KvAS Heiliges Kreuz - Flagship in Reserve
KvAS Heiliges Kreuz is the aged, and, in truth, retired Fleet Flagship. The people have long mourned the gallant fall of her mighty sister,
KvAS Heiliger Geist, lost in defense of her nation from a Germano-Soviet invasion. Acquired by private treaty with the de facto German administration with the connivance and approval of Whitehall, the two battlecruisers were refitted in Germany and spent their first few years in Arendellian service waging a dreadful and highly effective campaign against Soviet shipping in the Baltic.
The most moment in their careers that would define Arendelle for the next century came during the second week of April 1940. Fallschirmjägers assaulted several secondary ports on the south-eastern coast, without warning or declaration of hostilities. German and Soviet landing forces no more than eighteen hours behind. The affectionately-named
Eisenhunde battlecruisers sortied with Heimdallr, Gugnir, Tyrfing and Surtrsverth - export County/Surrey-class cruisers and twenty Tribal-class destroyers.
With a mutual dislike and mistrust, the Germano-Soviet operation was already fraught, when, in the dawn hours before sun-up, the first star shellstburst over the coshellfire northern flank of the Soviet heavy screen disintegrated under an infernal rain of shellfire and heavy-weight torpedoes. The German Admiral reacted with unusual decisiveness and swung his 2nd class battleships and fast destroyers out of line, leaving his panzerkreuzer Deutschland, light cruisers, training cruisers and naval auxiliaries to cover the convoy - a catastrophic mistake when a mixture of reserve WWI W-class destroyers and Vosper '102 torpedo boats struck from the west.
By the time all was said and done, and the modified R-class submarines had had their pick of the cripples of the Germano-Soviet force, half the Arendellian Navy lay at the bottom of the Baltic with the entire invasion force and major parts of the covering screens. Between the twilight hours and dawn - a matter of three hours - some one-hundred thousand men died - the worst casualties being German and Soviet troops, helpless as the destroyers tore apart the troop transports with rapid gunnery, machine-cannon and torpedoes.
