World War: Battleship Arms Dealers

"Other exits!" He turned in the direction he remembered. The ammunition depot had two exits, one leading to the elevator shaft and the other to a side corridor. They stumbled and groped their way towards the corridor door.

The heatwave intensified. Miller smelled smoke—not the smoke of a fire, but a more pungent, chemically burning odor.

"Corporal, I can't breathe..." Tom began to cough.

Miller himself felt short of breath. The air was rapidly becoming thin and scorching. He reached for the hallway door and forcefully turned the handle—

The door opened.

But the area outside the door is not a corridor.

It was a sea of ​​fire.

Orange flames rushed in through the crack in the door, instantly igniting Miller's sleeve. He screamed and fell backward, and Tom pounced on him to pat the fire off his arm.

"Close the door! Close the door!" Miller roared.

Tom pushed the door back with all his might, but some of the flames had already rushed in, igniting the canvas covers piled up in the corner. The firelight illuminated a corner of the ammunition depot—Miller saw that the shell, already loaded with propellant, still lay quietly on the elevator tray.

Meanwhile, the temperature around the tray is rising rapidly.

"No..." Miller murmured.

He knew. He knew where the eighth shell had hit. He knew where the heatwave was coming from. He knew why the air was burning.

The 380mm armor-piercing shell penetrated the Hood's relatively weak deck armor, traveling downwards, piercing through multiple decks, and finally stopping at—

The corridor next to the secondary gun ammunition depot.

The explosion ignited the propellant charges in the secondary guns. Flames spread along ventilation ducts and cable channels, now engulfing the area surrounding their 15-inch main gun ammunition magazine. The intense heat was being conducted through the steel bulkheads, heating the silk-wrapped nitrocellulose propellant stacked in the corners.

And once the main ammunition depot is detonated...

"Tom," Miller grabbed the young man's shoulder in the firelight, "listen. We need to move those medicine packets away, as far away from the shells as possible. Then find something, anything, to block the cracks in the door so no more fire gets in. Understand?"

Tom's face was covered in sweat and cigarette ash, and his eyes were wide open, but he nodded.

The two men rushed towards the pile of medical supplies in the corner. Each supply weighed a hundred kilograms and normally required mechanical assistance to move. But now, their survival instinct gave them the strength. Miller dragged a supply towards a corner away from the shells, and Tom followed suit.

It was hot. So hot. Miller felt like his lungs were being branded with a hot iron; every breath was painful. Sweat streamed into his eyes, blurring his vision. But he dared not stop, he couldn't stop.

Another loud cracking sound came from overhead. This time the sound was louder and closer. The entire ship began to list—not the natural swaying caused by the wind and waves, but some kind of structural, irreversible tilt.

"The ship...the ship is going to capsize?" Tom's voice was trembling with tears.

Miller didn't answer. He was speechless. He dragged the second medicine bag, his fingernails snapping from the force, leaving bloodstains on the bag's exterior.

Then he heard that voice.

That sound that all sailors feared most.

A deep, continuous rumbling sound emanated from deep within the ship's hull. It sounded like magma surging from the earth, like a colossal beast awakening.

That was the sound of the propellant in the main ammunition magazine spontaneously combusting after reaching the critical temperature.

"No..." Miller knelt down.

Flames erupted from the ventilation shafts, instantly engulfing half of the ammunition magazine. Tom's screams were drowned out by the explosions—not a single explosion, but a series of cascading explosions that rose layer by layer from deep within the ship.

Miller's last sight was the 15-inch shell glowing red and deforming in the flames, and then—

The whole world turned white.

On the bridge of the HMS Hood, Wellesley saw a light.

It wasn't muzzle flash, nor was it a fire; instead, it was a blinding white light that burst forth from inside the ship, so intense it instantly blinded the viewer. The white light shot out from the deck crack between the B and X turrets, as if countless suns were simultaneously igniting inside the warship.

Then comes the sound.

A sound he had never heard before, indescribable. Like a mountain collapsing, like a tsunami, like the whole world shattering. The sound was so loud that he was instantly deafened, only able to feel his skull vibrating.

The HMS Hood's hull expanded and deformed in a white light.

The section near the midships arched upwards, the thick armor plates torn and flipped open like tin foil. Flames—not orange-red, but incandescent, bluish-white—spewed from every crack, forming a pillar of fire hundreds of meters high.

The pillar of fire pierced through the storm clouds, illuminating the sea surface for dozens of nautical miles around.

Wellesley saw that HMS Hood, this 41,000-ton steel behemoth, the pride of the Royal Navy, the flagship he had just taken over, had broken in half.

The process of breaking apart was terrifyingly slow.

The midships section was completely shattered in the explosion, and the fore and aft sections of the hull began to separate. The forward section—including turrets A and B and the bridge—was lifted upwards by the impact of the explosion, with the bow almost vertical, exposing the underwater hull covered in barnacles. The aft section—turrets X and Y and the engine room—sinked rapidly, the propellers still spinning in idling.

Seawater surged wildly in through the fracture.

The tilt angle increased rapidly. Wellesley grabbed a pillar, but to no avail. The bridge was tilting at forty-five degrees, and everything unsecured was sliding toward port: charts, rulers, coffee cups, corpses…

He took one last look at the outside world through the broken porthole.

The storm raged on. The waves crashed like mountains. On the starboard side, the silhouette of the Bismarck was clearly visible in the firelight, smoke still rising from the muzzles of the German warship's guns.

Then seawater rushed in.

The cold, dark, salty seawater burst through the portholes and flooded the bridge. Wellesley held his breath, but the water pressure was immense; his lungs felt like they were going to burst. In his last moments before losing consciousness, his mind wasn't filled with thoughts of his family, the king, or the empire.

Instead, it's a simple question:

The fifth salvo. Just the fifth salvo.

Why?

Darkness swallowed everything.

On the bridge of the Bismarck, Scheer lowered his binoculars, his hands trembling slightly.

He witnessed the whole thing: the white light, the pillar of fire, the giant ship breaking in two, the two sections sinking in less than three minutes. Only a huge whirlpool remained on the surface, its center still churning with bubbles and oil, and some scattered, burning debris.

Silence enveloped the bridge.

Everyone saw it. Everyone knew what it meant. HMS Hood, the Royal Navy's most powerful battlecruiser, one of the warships symbolizing the British Empire's maritime supremacy, sank after five salvos.

"General..." the chief of staff finally spoke, his voice hoarse.

Scheer waved his hand, signaling him to be quiet. He picked up the radio: "Radar, report the sea conditions."