Chapter 697: The Goeben's Victory
Going to the ocean has been Tirpitz's dream for many years, but the Anglo-German naval competition and Britain's overwhelming strength once made Tirpitz lose confidence. But now a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has emerged.
In the Mediterranean, the French Navy was at a disadvantage to the Austrian and Italian Navy in all aspects. If the current configuration was used, even with the British Navy's strength in the Mediterranean, if a naval battle broke out, it would certainly be a life-and-death battle. Tirpitz did not believe that the British and French fleet would choose to take the initiative to attack given the current power comparison.
Then there must have been a strong fleet joining in, giving the British and French Mediterranean fleets the courage to do so.
The source of this force had no other choice but to go to the Great Fleet in Britain. Although Tirpitz did not know how many dreadnoughts the British had drawn to fight against the Austro-Italian Navy, he could sense that this was an opportunity that the German High Seas Fleet could not wait for.
After leaving the palace, Tirpitz immediately contacted the Italian Navy and the Austro-Hungarian Navy through the Navy Command. Italy's procrastination in this war made the German military dissatisfied. However, the Triple Alliance has a history of more than 20 years, and the military contacts between Germany, Austria and Italy have never been interrupted. The Triple Defense of the Allied camp has also been held more than once. It is not known whether the Italians know the movements of the Allied Mediterranean Navy, but he still feels it is necessary to remind his allies.
Tirpitz's guess was not wrong. The British Royal Navy had advantages over the German Navy in the three areas of dreadnoughts, battlecruisers and pre-dreadnoughts. This time, two dreadnoughts, two battlecruisers, seven pre-dreadnoughts and ten armored cruisers were drawn from the huge naval fleet to form a task force that was huge in the eyes of any country except the German High Seas Fleet. It went to the Mediterranean to complete the Allied Powers' attack on the Central Powers' Mediterranean naval forces.
Even with such a large fleet, the British Grand Fleet still has more than one-third the strength of the German High Seas Fleet. Now the ratio of the British and German navies is very close to the 70% fleet theory.
As for some unexpected interference factors, such as the Imperial Russian Navy in the Baltic Sea, they were not within Tirpitz's consideration. Not to mention that the Imperial Russian Navy suffered heavy losses in the Russo-Japanese War, the geographical environment alone could help the German Navy a lot. When the Imperial Russian Navy faced the German Navy, it was like the Austro-Hungarian Navy facing the Italian Navy. There was only one exit, the Strait of Otranto, and if it was blocked, there was no way out.
As for the four battleships that belonged to a slave owner and called themselves the First Fleet in the Indian Ocean, but actually had nothing to do except escorting supplies to the Persian Gulf, they were far from what Tirpitz was thinking about.
Tirpitz contacted the Austro-Hungarian Navy Commander Baron Haus. The Austro-Hungarian Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Baron Anton von Haus was convinced that the war would end in a short time, so he did not focus on strengthening the navy. Instead, he tolerated the transfer of the shipyard's labor force to army construction.
Fortunately for the navy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not have a navy department. The navy was just a naval department under the army. The naval commander had a relatively large degree of independence and could report directly to the emperor on many issues such as the construction, management and command of the navy. Therefore, compared with the army, it would not be involved in too many political confrontations and did not need to stick to more traditional constraints.
Baron Haus attached great importance to Tirpitz's news. Compared with the Allied Powers, Germany's military strength, whether navy or army, was the undisputed first in the Allied Powers. The three Allied Powers, Britain, France and Russia, each had their own advantages. When formulating combat operations, they needed to take care of each other's emotions.
Because Germany had an extremely obvious advantage over the Allies, most of the time, the other Allied countries cooperated with Germany's combat plans. After learning of Tirpitz's idea, Baron Haus immediately expressed his willingness to cooperate.
The Austro-Hungarian Navy then quickly activated the tripartite defense mechanism and informed the Italian Navy, which also felt the danger, of the news. The secret military operation was transmitted invisibly between Vienna and Rome via wireless telegrams.
Italy eventually became a staunch supporter of the Central Powers, and had a huge relationship with slave owners. Historically, the Allies tried to win over Italy by promising to divide the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Central Powers offered to divide Tunisia to Italy.
With the manipulation of the slave owners, not to mention Tunisia, even Libya was taken away by the French. This great humiliation made the Italian Navy firmly oppose getting close to the Allies.
The Duke of Abruzzi, the commander of the Italian Navy, quickly reviewed the battleships in his mind. Five dreadnoughts were ready to go into battle at any time, and four dreadnoughts were under construction. There were also eight pre-dreadnoughts and ten armored cruisers available. Together with the four combined-force dreadnoughts and ten pre-dreadnoughts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this was a force that could not be underestimated if a joint operation was adopted.
Through Baron Haus, the Duke of Abruzzi already knew that the German High Seas Fleet had already discovered the actions of the British and French fleets and was taking countermeasures. He quickly agreed to the Austro-Hungarian Navy's request for joint defense!
The Austro-Italian Navy knew that the Anglo-French fleet was coming with great force this time, so they quickly finalized an equally tit-for-tat plan, based on a decisive battle in the ocean to deal a heavy blow to the invading British and French navies.
On this day, the Austro-Hungarian fleet, centered around four Combined Power-class battleships, sailed out of the Strait of Otranto from various major military ports and headed south to join the Italian Navy. The huge turrets of the battleships told people that they were not out for a trip.
The peaceful Mediterranean Sea suddenly became strange because of this two-on-two interaction.
The slave owners, who felt a little bored in 1915, were no longer sleepy. They sent some trusted people to live next to the naval port. It was not difficult to count the number of people passing by every day. Moreover, it was not difficult to observe ports like Toulon and Alexandria in Egypt, and Gibraltar was not a completely naval port.
After learning that the French and British fleets in Toulon and Alexandria had disappeared, couldn't he guess what it meant? Most of the battles in the world wars were not sudden. Even the Battle of Jutland was known to the British when the German High Seas Fleet left the port.
"I just want to know, are the Germans just going to stand by and watch? Why not help the Allies?" Sheffield certainly didn't know that Tirpitz had already noticed this situation. Anyway, with his normal IQ, he felt that this opportunity could not be missed.
It seemed that after the boring first half of 1915, the fighting would become more intense from now on, and the fierce fighting would shift to the sea.
On the eve of the naval battle, which both sides had foreseen, the battlecruiser Goeben, which had been hiding in the Ottoman Empire, once again crossed the Dardanelles and became a troublemaker in the Mediterranean. Even the British had forgotten about the battlecruiser that staged a life-and-death battle royale in the Mediterranean after the war broke out, and by the way, pulled the Ottoman Empire into the Allied camp.
On June 27, the Austro-Hungarian Navy arrived at the Italian port and joined the Italian Navy. The Austro-Hungarian Navy that arrived in Italy was welcomed by many local residents. Italy has a long coastline, but since the war began, the military ports have been well defended, and ordinary ports have not been bombarded by the British and French fleets against civilians. Except for the French-Italian border, the whole of Italy is still very safe.
This naval force of nine dreadnoughts, eighteen pre-dreadnoughts, and twenty armored cruisers gathered together was very shocking. After the end of the southern war against Serbia, the land pressure on the Austro-Hungarian Empire was greatly reduced. The German-Austrian coalition forces had already invaded the territory of Imperial Russia. The strategic environment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had improved a lot. Finally, it agreed to Baron Haus's suggestion and was willing to send the navy out to give it a try.
Churchill had foreseen the difficulties that might arise in the Mediterranean, and was even prepared for fierce resistance from the Italian or Austro-Hungarian navy. However, facing the Italian navy and the Austro-Hungarian navy, which was also not known for its navy, he still believed that the British and French fleets had enough reasons to destroy them, or at least severely damage the Allied naval forces, to ensure the control of the Mediterranean for a period of time, so that his plan to destroy the Ottoman Empire could be realized calmly.
But Churchill did not expect that he was not the only one who was paying attention to the situation in the Mediterranean. The German naval commander Tirpitz was also thinking about taking advantage of this situation to deal a severe blow to the British.
"I heard that your German Navy's code book has been leaked. Of course, I have no evidence! It was some British friends who said it." Sheffield sat next to Grettisen very naturally, as if they were chatting about family matters.
"Mr. William, are you serious?" Grettisen asked in surprise.
"The news is not true! But sometimes it's good to think about it. For example, you know that the code book has been leaked, and the British used the previous code book to decipher your military operations. You can use this to your advantage." Sheffield smiled and said, "I work in the media, and I have created a lot of fake news."
While the two were chatting, a naval battle was approaching. It was impossible for such a large fleet to be deployed quietly. The British and French knew that the Austrian and Italian navies were gathering. At the same time, the Austrian and Italian navies also learned from various news that the British and French fleets were about to meet, and both sides were eager to find each other.
Whether to divide the troops to prevent the British fleet, which used Alexandria, Egypt and Malta as ports, from joining forces with the Anglo-French fleet in the western Mediterranean, or to wait until the two sides joined forces for a face-to-face decisive battle, became a new problem.
No one expected that the first record this time was set by the long-lost German battlecruiser Goeben. Goeben suddenly appeared, quickly grabbed an armored cruiser and attacked it. The huge enemy ship was hit directly, and tall water columns were stirred up on the side. One shell hit its generator room and another hit the rear boiler room. The enemy ship began to list, and nine minutes later, as the sailors jumped away one after another, it finally sank into the blue-black waves. This warship was a British 11,000-ton armored cruiser.
Then the battlecruiser Goeben disappeared again on the sea, as if it had never appeared.
(End of this chapter)
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