< World War II - Darkest Hour (4) >
June 24, 1940
The English Channel The battlefield was no longer the southern British Isles, but the English Channel.
A battlefield in the sky, where fighter aircraft scrambled from either the central British Isles or northern France could reach in just about an hour.
An overwhelming number of aircraft, far exceeding hundreds, were flying chaotically and engaging in combat over the English Channel.
"Damn it, why are there so many of them!"
Douglas Bader, a proud ace of the RAF (Royal Air Force), cursed as he frantically piloted his fighter.
-Bader, on your tail! Two of them!-
"I have eyes, I know!"
Douglas Bader twisted the throttle to evade the two French D.520 fighters on his tail, frantically pulling back on the control stick to make his plane climb.
Machine-gun fire strafed from behind his aircraft, and one round pierced the canopy glass, sending a chill down his spine.
"Damn it, you goddamn traitors!"
Bader flew frantically to a high altitude, banking his plane the mont clouds concealed it.
Enduring the vertigo, he rolled his aircraft and strafed an enemy fighter that had unknowingly flown past him, scoring a direct hit.
The French-made D.
520 fighter, its wings riddled with holes, began to lurch and fall toward the sea.
Only then did the other enemy aircraft realize the situation and dance to shake Bader off, but his Supermarine Spitfire relentlessly pursued the slower French fighter and rcilessly riddled its fuselage with bullets.
"This is revenge for the Victorious, you sons of bitches!"
Bader shouted with vigor at the enemy aircraft spiraling down in flas into the vast sea, but the situation was not good at all.
-I'm hit! C-Can't maintain altitude!-
-John! Behind you! Aaargh!-
The radio was flooded with frantic calls.
The RAF fought desperately, but they were at a serious disadvantage against the overwhelming numbers of the French Air Force.
"Damn it, low on fuel! Returning first!"
Bader had no choice but to retreat to base, leaving his comrades to struggle in the battlefield of carnage.
The performance of the RAF's mass-produced Hawker Hurricane was on par with the French Dewoitine D.520, and the new Supermarine Spitfire actually had superior combat performance.
However, the French Dewoitine D.520 had a range of 1,250 km, while Britain's ambitious Spitfire had a range of only 700 km at best.
With the southern British airbases annihilated at the start of the war, the RAF, forced to scramble from central Britain, had no defensive advantage against the French Air Force operating from its own mainland due to the range issue.
No, it was a disadvantage.
If they took off at the sa ti and flew similar distances, the British fighters had to return due to fuel issues after a short fight, while the French fighters could keep fighting.
In aerial combat, which is most severely affected by Lanchester's laws, this difference nullified the British fighters' superiority in engagent performance.
Having lost their southern fighters and airbases in vain, the RAF was now experiencing the sa range problem on their ho ground that the German Air Force had in the original history.
The battle, which began at dawn, had just passed noon, and it was becoming an extre situation, a battle of willpower and concentration, with most pilots scrambling two to three tis without rest.
Nevertheless, no one in the RAF could back down.
Because even as they fiercely fought a dogfight at a disadvantage, below them, the French Navy, covering the sea, was steadily approaching the British Isles.
-
The French air raids, starting with Portsmouth and Plymouth, continued without pause, and the damage sustained by the Channel Fleet, stationed in the major southern naval ports of Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Portland, was severe.
Though the RAF belatedly arrived, they were already overwheld just by confronting the French Air Force that blanketed the English Channel and lacked the capacity to support a naval engagent.
"Maximum speed is 15 knots due to damage!"
The hull of the HMS Resolution, the Channel Fleet's flagship and an old battleship commissioned in 1916, was screaming from the accumulated damage from bombing and torpedo attacks.
If not for the fact that its station, Portland, was hit last, it would have been sunk long ago, but thanks to the Royal Navy's damage control, the ship was stubbornly holding on, befitting its na, 'Resolution'.
"W-What did you say?"
Admiral Lancelot Holland, commander of the Channel Fleet, was speechless, utterly dumbfounded.
"Would you repeat that?"
In response to Admiral Holland's question, Captain Knox Little of the HMS Resolution, the Channel Fleet's flagship, reported again.
"According to reconnaissance and air force reports, the French Navy is approaching from the direction of Brest and Calais, and transport ships are approaching right behind their fleet."
"N-Numbers?"
"It seems they've brought every available force."
Admiral Holland couldn't hide how flustered he was.
Are those bastards mad? Committing their entire fleet was one thing, but sending transport ships before even securing sea control?
No matter how superior they were in the air, the fact that transport ships were already arriving ant they had set sail almost simultaneously with the surprise attack.
Did this an they weren't even afraid of losing their army to sunken transport ships?
An ally breaks an alliance and delivers a surprise declaration of war overnight, and as if that wasn't enough, they commit a crazy act that could result in imnse sacrifice.
All the common sense they had believed in was being shattered.
"Admiral. If we let them land, the Ho Guard has no way to stop them."
"…"
With Admiral Forbes, the Commander of the Ho Fleet, tied down at Scapa Flow, the field commander was him, the commander of the Channel Fleet.
In his hands were the battered old battleships HMS Revenge and HMS Resolution, four heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, fifty destroyers, and twenty submarines.
It was a good thing the enemy air raids started at Portsmouth and Plymouth; otherwise, his two Revenge-class battleships, with their already ager anti-aircraft defenses, would have been sunk right there in Portland.
Admiral Holland let out a hollow laugh.
If they hadn't attempted an imdiate landing, he would have sohow withdrawn the fleet to preserve its strength and waited to rendezvous with other fleets.
But the main fleet at Scapa Flow couldn't co imdiately due to the surprise attack and the laying of mines.
By the ti the Rosyth Fleet, which was safe in the east, arrived, the enemy would have already landed on a defenseless coast with no preparations.
To think the day would co when the Royal Navy, the strongest navy in the world, would have to fight the enemy at an overwhelming disadvantage.
Admiral Holland picked up the radio with a trembling hand.
"This is Admiral Lancelot Holland to Headquarters and all gentlen of the Channel Fleet. Those despicable traitors are approaching with their fleet and convoy to invade the British Isles."
How many battleships did the French Navy have? Was it nine?
The admiral's thoughts were broken by the sight of a French bomber, which had been trying to hit the battleship through a hail of anti-aircraft fire, crashing into the sea in flas.
He knew all too well that it was impossible for them to win, no matter what.
"We will prevent them from setting foot on the British Isles, no matter the cost."
After a mont of silence, a radio ssage ca from First Sea Lord Admiral Pound at Headquarters.
-Approved. I wish your fleet good fortune.
-
Having received approval from Headquarters, Admiral Holland swallowed dryly.
He was also well aware that this was no different from ordering all hands of the Channel Fleet to their deaths.
"…The British Empire expects that every man will do his duty."
Nevertheless, no one in the Channel Fleet opposed the admiral's order.
With the resolve to break through the French fleet's escort and sink even a few transport ships to defend the holand, all hands of the Channel Fleet chose to fight to the death.
-
The navies of the two nations that, in the original history, had worked together to create the miracle of Dunkirk, were now clashing with each other.
The engagent of a grand fleet of over 150 ships, covering the narrow and rough waters of the English Channel, made even the aning of fleet reconnaissance and searching obsolete.
The Channel Fleet's battleships Revenge and Resolution led their crippled bodies against the French fleet and were both sunk, but the flagship Resolution managed the feat of penetrating the weak armor of the French battleship Dunkerque and severely damaging it.
Even with their flagship down, the British destroyers charged fiercely, unafraid of the French Navy's overwhelming might.
Their procession, advancing while frantically dodging not only the main battery fire of battleships, the shelling of cruisers, and torpedo attacks between destroyers, but also air force bombings and torpedoes, was not unworthy of the Royal Navy's fa.
The Royal Navy launched a near-suicidal charge to break through the French Navy's warships and strike the transports, while the French Navy blocked the Royal Navy's path to protect them.
Thanks to the Royal Navy, which charged like moths to a fla, unafraid of death even as countless ships were sunk, an unprecedented brawl broke out, trading ramming charges and close-range gunfire, tactics long since extinct from the battlefield.
Flas and gunfire covered both sky and sea, and the desperate life-or-death struggle, which saw countless sailors and airn buried at sea, began in the afternoon and continued until dusk.
It was a battle so horrific that most of the sailors from sunken ships were not rescued and were either killed in the fighting or drowned.
Even in the sea filled with the wreckage of that devastating battle, the French Navy's new battleship, Richelieu, was unhard.
"Devastating."
Admiral Jean-Marie Charles Abrial, commander of the French Northern Fleet, who had made the Richelieu his flagship, clicked his tongue.
The British Channel Fleet had fought a battle of annihilation, and in the end, most of its ships were sunk.
However, the French Navy also had to pay a considerable price, despite its overwhelming nurical superiority.
The British Empire committed two battleships, four heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, fifty destroyers, and twenty submarines, but of those, only six destroyers and seven submarines survived to retreat.
Against them, France, which committed nine battleships, six heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, and eighty destroyers, suffered losses of one battleship heavily damaged, three heavy cruisers and four light cruisers moderately damaged, twenty-three destroyers sunk, and eighteen damaged.
Furthermore, the French forces ultimately had to lose most of the transport ships they were protecting to the attacks mobilized by the Channel Fleet, which charged like moths to a fla, along with submarines and the air force.
Admiral Abrial had secretly thought the Pri Minister's plan was excessively despicable and ruthless, but seeing these results, he had to change his mind.
Had the battle not taken this form, defeat would have been theirs.
"Admiral. The convoy will be arriving soon."
"I see.
Support the landing operation as soon as dawn breaks."
However, belying the glorious sacrifice of the Channel Fleet to block the landing, none of the sunken French transport ships had actually carried soldiers.
"…The Pri Minister is a frighteningly cruel and ruthless man."
Admiral Abrial shook his head.
La Rocque's plan to bring the transport ships along in advance, without soldiers on board, to prevent the Channel Fleet from retreating and then annihilate them, had worked perfectly.
Although the French forces, having lost a considerable number of transports, were now short on them, the Channel Fleet that had been in charge of the English Channel was virtually annihilated, and the real French landing force, which had departed a little later, would be able to carry out their landing operation much more safely.
They were empty transport ships, but it was a military gain obtained by using the lives of the crew aboard them as bait.
The result was truly excellent, but Admiral Abrial couldn't erase the bitter taste in his mouth.
-
June 25, 1940
Berlin, Northern Germany – Governnt Building
"…The British Channel Fleet was annihilated? The French Army landed on the British Isles this morning?"
I desperately felt the urge to grab the back of my neck.
I thought France might do sothing crazy, but even when I heard Scapa Flow, Portsmouth, and Plymouth were surprise-attacked, I never thought a landing on the British Isles would actually happen.
This is insane. The Army high command decided to send General Roml up after discussion, but General Roml and his unit haven't even reached Hamburg yet.
Who could have imagined that Britain, the world's strongest naval power, would be defeated so in vain?
"The British Embassy has officially requested our help, but I don't know what to do about this…"
Foreign Minister Weizs??cker's face was also completely pale.
Damn it, to think I'd see Operation Sea Lion succeed after the Nazis have fallen.
"What should we do?"
Even Father was unusually perplexed.
"The French mainland is protected by the Maginot Line, and our navy, realistically, cannot take on their navy.
It's not like we're allies with Britain anyway, and even if we entered the war, is there anything we could do right now…"
Ludwig Beck trailed off.
Although it may be temporary, the British Navy has been all but neutralized.
The diterranean Fleet can't move as long as the Italian Navy is there.
It's uncertain how much of the main fleet at Scapa Flow can be sortied imdiately after the mine-clearing is done, and it will take at least a month to repair the damaged capital ships.
The severe cases will take much longer.
Britain already has an incredibly small standing army, and with Halifax having carried out disarmant, the number of army troops that can be imdiately deployed on the mainland will be extrely small.
But if they've already been landed on, Britain's fate is hanging by a thread.
"That said, we can't abandon Britain here. Since France is practically an ally of Italy, it's obvious they will try to blockade us if they occupy Britain."
I had set General Roml aside as a detached force, but I had hoped the mont to actually use him would never co.
It looks like his unit will have to be dispatched as soon as it's ready.
The problem is whether it's possible for our navy, with only the support of the remnants of the British fleet, to break through the French Navy and land General Roml on the British mainland-
"U-Urgent news!"
No, what is it this ti!
Receiving the sharp gazes of all the governnt officials, Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Erich Kordt was a bit flustered, but he quickly handed
two telegrams.
The contents were truly staggering. One was infuriating enough, but two.
I think I know what it feels like for the sky to turn yellow.
I handed the telegrams to my father with a trembling hand, and he too wore a sour expression as he looked them over.
"Italy and the Empire of Japan have declared war on Britain and the formation of an alliance. And… the Soviet Army is preparing a massive offensive against Poland with a military force estimated to be over 2.5 million."
I tried so hard to avoid World War II, but in the end, a World War II of a completely different form than the original history has broken out.
Ah, this is driving
crazy.
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