Chapter 276: Their Asses Are at the Bottom of the Sea, Not Hurting Anymore |
Hipper certainly had the strength to use all four of his battlecruisers to bait David Beatty. But to ensure the enemy took the hook—to show weakness and make them give chase without thinking—he could only send out a single ship, the Hindenburg, for now.
By letting the Hindenburg bear the disadvantage of facing a superior force alone, dragging out the pursuit for two or three hours, he would lure Beatty right into the ambush zone.
Then, once the enemy was pinned down, the rest of the Empire's high-speed capital ships would arrive at precisely the right moment.
This was the risk and the price required for victory. Hipper also believed that with the Hindenburg's capabilities, sustaining a long-range, relatively inaccurate artillery duel for two hours would be no problem at all.
Around 2:00 PM, upon spotting the Hindenburg, Beatty pushed the boilers of all his warships into overload, chasing it down at full speed.
The Hindenburg's top speed was indeed slightly slower than the Brit Nation's fast warships, but in a simple tail chase, the enemy might not catch up even after sailing for several hours.
Yet as Beatty chased, he also attempted to open fire at an ultra-long range of over twenty kilometers. Although the impact error of the shells was massive and hitting the target was almost impossible, with repeated adjustments and spotting corrections, the margin of error gradually shrank.
When the shells began landing within two to three hundred meters of the Hindenburg, Beatty saw the German ship adjust its tactics. From its original straight-line course with stern gun return fire, it shifted to returning fire while making slight evasive turns.
As everyone knew, during naval artillery duels, if the enemy's shells were landing closer and closer—having dialed in the lead on the target's course and speed and threatening an imminent hit—the targeted side could alter its course or speed. This would invalidate a portion of the spotting data the enemy had just gathered, forcing them to recalculate several parameters and thereby lowering their hit rate.
Therefore, while the side actively changing course and speed would also see a drop in its artillery precision, the decline wouldn't be as severe as the enemy's.
This was easy to understand: when initiating a turn, a ship knew exactly how many degrees it would steer and how many knots it would drop, calculating everything before the maneuver even began. But the enemy didn't know. They had to observe the turn, figure out how many degrees had changed and how much speed was lost, and then calculate everything on the spot.
The side adjusting its speed and course could thus win a temporary precision advantage in the artillery duel, at the cost of losing speed and kinetic energy.
Seeing the Hindenburg shift its tactics, Beatty paid it no mind.
"Hmph. Still playing with turns and speed changes at a time like this to ruin my precision? Doing that will only make me catch up faster! So what if our accuracy is temporarily lowered and we can't hit them? I'll just tank a few hits first. As long as the distance closes, they'll die sooner or later!"
It was a trade-off between precision and speed. The Germans chose precision; the Brits chose speed. Both sides seemed to have gained the attribute they valued most.
And so, in a running fight that lasted two hours, they battled all the way to 4:00 PM, with both sides sailing over fifty nautical miles farther to the southwest.
Because the Brit ships had sacrificed precision for speed, they only managed to land three Armor-Piercing Shells on the Hindenburg throughout the entire process. The Hindenburg, on the other hand, returned fire and blasted four Armor-Piercing Shells into the Australia, piercing its superstructure in several places and destroying the rangefinder on its bridge.
The battlefield had almost shifted to the waters around Vage Island—the westernmost cape of the Scandinavian Peninsula, sitting directly north of Bergen Port.
Sailing eighty nautical miles farther south from this position—roughly three hours of full-speed steaming—would bring them right to Bergen Port.
However, just as the Britannia battlecruiser fleet rounded the cape of Vage Island, David Beatty's pupils abruptly contracted.
As his fleet's trajectory shifted from the southwest to due south, he saw a line of old-fashioned battleships appear to the south.
"The Demanians set an ambush of battleships here?! Did I fall into a trap again?"
Beatty's heart was gripped by a surge of suspicion and uncertainty. But he rubbed his eyes, and as they drew slightly closer, he finally saw clearly: the opposing vessels were merely a collection of ships with rather mediocre combat power.
Among them, he could actually make out two Nassau-class battleships, along with several Pre-dreadnoughts that looked like either the Braunschweig-class or the Demania-class!
"Why would such old ships be dragged out here on a mission? And sent to intercept our forces? Aren't these all decrepit old tubs running on triple-expansion reciprocating steam engines? Where are the other, faster warships?"
While Beatty was still reeling with doubt, the intelligence personnel attached to the Britannia Royal Navy—especially several intelligence analysis staff officers—proved reliable and competent. After a tense analysis, a staff officer gave him a reasonably plausible explanation: "Admiral, according to yesterday's intelligence, the Demanians attempted to cover a Swedish mercenary landing operation at Kristiansand in southernmost Norway, as well as here at Bergen Port in westernmost Norway.
"Furthermore, the southernmost port of Kristiansand has already been confirmed occupied by landing forces. According to intelligence from Norway at the time, large warships with relatively high speeds were suspected to be operating in the waters off Kristiansand. The situation here in Bergen, however, remains unclear.
"Therefore, is it possible the Demanians deployed these old ships simply to provide escort and fire support for the Bergen operation? If they originally intended to execute shore bombardment missions, using low-speed warships with old-fashioned steam engines would be entirely logical.
"Their main high-speed battlecruiser group might be carrying out a different task and is currently en route. As for their main dreadnoughts, according to prior intelligence, they have remained stationed in Wilhelmshaven. It was only yesterday, after they seized Ambassador Benckendorff, that our spies observed numerous dreadnoughts sailing out of Wilhelmshaven. So they were originally sitting on standby. That makes sense."
Hipper had deliberately waited until yesterday to let most of Admiral Scheer's main battleships set sail. The goal was to give the enemy time, embolden them, and lull them into relaxing their vigilance.
If all the dreadnoughts had left port early, the commotion would have been far too massive to hide from the eyes of the Britannia spies outside Wilhelmshaven. Therefore, the main fleet tasked with delivering the fatal blow had to make an emergency departure only after the core incident took place.
Of course, the fleet could secretly fire up its boilers in advance, saving several hours of preheating time to ensure they could hit full speed the moment they left port. This would shave hours or even half a day off their transit time, creating a massive information gap—though all of that would come later.
Regardless, Beatty had found himself a reasonable explanation for why a fleet of relatively slow, weak, yet numerous enemy vessels had appeared right before his eyes—these ships were originally here to execute shore fire support missions.
Hadn't the Royal Navy also used old-fashioned Pre-dreadnoughts to execute shore bombardment support missions during the naval battles of Ostend and Dunkirk last year? Both sides did the same thing.
"So, we're facing two Nassau-class ships and five Pre-dreadnoughts—looks like our forces are fighting a five-on-seven. If the Hindenburg turns around to fight us, it becomes a five-on-eight. The enemy has the numerical advantage—but Pre-dreadnoughts have abysmal combat power; even two of them can't match the firepower of a single dreadnought. Not to mention the enemy's dreadnoughts are just the oldest Nassau-class, with questionable combat effectiveness. We can fight this battle! I couldn't have asked for better!"
The Demanians currently possessed a total of two Braunschweig-class and five Demania-class Pre-dreadnoughts capable of sailing with the fleet into battle. This scale was roughly identical to the Battle of Jutland in the Earth dimension—
In the Battle of Jutland, because Demania had weaker naval forces, they threw everything they had into an all-out offensive, dragging both classes of Pre-dreadnoughts onto the battlefield to form the 2nd Battle Squadron: six Pre-dreadnoughts in total, commanded by Rear Admiral Felix Mauve.
In this dimension, due to the naval battle of Dunkirk the previous year, several Braunschweig-class Pre-dreadnoughts had been taken by Admiral Spee to intercept the Brit beachhead at Nieuwpoort and impede the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force. They had suffered heavy casualties dueling the Royal Navy; for instance, the SMS Hessen, which was originally supposed to fight at Jutland in the Earth dimension, had sunk in battle right there. By now, even its wreckage had long since been melted down and recycled by Lelouch's Three-phase arc furnace steel mills.
Thus, the Demanians could only field five Pre-dreadnoughts in total, leaving the two ships named Prossen and Demania behind. The Emperor had also considered that these two vessels were named after Demania and Prossen; if they were sunk, it would be an inauspicious blow to morale. Their meager combat power wouldn't be missed anyway, so both were permanently converted into training ships.
Right now, what Beatty faced across the water were the two dreadnoughts Nassau and Westfalen, alongside the Braunschweig, Hannover, Pommern, Schlesien, and Schleswig.
Five against seven, but they still had to charge! The enemy's ship quality and combat effectiveness were inferior anyway!
Hipper had offered up a choking bait—one that Beatty couldn't swallow comfortably, couldn't bear to walk away from, and ultimately, after much deliberation, decided to force down anyway.
And just like that, the Hindenburg, which Beatty had been pursuing all this time, magnificently cut right through the line of seven friendly warships covering it. It ducked several kilometers behind the seven vessels before provocatively turning its bow to run parallel to Beatty's battlecruiser fleet, playing a game of "hide and seek" with him.
For example, if Beatty intended to leverage his battlecruisers' superior speed to seize the advantage of crossing the T before entering firing range, he inevitably had to circle to either the left or the right of the German ships.
But the moment Beatty circled left, the Hindenburg ran right. Like a hawk catching chicks, it constantly used its seven slow, elderly friendly ships as a mother hen, kiting the hawk around them and ensuring that the chick and the hawk stayed on opposite sides of the hen at all times.
This forced Beatty into a reality: if he wanted to hit the Hindenburg, he had to fight their slow ships first. He could forget about using his high speed to play kiting games!
Originally, a major advantage of battlecruisers fighting Pre-dreadnoughts lay in their speed and the resulting formation superiority. But because the Hindenburg was an anchor target that simply had to be killed, more than half of Beatty's speed advantage was quietly neutralized.
This scene was identical to how Admiral Spee had relied on old-fashioned Pre-dreadnoughts to force Beatty into battle during the naval battle of Dunkirk early the previous year—back then, Beatty could have relied on his high speed and superior range to kite the enemy, but the moment Beatty dared to open the distance and maneuver for position, Admiral Spee would without hesitation turn his guns around and mercilessly bombard the British Expeditionary Force on the shore.
That left the army screaming profanities over the Radio Set, blasting the navy for cowardice and forcing Beatty to stop kiting the enemy and obediently fight a hard, head-on battle.
In that past battle, the stratagem Spee employed was "attacking what the enemy must save." Today, the stratagem Hipper employed was "defending what the enemy must attack."
The Hindenburg was the target Beatty was forced to assault. As long as it hid behind its allies, it was the ultimate cure for any fancy maneuvering.
Beatty knew time was precious, and both sides were now racing against the clock. If he could finish off the Hindenburg faster—even if he couldn't snatch Benckendorff back—as long as he ensured the man was dead and his belongings had sunk into the sea, Beatty could immediately retreat. Then it would be his turn to rendezvous with the Grand Fleet's main forces and lure the Demanians into pursuing him.
Therefore, to save time, Beatty decided to charge head-on, abandoning the use of his speed advantage.
Of the three great advantages battlecruisers held over Pre-dreadnoughts, Beatty had been forced to surrender one before the real fighting even began—and it was the largest one at that.
Over the waters near the cape of Vage Island, giant guns roared all at once. Thirty-six German 280mm massive guns and eight 305mm guns—a total of forty-four main guns—opened up.
They engaged in a fierce exchange of fire against the Brit lineage's twenty 305mm guns and sixteen 343mm guns—thirty-six in total (only six of the eight guns on each of the two Invincible-class ships could fire a broadside in the same direction).
The Demanians possessed a higher count of main guns, but the caliber length of the 280mm guns on the five Pre-dreadnoughts was rather short, resulting in weak armor-piercing power (the Braunschweig only had 40-caliber guns, the weakest, while the other four had 45-caliber).
The two sides traded fire at mid-to-long range for a short while, and the Demania warships were soon the first to suffer severe damage.
While trading fire on the line, the Pre-dreadnought Pommern was repeatedly struck by the battlecruiser Invincible. Multiple penetrations and explosions quickly erupted across the ship, and its hull began taking on water. The Pommern's counterattacks merely damaged some of the Invincible's auxiliary facilities, and its hit rate was far lower; it absorbed a full seven large-caliber Armor-Piercing Shells while only hitting the enemy with two in return.
The gap in firepower density and fire control precision on the Pre-dreadnoughts was simply too immense. The ship quickly lost its combat effectiveness, and both of its main gun turrets were rendered powerless to return fire. From beginning to end, its damage output was remarkably feeble; it merely served to hold the line, absorb damage, and share the enemy's firepower.
On the other hand, the Nassau dueling the Lion, along with the Westfalen dueling the HMS Princess Royal, performed quite well. In this kind of one-on-one combat, the German battleships' 300mm-thick waterline armor belt could still withstand the Brit battlecruisers' 343mm Armor-Piercing Shells in most situations.
Only Armor-Piercing Shells hitting above or below the waterline stood a chance of penetrating, and even then, they wouldn't destroy core compartments or cause massive flooding.
The Nassau performed best of all, actually fighting the Lion to a standstill. Perhaps this was because the Lion had already absorbed three vicious hits during its earlier duel with the Lützow, leaving one of its forward turrets destroyed, its firepower reduced by a quarter, and its fire control and targeting sights slightly damaged.
The Nassau's accuracy and hit count actually reached twice that of the Lion. It took four shells itself while landing nine on the enemy—a truly magnificent performance.
The battlecruiser Lion was pierced in multiple places, with flooding beginning at both its bow and stern. Although its firepower remained intact, its speed had noticeably dropped, and issues with sailing resistance and waves washing over the bow became glaringly apparent.
Stationed aboard the Nassau was none other than the commander of this detachment, Rear Admiral Felix Mauve. In the Battle of Jutland in the Earth dimension, he had only been allowed to command ancient ships consisting entirely of Pre-dreadnoughts, but now he had two Nassau-class vessels added to his roster—a genuine upgrade in combat power.
Seeing his flagship trading blows evenly with Beatty's flagship, Rear Admiral Mauve exhaled fiercely, feeling proud and vindicated.
"My ships only sail slow! Our firepower and armor aren't weak at all! Since Beatty abandoned his speed advantage to slug it out head-on with me, I'll take this chance to show him what we're made of!"
On the other end, the fight between the Westfalen and the HMS Princess Royal saw the German vessel slightly suppressed.
When the HMS Princess Royal entered the fray, it was at the peak of its strength, in excellent condition, and its gunners had a hot hand today. Over half an hour of bombardment, it secured a hit count noticeably higher than the Westfalen's.
Further down the line, the Australia fought the Braunschweig, and the Invincible fought the Pommern, while the Inflexible fought the Hannover. The leftover Schlesien and Schleswig looped around in an attempt to focus their fire on the Inflexible.
But Beatty's screening ships were no pushovers either. Several light cruisers and a number of destroyers immediately split off, surging forward to restrict the positioning of the two German Pre-dreadnoughts and prevent them from getting too close to the Inflexible.
The light cruisers and destroyers used torpedoes to force the German ships back, while the German ships desperately pounded away at the troublesome Brit light cruisers with their 170mm secondary guns.
The Brit light cruisers were practically trading their own lives to buy time for their capital ships to sink the corresponding German vessels as quickly as possible.
The Schlesien and Schleswig were held up for over half an hour, daring not to draw too close.
Because they were mismatched in formation, their distances from the Inflexible reached a massive seventeen and nineteen kilometers respectively. Their four main guns apiece fired for over half an hour without landing a single hit.
Instead, their starboard 170mm secondary batteries—totaling a massive fourteen guns—cumulatively landed six shells on the Brit light cruiser Castor and two on the Faulkner, causing both light cruisers to suffer sharp drops in speed and fall back wounded.
Seeing the battle locked in a stalemate, the Hindenburg—which had originally retreated to open up distance—crouched six to eight kilometers behind its friendly line for over ten minutes. Once its captain confirmed that every one of Beatty's ships was fully engaged with friendly vessels and would not easily switch targets, the Hindenburg turned its bow around, closed the distance slightly once more, and opened fire from eighteen kilometers away at the Inflexible at the tail end of Beatty's formation.
The position the Hindenburg selected was roughly to the rear flank of its friendly Hannover.
At the time, the Hannover and the Inflexible were separated by over fifteen kilometers, while the Hindenburg maintained a distance of eighteen kilometers from the target. If the Inflexible turned its guns around, not only would it lose the precision it had already calculated—requiring at least another twenty minutes to dial in again—but it would also have to fire on a target three kilometers farther away, pushing right up against the extreme limit of aimed accuracy for twelve-inch guns of that era.
The Hindenburg's cautious return to the battle line had clearly been planned with deep forethought.
The captain knew his ship carried far too much threat; the moment he charged even a little too far forward, the enemy would undoubtedly shift fire and focus him down.
Dueling from eighteen kilometers away meant abysmal hit rates, but it was still entirely one-sided, free damage.
After trading fire like this for another twenty minutes, the German battleship Pommern, which was dueling the Invincible, was the first to buckle. Pounded until injury stacked upon injury, it began to sink, and its crew started abandoning ship.
The Invincible then shifted its fire to the Hannover, which was engaged with the Inflexible, hoping to take down this Pre-dreadnought as quickly as possible so everyone could gang up on the enemy dreadnoughts or the Hindenburg.
But right before the Hannover gave out, an accident occurred.
The very first classic case of the Great War revealing the lesson that "to pursue extreme rates of fire, Britannia Royal Navy gunners left ammunition hoist doors open and stored propellant charges improperly inside turrets" occurred in magnificent fashion.
The Hindenburg had been firing for over twenty minutes and had only struck the Inflexible twice. However, because these shells arrived on high-arcing, long-range trajectories, slamming down onto the battlecruisers' thin horizontal deck armor, every single hit penetrated.
Now, the third shell the Hindenburg landed on the Inflexible finally dealt an exceptionally devastating critical strike.
It was a high-arcing shell from nineteen kilometers away that landed squarely on the roof armor of the Inflexible's rearmost main turret. A plunging strike smashed right through the turret top, detonating a small number of readied shells and propellant charges inside. As the flames spread, the fire raced right down the ammunition hoist, ultimately triggering a massive, ship-wide explosion within just two short minutes.
The Inflexible's stern was blasted clean off—a section measuring dozens of meters long. The severed section quickly swirled and sank into the ocean, dragging down the final sections of the ship's four severed propeller shafts, along with the four propellers attached to them.
Even if the Inflexible hadn't sunk on the spot, it was no different from sinking—its propellers and rudder had separated from the hull, leaving behind nothing more than a zero-power floating shell that was absolutely beyond saving.
Their asses were at the bottom of the sea, not hurting anymore.
The Inflexible's violent explosion completely jolted Beatty awake.
He had originally been immersed in the optimism of having just sunk one enemy Pre-dreadnought while being on the verge of neutralizing a second, all while fighting a Nassau-class to a standstill.
Only when the Inflexible was reduced to a useless hulk did he abruptly realize that during the bitter fighting just now, most of his own warships had taken damage. Their condition had deteriorated, and none of them could maintain their peak speed anymore.
Furthermore, right at that moment, two more Demania battleships arrived from the south, on the verge of joining the fray.
Because they approached from behind the German battle line, Beatty's fleet had limited visibility, spotting them only when the enemy drew close to the battlefield—who asked Beatty to chase from the north while the Demanians sat to the south?
In a midsummer naval engagement, the farther north the sea, the more severe the polar day phenomenon became. With the sun hovering closer to the southern horizon, the side looking from north to south suffered an increasingly glaring disadvantage in observation, easily blinded by the sunlight.
This naval battle was taking place eighty nautical miles north of Bergen—two to three degrees of latitude higher than the Battle of Jutland on Earth. Now that they had fought until dusk with the sun about to set, the observation advantage held by the line to the south was even more pronounced.
"It's two Sevastopol-class battleships! Those are the battleships the Lusha people surrendered to them! Their protection is relatively poor, but their speed can hit twenty-four knots! That's why they arrived on the battlefield ahead of the other slow battleships!"
Beatty hastily ordered his formation reorganized, preparing to conduct a fighting retreat. But his fleet had universally taken damage and lost speed; facing the speed of the Sevastopol-class, they might not even be able to open up the distance.
Taking advantage of Beatty shifting his formation, the opposing vessels charged into the fray, beginning to bombard Beatty's fleet with their twelve 305mm guns per ship.
The Sevastopol-class was a classic high-offense, high-speed, low-defense ship. Its positioning was actually quite similar to a battlecruiser, except battlecruisers could generally hit twenty-seven knots while it could only make twenty-four—a lesson learned half-heartedly, paid for by slashing a battleship's standard armor belt of at least eleven inches down to nine inches, which was still a bit thicker than the six to seven inches on early battlecruisers.
If they had appeared in the fray right at the very start, Beatty might not have dared to engage so rashly. And even if he had engaged, Beatty definitely would have prioritized focusing his fire on those two Sevastopol-class ships.
It was just like playing League or Honor of Kings: during a 5v5 team fight, you obviously prioritized diving the enemy backline to kill the high-damage, squishy DPS first. Why on earth would you focus the low-speed, damage-sponging tanks like the Nassau-class?
But Hipper had sent the Nassau-class out first, trading blows with the enemy on the front line for over half an hour until they had bruised each other and were completely glued together.
Having these high-offense, high-speed, low-defense warships enter the fight at this exact moment was utterly sickening.
It left Beatty in a position where switching fire felt wrong, but not switching fire also felt wrong. In short, fighting this battle felt stifling and miserable to the extreme.
"Abandon the mission to intercept the Hindenburg! Maintain combat formation and retreat! Lead the enemy toward the Grand Fleet!"
Beatty finally made his decision. He knew he had only one single chance left to turn the tables now, and that was to hastily fight a retreating action while falling back toward the west.
Because he knew Admiral Jellicoe's Grand Fleet had already set sail and was certainly less than half a night away from here. If he also fell back and the two forces steamed toward one another, they might link up in two or three hours.
If he dragged the battlefield west, closer to the Britannia homeland and farther from Demania's homeland, the Demania main ships would arrive much slower. He might even be able to exploit the time difference, seizing a brief window of time where they could fight with superior numbers against the few.
The only problem was that these warships of his were all in poor condition right now. Expecting to retreat at a speed of twenty-seven knots was impossible; they were only slightly faster than the Nassau-class.
If those two Sevastopol-class ships and the Hindenburg truly dared to pursue, they would still be able to catch up.
"If the Hindenburg really dares to pursue, we might even get a chance to turn around and finish it off!" A thought like this lingered in Beatty's mind.
The distance between the two sides gradually widened. The slow German warships were still trading shells with Beatty, unable to break free of each other's firing range for the moment, though their hit rates steadily declined.
In the final stage, the Invincible put on a brave showing, battering the Hannover until it was crippled into a completely disarmed shell that could barely move, at which point they finally fell out of range of each other.
Although the Hannover could still rely on its own engines to sail back for repairs, as a Pre-dreadnought laid down in 1904 that lagged severely behind the times, it clearly no longer held any repair value; it might as well be sent straight to the scrapyard.
The remaining four battlecruisers under Beatty were all wounded. The Lion was in the worst shape, followed by the Invincible. The Australia was the lightest wounded since it had faced the feeble Braunschweig, while the HMS Princess Royal was barely holding together, having suffered moderate damage while battering the Westfalen into severe damage.
The Demanians pursued with all their might, while Beatty ordered his light cruiser and destroyer detachments to charge forward, desperately launching torpedoes to intercept and delay the enemy.
In a chaotic exchange of fire, the German ships' ocean of secondary gun fire sank Beatty's already wounded light cruisers Castor and Faulkner, while additionally destroying the light cruiser Champion. On top of that, they sank five Brit destroyers launching a torpedo charge: the Acetate, the Ethyl Acetate, the Midge, the Night Owl, and the Sparrowhawk.
The torpedo strikes from the Britannia forces also delayed the pursuit potential of most of the slow German ships—especially those clumsy, sluggish, and wounded Pre-dreadnoughts, which were completely eliminated from the ranks of the pursuers.
Among them, the unluckiest and most outdated Braunschweig—having already been heavily wounded by artillery fire from the Australia, leaving its engines damaged and speed noticeably reduced—could not dodge in time while evading torpedoes and was struck by one.
The feeble underwater protection of old-fashioned Pre-dreadnoughts made torpedo attacks fatal. Flooding aboard the Braunschweig quickly grew uncontrollable, and the captain immediately ordered abandon ship, sending all crew members scrambling onto the lifeboats.
The Hindenburg, Sevastopol, and Poltava continued hunting down Beatty's four half-crippled battlecruisers, with both sides remaining within range and continuously trading fire.
Soon, a scene that made Beatty despair even deeper appeared.
Not long after those three German ships and their auxiliary vessels pinned Beatty down, three high-speed battlecruisers in absolute peak condition appeared on the southern horizon.
Admiral Hipper himself had finally arrived with the Derfflinger, Seydlitz, and SMS Von der Tann, speeding toward Beatty at a high speed of twenty-seven knots and closing the distance rapidly.
Hipper's train of thought had actually been clear all along: as long as Beatty didn't run away, his three pristine, high-speed battlecruisers could hold off on showing their faces for the time being.
Because he knew that the moment he showed his face, Beatty would completely collapse and run away in terror.
But since the Sevastopol-class had already engaged Beatty and Beatty had begun to flee, there was no longer any need to hide.
Almost at the exact moment he received the report from his frontline friendly ships that "Beatty has begun retreating," Hipper decisively chose to accelerate forward, charging into the battlefield from beyond the enemy ships' line of sight.
Summer nights in high-latitude waters had exceptionally long daylight hours, leaving only five or six hours of darkness. Thus, even when Hipper arrived on the battlefield and the time was already past 7:00 PM, the sky remained bright.
With Hipper's current speed, he was closing the gap with Beatty by over ten kilometers every hour. By 8:30 PM, Hipper's fresh reinforcements had pushed into effective firing range, beginning to madly pour shells onto Beatty.
Six against four, and those four were mostly crippled—this was already a crushing stomp.
At 9:05 PM, the second Brit ship to suffer a magazine detonation during the long-range, high-arcing exchange appeared.
The Invincible, which had fought bravely today—sinking the Pre-dreadnought Pommern and crippling the Hannover—was finally struck by a plunging 305mm Armor-Piercing Shell from Hipper's personal flagship, the Derfflinger. The plunging strike detonated a main turret and its ammunition hoist.
The violent explosion snapped the Invincible into two halves as well, and within minutes, it swirled and sank.
"Am I truly destined to lose my life in the Norwegian Sea today? Is the Royal Navy's battlecruiser detachment destined to be wiped out here tonight?"
David Beatty's heart was shrouded in utter desolation and self-doubt.
Yet just as he was sinking into despair, the light cruiser Chester leading the way at the vanguard flashed back a light signal that reignited his will to live.
"Admiral! The Chester is sending a clear-text light signal—the Valiant and the Malaya have come to save us! It's the Empire's newest, cutting-edge Queen-class battleships! They're right there on the western horizon!"
