This naval battle, which was called the 'Torture of Iquique' by later military fans, was defined by historians as the first show of ironclad ships on the stage of history.

Taking on twenty warships with one battleship seems to be an incredible victory, but in the eyes of military experts, it is an inevitability.

First of all, the ironclad of the two sides is not of the same specification, the Peruvian side does not count after removing a few wooden-hulled battleships, and the average thickness of the ironclad of the remaining battleships has not exceeded three centimeters, and the ironclad is an ordinary oak hull.

The Zhiyuan belongs to a pure ironclad warship, and the thickness of the steel plate reaches four inches, that is, more than 100 millimeters, and the three-fold gap gives the Zhiyuan an invincible shield in this naval battle.

The second is the power system, 2 horizontal 3-cylinder reciprocating steam engines and 4 high-rise coal-fired boilers were designed by dozens of Prussian engineers and carefully built by countless senior craftsmen, which is not an exaggeration to say that this has represented the top level of turbine technology at that time.

What's even more against the sky is that the Zhiyuan also has a strong wind pressurized design concept, and the strongest power can theoretically reach 7500 horsepower, so that the speed of the Zhiyuan can be increased to 18 knots against the sky, which is almost close to the speed of the clippers.

Looking at the caliber of the artillery, the gap between the 210 artillery and the 148 artillery is not a little bit and a half, the Zhiyuan is like a person with one or two cannons, and the enemy's thin-skinned dumplings make the 210 cannonballs poke a hole.

The rest is the quality of the soldiers, in the nineteenth century artillerymen, especially naval artillerymen, that is already considered a high-tech service.

First of all, you need to know ballistics, trigonometry, elementary aerodynamics, and preferably calculus at a mathematical level, only then can you be qualified to operate the main guns of a battleship.

It's not enough to have these basic knowledge, you also have to have a lot of live-fire training, which is very simple, but the cost of a shell for the 210 main gun is less than two thousand taels of silver, you don't have to be too expensive, this kind of one-piece bullet has no forming assembly line at all, it is completely semi-manual production, and you have to endure the high price.

Didn't you see that the Peruvian Navy's main guns had to calculate the amount of gunpowder before firing? Their guns were fired by separating the warhead from the propellant, and the gunners calculated the distance and angle and then calculated how many pounds of gunpowder were needed before loading. This launch mode is simply impossible.

The main gun of the Zhiyuan is extremely burning, and it is really easy to use, but this thing is really expensive! Only Xiao Letian, a traveler, knows where the future trend is, so he has the courage to spend money.

From the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, the price of various types of artillery shells and machine gun shells consumed by the Zhiyuan alone is approaching 500,000 taels of silver, and if it hadn't robbed the French of some money in Dakar, otherwise this trip back home would have really become a loser's trip.

Analyzing all kinds of factors together, it is not surprising that the victory of the Zhiyuan is not surprising, and the difference in the times of 20 years is really not bragging.

The cannon rumbled on the sea, and the Zhiyuan maneuvered in an S-shape, always maintaining a T-shaped shooting posture with the enemy, and the distance between the fleets has been maintained between four and three thousand meters, at this distance the Zhiyuan can still maintain a high shooting accuracy, but the Peruvian Navy's artillery can only try its luck.

Xiang Ying knew that the final victory would definitely belong to him, he deliberately let the Zhiyuan move from the southwest sea to the northwest sea, in case this fleet escaped, he wanted to eat this fleet in one bite, and there was no one left.

Boom Boom Boom ...... The sea was blown upside down, one after another Peruvian Navy warships were blown into torches, and even some of the battleships' internal powder magazines exploded and disintegrated due to a chain reaction.

After an hour of hard fighting, there were only fifteen warships left in the Peruvian Navy, and then look at the Zhiyuan in the distance, which has been alive and well without the slightest fatigue.

The flagship Lima was desperate, the commander burst into tears, and the whole battle today was really full of ups and downs that the heart could not bear. He watched as the battleships were sunk one by one, but he was helpless, and finally in a trance he pulled out his pistol and was about to kill himself.

"No...... The general can't!" A group of people pounced and snatched the pistol, "It's not your fault, that battleship was completely unexpected by us, it should be a European country intervening, this is a failure of diplomacy, not a failure of our soldiers!"

"That kind of battleship is not something we can deal with, let's order a breakthrough...... Disperse and break out can't be hesitant any longer!"

As he spoke, he heard a loud bang, and another small ironclad ship was hit and ignited a fire, until this moment the Peruvian Navy could only recognize the reality, the order to disperse and break through was issued, and the flag of retreat was slowly raised.

But at this moment, the Zhiyuan had already suppressed the northwest corner of the battlefield, and the Peruvian fleet did not dare to break through to the north at all, they could only make a big detour to the southwest, and they had to disperse the voyage.

But they didn't expect that the remnants of the Chilean Navy, which had fled a long time ago, actually appeared on the southern sea again, and were rapidly approaching them.

The Peruvian Navy, which was helpless, could only rush in one direction to the southwest, while the Zhiyuan and the Chilean Navy were frantically strafing this group of lost dogs in a north-south situation.

One battleship after another was hit by bullets and caught fire, countless sailors fell into the water and struggled in agony, and at the end of the battlefield there was only one voice: "What kind of ship is that? Which country's warship is it? If we don't figure it out, we won't be able to turn a blind eye!"

It's a pity that in the end, the Zhiyuan did not display any flag with a logo, and the sailors on the deck were vague and indistinguishable, and there was only one memory that the survivors of the war would never forget.

"That battleship, there are two very strange bow statues in the bow, the golden light is full of domineering, we thought it was a flying dragon but it has no wings, we thought it was a sea serpent but it has scales and golden light...... It wasn't until much later that we learned that it was the totem of the Chinese, and it was called the dragon!"

The slaughter on the sea shocked the soldiers on land, and the veterans of the Celestial Kingdom rushed towards the city of Iquique, bypassing the fire of the last three fortresses and attacking from the safety of the dock batteries.

The defenders of the Iquique battery numbered two thousand in all, and five or six hundred were killed in the previous battle, and the remaining soldiers were not enough to stuff their teeth, and the assault battery fell in just one time.

All soldiers who did not surrender were beheaded, and those who surrendered were kneeling in the corners, tied up with ropes and locked up in empty houses. Immediately afterwards, the veterans began to use small-caliber artillery to carry out artillery strikes on the fortress.

Tietoutuo's hand holding the telescope had begun to tremble, and he choked up and said to Chen Yonglu, "Look at it, look at it! That's the battleship sent by the prime minister, that's the battleship we Chinese...... Invincible!"

Suddenly the wharf erupted with a roar like a tsunami: "Invincible! Our invincible battleship! Invincible ......"