The matter in Gibraltar was soon settled. It was not that Churchill had a better idea, but that no one could think of a better way. Pound had asked the Admiralty to make plans to deploy aircraft carriers west of the Strait of Gibraltar and use carrier-based aircraft to eliminate German troops that dare to attack. However, no matter how it is deployed, the aircraft carriers in the chess deduction will never pass the 6-base aviation level. If the number is small, it will definitely be sunk by the enemy one or several. Doing such a thing under the premise of insufficient strength of the local fleet is completely futile, and in the end it can only give up.

But Churchill's focus is not on Gibraltar for the time being. Even if Spain has agreed to use the situation, he believes that the German army will take at least 2-3 weeks to attack, and before completely suppressing Gibraltar's air power, the enemy will not foolishly send battleships or units 6 to die. He has every time to deal with the greater threat in front of him.

The Tilpitz is the most imminent threat.

"Our reconnaissance planes did not find the enemy?"

"The reconnaissance planes searched carefully in all possible directions, and there was no situation. Of course, the reconnaissance planes did not encounter enemy planes." Tovey sighed, "There are two judgments now. One is that he has returned to the Altafjord, and the other is that he is about to head south into the Atlantic Ocean. What is not good for us is that the weather in the waters near Norway tomorrow is that it is very poor and we cannot continue to reconnaissance."

“That is, we have been out of touch with him for a day and a night?”

"Yes."

"Suppose the Tirpitz kept moving south for a moment after the war was completed, where can we go now?"

"It should be about a distance of about 5oo miles from Iceland."

"Tomorrow they will be able to reach a range of 100 miles from Iceland, but they may still not be able to be aware of our fleet?"

“In theory.”

"Will the weather improve in the next two or three days?"

"Not even, the bad weather will last for 4-5 days and will not improve after at least 13 days."

Everyone was a little worried. The Tilpitz put too much pressure on them. If they could not find their whereabouts through aircraft searches, it would be a complete disaster once they entered the Atlantic Ocean. Although the blocking fleet has taken action as fast as possible, it is too difficult to rely on the surface fleet to block this disaster. The North Atlantic Ocean is windy and harsh and the climate is impermanent. Everyone who has worked in the navy knows that it is a miracle to visually see a target of 20 miles in such an environment. Radars with farther detection distances but seem very fragile often have various unreliable failures when facing severe weather tests.

"Let the fleet widen their eyes and don't let the Germans go." Churchill did not make too much embarrass Tovey and patiently explained to Pound, "Speed ​​up the merchant ships currently transporting on the Atlantic Ocean and must be out of the dangerous area within a week."

"Will the fleet from the United States or Canada be postponed?"

Churchill hesitated for a moment and said, "It's normal, but we must maintain daily contact and obey all our dispatch and command. Great Britain cannot be without these materials, especially the fuel in it. Without them, we can't hold on for even three months."

Churchill said it all is the truth: Take crude oil as an example. Since the Indian Ocean was blocked from late December, no oil tanker has been able to run out of the Middle East to transport crude oil to the local area. The crude oil received in January was transported by oil tankers halfway before the Indian Ocean blockade. Since late January, no crude oil has arrived in the British Isles for nearly two weeks. During the war, Britain consumed about 120,000 tons of crude oil per month. Although it has implemented urgent and severe measures, the consumption is still close to 10,000 tons. The crude oil reserves in the entire British Isles are only a mere 10,000 tons. If crude oil is not delivered to Great Britain within three months, it means that the British will not have to fight the next battle.

Therefore, this time, not only did the proportion of oil tankers in the fleets sent from Canada and the United States have increased significantly, but the fuel required by each transport ship is also carried, in order to return to North America without refueling after arriving at the destination. This is one of the measures taken by the United Kingdom to save fuel consumption. The Americans are still very interested, knowing that the UK was in a dilemma after losing the Middle East crude oil production area, so what we sent this time was directly refined oil, and even the effort of refining on-site was eliminated.

In addition to practicing thrift, the UK also urgently launched the coal-to-oil project. Although the UK has also conducted research and exploration on this technology, its technical level is much behind that of Germany. No British chemical companies would have expected to consider using coal-to-oil for one day. Therefore, this project must now be built from scratch. Although it is the highest priority level, it cannot be built in just a few months.

Just as the British were deliberately considering dealing with the Tirpitz, the Norwegian cruiser fleet was escorting the captured transport ship to the Norwegian port. After docking, the British sailors on the transport ship would be sent to the prisoner-of-war camp. The garrison in Norway would immediately allocate enough personnel to transport the supplies back through other channels. The Tirpitz fleet would continue to move south after a short supply.

According to the statistics afterwards, there were 17 transport ships when the J-51a fleet left. Only the merchant ship that fell behind at the beginning finally crossed the German blockade line by mistake and arrived in Murmansk safely, and sent a batch of tanks and aircraft to the Red Army. However, the warship did not have the aluminum ingots and armored steel that Stalin urgently needed. The remaining 16 transport ships, except for one of the best-lucked merchant ships, finally escaped the German pursuit in the night and returned to Janmayen Island exhausted, the other 15 transport ships were either sunk or captured by Germany. After a brief count of the spoils at the port, Kumetz was in a much better mood. In addition to seizing two 10,000-ton transport ships, the materials seized on the ship included 5ooo tons of aluminum ingots, 4ooo tons of armored steel and nearly 2ooo tons of spam meat cans, and more than 5o various military vehicles, but none of them were tanks or aircraft.

After seeing these gains, the Navy Command finally basically calmed down the unhappiness caused by the loss of three destroyers. With the efforts of Chief of Staff Frick, Spel promised to increase the number of large-class destroyers to build by two more after obtaining the supplies.

After a long trek for a full 48-hour journey, on the night of February 9, the Tirpitz formation headed south along the Norwegian offshore coastline reached about 2000 nautical miles northeast of Bergen, Norway. This location is about 400 nautical miles from the Faroe Islands, less than 100 nautical miles from Meinland, and 600 nautical miles from Iceland.

The weather in Norwegian waters has been very bad these days. Although the aircraft cannot take off and reconnaissance, the German Navy has deployed a large number of U-boats in the North Sea. They have returned to the news that the British local fleet has dispatched. Although the Navy Command is not sure how much blocking forces the British have dispatched, the judgment they made is generally close to reality: it is believed that the British will mobilize 5-6 battleships, 6-8 cruisers, and at least 2-4 aircraft carriers to carry out blocking missions and jointly encircle and suppress the Tirpitz. Considering the terrible prospect of the German fleet rushing into the Atlantic Ocean to break the diplomatic relations, they believe that the British will focus on Iceland. This judgment coincides with the actual deployment of Britain.

However, accurate judgment does not mean that one can grasp the opponent's action deployment, and it is even more impossible to judge the enemy's next action. Therefore, for the Tirpitz, the next action must take a little risk.

The cautious Kumetz asked the formation to conduct another inspection. After confirming that everything was correct, he telegrammed to Berlin as agreed: "The formation has arrived at the designated location, everything is normal, please instruct."

After receiving the telegram, Raidel held his breath, thought calmly for 3 minutes, and made the final decision: "According to Plan No. 1, act!"

At 0:17 on February 1, Kumetz, who received the call back, issued an order to ships including Hiper and Luzov: turn southwest, head 215 degrees, and sail for 18 knots, pay attention to anti-submarine. (To be continued.)8
Chapter completed!