Chapter 278: The Greatest Defeat of the Royal Navy in Three Hundred Years |
The sudden appearance of the two "Bayern-class" battleships, and their frenzied sneak attack that damaged the "Valiant," sent a shockwave that suffocated the morale of the entire Royal Navy Grand Fleet.
For the next few minutes, the Royal Navy's high-level command structure fell into brief chaos. The sheer volume of incoming information was overwhelming. From Admiral Jellicoe on down, the commanders of every squadron were desperate to figure out exactly what had happened.
Until they could grasp the situation, no new orders could be issued. The ships had no choice but to continue exchanging brutal, point-blank blows with the enemies already in front of them.
The Demania forces seized upon these few minutes of chaos to further expand their gains.
The command structures aboard the "Valiant" and "Malaya" were still in disarray. They had not yet shifted their targeting to the "Bayern-class" dreadnoughts, continuing instead to duel the heavily damaged, obsolete "Nassau-class."
During the nine-minute artillery duel from 3:11 to 3:20 PM, the "Bavaria" closed the distance from eighteen kilometers down to sixteen, its accuracy steadily climbing. It landed another three shells on the "Valiant." "SMS Baden," positioned just over a kilometer farther back, also struck the "Valiant" twice.
These five 380mm armor-piercing shells blew two massive holes in the bow of the "Valiant." Shredded steel plates twisted and rolled back at horrific angles, and thick plumes of black smoke from internal fires billowed out of the hull.
One of the forward main gun turrets was destroyed, and a gaping hole was punched straight through the bridge. The armor-piercing shells detonated deep inside, obliterating three or four compartments. The chain of explosions and fires caused over a hundred casualties, plunging the ship into total chaos.
Compounded by the thick smoke obscuring their optics, by the time the "Valiant" tried to return fire, it had not only lost a quarter of its firepower, but its accuracy had plummeted.
However, issuing the order, recalculating firing solutions, and re-ranging the guns all took time. Just as he finished realigning his flagship's guns, the offensive output of the "Valiant" had already been crippled. There was no longer any point in ordering the "Valiant" to switch targets.
The "Valiant" was now utterly incapable of locking onto a new target. The smoke was too thick, the bridge had been devastated, and scores of technical personnel were dead. They likely couldn't even manage basic fire-control calculations anymore. It was better for them to just mindlessly keep firing at the "Westfalen" using their old data.
Seeing the "Malaya" redirecting its firepower toward them, the two "Bayern-class" battleships abandoned the now-inaccurate "Valiant" and swiftly traversed their guns toward the much more threatening "Malaya."
Because the "Malaya" fired first this time, it got lucky and struck "SMS Baden" with a 381mm armor-piercing shell—though it slammed directly into the ship's 350mm main armor belt.
The 381mm guns of the "Queen Elizabeth-class" might have been able to punch through the 300mm main belts of older Demania battleships, but against the 350mm main armor of the latest three-tiered battleships, it was a different story entirely.
The Demania battleship's 350mm main belt was practically guaranteed to completely block the 13.5-inch guns of Britannia's battleships, and even against 15-inch guns, it stood a solid chance of holding.
The armor-piercing cap of the shell from the "Malaya" shattered the moment it struck the armor belt, the violent impact triggering the fuse prematurely. The shell managed to gouge a shallow trench into the surface before detonating early, leaving behind nothing more than a crater of spalled steel.
It hit, it exploded, and it did nothing?! How were they supposed to fight this? Rear Admiral Thomas once again plummeted into despair, doubting reality itself.
Furthermore, the "Malaya" had sustained damage to its superstructure from 11-inch and 12-inch shells during its prolonged exchange with the "Nassau-class" and "Sevastopol-class" ships, significantly degrading its own optics and accuracy. It had only managed to land that first lucky shot on "SMS Baden" because it had the initiative in switching targets.
Once the Demania battleships dialed in their aim, the "Malaya" was quickly hit in rapid succession, taking heavy damage.
Worse still, just as the battle was reaching its climax, the Radio Sets of the Demania fleet began broadcasting in the clear, whispering like devils to scatter the morale of the Britannia forces.
The radiomen on various Britannia ships either failed to shut off their sets in time or accidentally transcribed the broadcasts. The moment they read the contents, those venomous thoughts burrowed into their minds, impossible to wash away.
"Britannia Royal Navy, you are finished! The Empire's brilliant commanders have long known that you deciphered the Empire's naval radio codes!"
"During the naval battles of Ostend and Dunkirk last year, the great Admiral Hipper didn't accidentally disobey orders and act alone to crush your ambush. He knew full well you had intercepted his orders! He deliberately feigned ignorance and intentionally went rogue!"
"In this campaign as well, we intentionally used the compromised codes to broadcast fake plans, baiting you right into our trap!"
"As early as November 1914, our mole inside London Room 40 secretly revealed that you acquired our codebooks from the Imperial cruiser 'Magdeburg,' which was sunk by the Lusha forces in the Baltic Sea! Therefore, since the end of 1914, our navy has never once fallen for your tricks due to compromised codes!"
"However, do not bother trying to find out who our mole is. He is buried deep, far beyond your wildest guesses! Blindly hunting for him will only destroy your own great wall and persecute your loyal officers!"
Terrified by the implications, several radio officers and intelligence analysts couldn't sit still after reading a few of these translated messages, and shut off their radio receivers.
But there were always those who didn't believe it, or who were too afraid of missing critical command orders from their superiors to turn off their sets. In short, across the Brit Nation fleet, there were enough people who heard the fragmented broadcasts. Once they gathered and compared notes, they could easily piece together the full array of psychological warfare the Demanians had maliciously spread to disrupt their morale.
Immense chaos swept through the Britannia fleet.
Some battleships that had hastily powered down their radios could no longer receive new orders from command. Unable to adjust their tactics in a timely manner, they were forced to rely entirely on flag hoist and signal lamp communications.
But in the heat of battle, towering structures like bridge observation posts were the first things to get destroyed. Ordering sailors to climb the mangled heights to display signal flags under these conditions was a monumental challenge.
Furthermore, certain individual ship captains and squadron commanders, seeing their local situations deteriorating and gripped by the fear of being baited into a trap, made their own executive decisions to temporarily fall back and regroup.
When the captains of the ships with deactivated radios saw this, they mistakenly assumed high command had issued a general retreat order that they simply hadn't received.
The firepower efficiency of the entire fleet plummeted by a massive margin.
Rear Admiral Thomas, commanding the two "Queen Elizabeth-class" battleships, was the first to lose his nerve and make a fatally flawed judgment. He had taken the heaviest mental blow: the "Valiant" was already crippled, and the firepower and upper decks of the "Malaya" were heavily damaged, though its sailing capability remained intact.
Consequently, Thomas concluded on his own that if they had been lured into such a profound trap, victory was impossible. He ordered his two "Queen Elizabeth-class" ships to retreat and regroup, simultaneously sending a telegram to Jellicoe requesting permission to withdraw, citing that his battleships had suffered devastating losses under the ferocious bombardment of the "Bayern-class."
Initially, this was meant to be merely a brief tactical disengagement—pulling back slightly to let allied ships hold the line.
But the moment the "Queen Elizabeth-class" ships pulled away and exited firing range, Hipper decisively ordered the two "Bayern-class" battleships to shift fire to the remaining targets holding the line. Very quickly, the fast battleship squadron of the Britannia forces, now facing an overwhelming numerical disadvantage, began to collapse.
The battlecruiser "Australia," already moderately damaged from continuous combat, was violently pierced by a 380mm armor-piercing shell from "SMS Baden." The shell tore straight through its lateral main belt and plunged into the upper boiler room. While it didn't strike the boilers directly, it severed several high-pressure steam pipes, triggering a catastrophic steam explosion.
The oldest battleship, the "Dreadnought," had the ammunition hoist of its wing turret penetrated by a 380mm shell from the "Bavaria." This triggered a massive explosion directly inside the lateral magazine. This time, there wasn't even a need for Brit Nation sailors to "leave the blast doors open, allowing the fire to spread downward and cause a magazine detonation."
Because the shell from the "Bavaria" brutally ripped straight into the magazine shaft, any closed blast doors would have simply been blown apart along with it. It was completely unblockable.
The "Dreadnought" was, after all, the oldest of the dreadnoughts. Its lateral waterline main belt was a mere 279mm thick, and the sidewall of the wing turret shaft, located just above the waterline armor, was only 203mm thick.
Against high-performance 380mm armor-piercing shells, this level of protection was practically paper-thin.
However, due to the design of the "Dreadnought", its ammunition storage was relatively dispersed, preventing a catastrophic chain detonation. A hit to the wing turret's hoist would, at most, ignite twenty percent of the ship's main gun propellant. The magazines for the other four turrets would be spared from the chain reaction.
But that was more than enough. When the propellant charges for over sixty 305mm shells detonated simultaneously, a gargantuan hole—twenty meters long and six meters high—was blasted right into the starboard side of the "Dreadnought."
Seawater surged violently into the twenty-meter breach at a rate of hundreds of tons per second. Within two minutes, the ship listed heavily and capsized. The capsizing triggered further ammunition detonations and boiler steam explosions. Out of a crew of a thousand, only a handful survived.
Meanwhile, Admiral Jellicoe, still holding the main battle line, had just received Rear Admiral Thomas's request and was evaluating whether to cut their losses and retreat.
But in those few minutes of deliberation, the two weakest ships on Thomas's flank were blown up and sunk. With the situation threatening to snowball into an avalanche, Jellicoe was finally forced to make his decision.
"All forces, full speed retreat! Maintain fire at will while falling back! Ships that have lost speed are to voluntarily serve as the rearguard and stall the enemy! Captains are authorized to use their own discretion! For the honor of the Royal Navy!"
The localized collapse of the battle line, the sudden and unexpected appearance of the enemy's super battleships, and the immense morale disruption caused by the enemy's demonic radio broadcasts—these three devastating blows converging together made it absolutely impossible to continue this battle.
From the physical level to the psychological, the Royal Navy had been temporarily crushed on both fronts.
However, even though Admiral Jellicoe had issued the order to retreat, it was impossible for the Grand Fleet to pull away cleanly as a unified group.
Several warships had already sustained damage during the artillery exchanges, causing their speeds to drop. These ships had to be abandoned. They were expected to fight to the death to buy time, allowing their comrades to escape.
All great naval battles were like this. If one side wanted to retreat, they had to leave behind sacrificial pawns to stall the enemy.
In the Battle of Jutland on the Earth plane, Admiral Hipper had played exactly this role. When the main body of the High Seas Fleet needed to retreat, he heroically sailed against the tide to intercept the enemy's pursuit.
The current situation was simply the reverse of the Earth plane. Now, it was the Britannians' turn to sever a limb to survive.
Vice Admiral Burney, the commander of the 2nd Battleship Squadron supporting Rear Admiral Thomas, was forced to step into this role.
He was the deepest in the fray and clearly had no chance of escaping. His "Dreadnought" had already been sunk, and his three "St. Vincent-class" battleships had all sustained varying degrees of damage. Their top speed was already inherently low—only 21 knots in pristine condition. Now, crippled, they were reduced to 19 or even 17 knots. Against the "Bayern-class," they couldn't outrun them.
Furthermore, Vice Admiral Burney's formation was positioned the furthest east, meaning he had the longest distance to break through during a retreat. If Admiral Scheer's battle line cut north, he would inevitably sever the Brit Nation ships bringing up the easternmost rear.
Knowing that death was inevitable, Vice Admiral Burney resolved himself. He led his three "St. Vincent-class" battleships, the decelerating "Australia" abandoned by Thomas, and the "Valiant," whose speed, fire control, and armament were heavily devastated. Together, they would fight to the bitter end, striving to drag some of the enemy's crippled warships down with them!
Among the enemy's two "Nassau-class" ships, the "Westfalen" was the most severely damaged. It had been fighting fiercely all day, absorbing vicious blows on the front line, and had just taken several hits from the 15-inch guns of a "Queen Elizabeth-class."
The German battlecruiser "SMS Von der Tann" had also been heavily damaged during the seesaw running battles of the previous night. As a battlecruiser, its armor plating was inherently thinner than that of a battleship. Since its engines were damaged and it couldn't flee, it naturally became a priority target.
Vice Admiral Burney drove his five damaged warships in a frenzied assault, trading blows with the enemy's crippled vessels that actually had a chance of being sunk. In return, his ships drew concentrated fire from the two Demania "Bayern-class" battleships and three "Derfflinger-class" battlecruisers, along with retaliatory fire from the remaining guns of the "Nassau-class" and "Sevastopol-class" ships.
The "Australia," "Vanguard," "HMS Collingwood," and "St. Vincent" sank one after another. During the artillery duel, Vice Admiral Burney's own flagship, the "Vanguard," had its magazine pierced by a 15-inch shell from a "Bayern-class." The resulting magazine detonation snapped the ship neatly in half.
This made it the first and only battleship in this naval engagement to suffer a catastrophic magazine detonation along its centerline main guns—prior to this, Brit Nation warships had experienced magazine detonations on four occasions, but most were battlecruisers. The only battleship to suffer such a fate was the "Dreadnought," and that was a lateral main gun, not a centerline turret.
The self-destruction of the "Vanguard" proved that not only did Britannia's lightly armored battlecruisers suffer from magazine protection flaws, but even their early heavy dreadnoughts ran similar risks. In truth, on the Earth plane, the "Vanguard" met its end on July 9, 1917, while anchored at Scapa Flow. During a routine maintenance procedure, without a single shot being fired at it, an accident caused a magazine detonation that sank the ship.
This time, the 15-inch main guns of the "Bayern-class" granted it a glorious death in battle. It could be considered a merciful end, sparing the "Vanguard" from such a humiliating and worthless demise later on.
The sinking of these four Britannia battleships managed to take the heavily damaged "Westfalen" and "SMS Von der Tann" down with them.
In comparison, the Demania battleships boasted incredibly resilient damage control and buoyancy. Even when blasted to pieces, they took on water and sank at a relatively slow pace, affording their crews ample time to evacuate.
The "Westfalen" was an older steam-engine dreadnought. Blasted full of holes, it took on massive amounts of water, and its engines were completely destroyed. The steam engine room was entirely submerged. Unable to sail back on its own, the crew was forced to abandon ship and escape in lifeboats.
Many of the lifeboats had been destroyed by earlier shellfire. In the end, only a little over two hundred men secured spots on the lifeboats. The remaining five hundred or more were forced to don life jackets, jump into the sea, swim clear, and wait for allied vessels to fish them out.
The slowly flooding "SMS Von der Tann" managed to squeeze out a few knots of speed, but it ultimately failed to limp back to Bergen Port. During its southbound return trip, at 9:00 AM that morning, it beached itself on a gently sloping coastline within a fjord and settled into the shallows. The crew disembarked and trekked overland toward Bergen—a port that had already been secured by Major Falkenhorst's mercenary landing forces. Throughout the entire Norway campaign, the Demanians had only organized two substantial amphibious assaults, capturing Bergen Port and Kristiansand respectively, deciding not to risk pushing for the ports further north.
On Hipper's side of the battlefield, the only ship still struggling was the heavily damaged "Valiant." Its thick armor plating rendered it virtually immune to the bombardment of the other Demania battleships. It was an iron tortoise that simply couldn't be cracked open, forcing them to wait for the 380mm advanced main guns of the two "Bayern-class" battleships to execute it.
The "Valiant" actually still had three operational main gun turrets, but its fire control and optics were so badly damaged that its accuracy was abysmal.
In its final moments, the captain of the "Valiant" selected a target that looked severely damaged enough to take down: the "Poltava," the most battered of the two defecting Lusha battleships. The "Valiant" charged straight at it, attempting to sail against the grain and close the distance to compensate for its poor accuracy.
The two "Bayern-class" battleships fired frantically to intercept it, blasting the "Valiant" until it was battered beyond recognition. Yet, its last two remaining main gun turrets resolutely unleashed fire upon its target.
The protection of Lusha's early battleship designs was truly subpar, completely incomparable to the buoyancy and survivability of Demania battleships. In total, the "Poltava" was only struck by three shells from the "Valiant," but Lusha's meager 9-inch main armor belt was swiftly breached by the point-blank barrage of Britannia's 15-inch armor-piercing shells, triggering a massive explosion.
In the end, the "Poltava" surprisingly suffered the highest personnel casualties of all the Demania warships sunk in this grand naval battle. Because it had exploded and sunk just like the Britannia vessels, it left no time for the crew to evacuate.
Fortunately, over half the sailors on board were Lusha technical personnel who had surrendered the previous year. Only a few hundred posts were manned by Demanians to ensure control of the warship.
Vice Admiral Burney's fleet had managed to take down a few targets before being entirely wiped out, thanks solely to the fact that among the enemies he faced were several obsolete ships that had been used as decoys and meat shields, rendering them heavily crippled from the start.
On the other side, the tail end of Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, currently locked in Scheer's jaws during the retreat, was not going to escape so easily.
Furthermore, that severed tail was facing heavily armored vessels in prime condition. Even in death, they couldn't find a single target to drag down with them.
Ultimately, of Admiral Jellicoe's 14 battleships, the 12 ships in the front three squadrons escaped, while the two "Colossus-class" ships at the rear were anchored down by Scheer.
—
Scheer concentrated the fire of 13 battleships on the two "Colossus-class" ships, whose speeds had dropped as they blocked the path to cover their fleeing allies. Without suffering a single sunken ship—merely sustaining additional damage to a few hulls and having a couple of turrets blown off—Scheer's forces completely sank the "Colossus-class" vessels.
Hipper and Scheer wanted to pursue and attempted to close the distance again, but Jellicoe left behind several light cruisers leading a torpedo fleet to lay down a defensive screen.
In the end, Scheer's battleship group merely pulverized the slowest retreating ships: the last four remaining armored cruisers of the Royal Navy, blasting them all into slag.
In the Battle of Jutland on the Earth plane, the Britannians had also deployed armored cruisers to aid in the battle, aiming to bolster their fleet strength as much as possible, so the presence of these obsolete ships was not surprising.
Furthermore, at Jutland, three Britannia armored cruisers had strayed into the Demania battleship formation due to poor nighttime visibility, only to be obliterated at point-blank range.
In this plane, the Britannians' armored cruisers died a somewhat more dignified death. They weren't lost to an embarrassing blunder; they genuinely served as a rearguard, providing cover and buying time for the capital ships, and were picked off one by one by Scheer.
A total of two "Defence-class" and two "Edinburgh-class" armored cruisers ("Duke of Edinburgh" and "Black Prince") were sunk by Scheer.
Additionally, three light cruisers acting as flotilla leaders for the torpedo destroyers—"HMS Galatea," "HMS Birmingham," and "HMS Nottingham"—were sunk. Eleven destroyers executing the torpedo delay mission—"Hardy," "Magic," "Manners," "Marksman," "Mary Rose," "Menace," "Mindful," "Moresby," "Natal," "Obdurate," and "Turbulent"—were also sent to the bottom.
These light cruisers and destroyers weren't entirely passive in their stalling tactics. Exploiting the gap before Hipper and Scheer merged their fleets, several of them squeezed through the Demania formation and recklessly charged into Hipper's fleet, attempting to sow further chaos.
They frantically fired a cumulative total of nearly two hundred torpedoes. Although the vast majority were blind shots fired from a distance, they still managed to land several hits on the Demanians.
Among them, the pre-dreadnought "SMS Hannover," already abandoned and left drifting, was completely unable to evade. It was sluggishly struck where it lay by two slow torpedoes fired from ten kilometers away and quickly sank. However, the ship was already completely evacuated at the time; it was nothing more than a floating, empty shell.
Another screening armored cruiser, the "Victoria Louise-class" "SMS Freya," also unfortunately took a torpedo and sank.
This constituted the entirety of the rearguard torpedo fleet's battle achievements.
The grand naval battle formally drew to a close at noon on July 4th.
The Demanian forces cleaned up the aftermath, rescued sailors who had fallen overboard, swept the battlefield before nightfall, and set course for home.
In this battle, the Demanians lost a total of two battleships ("Westfalen" / "Poltava"), two battlecruisers ("Lützow" / "SMS Von der Tann"), and three pre-dreadnoughts ("SMS Braunschweig" / "SMS Hannover" / "SMS Pommern").
One additional battleship was functionally destroyed—the "Nassau." Having traded blows with the "Malaya" for so long, everything on the ship aside from its main armor belt had been blasted to pieces. Even after sailing back, it held no repair value.
Because its firepower was completely obliterated, it was essentially a hollow shell. Furthermore, it ran on steam engine power, rendering it just like its sister ship, the "Posen," which had been heavily damaged earlier during the naval battle in the Gulf of Finland.
Moreover, the "Nassau" had been the last Demania battleship in the North Sea and Atlantic sectors to utilize 280mm guns. Following the sinking of "SMS Von der Tann," the only Demania warship left employing 280mm guns was the "Goeben," currently awaiting repairs in the Black Sea.
It was simply not worth maintaining the 280mm gun and shell production lines just to manufacture a new turret for a completely ruined "Nassau." At worst, they would ship all remaining shell stockpiles to Odessa and Trieste for the "Goeben"'s use, supply it with all leftover spare gun barrels, and completely shut down the related production lines to shift focus to manufacturing other assets.
By contrast, every single battleship in the Mediterranean theater was exponentially more precious than those in the Atlantic-facing High Seas Fleet, and could not be casually retrofitted. Because the Britannians controlled the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar—the only two gateways into the Mediterranean—Demania battleships could not be redeployed into the Mediterranean during wartime.
Ships in the Mediterranean had to be deployed there before the war; once hostilities broke out, every ship lost was a permanent reduction.
Therefore, in reality, the Demanians suffered total losses of three battleships, two battlecruisers, three pre-dreadnoughts, one armored cruiser, three light cruisers ("SMS Emden" / "SMS Wiesbaden" / "SMS Stettin"), five destroyers, and five large torpedo boats.
They sank 7 Britannia battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 4 armored cruisers, 9 light cruisers, and 24 destroyers.
For the Demanian side, only the crews of the "Lützow," "Poltava," and "SMS Emden" were nearly wiped out completely. These three ships alone accounted for 2,470 men killed in action or captured.
The remaining ships had varying degrees of time for evacuation and rescue operations. In the end, the Demanians suffered a cumulative total of 5,100 dead, drowned, or captured, and 4,600 wounded, amounting to over 9,700 total casualties.
The vast majority of sunken Britannia vessels could not be rescued. They suffered a total of 30,800 dead, drowned, or captured, alongside 7,700 wounded, resulting in a staggering 38,500 total casualties.
Following the conclusion of the Battle of Bergen, the balance of power in the North Sea and Atlantic theaters between the two sides had completely inverted.
The total number of Britannia battleships and battlecruisers plummeted from 27 down to 15 (inclusive of the "HMS Queen Elizabeth," which was undergoing repairs and missed the battle; Admiral Jellicoe had omitted it during his pre-war force estimation, but it was scheduled to reenter service in the third quarter).
Meanwhile, the Demanians' total count of battleships and battlecruisers only fell from 24 (which the Brit forces originally believed to be 22, having been deceived into thinking the "Bayern-class" ships were undergoing retrofitting rather than being active) down to 19.
Before the battle, the Demanians had three fewer ships than the Britannians. However, because this massive naval clash yielded a kill-to-death ratio of 12 to 5—a staggering net difference of seven sinkings—the Demanians had now seized a total numerical advantage of four ships.
Of course, Britannia's shipbuilding industry was still incredibly formidable. Furthermore, a substantial number of their warships were currently logjammed at the brink of commissioning, requiring only a little more time before entering active service.
Otherwise, the Demanians wouldn't have been so desperate to launch this grand naval engagement at this exact moment. The Demanians had meticulously calculated their enemy's shipbuilding schedule and knew that this specific juncture was the single window where the power gap between the two sides was narrowest. It was their prime opportunity to turn the tides.
If they dragged this out past the window of opportunity, allowing all the "Renown-class" battlecruisers to enter service and the "Revenge-class" battleships to attain combat readiness, the gap would only widen once again.
In the history of the Earth plane, the two "Renown-class" ships were commissioned in August and September of 1916 respectively—putting them only about two months away from the present date.
Now that the Royal Navy had sustained such catastrophic damage, the Britannians would inevitably spare no expense, despite escalating costs, working overtime to rush the completion of the "Renown-class." It was highly likely that both ships could be pressed into service as early as the beginning of August.
Three of the "Revenge-class" ships would also be commissioned shortly, while the remaining two wouldn't see service until the end of the year or even early 1917.
By doing so, the Britannians' total number of capital ships would rebound from 15 to 22. Furthermore, the seven newly inducted warships were all heavily armed behemoths equipped with 15-inch main guns, boasting a destructive capability completely unalike the standard 12-inch and 13.5-inch weapons of the sunk vessels.
Naturally, after the Demanians' capital ship count was reduced from 24 down to 19, they would also be able to commission the third and fourth "Bayern-class" battleships within a few months: the "Württemberg" and the "SMS Hessen." When that time came, the ratio would merely be 21 to 22—a margin they could certainly fight with.
Moreover, the Demania shipbuilding cycle was simply staggered a year off from the Britannians. By late 1916 or early 1917, the Demanians would briefly face a suppression in total numbers (assuming they couldn't instigate another massive naval battle to cripple the Royal Navy again). But by the latter half of 1917, once the "Sachsen" and the first three "Mackensen-class" ships entered service, the balance of power would reverse yet again.
At present, Britannia had very little spare capacity left on their slipways. At most, they could inject additional budget to finish the sixth "Queen Elizabeth-class" ship, the "Argo," while simultaneously rushing the "Hood." Going forward, before the end of 1917, the Demanians would add four capital ships, whereas the Britannians would only gain two.
Through this single battle, the Royal Navy's numerical superiority had been completely neutralized, and even temporarily overtaken by the Demanians for a two-month span.
More importantly, the morale and honorable traditions of the Royal Navy had been brutally fractured. Over thirty thousand sailors had perished, the fleet's honor was swept away, and they had suffered their greatest defeat in three hundred years.
The psychological toll and the loss of morale on such a scale was utterly terrifying. The very spirit and backbone of the military had been broken.
At the bitter end, Lelouch had even instructed Hipper to wage a psychological war of radio mockery, ensuring that suspicion and purges would only intensify within the ranks of the Royal Navy.
Lelouch had explicitly ordered the broadcast of a telegram stating with absolute certainty: "As early as November 1914, our mole inside London Room 40 secretly revealed that you acquired our codebooks from the Imperial cruiser 'Magdeburg,' which was sunk by the Lusha forces in the Baltic Sea, and subsequently shared with Britannia."
These minute details of Lelouch's were gleaned from reading history books in his past life. He spoke with absolute conviction, providing a vivid and plausible narrative where every single detail aligned perfectly.
Stirred up like this, not even a ghost would believe that London Room 40 was devoid of a mole.
Lelouch had also instructed Hipper to provoke them, saying, "Do not bother trying to find our mole. He is buried deep. Blindly hunting for him will only persecute your loyal officers and destroy your own great wall." Yet, these words would only make the situation vastly more lethal.
Whether it was Edward Carson or the ousted former minister Wharton Spencer, they were destined to launch a massive purge and witch hunt inside Room 40, and indeed throughout the entire Naval Intelligence Bureau.
The Royal Navy's intelligence operations would inevitably suffer devastating blows and internal friction. Many open, exploratory research projects would be forcibly terminated, transitioning into a much more conservative model.
Britannia's development of radio technology, cryptanalysis, and the foundational research and application of related mathematics would all be crippled.
Future advancements in radio antenna technology, and even the subsequent exploration of early radar technology that would stem from it, would be heavily damaged or even completely locked down.
Riding the chain reaction of introspection caused by this great victory, Lelouch essentially forced the Britannians into a conservative stance within the realms of mathematics, radar, and radio, compelling them to castrate a portion of their own technological prowess.
On top of that, Admiral Somerville—the future head of the Mediterranean Fleet—had died in battle at Malta. The military brass had lost its foremost advocate for radio technology.
It was highly likely that the Britannians wouldn't even conceive of scientific concepts like radar or radio proximity fuzes for the next twenty years. Even the very spark of the idea had been eradicated.
