Chapter 25: Cut The Grass At The Root, Leave No Evil Uneradicated
As “Majestic” belched thick smoke mingled with flashes of fire, the brutal close-range pounding between the battlecruiser and the pre-dreadnought had thoroughly decided the victor.
Before coming, Major General Hipper had been well aware that the true difficulty of the campaign lay in the covert surprise attack and smoothly engaging the enemy. Once the battle truly began, victory was almost inevitable; the only uncertainty was the cost to their own side.
Lelouch, observing the battle alongside Major General Hipper, did not yet fully understand naval battle, so he could not help but seize the opportunity to ask a question:
“General, earlier you didn’t wait for the rangefinding results of the previous shells’ fall points, but directly ordered full-speed half-salvo, shortening the rangefinder by 300 yards per volley. What tactic was that?”
Hipper had already done everything he needed to do; now he just had to wait for the results, so he did not stint on guidance for the young friend: “Simple. If it were medium- or long-range engagement, you definitely couldn’t fight that way. Accurate rangefinding is very important for lobbing fire.
But now we’ve closed to such short range that the trajectory is almost flat. Even if you pre-aim the hull too far ahead, it’s still possible to cover the enemy’s superstructure on the trajectory line and hit by luck. So as long as you confirm you’re overshooting, just close the range at the fastest speed; no need to fuss over exactly how far.”
Lelouch was Lelouch after all; his math grades were so good that even though he couldn’t get into the art department, he still qualified to transfer to the architecture department. With his geometry foundation, he almost immediately grasped the essence of this tactic.
He felt he had gained a great deal, and at the same time gained a deeper impression of General Hipper’s adaptability in command.
The German Army battlecruisers had all entered rapid fire state, frantically pouring down a rain of shells.
305 mm shells successively exploded in the protected zone of “Majestic”‘s 228 mm nickel-chromium steel main armor belt. At engagement distances within five kilometers, the shells could easily tear through all the protection of this type of pre-dreadnought.
The warship’s core areas were repeatedly penetrated, multiple steam pipes in the propulsion system were blown apart, and various hundreds-of-degrees-high-temperature high-pressure steam rampaged inside the ship, instantly steaming to death countless engine room crew attempting repairs.
The casemate deck located above the propulsion level was even less spared; those relatively thin-skinned but large-stuffed positions were directly shattered by 305 shells, with several secondary guns and fragments of the casemate deck flung directly into the air.
A small amount of ammunition stockpiled at several secondary gun positions even detonated sympathetically, but 152 mm shell detonations were not enough to sink the warship, though sufficient to completely destroy the upper fire control system and bridge.
Lieutenant General Hastings was also in this process directly blasted into the sky; the commander of the Britannia Strait Fleet perished on the spot.
The main turret protection of “Majestic” was quite sturdy, enduring hits for several minutes without the main turrets being penetrated or main gun ammunition detonating. But with fire control and propulsion lost, the main turrets could neither receive aiming data nor hydraulic power to traverse, reduced to futilely firing at fixed positions.
This ship had in fact become a floating dead fish; only the ship hull’s reserve buoyancy was still sufficient.
Shells of this era could quickly destroy a battleship’s upper works, rendering it combat ineffective. But unless the ammunition depot or boilers exploded, it was hard to directly break the hull and cause rapid sinking.
To hope for flooding and rapid sinking still required torpedoes or mines.
……
Meanwhile, the other enemy main force warship “Revenge” was also locked in a deathmatch with two Blücher-class battlecruisers under Hipper’s command.
The engagement situation between both sides was very similar to the other group; after “Revenge” had its main guns refitted, its turrets were the same type as “Majestic”‘s, but the fire control system had not yet been upgraded and broken in, resulting in even lower bombardment accuracy and slower aiming for “Revenge”.
The only differences were that the German Army’s Blücher-class still used 280 mm main guns, one inch smaller than the Derfflinger-class.
While “Revenge”‘s main armor belt was much thicker than its successor “Majestic”‘s, with a maximum of 450 mm! But the armor type and quality were much inferior; as a King Edward VII-class, it used early 1890s Harvey steel, not even nickel-chromium steel, so the equivalent protection level was reduced by about twenty to thirty percent.
Moreover, everything has a cost; 450 mm armor at the thickest point meant much smaller main armor coverage, with 450 mm only in a very narrow strip near the waterline, dropping sharply to 356 mm just a bit higher above the waterline.
The Blücher-class’s 280 guns indeed could not penetrate its waterline armor at all, but anywhere slightly higher was casually penetrated.
So at almost the same time, “Revenge” was also blasted into a floating iron shell; aside from not sinking, it had completely lost combat effectiveness.
And while thoroughly crippling two enemy pre-dreadnoughts at extremely minimal cost, on Hipper’s side, only “Seydlitz” was hit by an enemy ship’s 305 mm main gun shell on the mid-aft casemate on its broadside,
blasting away two 150 mm secondary guns, ripping up a section of casemate deck, and also destroying the lifeboat cranes and several lifeboats above the deck.
Aside from that, throughout the entire engagement, the German Army battlecruisers were cumulatively hit by only five or six 150 mm enemy secondary gun shells, none of which could penetrate the main armor, merely damaging some peripheral facilities.
……
And just as Hipper crippled the enemy’s two main force warships at extremely minimal cost and was preparing to turn toward the weakest enemy main force warship “Hood”,
he suddenly discovered that his battlecruisers had not even personally engaged yet, but “Hood” had already lost most of its combat effectiveness—while the battlecruisers were fiercely battling just now, the German Army’s two Scharnhorst-class armored cruisers had not been assigned combat tasks; Hipper allowed them to fire freely and assist the main force warships.
And it was these two Scharnhorsts’ 16 210 mm guns washing the decks that, in just a few volleys, stripped “Hood” of its main gun firepower.
It turned out that “Hood” was a sister ship to “Revenge”, but had not undergone main gun modernization refit, still using 343 mm open-back main guns from over twenty years ago—that is, without enclosed turrets, no roof, directly exposed to the air above.
Such main gun protection meant utter disaster even from armored cruiser 210 mm guns attacking from above.
The actual combat situation proved exactly that; shortly after the battle began, “Hood” was hit in its fore and aft main gun positions respectively by “Scharnhorst” and “Gneisenau”.
The gun crews in the gun positions, completely unprotected, were all killed by the blasts, and the four ready-to-load 343 mm shells placed in the gun positions detonated sympathetically. In this situation, even if the gun barrels weren’t completely destroyed, there were no gunners left to fire them.
It could only be said that this garbage, far behind the times and destined only for shore bombardment tasks, was fated to become a tragedy in main force warship combat.
With matters at this point, Hipper could choose to slowly finish off and sink the combat-ineffective enemy ships one by one, practicing artillery tactics.
But he was in a hurry, so he ordered continued bombardment while detaching three destroyers to charge the fireless enemy ships and torpedo them for the kill, cutting the Gordian knot.
The three friendly destroyers acknowledged and immediately charged head-on at high speed, fan-firing a salvo of torpedoes each when approaching about 3 kilometers from the enemy ships.
No need to get too close, lest the enemy ships’ remaining rapid-fire cannons threaten the destroyers. Anyway, the enemy ships’ speeds had generally dropped very low, and with command systems lost, torpedoes from three kilometers out might not be dodged.
A few minutes later, four torpedoes detonated, raising tall water columns along the enemy ships’ sides; “Revenge” took two hits, “Majestic” and “Hood” one each, respectively beginning to flood and list; “Revenge” sank completely the fastest, while the other two were doomed as well.
……
“Sunk enemy 3 pre-dreadnoughts, 3 light cruisers, 2 destroyers; damaged 3 destroyers. Killed at least 5000 enemies—what monumental merit! The general is truly heroic. Should we continue engaging the western detached squadron, or call it quits? After all, we must watch the time.”
With “Revenge” sinking, several trusted officers around Major General Hipper, as well as Derfflinger’s captain, immediately began sincerely praising and flattering him.
These people were not necessarily sycophants; many were genuinely admiring. Some were trying to call it quits for their own side’s safety, compelled to extol this battle’s merits.
After all, if the merits weren’t big enough, the general might get greedy for more glory and prolong the fight.
Although thoroughly winning this engagement and pursuing the remnants was certainly no problem.
But the longer the delay, what if David Betty cut off their way home?
Problem-solving can’t just focus on the immediate; must consider the big picture.
Amid the crowd’s praise, Hipper did not lose his cool; he was well aware of everyone’s thinking.
He asked himself honestly: if not for the earlier discussion with Lelouch, which inspired his “third withdrawal route,” he would probably choose to call it quits now.
From the moment their side opened fire, David Betty already knew their position and was now racing full speed to intercept. The later they left, the more likely to be cut off.
The remnants of the Channel Fleet before them were nothing, but Betty’s six to seven new battlecruisers could truly be lethal!
But now with the never-before-considered “retreat to Antwerp” new path added, “leaving no evil unfinished” had become somewhat possible.
Seeing his subordinates did not understand his deeper intent, Hipper scanned around, then ordered all ships to first engage the other western enemy detached squadron, and act according to the situation later—don’t rush.
After dismissing the other subordinates, he specifically kept Lieutenant Lelouch, the duke’s special envoy, and asked in an examining tone for some advice: “What do you think? Should we pursue to the end now, or call it quits?”
Lelouch had always been low-key before, never interfering in campaign decision making. Until Hipper asked him directly, he was not polite either, decisively saying:
“I suggest pursuing to the end! The other generals seek stability because they don’t know the Antwerp situation or how the army can support the navy; I only told you these things, so only you can make a sufficiently comprehensive judgment.
Secondly, when I previously reported the fallback plan to retreat to Antwerp, you also mentioned that this plan most fears ‘warships severely damaged in battle, while Antwerp has only a good harbor but lacks professional large naval shipyards, fearing they’d arrive able only to anchor without proper repairs.’
But now the results are out: we’ve cumulatively been hit by just a few 6-inch shells, with only ‘Seydlitz’ taking one 12-inch—all minor. Since no major repairs are needed, the biggest hidden danger of retreating to Antwerp is eliminated; only benefits remain, no drawbacks.”
Hipper had been somewhat swayed by his subordinates’ unanimous advice, but encouraged by Lelouch, his thinking cleared again.
Right! Others couldn’t make comprehensive judgments because, for secrecy, he hadn’t told them the full situation! Especially the army-navy coordination intel from Lelouch, which only he knew.
Because Hipper needed to continue intelligence deception after this battle, needed to prevent the enemy from realizing “the German Army already knows its radio cipher has leaked,” needed to play today’s events as his own “disobeying orders and acting alone.”
And to ensure the “disobeying orders and acting alone” was convincingly real, he naturally had to keep even his trusted aides in the dark; they just needed to know what he did, not why he thought that way.
Objective actions could be public, subjective motives must be concealed—conceal as many as possible.
“You’re right; only you and I can judge from the big picture height on this. Others don’t even know the full conditions, so why listen to them? Sometimes history relies on one or two people to change it. I’ve decided: pursue to the end! Kill as many as we can! Ignore Betty’s interception; head straight back to Antwerp then!”
——
PS: Still two updates today, about six or seven thousand words.
I guarantee to finish the naval battle today; I’ve learned my lesson and sped up as much as possible. Today we’ll get back to land battle scenes and protagonist promotion plotting—don’t stop reading or commenting, everyone.
I’ve deleted and compressed repeatedly to ensure this chapter kills off Hastings’s main force entirely; only the necessary strategic thinking and decision processes couldn’t be cut—no way around it.
Kowtowing in apology; naval battles really have slow pacing, mainly first time writing, lots of setup needed, and to let readers who skipped before understand the status quo.
