Battle of the Third Reich

Captain Ronald was in a dilemma. He was reluctant to destroy this powerful warship, nor was he willing to let her fall into the hands of the Germans. The French Army can defeat and surrender, but the glorious French Navy will never be able to catch it. After making Ronald think twice, he issued an order to set sail immediately.

The outfitted captain is actually more like an administrative officer. He is responsible for coordinating the relationship between the shipyard and the navy, while also shouldering the responsibility of training technical officers and grass-roots sailors, leading them to become as familiar as possible with this battleship. The various systems ensure that the ship can be tested normally during the sea trial period.

Jean Ronald witnessed the battleship gradually taking shape in front of him. For the captain of the Navy, the Barr was like his children. He was proud of her advanced and powerful, and could not tolerate it without passing by. It was announced to give up before one attempt.

Jean Barr was quietly parked in a huge outfitting dock at this time. After being filled with water, the water depth here reached ten meters, enough to float Jean Barr’s huge hull. The engineer suggested to explode one side of the hull in the dock and let her hull tilt to the side, which would cause structural damage to the hull and the bottom keel, and the weight of the hull would also cause extreme damage to the dock.

In this way, even if the Germans get the hull, there is no value for repairs, and this advanced dock can not be used by the enemy in a short time.

This is really a fierce and effective strategy. If Jean Ronald agreed to the proposal of the adjutant and the director of engineering, the German would get nothing but a mess.

But Colonel Jean Ronald refused to adopt the engineering director’s suggestion. He believed that there was a risk in everything, and this one was clearly worth his risk. For the French navy to keep this new warship, even if it was only one thousandth. Maybe he will not give up.

Unlike the historical semi-finished warship, the Jean Barr was almost completed at this time. The hull weight and draft are basically the same as the design data. The dredging of the waterway from the dock to the estuary was contracted to private companies for construction. In order to save the construction volume, the standards initially formulated were used for the preliminary outfitting of the hull. The French Navy originally planned to only carry out the sea in Saint-Nazaire. For trial, the follow-up assembly work of this battleship was completed at the naval shipyard in Port Brest.

In the Navy’s plan, the warship weighed 6,000 tons lighter than the completed body. The draught was calculated to be around eight meters, and the original channel water depth was only 5.4 meters on average, so the planner needed A trench of four meters deep and ninety meters wide and up to 3.4 kilometers long was excavated at the bottom of the river to ensure that the battleship safely entered the main channel of the Loire River.

This is a very difficult project, the construction environment is very complicated, because there are a lot of rocky reefs besides the silt at the river bottom. In order to keep up with the progress of the project in the middle, the shipyard has successively lowered the standard of the waterway several times. The original safe width of 90 meters was reduced to 50 meters, and the depth of 4 meters was reduced to 3.5 meters, barely able to let the draft The eight-meter battleship traveled through the middle.

But now the draught of this battleship has already exceeded nine meters, so if you want to escape from the harbor, you must reduce the draught of the ship, so Captain Ronald and the engineers of the shipyard have tried everything to The battleship loses weight.

They emptied the ammunition inventory of the main and auxiliary guns, leaving only a small amount of ammunition for anti-aircraft firepower. They also evacuated most of the fuel, emptied the ballast water tanks, even abandoned all furniture debris, and even reduced The scheduled crew and passengers finally reduced the draught of the battleship to 8.1 meters.

This means that there is less than half a meter of safety clearance between the bottom of the ship and the river bed, and any small mistake will cause a serious stranding accident.

Captain Jean Ronald foresees that this voyage will be very difficult, but the German motorized forces are approaching at a rapid pace, and the naval captain has no other choice but to take the risk of taking a brave nose.

On the route leaving the outfitting dock, Jean Barr did not start his own power, and all relied on the two steam tugs of the shipyard to tow back and forth. Because the channel was narrow, it was difficult for the tug to control the course of the battleship if the main power was activated. Because even in the drifting state, in order to overcome the huge inertia of this battleship, these two tugs have been exhausted.

While Jean Barr was leaving the dock, more than 3,000 workers left in the shipyard were also demobilized on the spot. These people were originally prepared to evacuate with the warship, but because of the draft, they could only be left behind. When I came down, the feeling of being abandoned by the organization was really uncomfortable. The disheartened workers silently left the berth, and nobody looked back to take a look at Jean Barr.

The warship was carefully reeled out of the 900-meter-long artificial channel and rushed into the Loire River. At this time, it was at low tide time. The risk of grounding the warship was beginning to increase exponentially as the water level dropped. .

Following the pre-set buoy, the battleship slowly moved forward, and Colonel Ronald stood on the nautical bridge, personally operating the steering wheel, and the rudder had little effect at this time in the unpowered state. The naval captain is now doing this completely because he can assume all the responsibilities if something goes wrong.

The warship's navigation has been smooth so far. As long as it passes through the 200-meter-long passage between the bilho sandbar and the Penoe Reef, the warship can enter the deep water area. Seeing victory in sight, the expression of the officers and soldiers on the bridge gradually began to relax, and some people even smiled.

The huge hull slowly drove across the river, the reed and thatched bilho sandbar was on the left side of the bow, and the starboard side had crossed the Penoe Reef, just when people thought it had been the most difficult time. During the course, the ship suddenly violently flew, and the officers and soldiers who did not hold the support in the bridge immediately fell to the ground. Accompanied by a harsh rubbing sound, the battleship stopped advancing, and at the same time, the port side of the hull slowly lifted upwards at a speed that could be recognized by the naked eye. The huge battleship appeared five degrees in just a few seconds.

"We are stranded!" The deputy captain helped Luo Zhuo stand up and turned back to report to the captain.

"The various departments report damage, don't be alarmed, we should have hit the uncleaned rock." Jean Ronald returned the rudder to the helmsman, and went to the captain's seat calmly and gave the order.

PS: I'm sorry. I have something to do with the author's home today. I just took the time to write this. The number of words is not much. I hope you will understand. I will make up for it in the future.

thanks for your support.

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