Author Notes:
I'm gonna preface this by saying I am not a politician, a psychologist, or a strategist worth a damn. The closest things I can be equated to is a high-strung, coffee-infused, writer, HOI4/RTS gamer, and a Paradox war criminal. I am in no shape or form to confidently say that what I write is remotely realistic, despite my best attempt at mimicking it. You have been warned!
Now that's out of the way, shoutout to Brian Hopson for your one-off donation to the cause of the Imperium of Man! Be seeing you around, and hope you enjoy the two series at your leisure!
And you, yes you! Don't forget to review, recommend, or comment about the stories, you hear!?
There are advanced chapters on Patreon for both of my fics, with a couple of special bonuses if you read the fine print :D
https://www.patre-on.com/Heartbreak117
https://ko-fi.com/heartbreak117/goal?g=0
Income goal 775/880 USD (UmU)
Battle of Mers-el-Kébir: https://postimg.cc/vDm5T30s
Marshal Yuki: https://postimg.cc/K3vXSdb4
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"Once the Prisoners of War are secured, immediately break harbor and make for the open sea! All vessels are to then form around the Richelieu. It's time we tightened this net!"
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BOOM
"Good God almighty! The Arethusa has her entire front tower collapsing!"
"She's listing and is falling behind the formation!"
"Admiral, should we slow down for the Arethusa?"
"We can't, the Arethusa is as good as gone. Use any means necessary, communicate with the survivors of the Arethusa, and have them abandon ship. The loss of the front tower could mean that most of them won't even know what's going on until it's too late." Somerville commands with white knuckles and a creaking binoculars. "Have the ships following behind us toss out the life rafts when they pass by the Arethusa. Maintain our current heading and speed."
"Aye aye, sir..." The XO moves to relay the orders, though one can hear quite well the subtle crestfallen tone in his reply.
Now left mostly alone, Vice Admiral Somerville curses. "Already a sunk cruiser and a destroyer, with no kill of our own... Such rotten performance and luck on this accursed night."
Other than forcing a pair of Ustian destroyers to turn away because of battle damage, Force H has achieved little. In turn, the Ustians have scored two kills and multiple hits on nearly all frontline vessels of the Erusean war fleet. Even HMS Valiant, Somerville's flagship, has taken two damaging hits. While the extent of battle damage isn't as great as that of the HMS Revenge, the fact that Force H's flagship is injured is alarming enough. This means that the chance for the Ustian Mediterranean Fleet to score a lucky, devastating hit on the Valiant just shot over the roof. And if Somerville is to be taken out of the picture, then the destruction of the last capable Erusean naval force is but assured in moments. Such a thing must not come to pass, if not for the bigger picture, then for the souls that are under the Vice Admiral's command. The Erusean Admiral must wrack his brain for a way to salvage this catastrophe. Yet, as the distance between both sides is being shortened by the seconds, Somerville's time is running out.
KRA-BOOM
"No good, the Keppel just took a big hit! Oh no, I think a shell detonated her torpedoes!"
"What!?" Somerville pans his gaze to where the aging destroyer leader is, and sure enough, a major pyre is raging amidship for the Keppe.
Then, under the shocked gaze of many, the Thorneycroft-class destroyer leader breaks apart into two halves, her keel finally cracked under the immense strain generated by the detonation of her torpedo tubes.
"Blast the Ustians and their accuracy...!" Somerville curses before making up his mind. "Contact the rest of the destroyers, all of them. I need them to form up an attack line for torpedo duty. If the Ustians don't want to launch their torpedoes, then let us unleash ours!"
"Understood, Admiral. But sir, this will put our starboard side at risk."
"I have already accounted for that."
Damn if he do, damn if he don't. This is the predicament Somerville now finds himself in. Earlier, the presence of the Ustian destroyers had caused the Erusean Vice Admiral to delay his torpedo attack out of fear of being subjected to the same tactic. Now, as losses are mounting, Somerville has to throw caution to the wind, just for a chance at breaking through. Thus far, the Ustians are still bunching up nicely in a firepower blob. With multiple Erusean destroyers attacking at once, their combined torpedo salvo will be more than enough to cause highly disruptive damage to the Ustians. You can't just hope to dodge all of the torpedoes when your fleet is so massive.
Somerville's tactic isn't actually a bad one, considering how ineffective his naval gunners are right now; a close-in torpedo deployment is quite possibly the only way left for him to deal meaningful damage. However, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Even before Force H's starboard-side destroyers can fully form an attack formation with the port-side ones, the Ustian Task Force, led by the Jean Bart, makes a sudden, distressing move for Somerville.
The Ustian fleet is splitting up.
"Bollock!" Admiral Somerville slams his arms on the handrest, almost throwing his binoculars at the Ustians as well.
The Ustians have branched their fleet, with the destroyers and light cruisers going parallel with Force H but at a faster speed. Their capital ships and heavy cruisers, however, are maintaining largely the same course, fully intended to shoot the Erusean warships in the aft. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Ustian commander is aiming to create a crossfire situation. This tactic of splitting up the Ustian fleet, in turn, forces the Eruseans to pay attention to multiple angles at once, thus severely limiting the amount of firepower they can bring to bear.
Now, if Somerville is to try to torpedo the enemy capital ships with the destroyers, it will leave his battleships hopelessly undefended from the same attack caused by the Ustian high-speed flotilla. This does not mention the fact that the Ustian capital ships now have ample room to maneuver, now that most of their escorts are elsewhere. And unlike the Eruseans, the newer Ustian heavy cruisers can act as a great torpedo detection screen. So, once again, Somerville is but a step too late and has to change his priority.
"I want all battleship guns to focus fire on the enemy cruisers directly North of us! Pave the path forward for our destroyers to clean up the enemy's!"
If Somerville can't deal with the enemy's big guns yet, then may as well blow a path through the smaller ones. As long as they can eliminate the protective bubble that is the Ustian light cruisers, then perhaps he can have HMS Emerald and the rest of his destroyers to mop up the rest of that flanking flotilla. With both their light cruisers and their destroyers gone, the Ustian Mediterranean Fleet will stand a worse chance at eliminating Force H. Yet, once again, reality seems to defy the Erusean Vice Admiral's expectation.
Modern Ustian warships are too nimble and agile, at least for the smaller ones, to the point that they defy the conventional thinking of the Erusean sailors. Their flanking flotilla, in particular, is composed of nothing but the swiftest of such vessels: the La Galissonière-class light cruiser, the Le Fantasque-class, and the Mogador-class destroyer. This composition allows the Ustian flotilla sailing parallel to Force H to seemingly turn on a dime and regain its lost speed in but moments. The surprising agility being shown has made all large caliber shells fired by the Erusean battleships miss their intended targets, the Ustian light cruisers, and that's after multiple salvoes. In fact, the ones with the better luck are the secondary guns from the Erusean battleships, whose rate of fire and luck made up for their dismal accuracy. Still, being light cruiser caliber at best, these secondary guns lack the necessary punch, so the La Galissonière light cruisers can still steam full ahead, shrugging off the minimal casualties.
Ineffective this, ineffective that, by this point, one can even say that Somerville has half given up. The only thing that keeps him from straight-up leaving his post in a rage is the possibility of a turnaround. After all, in naval warfare, things aren't as clear-cut and dry. A certain windfall may very well happen to the side that is losing.
One can argue that, if Admiral Somerville cherishes the lives of his men, why didn't he surrender outright and thus spare them the sinking and deaths?
Well, that's the neat part, and the answer is that any man or sailor worth their salt will know. As paradoxical as it may sound, immediately giving up is sometimes a fate worse than death for the sailors, who are sometimes more stubborn than a chunk of reef. Surrender is only an option when there's no hope left at all, or half of the vessel and her crew are already gone up in flame. If both the ship and the crew can find it in them to fire one more salvo, then they shall. That's the pride of a warship sailor, that's the pride of the Royal Navy... Or so they choose to believe. At the very least, history books will remember them as someone who fought valiantly.
And as the fleet duel in the East drags on and on, with the distance shortening at a rate visible to the naked eye, things are much more silent to the West, where the retreating Troop Convoy is.
One can even say that it's too silent.
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Underneath the ashen waves of the Mediterranean, predators stalk their unsuspecting prey.
A Ustian submarine flotilla, one that has been patrolling near Mers-el-Kébir, is tasked with the very honorable task of making sure none of the Erusean vessels reach Gibraltar and beyond. Forming from four submarines, two modern Redoutable-class and two slightly older Surcouf-class, this underwater flotilla has been trailing the Erusean Troop Convoy for the better part of the naval engagement. Unlike the truly top-of-the-line Belkan Nassau-class submarine, which has a night vision periscope, the Ustian underwater killers mostly rely on the Surcoufs' autogyros for targeting data. The two autogyros, namely the Ustian-built LeO C.301s, brave the dark, windy night and even fly right above the Troop Convoy, just so they can accurately provide intelligence to their home vessels.
"It's a convoy of twelve ships. Speed is slow, and we judge it to be five to 7 knots. They don't seem to be armed, and I don't think they know we're right above them."
"Flotilla received. Stay on station and keep us posted on their headings."
"Roger that."
"All vessels, stand by for engagement order. Open up secondary torpedo tubes."
Normally, a submarine will have to face its hull in the intended direction of attack before launching its torpedoes. Yet, as doctrinal differences would have it, the Ustians have not just two different diameters of torpedoes, but they also place them on conformal turrets at the aft of their submarines. The 21.7-inch, 550 mm torpedoes are for the big games, while the smaller 15.7-inch, 400 mm torpedoes are intended for small vessels like transport ships. The latter, in particular, are also dubbed secondary torpedo armament and will soon be used for their intended role as a convoy killer. A Redoubtable-class submarine will have two 400 mm tubes each, while the Surcouf-class will have four each. This means a total of twelve torpedoes will be launched against the twelve-ship Troop Convoy.
Once the rear torpedo turrets of all submarines are aligned, the Flotilla leader aboard one of the Surcouf-class submarines gives the order. "Fire!"
Accompanied by a burst of bubbles, the combined salvo of twelve 400 mm torpedoes is launched against the unsuspecting Troop Convoy, too busy spectating the far-off naval war. In a perfect scenario, twelve torpedoes should be able to sink all twelve convoy ships. However, this is the real world; it's wonderful enough to sink or cripple half of the Troop Convoy with the spread. And as expected, even with the targeting data fed to them by the two autogyros, only 1/3rd of the torpedoes can find their way to the draughts of the Troop Convoy. By the time the crews of the Erusean convoy react, it's already too late, and four troop transports are hit underwater. Being single-hull vessels with cheap constructions, they buckle under their own weight and start sinking immediately.
Any military sailor understands that they have just been hit by a submarine attack, and there's nothing they can do to stop it. They try radioing for Force H to help, but Vice Admiral Somerville already has too many things on his plate to even deign a reply. Worse, flares start to fall from the sky, deployed by the previously unseen autogyros. Other than a few rifles and machine guns, the Troop Convoy has nothing else to shoot down the nimble Ustian airframes. They can only fire impotently into the air as the autogyros report the new targeting data back to the submarine flotilla, which has now surfaced. The crews of these submarines then spring onto the decks of their vessels in a practiced manner, all so that they can prepare their deck guns for convoy bombardment.\
And boy, there can be no other place the Surcouf-class submarines want to be than here.
After exactly three and a half minutes and at a stone-throw distance, the 203 mm guns of the cruiser submarines fire their heavyweight salvo according to the refined targeting data, provided by not just the autogyros but also the rangefinders on the submarines themselves.
...
...
...
Miraculously, both submarines hit their chosen target in the first shot, resulting in explosions on the broadside of two Erusean transport ships.
Now, ain't that a surprising result? Such accuracy from a... A largely situational platform is unexpected, but the results speak for themselves. But it has to be noted that this is an engagement that is occurring at less than 3 kilometers and that the Surcoufs are assisted by flares from the autogyros. Without any of these, the cruiser submarines won't be able to shell anything other than some unlucky sealife. Regardless, by this point, the Troop Convoy is basically a non-factor as they possess no offensive means that can be used to deal with the submarines. When the 100 mm guns from the Redoubtable-class submarines join in, the Eruseans don't even have time to consider a ramming maneuver when their boats are already set aflame.
Although the submarine flotilla initiates engagement much later than their surface counterparts, they finish it the quickest, with all twelve kills on the Troop Convoy and multiple Erusean prisoners in custody.
That, my friend, is a true Great Success.