Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology-Chapter 1252: WW1: Attack of the western Front (2)

Northern Atlantic Ocean

Agni had made his final preparations for the battle. The only thing that was left was for him to officially kick off the operation.

He stood before a group of senior 7- and 8-star naval officers, ranks equivalent to lieutenant generals and commanders. Wearing a sombre expression, he handed over a ceremonial dagger with various numbers etched on it one by one. The officers stood up with stern faces, stomped their feet and saluted to receive the dagger as if it were not a simple cold weapon but a burden and a responsibility.

Because it was.

What happened was an initiation process for a major operation, so as soon as the 8-star officers confirmed that the number on the dagger matched up with the protocol they were issued when they were promoted to the position of commander, they turned around and left.

Within half an hour, the entire conference room was empty, but Agni wasn’t idle. He may not be on the front line of the operation, but he was certainly the brain of it, with the battleship he was on practically being his intelligence and analytics centre, consisting of the headquarters of the research and analysis wing for the fleet, as well as the main intelligence and inventory correspondence with the rest of the fleet.

Therefore, given its crucial role for the fleet, despite not directly participating in the war, it was still escorted by two Maharaja Ramachandra-class battleships, five Ramachandra-class battleships, and ten Delhi-class battleships, along with 30 heavy and light frigates and clippers, as well as its own logistics vessel group weighing a sum of 20,000 draught tonnes. It was basically a small battle group unit capable of launching an independent attack on any major port.

With the general direction of the battle already decided, the fleet consisting of over 1000 ships quickly split up into two different units, and as it advanced, it brought a huge sense of fear and dread among the scouting vessels of the European Union. As soon as the empire’s fleet appeared on the horizon, the vessels turned around and ran away. Some scouting vessels were so startled that they even retreated at the sight of a Bharatiya scout alone.

Time passed quickly, and the first group made it very close to the Portuguese coast, rattling John Miguel, the admiral of the European Union, to his core.

John Miguel had not been in many naval battles. He could be considered experienced when compared with senior naval officers across Europe, but when compared against seasoned veterans, he still fell a little short. This was one of the reasons why he was not appointed to serve on the main Mediterranean fleet, but was given the task of commanding the Atlantic fleet, which at this point was a minor naval force located in several naval bases, including Lisbon.

So when he finally saw the Bharatiya fleet and had to confront it with his 500-odd ships, which couldn’t even be considered proper warships, and with fewer than 15 actual battleships, he knew he was done for.

So he did not try to be brave. He activated plan C and asked for reinforcements without hesitation. He knew that the French, the Spanish, and the English had hoarded a few warships for such a day, and he also knew that the Danish, Norwegians, and the Swedish were not completely defenceless either. His hope was to get support from these forces and maybe, just maybe, try to put up a fight against the opponent. Who knows, if he could somehow pull the opponent into a war of attrition, the semi-built Mediterranean fleet might be mobilised.

"Quickly disperse and take on a skirmisher formation."

Of course, before the reinforcements even arrived, he had to survive, so he took the best plan of action, spreading out as much as possible to avoid the artillery bombardment of the opponent, and constantly trying to annoy the opponent until reinforcements arrived.

As he expected, when the Bharatiya Navy came close enough, the fireworks started without delay. The primary battery, the secondary battery, and the tertiary battery were all unleashed with the most firepower they could muster, and the European ships began to fall one after another.

Looking at numbers alone, the two fleets weren’t too different. From the sky, it simply looked like two navies going to war, with the situation being impossible to ascertain, but as time went on, it became clear that one fleet was trying its best to finish off the opponent with everything it had, while the other tried to escape desperately like a rat.

This cat-and-mouse game went on for several hours until, eventually, Rear Admiral Pulikesh Roy received intelligence from a scouting vessel.

"Your Excellency, reinforcements are coming in from the British, French, Dutch and the Norwegian Kingdoms. Over 300 ships have been noticed in sector A-43, sir."

"Composition?"

"Mostly retrofitted merchant vessels, sir, but ten of them are newly produced battleships by the French. We haven’t seen this model ever before, but according to headquarters, this is the code-named Yellow Dove class. From all the data we collected from multiple sources, RAW has speculated that this is a battleship just as, if not slightly more capable than our Delhi-class battleships."

"Along with this, we also caught sight of over 24 Nordic battleships, but these were smaller ones, coming at only 1700 tonnes "

Pulkit Roy stroked his chin for a while and nodded, " Nothing we can’t handle, alright, go ahead"

The next moment, he passed on the intelligence to group number two and also put forward an idea that had popped into his mind.

Only an hour later, he received a confirmation message that Rear Admiral Puri Vadivelu was willing to follow through with his plan.

The next moment, without hesitation, he ordered his fleet to take on a concentrated formation.

With the formation becoming concentrated, the opponent had fewer chances to launch a sneak attack, but they also had a lot more room to manoeuvre, so when a few hours later the reinforcements finally arrived and joined with the remaining 250-odd ships, they used the newly rebuilt French ships as the flagship and launched an all-out attack.

The artillery of the French was surprisingly powerful. They were powerful enough to break through several layers of defences of the Ramachandra-class battleship, but Ramachandra-class battleships, even if they were not the current bleeding edge technology of the Bharatiya Empire, were still leagues ahead of the European Navy, so aside from a violent rocking of the ship, there was no catastrophic damage.

"You ain’t going to sink this battleship, no way!" The captain of the ship, hit with consecutive artillery shells, smirked defiantly and commented.

Pulikesh Roy knew that the time had arrived, so without hesitation, he repositioned his fleet into a wide defensive formation and launched a counterattack. However, the attack was not as fierce as the opponents expected, so the thought of retreating and dispersing to avoid their edge was temporarily suppressed, and John Miguel continued to give the same order. Unfortunately, John’s good times did not last long.

"Ohh Lord, our fleet has been flanked from behind. It is the second Bharatiya battle group that had previously disappeared," The scout exclaimed with absolute dread.

Hearing the report, John did not have a different expression either; he was stunned, and all colour left his face.

"Boom!"

"Booom!"

"Boom!"

Rear Admiral Puri Vadivelu didn’t feel any sympathy for the opponent; he heartlessly ordered for the cannons that were locked and loaded to be fired without mercy. The moment his order dropped, the artillery pieces shot out, sending ripples coursing through the sea surface, setting shockwaves strong enough to permeate the very bone marrow.

The beating that resulted was brutal enough to even make the Bharatiya sailors feel a little embarrassed by the disparity in strength. Thankfully, with the elimination of the main French flagships that were newly minted, the European fleet decisively surrendered and allowed for the Bharatiya troops to board the vessels without putting up any more resistance.

The news eventually reached Agni, and he smiled with contentment.

"Send back all the captured ships to our overseas territory in northwestern Africa. These ships are important resources, nearly everything in the ship can be salvaged, including the timber, which can be used to repair our ships, and the artillery...they could be reverse engineered as well."

Although the Europeans are very backwards compared to the Bharatiya Empire in artillery technology, they are still taking their own path in development, as they were not too successful in stealing the technology from the empire. So, European technology is still useful in filling any shortcomings in the Empire’s own technology. Who knows, European artillery technology might open up a new direction for the empire’s own artillery advancement.

"Your Excellency, both the rear admirals have requested to move on to the next stage of the operation."

"Alright, proceed," he answered directly.

With Agni approving the request, the two battle units immediately split into five different battle groups, each having its own mission, and the military transporter vessels that previously stayed far away from the battlefield divided into a pre-discussed number and integrated into the battle groups.