I Became a Plutocrat in World War I: Starting with Saving France-Chapter 1011: We Underestimated Shire

London War Building.

Prime Minister George places great importance on this war against France, even believing that the outcome of this war is tied to Britain’s national fate.

Win: Will suppress France and successfully obtain reparations from Germany.

Lose: No, the Royal Navy is impossible to lose!

Prime Minister George specifically transformed the conference room on the third floor into a command center.

The overall commander is Prime Minister George, but he is only a nominal commander, responsible merely for coordinating the work among departments.

This war involves too many issues, sea battles, air battles, politics, and possibly even simultaneous wars with several countries.

The actual commander is the Minister of Military Supplies, who formulated this plan, and is most familiar with its essence, making him the most suitable to control the overall situation.

The deputy commanders are the Minister of the Navy Belfort and Major General Trunchard, with one responsible for naval battles and the other for air battles.

Along with thirty-some staff officers and over a hundred communication soldiers, a command center that can be described as luxurious is thus constructed.

However, this command center hasn’t actually played a significant role.

Major General Trunchard operates as an independent command system, while both the Minister of Military Supplies and the Minister of the Navy are unfamiliar with air battles.

At this time, the Royal Navy still doesn’t understand the tight cooperation between the navy and naval aviation forces; in their minds, aircraft carriers are merely platforms for aircraft to take off.

This is one reason why the British Army’s two aircraft carriers were placed fifty kilometers away at the back as part of the not-too-important "First Fleet" and "Second Fleet."

The correct approach should have been to take the aircraft carrier as the core, have warships protect the aircraft carrier, surround it, with the primary task being to locate and strive to sink the enemy carrier.

If this strategy were implemented, the British Mediterranean Fleet would still have a fighting chance.

Though the British Army’s carrier-based aircraft "Camel" couldn’t match the French "Jeanne A," ultimately falling short in combat.

But the British Army shouldn’t be unable to even see the French aircraft carrier.

Upon knowing the position of the French carrier, the British Army could utilize high-speed surface ships to besiege, thus exerting pressure on the French carrier from both sea and air; the final outcome still remains uncertain.

But the reality of warfare was not like this.

Neither the Minister of Military Supplies, the Minister of the Navy, nor Major General Trunchard had any concept of carrier operations, including General Winter at the front lines.

They assumed France had no carriers; even if there were, their carriers could only launch a limited number of fighter planes, incapable of posing significant threats to rugged warships.

Therefore, they placed their own carriers in dangerous positions: protected by only twenty-some destroyers, sailing in fixed sea areas, waiting for carrier-based aircraft to return.

Major General Trunchard saw no problem with this strategy.

At this stage, radios haven’t been installed on airplanes; if the location of carriers were to change significantly, it’s possible the carrier-based planes wouldn’t find the carrier upon return, which would be disastrous for the aircraft.

Thus, the command center cheered loudly when the carrier-based fighters won the first phase of victory.

"Well done!" Prime Minister George nodded towards Major General Trunchard: "We’ve successfully driven away the French fighters."

"The important thing is to prevent France from daring to launch ’torpedo planes,’" said the Minister of Military Supplies: "The French know our prowess, they understand once they launch ’torpedo planes,’ they’ll become our target!"

"Indeed," Belfort agreed: "They ensured the battleship’s safety, which is crucial."

Major General Trunchard nodded slightly, smiling meaningfully at the Minister of Military Supplies.

The greatest credit for this battle should belong to the Minister of Military Supplies, who trained a group of pilots able to take off and land fighters on carriers ahead of time.

Without these pilots, this battle wouldn’t have even commenced.

The Minister of Military Supplies returned the gesture with a deliberately magnanimous smile.

Actually, this credit couldn’t be taken by anyone else.

The Minister of Military Supplies had planned long before; once General Winter achieved a major victory, he naturally would write significant praise for the Minister of Military Supplies in his report.

And then, all the halos of being magnanimous, humble, and visionary would be placed upon the Minister of Military Supplies.

The Minister of Military Supplies smiled insightfully, as if foreseeing that moment’s arrival.

But at that moment, a staff officer exclaimed: "Prime Minister, our carrier is under attack by enemy fighters!"

Prime Minister George sharply turned his gaze towards the Minister of Military Supplies: "Enemy fighters? That’s impossible!"

This was stated by the Minister of Military Supplies.

The carrier is over 200 kilometers from Malta Island, and French fighters have a combat radius of only about 150 kilometers, so naturally, it’s impossible to attack British carriers.

The Minister of Military Supplies was stunned and said in a deep voice: "If fighters attacked our carrier, it must be a French carrier."

Everyone immediately reacted, gathered around the navigation chart and calculated the position of the French carrier according to the telegram.

Everyone harbored the same thought: Find it, sink it!

However, before they could devise an appropriate plan, the staff officer, with a pale face and a panicked tone, reported: "Prime Minister, we... our carriers have been sunk, and all carrier-based aircraft have been shot down."

"What?" Prime Minister George looked up at the staff officer, disbelief washing over his face.

Everyone else was at a loss.

This is impossible; it must be a communication failure or the decoder making a mistake.

"They just got attacked," Major General Trunchard checked his watch and spoke in a calm tone: "How could two carriers be sunk within a mere ten minutes?"

The Minister of Military Supplies displayed a confident smile: "What did they use to sink our carriers? Machine guns?"

The others burst into laughter as if hearing a joke.

Only the staff officer holding the telegram had a mortified expression, handing the telegram to the Minister of Military Supplies: "No, Minister, they used bombs—the attackers on our carriers weren’t fighters but bombers carrying bombs."

Laughter abruptly stopped, and everyone’s eyes were filled with shock. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

The French carriers, unexpectedly, could launch bombers?

In their imagination, bombers were old-style "Caproni" bombers with a wingspan of 22.2 meters and a length of 10.9 meters.

Such planes couldn’t possibly take off from carriers.

Eventually, through repeated inquiries and verifications, they understood the crux of the matter:

The French developed a new model bomber, smaller in size, faster, capable of high-speed dive bombing with precision order-of-magnitude greater than the "Caproni" bombers.

(Annotation: The "Caproni" bombers typically have a margin of error of around 300 meters while dive bombers boast a margin of error of 30 meters. At that time, the "Hundred-eyed Giant" carrier had a deck 20.7 meters wide and 172.2 meters long; a vertical dive bombing would likely hit it.)

The command center fell into dead silence; they realized they had underestimated Shire.

Especially Major General Trunchard.

If all the fighters were shot down by the enemy, and the carriers were also sunk.

This meant the Royal Flying Corps’ chief of staff, himself, had nothing left to do; he no longer needed to stay in this command center!