At the Gibraltar naval base, Admiral Hermann Böhm, commander of the German Navy Mediterranean Fleet, boarded the fleet flagship, the aircraft carrier Deutschland. Compared with the Home Fleet and the Atlantic Fleet, the Mediterranean Fleet was far weaker. It had four battleships, three battlecruisers, and four Deutschland-class aircraft carriers.
It could be said that the German Navy Mediterranean Fleet and Indian Ocean Fleet were the two weakest of the German Navy's Five Grand Fleets. Even so, the Mediterranean Fleet's strength was not to be underestimated.
The four battleships and three battlecruisers had been completed using the hulls of British battleships and battlecruisers captured in the previous war. Before this World War broke out, they had undergone modernization refits, allowing these Capital Ships to regain formidable combat power. Perhaps their overall strength could not compare to the American Navy's newest Capital Ships, but the gap was not too great.
Although the four Deutschland-class aircraft carriers did not perform as well as the Constellation-class aircraft carriers and the carriers later mass-produced on a large scale, aircraft carriers capable of carrying eighty combat aircraft were not weak by any means.
"Order the fleet to set sail! Since the Americans want a decisive battle with us this time, then we will smash them with everything we have! Let them know that the Imperial Navy is the strongest navy in the world!" Admiral Hermann Böhm gave the order.
Very soon, the German Navy Mediterranean Fleet's seven Capital Ships and four aircraft carriers sailed out of the naval port under the escort of large numbers of cruisers and destroyers. They passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and entered the Atlantic Ocean.
To meet the American Navy's challenge this time, the German Navy had dispatched all its main forces. All three major fleets deployed in the Atlantic