Chapter 22: As Long As The Jungler Doesn’t Show On The Laning Phase, He Can Appear On Any Lane
At the same time as Minister Walton, Lieutenant General Hastings, and Major General Hood finalized the matter of the Britain Channel Fleet’s sortie.
On the North Sea surface, Major General Hipper’s high-speed raiding fleet had already been sailing at high speed due west through the thick fog for an entire morning.
Lieutenant Lelouch was boarding a real warship for the first time, so for the entire morning he remained humble and low-key, just walking around to observe and learn, and he absolutely did not go anywhere he was not allowed to, nor did he say a single extra word.
At noon, the fleet had reached the ocean surface about 120 nautical miles west of the German border, entering the edge of the famous Dogger Bank Shoals sea area in the North Sea, when Major General Hipper decisively ordered a turn.
“Hard to port, course 210, straight for the direction of Ostend off the Belgian coast.”
A fleet consisting of 4 battlecruisers, 2 armored cruisers, 4 light cruisers, and 8 destroyers soon began to slowly turn south.
The original course due west gradually turned to 30° west of due south. （270 is due west, 180 is due south）.
Lelouch followed beside Major General Hipper, also holding a telescope, gazing at the majestic warships in the midst of turning, his chest surging with emotion.
Before this sortie, Lelouch had always mistakenly thought that Major General Hipper could only use 3 battlecruisers, but he never expected it to end up being 4, plus 2 armored cruisers. This once made him think he had made a mistake, but he later learned it was due to subtle differences between this world and real history—
The world where Lelouch resided was, after all, slightly harmonized. In this world, the Western nations and the Far East were completely isolated and had no dealings with each other, nor did Western nations go to the East to colonize and cause trouble.
Therefore, in this world, Germania had no Asia-Pacific colonies, and their naval construction did not need to consider long-range operations much, with their farthest colony only reaching Tanzania in East Africa.
The resulting butterfly effect was that in this timeline, the Germania Navy, when designing warships, relatively did not emphasize endurance and long-range raiding as much. Their warships were built for fleet decisive battles.
This also meant their naval construction took fewer detours, with resources more concentrated, indirectly resulting in Major General Hipper having slightly more warships available now than in the Earth history Lelouch knew from his previous life.
The main influences were in the battleship and battlecruiser fields:
First, in the battlecruiser field. In this world, the Germanian people, on the eve of the dreadnought’s birth, built their last class of armored cruisers, the Scharnhorst-class（referring to the 1904 Scharnhorst class, which also built Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, completely different from the WWII ships started in 1936）, which had slightly worse endurance than their Earth counterparts, but improved armor and speed, with firepower on par.
Later, upon hearing that the Britannians had invented the “battlecruiser” concept, the Germanian people followed suit immediately, without falling for the strategic deception again. In original history, the Germanian people would build a problematic “large cruiser” Blücher as a battlecruiser prototype, but in this world, this failure was directly skipped.
The name “Blücher” still existed, but became a sister ship to the Von der Tann-class battlecruiser, and since Blücher was built first, this first class of battlecruisers was directly renamed the Blücher-class. Subsequent battlecruisers also avoided some minor pitfalls due to more accumulated experience early on.
Next, in the battleship field, since the Germanian people did not need to consider long-range expeditions, after entering the dreadnought era, aside from the first class Nassau-class battleships still stepping into a minor pit where not all main guns could fire to the same side, starting from the following Helgoland-class, they preemptively avoided this issue, ensuring all main guns could fire to one side.
All subsequent battleships had better broadside performance than historical counterparts, with slight improvements in firepower or armor, but reduced endurance. Specific details are hard to elaborate on at the moment.
Of course, due to isolation from the Far East world, not only did the Germania Navy benefit, but the opposing Britannians actually benefited slightly as well—
For example, since Fusang in this world is also in seclusion, completely different from Japan on Earth. So the Fusang people in this world did not buy the Kongō from Britannia, resulting in the British Army having one more “Iron Duke”-class battleship, built using the resources originally allocated for Kongō on Earth.
But Britannia’s colonies were still spread across the globe, and even without the Far East, they had Australia and New Zealand, so warship designs remained unchanged from Earth.
All these subtle changes led to Major General Hipper’s fleet today actually being mainly composed of 4 battlecruisers, namely:
Flagship Derfflinger, and the second ship of the same class Seydlitz（in original history, Seydlitz was a single class）, plus Blücher-class Blücher and Von der Tann（see picture below）.
The Moltke-class battlecruiser lead ship Moltke, which should originally have been under Hipper, was pre-war, along with its sister ship Goeben, blockaded in the Black Sea and lent to the Ottomans, and could perform well later if there was a chance to go to the Eastern Front.
Those 2 armored cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau（see picture below）, in original history should have been assigned to the Asian Fleet pre-war, and intercepted by Britannians in the Falklands sea area off Argentina during their return voyage after war broke out, with their Asian detached squadron commander General Spee also dying in that battle.
But in this world’s Germania, with no Asian colonies, there was no Asian detached squadron, so these two ships stayed home safe and sound, and General Spee was still alive.
Further down, those 4 light cruisers included 2 each of Magdeburg-class（1912） and Kolberg-class（1910）.
As for those 8 destroyers, they were very poor, with nothing worth introducing. During WWI, German Army destroyers’ main guns were only 88 mm, no match for the British Army’s 120 mm guns. Only torpedo performance was comparable.
……
Lelouch spent the morning figuring out the fleet composition and the ins and outs of all this.
Seeing General Hipper order the turn south ahead of schedule, Lelouch mentally calculated a bit before raising a small question in his mind:
“Your Excellency, turning south so urgently now, while it saves some distance and time, won’t it increase the risk of early exposure? We’re only about 30 nautical miles from the Netherlands coast now, just barely out of the lighthouse observation range.
If there are civilian ships frequently passing near the Netherlands coast and they spot our fleet, and one of them happens to be a Britannian spy reporting our movements, that would be no small matter.”
Lelouch asked very cautiously, as he truly did not understand naval combat operations and was sincerely seeking advice.
Seeing his humble yet inquisitive demeanor, General Hipper took a liking to this smart young man, and since there was nothing else to do, he generously explained:
“Of course I know that turning early increases the risk of being spotted by nearshore ships, but between two evils, I choose the lesser. We have now sailed to the eastern edge of the Dogger Bank sea area; further west, the water depth drops sharply. The shallowest part of Dogger Bank is only 13 meters, the deepest no more than 40 meters, averaging 20 meters.
This sea area is too shallow to hide submarines. And our Empire’s submarines are far more numerous and powerful than the enemy’s, so once an area cannot hide submarines, the enemy there becomes very aggressive. In the Dogger Bank sea area, there are countless enemy trawlers that are actually Britannia Navy informants; they rely on there being no submarines to patrol densely with nets and report our warships upon sighting.
Therefore, I had to turn early to avoid the shallow waters. And as long as we stay in deep waters, I can arrange friendly submarines in advance along the route to ambush and monitor. If there is real danger of discovery, we let the lead patrolling destroyers or the ambushing monitoring submarines warn with low-power shortwave, or directly sink them.
In sea areas where our submarines are active, the enemy does not dare casually send armed fishing boats or other ships disguised as civilian vessels for net reconnaissance.
Additionally, it’s now late October, the colder the weather, the thicker the fog on the North Sea; mornings basically clear around 10 a.m., and it’s dark by 4 p.m. This season, it’s relatively easy to hide movements.
I also arranged many destroyers in advance, scattered like a net from north to south, several every 50 nautical miles; upon encountering the enemy, they fire torpedoes if possible, then run immediately after. Thus, even if the enemy discovers our forward search ships, they cannot estimate if main force ships are following behind. Enemy sightings everywhere mean no enemy sightings anywhere.”
（Note: The above picture is a map of the Dogger Bank sea area; the red-circled central sea area has particularly shallow water where submarines cannot enter, or rather, submarines there can only surface and become live targets. Baidu Maps also shows this area with particularly light color, formed by silt deposition from the Thames and Rhine Rivers over millions of years.）
Hipper’s explanation left Lelouch deeply impressed; as expected of one of the Germania Navy’s renowned generals, with extremely solid raiding fundamentals.
Before every sortie, Hipper never hoped to completely conceal the fact that “I have sortied,” knowing it could not be hidden.
He would only, after openly revealing “I have sortied,” release many smoke grenades to prevent the enemy from judging where exactly he sortied to.
Similar to later aircraft scattering chaff upon radar detection.
Chaff cannot hide the fact of the aircraft intrusion itself, but with a massive number of false targets, you cannot pinpoint the real target’s location.
The best part is that all this was not hastily prepared by Hipper, but was already ready, intended as smoke grenades for the bombardment of Yarmouth mission.
Now it was just a temporary target change, but the previous smoke grenades could be directly reused without adjustment, allowing such a swift response for a “trip on a whim.”
The luggage was packed in advance; only the ticket was swapped at the last minute.
At this moment, the Britannians definitely knew Hipper had disappeared, but not where he would appear.
As long as he did not collapse, he could remain in a quantum superposition of here and there.
As long as the jungler stays hidden, he could appear on any lane.
Minister Walton thought Hipper was going mid-lane, temporarily moving Betty from top to mid to counter-ambush, but Hipper actually chose to gank bot-lane.
——
PS: The real battle starts tomorrow.
Only after starting to write did I realize naval battles require a lot of preamble details and force data; both sides’ deployments alone took two chapters.
But considering my frequent updates, with seven thousand words for two consecutive days in the new book period, please forgive me.
Mainly, some worldview settings and background differences between the two worlds needed to be interspersed and explained concentrated in this chapter at the start.
It’ll be fine tomorrow.
New book continues seeking comments, follows, collections, votes; thanks.
