"Can you start by telling us about your plans?" Major General Kuhl asked rhetorically. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

"My plan? Quite simply, for the time being, there is only one port in the entire Indian Ocean that can support the maintenance and repair of these two fast battleships, and that is the port of Basra-Fao. The Germans were smart, they laid a mine array in the Sea of Hormuz so that our fleet could not enter the port to blockade, if we could, I hope, we can lay minefields outside the Sea of Hormuz to prevent the German fleet from going back, and if we are lucky, it is not impossible to solve these two battleships with mines. "Since the rat only has one burrow, it's better to plug it directly. Simple and affordable.

"I'm afraid this is very difficult to achieve now, our mines in the Indian Ocean are basically used to lay mines in our own ports, and the guns of battleships have a range of more than 15 kilometers. So in order to ensure the safety of the port, we must push the other side back to the periphery as much as possible. And even if there were mines now, it would be slow and dangerous to lay a tight minefield, and the Germans had not only mines but also submarines in the Sea of Hormuz. ”

"They also have minesweepers, and they go out to sea every day to make rounds, and even if we can lay a minefield, when the German fleet returns, it is unknown how much of this minefield will remain. And a kind of ship was made, the bow of which was filled with cement and logs, and the mines were cleared directly by impact. Of course, this is an emergency response. But judging from the results, it is good. Maj. Gen. Cook said.

"If this plan is not successful, then we will have to search for targets in the Indian Ocean, which is an almost impossible task for my fleet." Think about the vast Indian Ocean and look at the warships that have just reached the double digits in your hands. Thomas's head couldn't help but feel a little numb!

It's almost impossible to find! How far can you see from the top of the mast, even on a sunny day? 40 kilometers up to the sky, right? Then draw a circle with a radius of 40 kilometers, how much coverage is this? Yes, maybe an attacked merchant ship or a camouflaged reconnaissance ship could find the target, but after many times of retransmission at the level of telegrams of this era, it is a question of when it will reach Thomas, and whether it will be there!

Even if luck was right, all this was done, the camouflage reconnaissance ship found the opponent without alarming the Germans, and after some twists and turns, the telegram reached Thomas, but don't forget, once it is night, the information obtained during the day is immediately invalid! God knows where the German battleships went again during this night!

Therefore, during World War I, there will be a situation where an attack ship has been running at sea for more than one year, and no one can catch it, and it is possible that the attack ship has run to the Pacific Ocean, and as a result, three dozen British ships are still looking for people in the Atlantic. Well, in general, it is the camouflaged cruisers that appear in this situation, which themselves are well hidden. And the average regular cruiser was killed less than 1 year after the start of the war. The only longer surviving Königsberg was at the mouth of a river, and it took hundreds of days to fight the British, with the exception of that.

But now, Su Xiong's fleet is obviously the other extreme, if the camouflage attack ship is good to hide, then Su Xiong's fleet is too powerful! What if Thomas was found before he came? Everyone stood up and met each other! I can't kill you! Even through the information provided by other camouflaged attack ships, the Suxiong fleet may take the initiative to trouble the British Navy! A British dreadnought did just that, and two fast battleships did it. At the time, the former intrepid was chasing down a German camouflaged assault ship.

"IMHO, with conventional means, it would be difficult for us to catch these two fast warships." Thomas said helplessly.

"So, we haven't been planning to search for these two big guys in the normal way, before you came, even before deciding to send your fleet out, the Royal Navy had already considered this problem and took action, and now, all you and your fleet need to do is to rest and recuperate, and then ensure that the fleet can attack the opponent in the best condition!" Major General Cook smiled mysteriously, and the expression wrapped around me made Major General Thomas a little confused!

It is indeed difficult to search for camouflaged cruisers in the vast Indian Ocean, but if it is considered that the British Royal Navy cannot find an opponent, it can only be said that the too young, too simple Tucson is broken! A country that has stood on the top of the world for more than a hundred years is terrible, and a navy that has ruled the world's oceans for more than 200 years is even more terrifying! The technical background of the British made it possible for them to accomplish such a task, and the brains of the elite of the British royal family provided the idea to accomplish this task!

"We never thought of having Thomas take 10 warships on a senseless armed march over the vast Indian Ocean, nor did we think about how many camouflaged raiders were sent to search for the German fleet, because the former was useless and the latter was too inefficient! How could the British Imperial Navy do such a thing? What we are thinking is, how to get the Germans to take the bait themselves! Vice Admiral Oliver, Chief of Staff of the British Royal Navy, who was in charge of the matter, wrote in his diary!

Before Thomas's fleet came to the Indian Ocean, the Such-hung fleet was indeed invincible in the Indian Ocean, but it was not without weaknesses. One of the greatest weaknesses of the German fleet was the sheer attrition, and camouflaged raid ships could rely on the spoils of war to sustain their operations, capturing coal, food, and fresh water to support them across the ocean for hundreds of days. For example, the famous German raider Wolf in World War I, when sailing at a speed of 8 knots a day, consumed only 35 tons of coal a day! And relying on the thousands of tons of coal it carried and the captured coal, the attack ship sailed on the ocean for 452 days!

But as a warship, then it is a small warship, and the daily consumption is very amazing, for example, the Emden light cruiser, when such a ship sails at a speed of 12 knots, it consumes 2 tons of coal per hour, but if it sails at a speed of 23 knots, it consumes 15.7 tons of coal per hour! And this is only a small ship of 3,000 tons, and the Wolf is a large ship with a registered tonnage of 5,800 tons and can carry nearly 6,000 tons of coal! The battleship is loaded with less, and it consumes more, so the endurance here is poor!

And even more so as a large battleship! According to the intelligence of the British, the maximum fuel load of the two German fast battleships was supposed to be 3700 tons of coal and about 1200 tons of fuel oil. According to the calculations of the British, if the battleship sailed at a speed of 14 knots, then the endurance should be 6100 nautical miles! That is, the fuel was only enough for the battleship to sail for about 436 hours. But 18 days!

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