The identities of the hunter and the prey seem to have been reversed.

The Burke-class destroyer drew a U-shaped circle on the surface of the sea, and the other frigate was faster, and it took less than a few minutes to get away with the destroyer.

In order to prevent radio detection radars from spotting their tracks, they even perform the highest level of radio silence procedures.

Fleet Commander Lassiet was not afraid of the violent turbulence of the ship's hull as he fled, and he quickly tore a blank piece of paper from the maintenance register of the equipment and wrote something on it with a pencil.

His mood shook as violently as the command room that was jolting at sea at this time.

Things like speed and sea bearing, he could easily calculate by heart.

The target was sixty-four nautical miles directly behind.

Now they were withdrawing at a maximum speed of thirty-two knots, and the target ships were catching up at one hundred and thirty knots.

There is no need to go through the equation to calculate how long the target ship can catch up with them between chase and escape.

A simple calculation is that the target ship will reach their current position within thirty minutes if it goes straight.

What is 30 minutes enough?

Thirty minutes, enough for the destroyer and the frigate to run out in two directions......

Run sixteen nautical miles.

Lasitt quickly recalled in his mind the information about the effect of the curvature of the earth on the view of sea level.

Affected by the curvature of the earth, if the draft is close to eight meters in good weather, the height of the antenna at the top of the console, and the difference between the antenna level and the sea level, the Burke-class guided missile destroyer can be seen by observers at a distance of 12 nautical miles, and the outline of the control tower above the deck can be seen by observers.

If the distance is twenty nautical miles, and the observer stands at a high place, the top radar antenna of the Burke-class destroyer can be spotted with a telescope.

According to the scale calculations on the satellite images, the height of the top floor of the target ship is about 30 meters.

Suppose an observer stands on the top deck of the target vessel and observes visually with a nautical telescope......

Even elementary school students know that the distance between the two is the shortest in a straight line. The commander of the fleet, Lasit, could only order the two warships to run in a straight line in different directions, striving to run the longest distance in the shortest possible time.

But after some calculations, Lasitt found that no matter which direction he was running.

The target ships can be chased within half an hour, and the two warships can be easily locked on by visual observation.

The staff officer on the side saw the numbers that Lasit had written on the paper, and without thinking about it, he understood the seriousness of the matter, "Long...... Official. ”

"They may not be able to find us...... Isn't it?" Lasitt comforted himself with a pale face: "Judging from the previous firefight, although the target ship is equipped with equipment that can shield electromagnetic waves and have strong power electromagnetic interference. ”

"But it doesn't have any long-range firepower, strictly speaking...... It is still a civilian vessel. ”

"We are now in a state of radio silence, the target vessel is sixty nautical miles away, and it is impossible to accurately locate our position. ”

"They have ...... There is a high probability of running in the wrong direction. ”

Lassite's consolation was not unreasonable, and now the target ship was sixty nautical miles away. At this distance, both shipborne radars and optical observation devices with a resolution large enough to view the lunar craters will be limited to a very limited range of use under the influence of the curvature of the earth.

Since the target ship is now unable to obtain accurate coordinates, there is a high probability that there will be a deviation in direction during the chase.

As long as the opponent's course deviates by 10 degrees, observers will not be able to detect any targets from the surface.

Thinking of this, Lasitt couldn't help but start praying, praying that the other party would definitely deviate from the course.

"Sir......" The staff officer touched Lasit's shoulder with some words, and when the other party opened his eyes, the staff officer pointed to the observation window on the outer wall.

Following the direction pointed by the staff officer, Lasit saw the fiery red sky at dusk.

Lasitt was a little puzzled.

The staff officer whispered, "Sir, do you remember those missiles we fired?"

At this moment, Lasit's face changed drastically, and he rushed out of the command room to the spiral staircase, regardless of his identity.

Standing here, he could see the whole sky.

Then he saw a huge pillar of gold and powder in the sky behind the destroyer.

These pillars of cloud stretched across the entire sky, and the further you went to the end of the sky, the more obvious they became, and you could even see that the pillar of clouds was actually made up of many tiny, sea-snake-like lines.

This is the trace of smoke from the engine after the missile is launched.

The smoke contained a large amount of liquid gaseous waste, as well as small particles of solid fuel after combustion.

If it's clear weather in the middle of the day, the smoke will take on a pure white color. But now it was dusk, and the glow of the setting sun rendered them into an unusually distinct pillar of golden clouds.

In windless weather, the trajectory of the missile after launch can remain undispersed for several hours, let alone the smoke trail left by the intensive flight of more than 100 missiles?

As long as the crew of the target ship is not blind, they will definitely be able to notice the anomaly of this golden cloud pillar in the sky, and it is natural that they will find the target with the guidance of this cloud pillar as accurately as radar.

Originally, Lasitt imagined the missiles as a deadly net.

Now it seems that this "open net" is indeed deadly, but it is his life.

Why dusk?

Why is there only half an hour to escape to time?

At this moment, how much Lasitt wished that Lady Luck would give him another hour to hold him up until nightfall.

……

A few minutes later, a terrible alarm sounded in all the cabins of the destroyer.

The alarm is seven short and one long, and the crew members who stick to their posts hear the siren as if they heard a cry from the abyss.

Because this is the highest level of all distress warnings.

This is an abandonment alert.

Upon hearing the alarm, everyone must immediately abandon all work and urgently go to the deck to evacuate the mothership in a lifeboat within five minutes.

Five minutes meant that the crew simply didn't have any time to pack their belongings and were not allowed to bring any personal items that took up space.

At this moment, everyone is crazy to question in their hearts, but no one will waste time to question.

The order was above all else, and they could only grit their teeth and rush out of the work area to the deck.

When they reached the deck, they found no sign of an enemy attack.

Destroyers rely on fuel as power, and they are not nuclear power that is likely to be completely scrapped in the event of an accident. Besides, now that everything is fine with the destroyer, why abandon the ship?

"This was not a drill, everyone immediately carried out the emergency evacuation according to the scheduled procedure. ”

"This is not a drill ......"

The destroyer was in an emergency deceleration, the lifeboats were released into the sea by the boom, and the cabins were filled with ignorant crew members with a face of "am I dreaming".

In the other direction of the destroyer, the same frigate was carrying out the same emergency evacuation order.

Dozens of minutes later, more than two dozen lifeboats were already floating on the surface of the sea with all the crew members.

Then the lifeboats scattered like flowers, scattering towards the surrounding waters.

The lifeboat is equipped with a high-speed motor, and although it has a range of only a few hundred nautical miles, it can reach a speed of nearly 40 knots.

In addition, with the size of the lifeboat, they can completely disappear from the sight of the target ship by simply pulling a distance of tens of nautical miles.

In a situation where it was no longer possible to escape from the target ship with the destroyer, this was the only way the fleet commander Lassett could think of to save himself.

They had already shot all the missiles empty, and even the first frigate was completely destroyed before it could even send a distress signal.

Lasit, who didn't want to die early, would rather completely ruin all his future than take another look at the "black beast".

Of course~

If he left a destroyer and a frigate here without doing anything, he would definitely lose his future and his life at the same time.

So he ordered a timed self-destruct device to be placed in the ammunition depot, and after half an hour, when the target ship arrived, he would see two clouds of fire rising high above the sea.

Its practical remote-controlled self-destruct device, which waits for the moment when the target ship comes into contact with the destroyer, is the best solution.

But Lasitt did not dare to bet on whether the electromagnetic interference equipment on the target ship would still work.

To be sure, this timing device can only be mechanically based.

"Run, run as far as you can. After saying this to the staff officer, Lasit, who was curled up in the cabin, buried his head deep in his life jacket and never looked out at the sea again.

I'm done.