At 6:20 in the morning on June 14, Lord Forbes's British fleet, led by the flagship "Ark Royal", quietly arrived at the entrance of Oran Harbor.
They lined up in the fjords, forming a siege on the Oran port where the main force of the French Darlan fleet was located.
At this moment, the surrounded French fleet was still unaware of the crisis.
"Report to the commander! We found a large number of British warships among the fjords."
In Darlan's office, a combat staff officer was reporting to his superior in an orderly manner.
Although Darlan and the others had not received any news about the sudden appearance of the British fleet.
However, after all, British Prime Minister Churchill had clearly sent a message, swearing on the glory of the British Royal Navy and his own credibility, that he would not take action against the French fleet. The promise of the British Empire must not be too ineffective.
Furthermore, the British will not disclose their military operations to Vichy France now, and Darlan and his officers and soldiers fully understand this.
After all, Vichy France is no longer an ally of Britain. They are now nominally following Germany.
Although Darlan's fleet and Berante's colonial army are actually not controlled by Germany, they maintain relative independence.
But after all, they were all troops under Pétain's name and theoretically belonged to the Vichy regime.
It is understandable that the British were worried that Darlan and the others were sharing intelligence with the Vichy regime, that is, in disguise, with Germany.
"I understand." Darlan nodded with a smile and motioned for his staff to step back.
In his opinion, the British Navy had suffered successively from the German fleet in Narvik and the North Sea, and now it was unable to even dispatch warships to escort its own transport fleet.
The German submarine force of General Dönitz is simply unparalleled.
In the propaganda of the German Social Workers newspaper, because the battle on the road has come to an end, Germany's recent enemy has become a maritime power - Britain.
Therefore, their propaganda pages have changed from boasting about "lightning tactics" and armored forces some time ago to currently boasting about "wolf pack tactics" and submarine forces.
Under German propaganda, Dönitz's "Wolf Pack Tactics" has become as famous as Guderian's "Blitzkrieg" and is known as the two "magic weapons" of the Third Reich on land and sea.
The essence of the wolf pack tactic is actually to use the weak ships of the German Navy to work together to destroy the enemy's large fleet.
Because it started later, the German Navy has always been no better than an established power like the United Kingdom in terms of the number of large warships it owns.
Speaking of the history of Germany's naval development in the past 20 years, it has almost always been an adventurous process that relies on crooked technology trees and eccentric approaches.
They gave up their deliberate pursuit of large battleships and focused entirely on aircraft carriers for surface combat.
For this reason, the German High Seas Fleet has only three true battleships so far.
You know, the French navy under Darlan now also has a huge presence of 7 battleships and 2 battlecruisers.
In other words, measured solely by the strength of sea artillery battles, the French fleet currently controlled by Darlan is almost twice as powerful as the German Navy.
This is also an important reason why Churchill was worried about Darlan's defeat.
Because once the French fleet merges with the German fleet, the number of battleships in the German High Seas Fleet will immediately triple, and its shortcomings in low artillery combat capabilities will be completely made up for.
By that time, the British Royal Navy would really no longer be able to find any usable advantage in the confrontation with the German Navy.
After all, Reinhardt's aircraft carrier tactics were maintained by sacrificing the number of battleships. This was a trick, but it was also a risky gamble.
If you are not careful, the approaching German navy will become a living target for the large British warships.
As for the "wolf pack tactics" that are now being promoted by the Social Worker newspaper, in the final analysis, they are not a method that can be used to compete with the British fleet.
The essence of the wolf pack tactic is to concentrate a large number of weak ships to destroy the enemy's large transport fleet, rather than to deal with the enemy's combat fleet.
During the operation, the "Wolf Pack Tactics" required sending several submarines to hunt and conduct reconnaissance at sea.
And their hunting time is usually at night.
There is no other reason, just because it is easier to run around at night and avoid encountering enemies that cannot be defeated.
And the reason why we have to consider running away and evading is not because we are not strong enough and we dare not confront anyone head-on.
In the "Wolf Pack", as long as a submarine conducting secret reconnaissance discovers the British convoy, it will send out a radio to find all the nearby submarines and launch a surprise attack on the enemy at night.
The usual approach is that when a target is discovered, each ship will covertly pass through the gap or flank of the opponent's escort fleet, avoid its fire barrier, and approach the target.
If the British fleet was discovered during the day, the German submarines would occupy favorable attack positions from far away in all directions and hide under the water.
Wait until night, then they will suddenly rise out of the water after approaching, and at the same time launch torpedoes at the target to achieve a surprise attack.
Because British anti-submarine measures were only at a level that was better than nothing at this stage in 1940.
Therefore, Dönitz's "wolf pack" can almost be said to be in a paradise-like environment.
To put it bluntly, they can hit others, but others cannot hit them.
Judging from the information Darlan knew, Dönitz, who invented the "Wolf Pack Tactics", had been promoted from major general to lieutenant general some time ago.
After the Germans occupied northern France, they quickly transformed the ports on the west coast of France and the Bay of Biscay into German submarine bases. They set up a German submarine production line at full capacity and delivered a batch of submarines to Dönitz's submarine force.
New submarine.
As for those old German pre-production submarines, many of them have been mobilized to go hunting in the Mediterranean near the Darlan fleet.
After all, he was in the Vichy government, and the tips Reinhard gave to Pétain also reached Darlan's ears, letting him know about the existence of German submarines in the Mediterranean.
This information that Reinhard deliberately sent to Darlan was just to make him feel at ease.
Although there are German submarines in the Mediterranean, their goal is to clean up the British fleet here and not accidentally damage the French ships in Darlan.
But today, Darlan mistakenly connected the German submarine with the British fleet that appeared here.
For a moment, he thought that this British fleet appeared in the Mediterranean at this moment and appeared near them to round up the surrounding German submarines.
"Bring me the map."
Darlan thought about it and decided to look at the map. Maybe he could deduce more information.
