The Third Reich: The Return of the King

Chapter 588

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: 0.073s Scan: 0.023sThe captain of the battlecruiser Hood is Major General Holdland. His full name is Lancelot Holdland, the same name as Lancelot in the Knights of the Round Table in history. He was born in 1887 and is just 40 years old this year. With his exploits in World War I, he was promoted to Major General. In the British Army, it is very rare to be promoted to Major General before the age of 40.

So like other young generals, Holdland is a new general of the Royal Navy and a rising star in the army!

Indeed, the person who can take on the task of commanding the strongest battleship of the entire Royal Navy must not be an ordinary person.

Lancelot Holdland is an ambitious man. He is not satisfied with his current status. His goal is to be an admiral or even a naval marshal!

And the only way to achieve this goal is to participate in battles, constantly participate in battles, and climb up with military exploits!

If he served on other battleships, perhaps this wish would be extremely difficult to realize. However, the warship he served on was not an ordinary warship. It was one of the most powerful battleships in the world. The Hood was the pride of the entire British Empire!

They had achieved very impressive results in previous battles!

A few years ago, in the Battle of the Mediterranean, the Hood fought one against five, sank one, and damaged three Italian battleships, which attracted the attention of the whole world. That was the first time that the world saw the great power of the Hood.

But that was not enough. Italy’s strength in the Mediterranean might be good, but from a global perspective, it was just a second-rate country. Although the Hood sank an enemy ship, it was also injured and failed to completely annihilate the enemy. In the end, the enemy escaped with injuries and failed to expand the results of the battle.

This made Hoodland very worried. If he could sink all five Italian battleships during the Mediterranean Sea Battle, people all over the world would be shocked, and everyone would remember his name, the name of the Hood! By then, even if Italy was not the main enemy of the Sun Never Sets, he could be promoted to Lieutenant General with this great military exploit!

After the Battle of the Mediterranean, the Hood did not find any good opportunities to participate in actual combat, but Major General Hudland was not idle, but was preparing for war!

With the commissioning of the Bismarck and Tirpitz battleships, the Hood’s world No. 1 throne began to become somewhat unstable.

The tonnage of these two battleships exceeded that of the Hood, and their firepower was even stronger. There were nine 406mm main guns, which made the Hood’s four twin 381mm main guns pale in comparison.

The enemy’s artillery had a larger caliber, more guns, and more powerful firepower. In terms of firepower output, the Bismarck and the Hood had already opened up a gap. If they really fought, the Hood would definitely not be able to gain an advantage.

However, Holland was not intimidated by this.

The British Navy was the world’s number one navy, and their officers and soldiers were the best officers and soldiers in the world.

Hans’s navy suffered a heavy blow in World War I, and did not participate in any actual combat afterwards.

They were just a group of rabble.

Even if they were equipped with more advanced weapons, there was no guarantee that they would be able to bring out the performance of such weapons.

So Holland felt that since the British Navy had the best sailors in the world, even if they encountered the Bismarck and the Tirpitz, they still had a chance!

Moreover, the credit for defeating these two battleships was definitely much greater than the credit for sinking those second-rate battleships of Italy!

Italy was just a second-rate country in the Mediterranean, and it was impossible for it to pose a threat to the British mainland. At most, it would threaten the safety of the British colonies in North Africa.

However, Hans is different. Hans is in Western Europe and has an outlet to the North Sea. Once their navy becomes strong, it will pose a threat to the British Empire.

Moreover, Hans is a world-class power. Their industrial strength and their total population make them the biggest threat to the British Empire in Western Europe!

So after 1926, the entire British Empire began to pay more and more attention to Hans, and combat plans against Hans emerged one after another.

With the continuous rise of Hans’ navy, more and more people within the British Royal Navy began to regard Hans’ navy as their imaginary enemy, and formulated many tactics against this imaginary enemy to weaken and annihilate the opponent’s naval power.

In this case, defeating Hans’ navy and defeating Italy’s navy are completely different!

Defeating Italy was nothing more than a battle to crush a weak country with a strong national strength. Even without the Hood and Hoodland, others could do it. Moreover, there was not much benefit in winning, and the impact of losing was not great. It had limited significance in the entire strategic plan of the British Empire, and not many people in the country would pay attention to that war!

However, defeating Hans would have a completely different meaning.

Once they defeated Hans’ navy, Hans would be completely unable to threaten their homeland. In that case, even if the British Empire could not counterattack the European continent, it could at least rely on its own powerful navy to protect its own safety.

And when they gathered the power of the colonies and used the advantages of the navy to open up battlefields on other fronts in Europe, Hans’ long coastline would become a loophole that they had to invest in defense, which would greatly consume Hans’s manpower and material resources, allowing the British Empire to take the initiative in this war!

It was a matter of life and death for the country. The entire British Empire and even the colonies overseas where the British Empire never set were paying attention to this war!

Therefore, if he could lead the battleship Hood to sink Hans’s Bismarck and Tirpitz, he would surely become a national hero of the entire sun never sets!

This is what Holden wanted!

So after receiving the order to attack and intercept Hans’s battleship Bismarck, Rear Admiral Holden was very excited. He seemed to have seen a shortcut to the pinnacle of his life!

With four battleships plus several cruisers and destroyers, and with Captain Holden’s full expectations, the battlecruiser Hood left the Spaka Gulf!

At the same time, in the north of the Atlantic, Lütjens also received a telegram from the German headquarters.

“The enemy has dispatched a battleship formation to the north to intercept!”

Seeing this telegram, Lütjens let out a long sigh:”Is it finally here?”

Looking back at the 406 main gun shrouded in the orange-red sunset, Lütjens smiled:”I’ve been waiting for you for a long time!”_