At the same time that Minister Walden, Vice Admiral Hastings, and Rear Admiral Hood finalized the sortie plans for the Britannian Channel Fleet.
On the surface of the North Sea, Rear Admiral Hipper's high-speed raiding squadron had already sailed at high speed toward the west through dense fog for the entire morning.
Lieutenant Lelouch was setting foot on a real warship for the first time, so for the entire morning he remained modest and low-profile, simply walking around and observing, watching and learning. He absolutely did not go anywhere he wasn't allowed, and not a word of unnecessary chatter escaped his lips.
At noon, the fleet had reached waters approximately one hundred twenty nautical miles west of the Demania-Netherlands border, entering the fringes of the North Sea's famous "Dogger Bank Shoal" waters, before Rear Admiral Hipper resolutely gave the order to turn.
"Hard to port, course two-one-zero, straight for Ostend off the coast of Belgium."
A fleet composed of four battlecruisers, two armored cruisers, four light cruisers, and eight destroyers soon began a gradual turn to the south.
Their original heading due west gradually shifted to thirty degrees west of south (270 being due west, 180 due south).
Lelouch stood beside Rear Admiral Hipper, also holding a pair of binoculars, gazing at the majestic warships as they came about, his heart surging uncontrollably within his chest.
Before this sortie, Lelouch had mistakenly believed Rear Admiral Hipper could only deploy three battlecruisers. He hadn't expected that in the end there would actually be four, plus two armored cruisers. For a time he thought he had remembered wrong, but later learned it was caused by the subtle differences between this world and real history—
The world Lelouch inhabited was, after all, slightly "harmonized." In this world, the Western nations and the Far East were completely isolated from each other, with no contact whatsoever, and no Western countries had gone to the East to make colonial fuss.
Therefore, Demania in this world possessed no Asia-Pacific colonies. Their naval construction didn't need to consider long-range oceanic operations much; their furthest colonies were only in East African Tanzania.
The resulting butterfly effect was that the Demanian Navy of this timeline, when designing warships, placed relatively less importance on endurance and long-range raiding. Its warships were built purely for fleet decisive battles.
This also caused their naval construction to avoid a few detours, their resources grew more concentrated, and indirectly resulted in the ships currently available to Hipper being slightly more numerous than the Earth history Lelouch had known in his previous life.
The main influence manifested in the realm of battleships and battlecruisers:
First, in the battlecruiser realm. The people of Demania in this world, even before the birth of the dreadnought, had built their final class of armored cruisers, the "Scharnhorst class" (referring to the 1904 Scharnhorst class, also building two ships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, completely different from the WWII ships laid down in 1936), which compared to their Earth counterparts had somewhat worse endurance, but considerably improved armor and speed, while firepower remained the same.
Later, upon hearing that the Britannians had invented the concept of the "battlecruiser," the Demanians followed suit immediately, without suffering strategic deception. In original history, Demania would have built a disastrously bad "large cruiser," the Blücher, as an experimental battlecruiser prototype. Now this failure was directly bypassed.
The name "Blücher" still existed, but became a sister ship of the Von der Tann-class battlecruiser. Furthermore, because Blücher was laid down first, this first class of battlecruisers was directly renamed the "Blücher class." The subsequent battlecruisers also avoided a few minor pitfalls due to the greater experience accumulated early on.
Second, in the battleship realm. Because the Demanians did not need to consider long-range expeditions, after entering the dreadnought era, aside from the first Nassau-class battleships still stepping into a minor pitfall—all main guns unable to fire in a broadside salvo to the same side—from the next Helgoland class onward, they preemptively avoided this problem, ensuring all main guns could fire to one side.
All subsequent battleships had better broadside performance than their historical contemporaries, with slightly improved firepower or armor, but decreased endurance. The specific details are too numerous to elaborate on for the moment.
Of course, due to the isolation from the Far Eastern world, it wasn't only the Demanian Navy that benefited; the Britannians across the North Sea had actually benefited slightly as well—
For example, because Fusang in this world was also closed off and isolated, completely different from Japan on Earth. Thus, the people of Fusang in this world did not ask Britannia to purchase the Kongō, resulting in the Britannian military gaining an extra Iron Duke-class battleship—built using the resources that, in Earth history, had been used to construct the Kongō.
But Britannia's colonies still spanned the globe; even without the Far East, there were still Australia and New Zealand, so warship designs were unchanged from Earth.
All these minute changes resulted in Rear Admiral Hipper's fleet today being composed, in fact, of four battlecruisers as its main strength, specifically:
The flagship Derfflinger, and her sister ship of the same class Seydlitz (in original history, Seydlitz was a separate class), plus the Blücher-class Blücher and Von der Tann (see figure below).
The Moltke-class battlecruiser lead ship Moltke, which should have appeared under Hipper's command in original history, had been trapped in the Black Sea along with her sister ship Goeben before the war due to certain circumstances and lent to the Ottomans. If there were an opportunity to go to the Eastern Front later, they could certainly be put to good use.
As for the two armored cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (see figure below), in original history they should have been assigned to the Asiatic Squadron before the war, then intercepted and killed by the Britannians in the Falklands waters off Argentina during their voyage home after the war began. Admiral Spee, the commander of the Asiatic Squadron leading them, had also died in battle.
But in this life, Demania had no Asian colonies, so there was no Asiatic Squadron. These two ships had been lying at home safe and sound the whole time, and Admiral Spee was also still alive.
Going further down, the four light cruisers included two of the Magdeburg-class (1912) and two of the Kolberg-class (1910).
As for the eight destroyers, they were utter trash, hardly worth introducing. During the Great War, Demanian destroyers only had 88mm main guns, completely unable to compare with the Britannians' 120mm guns. Only their torpedo performance was roughly comparable.
...
Lelouch had spent the entire morning clarifying the fleet composition and the full story behind all this.
Now seeing that Rear Admiral Hipper had given the order to turn south ahead of time, Lelouch did some quick mental calculations before voicing a small question that had been on his mind:
"Your Excellency, by turning south so hastily now, although we may save some distance and time, will it not increase the risk of premature exposure? We are only about thirty-odd nautical miles from the Netherlands coast, no? We have barely just sailed beyond the visual range of the coastal lighthouses.
If there are civilian vessels moving frequently in the Netherlands coastal waters and they spot our fleet, and if among them there happens to be a Britannian spy who reports our movements, the consequences would be no trivial matter."
Lelouch asked very cautiously. After all, he was no expert in actual naval combat operations; he was genuinely seeking instruction.
Rear Admiral Hipper saw how modest yet inquisitive he was, and felt some fondness for this clever young man. Since they had nothing but time at the moment, he did not hesitate to explain:
"I am of course aware that turning early increases the risk of being seen by coastal vessels. But of two harms, one chooses the lesser. We have already sailed to the eastern edge of the Dogger Bank waters. If we continue west, the water depth will rapidly decrease. The shallowest parts of Dogger Bank are only thirteen meters, and the deepest no more than forty meters, averaging twenty meters.
This water is too shallow to hide submarines. And the Empire's submarines are far more numerous and powerful than the enemy's. So once an area cannot hide submarines, the enemy there grows exceedingly bold. In the Dogger Bank area, countless enemy trawlers are, in fact, the eyes and ears of the Britannian Navy. They take advantage of the lack of submarines to patrol densely with their nets; as soon as they see our warships, they transmit reports.
Therefore, I have no choice but to turn early, precisely to avoid the shallow waters. So long as we remain in deep waters, I can arrange for friendly submarines to lay ambushes and monitor the route ahead of time. If there is truly danger of being discovered, we have the leading patrol destroyers or the lurking submarines use low-power shortwave to warn us, or simply sink them outright.
In waters where our own submarines are active, the enemy does not dare to casually send armed fishing boats or other military vessels disguised as civilian craft to conduct sweep-net reconnaissance.
Furthermore, it is already late October. The colder the weather, the heavier the fog over the North Sea. In the morning, the fog basically doesn't clear until after ten o'clock, and by four-thirty in the afternoon it is already dark. In this season, it is relatively easy to conceal our movements.
I have also arranged in advance for many destroyers to be spread out like a net, scattering several ships every fifty nautical miles from north to south. Upon encountering the enemy, they will fire torpedoes if they can, then run immediately after firing. Thus, even if the enemy discovers our forward scout vessels, they cannot estimate whether main force ships are following behind. Enemy activity everywhere is equivalent to enemy activity nowhere."
(Note: The image above shows a map of the Dogger Bank sea area. The area circled in red in the middle has especially shallow water that submarines cannot enter; or rather, if a submarine reaches here it can only surface and sail on the water, becoming a sitting duck. You can also see that the color of this patch of sea is especially light on Baidu Maps; it was formed by sediment deposited over millions of years from the confluence of the Thames and the Rhine.)
Hipper's explanation left Lelouch filled with admiration. As expected of one of Demania's few great naval commanders, his fundamentals in surprise attack were truly solid.
Before every sortie, Hipper never counted on completely concealing the message that "I have sortied," because he knew that was impossible to hide.
He would only openly reveal the fact that "he had sortied," and then release many smoke bombs to prevent the enemy from judging where exactly he was heading.
It was similar to how later-era aircraft would dispense chaff when encountering radar sweeps. Chaff cannot conceal the fact of the aircraft's intrusion itself, but through numerous false targets, it prevents you from knowing exactly where the real target is.
What was most brilliant was that none of this had been prepared by Hipper in haste; he had already prepared it, intending to use it as smoke screens for the bombardment of Yarmouth mission.
Now it was merely a matter of swapping the target at the last minute, but those previously prepared smoke screens could be used directly without adjustment. This was how he could respond so swiftly and embark on a "say-go-and-go trip."
The luggage was already packed; he had merely changed the ticket at the last moment.
At this very moment, the Britannians certainly already knew that Hipper had vanished, but did not know where he would appear.
As long as he did not collapse into a definite state, he could remain in a quantum superposition of being both here and there.
As long as the jungler doesn't show his face, he could appear in any lane.
Minister Walden thought Hipper was going to gank the mid lane, temporarily moving Beatty from the top lane to mid to prepare for a counter-gank, but in reality Hipper had chosen to gank the bottom lane.
—
PS: The real fighting can only start tomorrow.
After starting to write, I realized naval battles require quite a lot of preliminary details and combat data setup; deployments for both sides alone took two chapters.
But please forgive me, seeing as I'm updating so much—seven thousand words for two consecutive days during the new book launch period.
Mainly, at the beginning some world-building settings and the background differences between the two worlds had to be interwoven and explained centrally in this chapter.
Tomorrow will be better.
The new book still seeks comments, reading follows, collections, and votes—many thanks.