Let. Captain Rhone was caught in a dilemma, he was reluctant to destroy the formidable battleship, and he was equally reluctant to let her fall into the hands of the Germans. The French Army can be defeated and surrendered, but the glorious French Navy will never rest on its laurels and let . After much thought, Ronak gave the order to set sail immediately.

The outfitting captain was more of an administrative officer, coordinating the liaison between the shipyard and the navy, while also training technical officers and junior sailors, familiarizing them with the ship's systems as much as possible to ensure that the ship could be tested properly during the sea trials.

Let. Ronak watched the ship take shape before him, and to the admiral, Jean Barr was like his son, proud of her advanced and powerful, and could not tolerate abandoning it without a single attempt.

Let. The Barr was now quietly parked in a huge outfitting dock, filled with water that was ten meters deep enough to float up. The massive hull of the Barr. The Engineer suggested blowing up the hull on one side of the dock and flipping her hull to one side, which would cause structural damage to the hull and bottom keel, and the weight of the hull would cause extreme damage to the dock.

In this way, even if the Germans get the hull, there will be no repair value, and this advanced dockyard will not be used by the enemy for a short time.

This is really a ruthless and effective strategy, if the . Ronalk agreed to the advice of the adjutant and the director of works, and the Germans would end up with nothing but a mess.

But let's. Colonel Ronalk refused to adopt the advice of the Director of Engineering, believing that anything was risky, and that it was clearly worth the risk he would not give up on the hope of keeping this cutting-edge warship for the French Navy.

Unlike the half-finished battleship in history, at this time let. The Barr is largely finished, with the hull weight and draft basically the same as the design data. The work of dredging the channel from the dock to the mouth of the river was contracted to a private company, and in order to save the amount of work, the standards that were initially established were for the initial outfitting of the hull, and the French Navy had intended to carry out only sea trials in Saint-Nazaire, and the subsequent assembly of the battleship was to be completed at the naval shipyard in the port of Brest.

In the Navy's plan, the weight of this warship when it sails is 6,000 tons lighter than the finished body, and the draft can be maintained at about 8 meters, while the average water depth of the original channel is only 5.4 meters, so the construction party needs to dig a ditch at the bottom of the river with a depth of 4 meters and a width of 90 meters and a width of 3.4 kilometers to ensure that the battleship can safely enter the main channel of the Loire.

This is a rather difficult project, and the construction environment is complicated, because in addition to silt, there are also a large number of rocky reefs at the bottom of the river. In order to catch up with the progress of the project, the shipyard also lowered the standard of the channel several times, and the original safety width of 90 meters was reduced to 50 meters, and the depth of 4 meters was reduced to 3.5 meters, barely allowing a warship with a draft of 8 meters to pass through the middle.

But now this battleship, the draft has already exceeded nine meters, so if you want to escape from the port, you must reduce the draft of the ship. Captain Ronak and the shipyard's engineers did everything they could to reduce the weight of the ship.

They emptied the ammunition stocks of the main and auxiliary guns, leaving only a small amount of ammunition for anti-aircraft fire, and they also drained most of the fuel, drained the ballast water tanks, and even discarded all the furniture and debris, and even reduced the scheduled crew and passengers, and finally reduced the draft of the battleship to 8.1 meters.

This means that there is only a safety gap of less than half a metre between the bottom of the boat and the riverbed, and any small mistake can lead to a serious grounding accident.

Let. Captain Ronak foresaw that the voyage would be very difficult, but the German motorized forces were approaching at a rapid pace, and the Admiral had no choice but to take the risk.

On that leg of the line that left the outfitting dock, let. The Barr did not start its own power, and relied entirely on the shipyard's two steam tugboats to tow it back and forth, because the channel was narrow, and if the main power was activated, it would be difficult for the tugboat to control the course of the battleship, because even if it was in a drifting state, in order to overcome the huge inertia of the battleship, the two tugboats were already exhausted.

Just let. At the same time as Barr was undocked, the more than 3,000 workers left in the shipyard were also dismissed on the spot, these people were originally going to evacuate with the battleship, but because of the draft, they could only be left behind, and the feeling of being abandoned by the organization was really uncomfortable, and the depressed workers silently left the slipway, and no one looked back to see Jean. Baal at a glance.

The battleship was carefully pushed out of the nine-hundred-meter-long artificial channel and rushed into the Loire, at low tide, and the danger of the battleship running aground began to increase exponentially as the water level dropped.

Following the pre-set buoy, the battleship slowly moved forward, allowing the . Colonel Ronak stood on the bridge of the seafaring ship, operating the rudder himself, and the rudder was of little use when it was not powered, and the Colonel was doing it now so that he could take all the responsibility if something went wrong.

The voyage of the battleship has been smooth so far, and the battleship can enter the deep water area by passing through the two-hundred-metre-long passage between the Bilho sandbar and Penoe Reef. Seeing that victory was in sight, the expressions of the officers and men on the bridge gradually began to relax, and some even had smiles on their faces.

The huge hull of the ship slowly passed over the river, the reeded and thatched bilho sandbar was on the left side of the bow, the starboard side had already crossed the Penoe reef, and just when it was thought that the most difficult passage had been crossed, the ship suddenly slammed down, and the officers and men in the bridge who had not supported the support fell to the ground. With a shrill grinding sound, the battleship stopped advancing, and at the same time, the port side of the hull slowly lifted upwards at a speed that was visible to the naked eye, and in just a few seconds, the huge battleship had a five-degree roll.

"We're stranded!" The deputy captain stood up with the compass pillar and turned back to report to the captain.

"Departments report the damage, don't panic, we should have hit a rock that wasn't cleaned up." Let. Ronak handed the helm back to the helmsman, walked to the captain's seat and gave the order calmly.

PS: I'm sorry, there is something at home today, and I only took the time to write these, not many words, please understand, and I will make up for it in the future.

Thank you all for your support. (To be continued.) )