Chapter 262: The Mantis Stalks the Cicada, Unaware of the Oriole Behind It |
By the time the surprise attack on Taranto was halfway through, Admiral Spee and Admiral Horthy's fleets had already received the news and were frantically accelerating toward Taranto.
However, due to the distance, they would not reach the battlefield for at least another half a day to a full day, nor could they arrive at the same time.
Lelouch was not omniscient, after all. He merely mentioned the possibility as a precaution, based on his profound understanding of Britannia's sheer shamelessness.
In this world, one could play the thief for a thousand days, but one could not guard against a thief for a thousand days. Without precise intelligence, the allied forces' prevention and coordination could only go so far.
While Spee and Horthy frantically rushed toward Taranto, John Robeck and Osmond Brock still had to fight the latter half of their escape battle before they could safely flee the Port of Taranto with today's spoils.
Although they had completely wiped out Italy's main battleships and the auxiliary vessels left in the port within half an hour thanks to the advantage of their surprise attack, the Brit forces' fleet had also paid the price in auxiliary ships.
During the decisive surprise attack, the Italians had also lost three Garibaldi-class armored cruisers, four older protected cruisers, and five destroyers.
On the Brit Nation's side, they had lost the armored cruiser Good Hope, three older protected cruisers, and one destroyer. These losses were the result of close-range artillery fire and mutual torpedo exchanges—a brutal engagement. The destruction of these protected cruisers and the destroyer was also the result of the Brit Nation's meticulously arranged defenses. Knowing this was a surprise attack, they had deliberately adjusted their berths before the battle began, placing the older protected cruisers on the outside to shield their capital ships, then evacuating as many personnel as possible.
Only weapons operators like gunners and torpedo crews—the soldiers manning the firepower systems—were left on these dilapidated ships, while the engineers and damage control personnel had been transferred out in advance. When the surprise attack began, these protected cruisers did not need to sail at all; they just had to fire with all their might. Furthermore, their berths perfectly blocked the trajectories of the torpedoes fired by the distant Italian fleet at the Brit Nation's capital ships.
Once hit by torpedoes and sinking, or their firepower completely destroyed, the remaining protected cruiser gunners did not linger. They immediately jumped onto lifeboats that had been lowered into the water long beforehand and transferred to their larger ships. Therefore, casualties among this portion of the Brit forces' sailors were very low; only the broken ships were lost.
The Italians, on the other hand, were the ones being ambushed. They had not set up formations in advance, which allowed the torpedoes the Britannia forces launched within the port to strike various Italian targets like winning lottery tickets.
By the middle of last year, because Britannia's naval foundation built over the previous decades was so vast, they still had an inventory of over forty older protected cruisers. But later, during the Gallipoli landing operations, they lost nine (Chapter 156); during the retreat battle in the Sea of Marmara, they were ambushed and surrounded, losing another ten (Chapter 210). Over the past year, they had successively lost two more in anti-submarine warfare, and today they lost another three.
Now, in the entire Britannia Navy, the total inventory of older protected cruisers had been depleted until only nineteen remained. Over half of them were in the Mediterranean Fleet—a total of eleven ships—while only eight were left in the homeland and overseas. The inventory of this trash was just about wiped clean.
Although Robeck had smoothly wiped out the Italian auxiliary fleet inside the port, Italy's auxiliary vessels were not all parked in the harbor. After all, Italy had not yet formally reached an armistice with Demania. The Italian Navy was already in a state of combat readiness and vigilance; they still had many auxiliary vessels providing patrol and reconnaissance outside the port, offering long-range early warning for the harbor.
This portion of the Italian patrol vessels—approximately four protected cruisers, sixteen destroyers, ten submarines, and forty torpedo boats—was scattered across the vast warning waters between the Strait of Otranto and the toe of the Apennine Peninsula.
Now that their lair had been gutted from the inside out, the cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats patrolling outside were highly likely to return for revenge.
"Do not give the Italians a chance to fall back and defend! Hurry up and charge out!"
Admiral John Robeck decisively ordered the fleet to file out along the port's narrow exit, commanding each ship to stagger its course left and right as much as possible, avoiding the same route, in order to lower the hit rate of the Italian coastal defense guns facing outward.
If the leading and trailing ships sailed the same route, the Italian coastal defense guns would only need to aim at the first ship without adjusting their direction for the subsequent ones. They could just mindlessly fire for maximum efficiency and speed.
By staggering their courses by hundreds of meters, it would force the Italian coastal defense guns to repeatedly re-aim, reducing their attack efficiency.
The moment the Brit Nation fleet left the port and entered the firing arc of the outward-facing coastal defense guns, the Italian gunners immediately opened fire with frenzied hatred.
Admiral Robeck observed the enemy situation at once. There were about eight single-barrel 305/17 Obice coastal defense guns and forty-five 150mm coastal defense guns raining shells upon his fleet.
The Brit Nation warships pushed their speed to the maximum, fighting as they retreated. Initially, they returned fire with their broadside guns, but soon pulled far enough away that they could only fire back with their rear guns.
When they sailed out of the narrowest part of the Port of Taranto's channel, the coastal defense guns on both shores were a mere five kilometers from the channel mouth, while the outermost gun emplacements were only eight kilometers away, resulting in a very high hit rate.
However, as long as the Brit Nation warships left at full speed, the Italian gunners had to choose whether to rotate their muzzles to track the departing targets, or to keep aiming at the channel mouth to shoot the next ship as it emerged.
Theoretically, keeping their aim locked on the channel mouth yielded the highest hit rate because it only required fine-tuning. The regular firing tables explicitly noted the exact degrees of direction and elevation needed to completely seal off the outbound channel. But doing so would only allow them to "spread the rain and dew equally"—landing a few shots on every passing ship, making it very difficult to actually sink any enemy vessel.
Admiral Robeck of the Mediterranean Fleet had clearly made contingency plans in advance, knowing the Italians would face this choice. Therefore, to protect the capital ships, he first had a few high-speed destroyers lead the way and charge out.
A large number of Italian coastal defense guns took the bait. The 305mm 17-caliber howitzers simply could not keep up with such high-speed small targets, wasting several rounds of firepower. Only a few 150mm guns got lucky and sank one destroyer, while the Britannia counterattack destroyed several 150mm coastal defense guns.
Following that, Admiral Robeck sent the seemingly massive and bloated armored cruiser Otranto to scout the path, then had his battlecruisers and battleships swarm out all at once.
The Italian battery commander, already flustered by the destroyers buzzing out like flies, suddenly saw the Otranto emerge. Seeing its massive size, he immediately mistook it for a capital ship and instantly ordered all eight 305mm guns to lock on and track their fire.
Lured into turning their muzzles far away, the heavy, large-caliber coastal defense guns focused entirely on aiming at the Otranto. By the time they saw the subsequent battleships rushing out and tried to switch targets back, their efficiency had plummeted.
Ultimately, after all the 305mm guns focused their fire on it for fifteen minutes, the Otranto—a 12,000-ton armored cruiser equipped with two single-mount 234mm main guns and a total of sixteen 150mm secondary broadside guns—was blasted into scrap iron.
However, the sinking of this 10,000-ton armored cruiser also allowed the Brit Nation's main battleships and battlecruisers to rush through the crucial death zone at the Port of Taranto's exit channel. Although they were still within range of the Italian coastal defense guns, the distance had widened from the deadly five-to-eight kilometers out to nine-to-twelve kilometers. If the Italians wanted to keep chasing them with artillery, their hit rate would drop by at least an order of magnitude.
Moreover, while the Otranto sank, the Brit forces' artillery frantically struck back. Although many of the smaller guns could not destroy the 305mm armored turrets, they remained a major threat to the 150mm coastal defense gun emplacements.
Putting everything else aside, the Otranto alone could fire from both sides, engaging in a shootout with the shore using its sixteen 150mm guns. By the time it sank, the fierce counterattack had already blown up nearly half of the 150mm gun emplacements on the shore.
"Keep your eyes on the Barham and the Tiger! Blast them! Don't stop until they're out of range!"
Having finally sunk the Otranto and realizing he had been duped by a tactical trick, the Italian coastal defense gun commander flew into a humiliated rage. This time, he strictly ordered all the heavy guns to fiercely bombard the Brit Nation's most valuable, cutting-edge battleships.
The maximum range of the Italian coastal defense guns was only eighteen kilometers—who told their barrels to be so much shorter than those of other nations? This fatal flaw meant the time window to chase and fire upon a high-speed fleeing enemy ship was exceedingly brief.
The Barham returned fire with its rear guns, exposing only its backside to the Italians. After a fierce exchange, the Italian forces only managed to smash six 440-kilogram 305mm Armor-Piercing Shells into the tail of the Barham, and three into the tail of the Tiger.
When the shells hit the Barham, Admiral Robeck felt the battleship shudder violently.
"What is going on? Are the Italians' short-barrel guns that powerful? Isn't our battleship's armor designed to withstand 15-inch guns? Damage control, report the situation immediately!"
Admiral Robeck was extremely anxious. Just as he demanded the report, the battleship trembled violently once again.
After quite a while, a damage control officer finally came over to report, "The rear secondary bridge was hit, and the officers inside were all killed in the explosion. The rear No. 3 turret has also been destroyed."
"Fortunately, there were only four shells in the turret, so the secondary explosion wasn't massive. The ammunition hoist is fine."
"Weren't our main turrets designed to defend against bombardment from 15-inch guns?!" Admiral Robeck was still somewhat bewildered as to how a rear main turret had been crippled.
A few minutes later, a technical officer finally figured out the situation.
"Reporting to the Commander! The trajectory of the Italians' coastal defense guns is highly arched! Their short-barrel guns are fired at an elevation angle of over forty degrees. The horizontal armor of our turrets and decks simply cannot withstand it!"
Upon hearing this explanation, Admiral Robeck was left speechless.
Damn it! To think that the Italians' unorthodox idea of using short-barrel, high-elevation indirect-fire howitzers as coastal defense guns would actually pose such an unexpected threat!
The vast majority of anti-ship guns in this era were modified from long-barrel battleship guns, possessing flat trajectories and primarily targeting vertical armor belts.
Italy was the sole anomaly, specializing in top-attack tactics similar to mortars. Although it was difficult to sink a battleship this way, it posed a massive threat to the deck and upper superstructure.
In the end, before the Barham broke free of enemy range, it was struck by the plunging fire of these six 440-kilogram shells, resulting in the tragic destruction of both the C and D rear main turrets, the explosion of the rear bridge, and the collapse of the rear funnel.
Two more Armor-Piercing Shells hit the unarmored rear deck near the tail. Because there was almost no armor protection there—the deck steel being only one inch thick—the plunging shells easily blasted deep into the stern, even over-penetrating and causing flooding. The Armor-Piercing Shells simply punched through the deck and exited through the ship's bottom.
Had it not been for the Armor-Piercing Shells plunging at an elevation angle of over forty-five degrees, achieving such an effect would have been impossible.
While inspecting the damage caused by these last two stern-penetrating shells, the damage control team quickly brought another piece of bad news to Admiral Robeck: "The stern-penetrating shells damaged the central right main shaft! We must lower the output of the corresponding low-pressure steam turbine!"
"Damn it!" Admiral Robeck felt incredibly helpless, but to prevent the damage from worsening, it was the only way.
The Queen Elizabeth-class battleship was propelled by four shafts, with the outer two shafts providing greater power and the central two providing less.
It utilized four steam turbines. The boilers first delivered high-temperature, high-pressure steam nearing three hundred degrees Celsius to the two outer high-pressure turbines. The steam discharged after doing work was still around two hundred degrees, and could then be piped into the low-pressure steam turbines of the two central shafts, using the residual heat and pressure to generate power once again.
This "cascading high and low-pressure steam turbine" model was designed to save fuel and increase the utilization rate of the steam's residual heat.
Because every steam turbine had a fixed high-efficiency working temperature and pressure range, a turbine highly efficient in the high-pressure range would fail to turn when encountering low-pressure steam. Conversely, a turbine highly efficient in the low-pressure range might spin out of control if fed high-pressure steam. To fully utilize steam across all temperature and pressure ranges, a high-low configuration was the only solution.
Now that a central low-pressure shaft had been damaged by the explosion, the battleship had to vent and waste a portion of the residual steam through pressure relief valves after the high-pressure turbines were done with it. Main propulsion now relied solely on the output of the two high-pressure shafts.
The entire ship's output dropped from roughly 75,000 horsepower to 60,000 horsepower, and its theoretical maximum speed fell from twenty-five knots to twenty-three knots at best.
Furthermore, the destruction of the rear funnel caused a drop in combustion efficiency, further decreasing power. Combined with the flooding in the stern, the ship's longitudinal stability plummeted, increasing drag, and ultimately causing its speed to drop to nineteen knots.
(Note: The destruction of the funnel leads to poor exhaust ventilation because the funnels of the Queen Elizabeth-class have forced-draft fans rather than relying on natural ventilation. If the fans are destroyed along with the funnel, exhaust gases will be expelled slowly, and the intake of fresh, oxygen-rich air will also be slow. Without enough oxygen, the boilers will burn slowly, causing pressure to drop. If it were an older dreadnought using natural ventilation boilers without forced-draft fans in the funnel, the destruction of the funnel wouldn't affect the boiler's power; it would merely spew black smoke and obscure visibility. Anyone who has played Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts knows this common sense.)
On the other side, the battlecruiser Tiger had also been struck on its rear deck by three 305mm plunging heavy shells. The Tiger's armor was far thinner than the Barham's; its rearmost No. 4 main turret was blasted away during the bombardment, and its hull was pierced with two massive vertical holes, causing flooding. However, its propulsion shafts were unharmed, allowing it to maintain a speed of twenty-four knots.
After all the dreadnoughts and battlecruisers sailed out of range of the Taranto coastal defense guns, they turned their broadsides past the eighteen-kilometer mark. From just outside the coastal guns' maximum range, they launched free bombardments to cover the slower ships that had not yet escaped.
Seeing that they could no longer hit the Barham and the Tiger, the Italians had no choice but to turn their muzzles toward the slowly crawling Pre-dreadnought, the HMS Hindustan.
Ultimately, under the Italians' final focused fire, the HMS Hindustan was top-attacked by over a dozen heavy 305mm Armor-Piercing Shells. The Pre-dreadnought's weak horizontal armor caused the ship to explode massively and sink. Additionally, two protected cruisers and one destroyer were destroyed during their escape by the clusters of small 150mm shore guns.
Meanwhile, all the other ships escaped the range of the coastal defense guns.
The fierce counterattack by the Brit forces' fleet had also nearly wiped out the Port of Taranto coastal defense batteries on the shore. Only three of the 305mm 17-caliber coastal defense guns remained, while the 150mm coastal defense guns were completely annihilated.
Admiral Robeck had no time to dilly-dally and slowly clean up the last three short-barreled 305mm guns, so he simply slipped away at a speed of sixteen knots. It wasn't that he didn't want to go faster, but his fleet contained injured Pre-dreadnoughts like the Cornwallis and the Russell, which maxed out at that speed. Although the Barham had slowed to nineteen knots, it was still considered fast compared to the equally damaged Pre-dreadnoughts.
During the duel with the coastal defense batteries, the Brit Nation's Mediterranean Fleet paid the price of having one battleship and one battlecruiser damaged, and one Pre-dreadnought, one armored cruiser, two protected cruisers, and two destroyers sunk. A total of six ships sank in exchange for almost completely annihilating the Port of Taranto coastal defense fortress and escaping.
This Operation Catapult truly could not be considered a clean victory; it was only a pyrrhic one, wiping out more than half of Italy's main naval forces.
During their departure, Robeck's fleet was soon attacked again by Italy's patrol fleet from outside the port.
Fortunately, the Italians did not dare to truly fight to the death. More often than not, they would just charge up, launch a volley of torpedoes, and flee, because they no longer had any capital ships. Their only hope of turning the tables lay in torpedoes.
Robeck still had quite a few light escort vessels around him, so he could still put up a fight.
He took stock of his remaining forces, which included the injured Barham, Tiger, and Bellerophon, as well as the Pre-dreadnoughts HMS Africa, Cornwallis, and Russell. Additionally, there were the armored cruisers Devonshire and Drake, nine protected cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers.
The total was two battleships, one battlecruiser, three Pre-dreadnoughts, two armored cruisers, nine protected cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers.
When the Brit Nation's Mediterranean Fleet sailed forty nautical miles south-southwest of the Port of Taranto, they first encountered an attack by four Italian destroyers leading a swarm of forty torpedo boats. Inherently incapable of distant voyages, these torpedo boats were responsible for inner-line patrols near the port, so they arrived earliest.
Unexpectedly, despite the Italians' cowardly reputation, their torpedo boat units actually displayed quite a bit of courage. Even after their allied boats were blown apart by rapid-fire guns, many continued the charge. In the end, because the artillery fire was truly too fierce, some of the small boats simply fired their torpedoes upon reaching maximum range and then turned away to disengage.
Because a large number of the Brit fleet's protected cruisers pushed forward as a screen, the Italians found it difficult to threaten the capital ships. In the end, a staggering twenty-three torpedo boats were brutally blown up, while the rest were scared out of their wits, haphazardly launching their torpedoes and fleeing. The four destroyers were entirely annihilated by artillery fire.
The Britannia side only paid the price of two outer protected cruisers taking torpedoes and sinking. Another two protected cruisers took some destroyer shells, suffering minor damage that didn't affect their sailing. One Brit Nation destroyer was heavily damaged by enemy destroyer fire and rendered unable to sail; to avoid dragging down the fleet's speed, they chose to evacuate the personnel and abandon ship.
But soon, Admiral Robeck paid the price for heavily defending the perimeter while leaving the core vulnerable.
Guarding against the large swarm of torpedo boats, he had dispatched all the protected cruisers and some of the destroyers, creating obvious loopholes in the anti-submarine search network near the capital fleet.
The Italians still had ten submarines near their home port of Taranto. Although their extremely slow speed meant they couldn't all reach the scene, it was generally considered a success if just one of the three searching submarine groups managed to make it to the battlefield.
But these mere four submarines still posed a considerable threat.
While the Brit Nation's forces had their attention entirely focused on the distant swarm of destroyers and torpedo boats, the submarines suddenly closed in, surfaced, and attacked, unleashing a volley of eight torpedoes at close range. (During World War I, Italian submarines only had two forward torpedo tubes, much worse than Demanian submarines.)
As a result, the threat of these eight torpedoes proved far greater than the 160 torpedoes from the forty torpedo boats in the distance.
Because the battleship Barham was the most obvious target and drew the most attention, it was focus-fired by four torpedoes from two submarines. One finally hit, throwing up a massive geyser of water on its port side, tearing open a two-meter breach, and pouring in thousands of tons of seawater.
Damage control immediately sealed the watertight bulkhead doors, yet the hull still listed by eight degrees. They had no choice but to flood the starboard side with 1,200 tons of water to balance it out, which further dropped its speed to fifteen knots.
The other two submarines targeted other ships. One missed all its shots, while the other's two torpedoes struck the Pre-dreadnought Cornwallis, which was already damaged and suffering from reduced speed.
Coincidentally, in the Earth plane, this Cornwallis was originally destined to be sunk by torpedoes from a Demanian submarine in the waters of Malta in 1917. Now, a year earlier and with the battlefield still near the waters of Malta, by a twist of fate it was struck by torpedoes from an Italian submarine instead.
The Cornwallis, inherently slow and sluggish in its turns, had no way to dodge. It took two solid torpedo hits on the same side and soon capsized and sank. Fortunately, the sailors on board had ample time to lower lifeboats and escape.
The four Italian submarines that launched the attack did not fare well either. They were soon swarmed by furious Brit Nation destroyers, which frantically dropped depth charges and sank them all.
"Motherfucker! I really underestimated the Italians! Their army is such garbage with zero fighting will, so how is it that their navy actually has the guts to fight us to the bitter end!"
Admiral Robeck was extremely frustrated. The reason the Admiralty had ordered him to execute Operation Catapult was partly due to the Italians' weak fighting will. They believed the Italians could be scared into surrendering and seized, and even if they couldn't be seized, they definitely wouldn't have the will to fight to the bitter end.
Unexpectedly, the fighting will of the Italian Navy was stronger than that of their army. This misjudgment caused Operation Catapult to turn into a total mess.
The fierce battle lasted until nine in the morning. After finally routing the Italian submarine and torpedo boat swarms, Admiral Robeck continued retreating to the southwest.
At ten-thirty, he encountered the final wave of resistance from the Italians. This time, it was the Italians' patrol protected cruiser detachment rushing back—a total of four protected cruisers and twelve destroyers.
Robeck dared not linger in battle any longer. He ordered the capital ships to flee at full speed and kept a portion of the destroyers by his side for anti-submarine duties, not daring to send them forward to form a screen. He only left a few protected cruisers to bring up the rear and intercept.
Thus, a battle between protected cruisers and destroyers finally ended with the Italians' protected cruisers either sunk or damaged, and several of their destroyers eliminated, in exchange for the Brit fleet losing another three older protected cruisers before they eventually pulled away from each other. Of the three protected cruisers the Britannia forces lost, two were sunk by focused enemy destroyer torpedo fire, and only one was sunk by artillery.
The Italian destroyers knew they could not penetrate the screen to launch torpedoes at the capital ships, so they dumped all their torpedoes onto these protected cruisers.
After successive bouts of tearing at each other, when Admiral Robeck finally shook off the Italians, he only had two battleships, one battlecruiser, two Pre-dreadnoughts, two armored cruisers, four protected cruisers, and nineteen destroyers left.
The crux was that all three battleships and battlecruisers were damaged. The Barham had been bombarded by over a dozen 305mm Armor-Piercing Shells in total (the six plunging shells caused massive damage, while the remaining flat-trajectory ones weren't a big deal), and it had also taken a torpedo.
In completely blocking the Italians' torpedo strike fleets, the losses suffered by the screen of older protected cruisers had been truly too great, dropping from over a dozen ships down to just four. They had simply run into bloody bad luck.
Admiral Robeck could have originally sailed to Malta in twenty hours. Now that his ships' speeds were so much slower, it was estimated to take forty hours, and the multiple naval battles in between added another three hours of delay.
This didn't even count the slight amount of time lost to fishing up the abandoned ships' lifeboats.
In a complicated mood, Admiral Robeck sailed through the afternoon with nothing happening. He continued sailing through the entire night, and still, nothing happened.
But when the morning sun of June 20th rose on the port side, Admiral Robeck was finally alerted to a situation.
A few destroyers casting a wide net for early warning thirty nautical miles to the left of the capital fleet suddenly reported back: "On the port side rear, heading 115, an enemy fleet has been spotted! It's the Demanians! It's the Moltke and the Goeben!"
Admiral Robeck felt a rush of blood to his head. "What? The despicable Spee! Why is he appearing here? Trying to pick up cheap scraps right after our bloody battle! Shameless!"
But he had no other choice. The Demanians had already discovered him, and the distance between the two sides was rapidly closing. The enemy's speed was at least twenty-eight knots, while his was a mere fifteen. They were closing the distance by over a dozen nautical miles every hour.
And they were still over two hundred nautical miles from the port of Malta.
Robeck gritted his teeth and ordered the transmission of an unencrypted telegram, calling for friendly forces in nearby waters to rush over as quickly as possible.
"I don't even know where the Franks' reinforcements have reached! Send another telegram to Ferdinand Jean Jacques De Bon! Have them rush over at top speed!"
After giving the order, he muttered curses under his breath. "Our position is already exposed. There's no need to maintain radio silence anymore."
Actually, after the Taranto battle turned into a fiasco yesterday, Robeck had already telegraphed Ferdinand Jean Jacques De Bon, the commander of the Francia Mediterranean detachment fleet, urging him to hurry up. Besides, Robeck's position was publicly known at the time anyway, so there had been no need for radio silence.
Now this was the second time urging him, so naturally it counted as another telegram.
As long as they held out until the Franks arrived, the Demanians would retreat.
To fight a battle with these kind of oil-adding tactics, where both sides were constantly sending reinforcements, was truly too clumsy.
In a rigorously planned naval battle, such low-level mistakes would never be made. Neither side had managed to assemble a superior force at the first opportunity to absolutely crush the opponent with greater numbers—what a true failure.
But then again, who could help it if the world was nothing more than a ragtag troupe cobbled together by countless accidents?
