I deeply regret that my incompetence has led you all to your graves. But... is it not also the duty of an admiral to make your deaths meaningful? Do not retreat! Even if we flee, only a future of becoming fish food for torpedoes awaits us! If we must go, should we not drag at least one more Frenchman down with us? Fight on! Do not cease engagement! Pour it on until our last shells are spent! The Kaisermarine may vanish from this earth today, but the glory of the German Empire shall endure forever!"
This was the graveyard of the Kaisermarine. It was meant to be their tomb. It had to be. But then...
"Unidentified fleet detected to the south!"
"Where on earth are the French hiding all these ships? They just keep coming. Did they pull reinforcements from Asia and Africa without us noticing?"
"N-no, Admiral! Look at their flags!"
The admiral hurriedly peered through his binoculars to identify the flags flying from the approaching fleet. They belonged to Greece and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Yet, this did not particularly lift Hupper's spirits.
"Only two battleships... they can't do anything with that. Send a transmission immediately. Tell them to turn back and run."
Far from turning the tide, the precious navies of their allies were about to be dragged down with them. Both the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Democratic Revolutionary Republic of Greece must have poured blood and sweat into building those fleets. Hupper had no desire to drag them down into this watery grave. But the fleet Shtal had dispatched to aid the Germans had absolutely no intention of dying.
"A-Admiral! Do you hear that?"
"...What is that sound?"
A low, rumbling drone echoed from the northeast. It was a bizarre, alien sound, entirely out of place amidst the thunder of naval artillery and the roar of ship engines.
"What in the world is..."
"Captain, look at the sky!"
"...!"
"Planes! They're airplanes!"
"Why are there airplanes here...?"
At long last, the aircraft Shtal had painstakingly dispatched had reached the Mediterranean.
"Representative Shtal flew all the way from Vienna to Stockholm back when airplanes couldn't even fly a hundred kilometers. Aviation technology has advanced leaps and bounds since then. Even so... flying from South Tyrol to the Mediterranean is a massive gamble."
Range and payload. The bombers produced in Hungary, boasting the world's finest engineering, took to the skies. Even in an era where payloads were limited and precision high-altitude bombing was impossible, aerial torpedo strikes were highly viable.
"T-torpedoes are raining down from the sky!"
"Do something! Intercept them!"
There was absolutely nothing they could do. Due to technological limitations, the very concept of aerial bombardment existed only in the realm of imagination. Naturally, none of the warships possessed proper anti-aircraft weaponry. Unopposed, the squadrons of planes buzzed so low they practically skimmed the water, dropping their torpedoes with pinpoint accuracy.
"Time to map the ocean floor!"
"Yahoo!"
"This is way better than being on land! The enemy fleet can't do a damn thing!"
A 'real' torpedo capable of dealing fatal damage to a battleship weighed around 0.8 tons. However, taking flight range into account, the maximum payload these aircraft could carry was only 0.5 tons. In other words, they could not inflict critical damage on the battleships. Yet, the sheer volume of the attack was overwhelming. A massive armada of nearly a hundred aircraft dropped torpedo after torpedo. And while they couldn't sink the battleships, they could easily devastate every other vessel in the fleet.
"Aaargh!"
"Run!"
"We have no way to counter their planes! We must retreat immediately!"
Hit by an ambush that defied all imagination, the French fleet fell into utter chaos. A hundred torpedoes plunged into the sea. In a mere ten minutes, a vast number of warships were rendered completely combat-ineffective. But it wasn't over yet.
"Shtal's air fleet...!"
"This is no time to stand there gaping!"
"Y-yes, sir! It seems the destructive power of their torpedoes is limited."
"Pour every remaining shell we have into the enemy battleships!"
Squeezing out every last drop of their strength, the German fleet hammered the French. From the east, the joint fleet of Austria-Hungary and Greece was closing in.
"...Scuttle the battleships."
"What?! Captain! Surely you don't mean..."
"The tide of battle has turned. Do you want to hand our capital ships over to the Germans?"
"...Understood. Scuttle the ships! Scuttle the fleet!"
The Franco-Italian allied fleet, which had executed a flawless battle plan from start to finish, was ultimately forced to wave the white flag in the face of an unprecedented, devastating aerial assault. It was a victory for the Kaisermarine.