Chapter 310: Chapter 387 Operation Starvation (11)
As the sun gradually set in the west, the evening glow reflected on the sea surface, caught in the waves and rolled into the billows. It was a brilliant red, like a piece of blood-stained brocade, spread over the sea.
Hubert, responsible for the escort this time, had no mood to enjoy the scenery. Watching the slowly sinking sun, his brows were tightly furrowed, revealing a deep worry in his eyes. He ordered, "Command the destroyers on the perimeter to be fully alert, without the slightest negligence!"
Because the German wolf packs preferred to launch attacks at night, he had to be extremely vigilant. If they could just get through tonight, by tomorrow evening the convoy would be able to enter the patrol range of domestic aircraft, and only then would they be safe.
All along the way, they were nervous and scared, sometimes the lookouts, out of tension, would mistake whales or anything else for German submarines and sound the alarm, causing the entire fleet to tense up. But he couldn't scold the lookouts; after all, if they really encountered a German submarine next time, any hesitation from the lookouts could lead to disastrous consequences.
This feeling was truly torturous; after a few days, he felt he had aged at least ten years. He had secretly decided that after this trip, he would never take on such a cursed task again.
Boom! Just then, an explosion sounded in the distance.
"!!" Hubert staggered, almost falling to the ground; it was a case of fearing the worst. "Sound the alarm! Prepare for battle!!"
As the piercing alarm for battle sounded over the transport convoy, a few white men were leaning over the railing of a cargo ship at the core of the convoy, vomiting into the sea.
"Damn it, I shouldn't have eaten that dinner, ugh!" A young man just complained, then couldn't help but vomit a few more times.
Seasickness, carsickness, and airsickness are very normal physiological reactions. Although medically referred to as motion sickness, it's just an emergency response of the human inner ear vestibular nervous system to external stimuli.
The long sea voyage across the Atlantic would make anyone with seasickness feel extremely uncomfortable, and this poor young man was one of them; after spitting out some bitter water, he couldn't help but complain to the person next to him. "We had a good passenger ship to take, but instead, we have to suffer this punishment. I don't know what the higher-ups are thinking, do they want us to vomit to death halfway through?"
They were American pilots, to be precise, British-American pilots, secretly on their way to support Britain.
The person next to him also looked pale, retching twice, with nothing left in his stomach to throw up. "Taking a passenger ship, if the Germans discovered anything, it would be a troublesome matter for the higher-ups." The long swaying at sea had dampened his appetite, making his speech seem weak and breathless.
Due to the previous sinking of the "New Jersey" passenger ship, the dissatisfaction among the American public had not yet subsided. Moreover, as the United States was still nominally neutral, it could not support openly. Therefore, Roosevelt could only secretly support a group of pilots and fighter planes like this; only a few people in the military high command knew about these matters, not even Congress.
"But if we encounter..." Before he could finish, the young man began to feel something churning in his stomach again. He retched twice before continuing to speak. "If we encounter that 'wolf pack,' won't we all be done for here? We're going to resist the Germans, not to feed the fish in the sea."
"You crow's mouth..." Before he could finish, an explosion was heard in the distance, followed by a piercing alarm for battle. They noticed that all the ships around them began to slowly accelerate, although this acceleration wasn't much. Pilots lying in hammocks inside the cabin looked at the continuously flashing red alarm lights on the cabin walls with eyes full of panic and bewilderment.
"Wolf pack attack! Wolf pack attack!" A British sailor on the ship ran over quickly, shouting loudly at the pilots. "Put on your life jackets quickly!"
"Oh, shit!!" The pilots hurriedly put on their life jackets, and halfway through, someone realized, cursing aloud. "Shit, what's the use of wearing this thing? Can we survive if the ship is sunk?!" If their ship was hit and sunk, they would fall into the sea, and the rest of the ships would certainly not stop to rescue them under the threat of German submarine attacks. In the icy waters, they would only last a few minutes before meeting God; at that time, life jackets would be useless, better to drown quickly.
The companion next to him reassured, "Don't worry, we are now in the very core of the entire convoy. Unless the ships on the perimeter are all sunk, it won't be our turn."
At this moment, the destroyers on the perimeter crazily fired numerous flares into the sky, illuminating the sea area as bright as day. The sailors widened their eyes, carefully scanning the sea surface, hoping to spot the periscope of a submarine or the trail of a torpedo. Some destroyers had even begun to fire their main guns randomly at the distant sea surface. However, this action seemed to serve no purpose other than to bolster courage.
Boom! Boom!
One explosion after another, in less than a minute, six transport ships had exploded.
"How have we not found the enemy's submarine yet?!" Hubert was frantic, his clenched fists turning white.
The adjutant next to him frowned. "Commander, this rate of explosion doesn't seem like an attack by the wolf pack." If it were a wolf pack attack, they would definitely launch torpedoes from all directions, and at least a dozen transport ships would have been hit by now. But so far, only the six transport ships at the forefront had exploded, and the rest were unharmed.
Reminded by his adjutant, Hubert also sensed something was amiss. "If it's not a torpedo attack, could it be mines? But this is an international waterway, why would the Germans lay mines here?" Aren't the Germans afraid of accidentally damaging the ships of other neutral countries? "Is our course correct?" For a moment, he even doubted whether they had occasionally deviated from their set course.
But after inquiring with several ships around them, all confirmed that the course was completely correct and there had been no deviation.
This was indeed an international waterway. As for the possibility of accidentally harming the ships of neutral countries, the solution was quite simple. Just equip the mines with timers, and an hour later, those mines that hadn't been detonated would self-destruct, so there would be no accidental damage to other ships.
"Damn it! All ships, stop advancing!" Hubert urgently issued the command for the fleet to stop advancing. If the Germans had laid hundreds of mines ahead, how many ships would be left if they blindly charged through?
Therefore, he could only issue the command to stop advancing. But these were not small fishing boats that could stop on command; all the ships dropped their anchors, the propellers began to reverse, but they still moved forward tens of meters, detonating more than a dozen mines before gradually coming to a stop.
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