And the commander of the other side was also crisp enough, and after escaping for a while, instead of opening up the distance, but facing the situation of being surrounded, he did not continue to waste coal and escaped, but turned and began to attack the junction of the first and second fleets.

They tried to break out directly, so that they might be hit in the process of breaking through, but it was better than just being able to keep running and finally have no way to escape, knowing that if they continued to go dozens of nautical miles, it would be land.

In the face of the decisive breakthrough of the enemy fleet, Duan Hongxiao also directly ordered the fleet to start turning and preparing for interception operations.

This time, the Nanhai Prefecture fleet was determined to defeat these attack fleets, so as to give the navy of the northern domain a deterrent, and at the same time to give Lin Ziran an explanation.

The results were not unexpected!

Although the enemy fleet broke through decisively, Duan Hongxiao still personally commanded the fleet to intercept it.

In the afternoon, one of the two sides broke through and the other intercepted, and a skirmish broke out when the two sides came into contact with each other.

The difference in strength between the two sides was too large, and after only half an hour of fighting, a cruiser of about 2,000 tons led by the other side had already ignited a raging fire, completely lost its combat effectiveness, and the enemy crew began to abandon the ship.

Twenty minutes later, the other battleship also began to fail, and even the waterline was penetrated, and the hull began to flood in large quantities, and soon the commander of the enemy ship was forced to give the order to abandon the ship, and soon after abandoning the ship, the cruiser slowly sank into the water.

And the other cruiser that caught fire has not sunk at this time, but there is basically no possibility of saving, and it is only a matter of time before it sinks.

At this time, this naval battle with a huge disparity in strength between the two sides came to an end.

However, although the result of this naval battle was good, the overall process made Lin Ziran not very satisfied!

In a normal naval battle, the own side has an absolute advantage from beginning to end, after all, it is a whole escort fleet to encircle and annihilate these two small tonnage attack cruisers, but only the own warships that actually participated in the battle, there are four ironclad ships and six cruisers.

The gap in the comparison of forces is too big!

However, although their own side had an absolute advantage, the battle did not go as smoothly as expected.

Because these warships were drawn from various local fleets, there were still great problems in coordinating with each other, and at the same time, the rear-loading rifled guns, which had been pinned on high hopes, did not play a huge role as they should.

In this naval battle, the sea side originally pinned on the accurate long-range range of the rear-loading rifled naval guns, and tried to hit the enemy by firing accurately at a distance of more than 1,000 meters.

However, when shelling enemy armored targets at more than 1,000 meters in actual combat, the hit rate was still very low, and they could only rely on the experience of the gunners to carry out shelling as usual, and the hit rate of the shelling was very average.

When they carried out artillery shelling at a distance of 2,000 meters in the early stage, they did not get a single hit.

Waited until about 1,500 meters

At a distance, the hit rate is still very low, not even a percentage point.

After entering the distance of 1,000 meters, the hit rate increased slightly.

But at this time, because the distance between the two sides was too close, and the other side adopted the tactics of direct attack in a horizontal formation, the Nanhai State fleet adopted the tactics of interception in a horizontal formation.

After the other side rushed over, a close-range melee broke out between the two sides.

In fact, most of the hits achieved by both sides were within a kilometer, or even within five or six hundred meters.

How to say it, in this battle, the Nanhai State Fleet did not give full play to the range advantage of the breech-loading rifled guns, and the entire battle mode was almost not much different from the line tactics of the traditional wooden sail smoothbore guns.

Just look at the battle distance!

Why is this happening?

Because the ships in the Nanhai State Fleet, except for a few offshore ironclad ships or river gunboats with special gun layouts, although most of the ocean-going warships have been equipped with steam engines and some are ironclad ships built of all-steel, the ship's gun layout is still the traditional shipside guns.

The naval guns used before were mainly smoothbore guns, and the front-loading rifled guns were relatively few.

And because of these guns, the combat distance is generally only a few hundred meters, and there is no need for any fire control system, and it is enough to rely solely on the experience of the gun commander.

But this situation did not work in the era of breech-loading rifled guns.

Even the gunners in the Nanhai Prefecture Fleet, most of whom are experienced gunners, have also undergone several months of adaptive training, but on the one hand, the time is still relatively short, not to mention how familiar they are with these new types of artillery, and they often unconsciously use the previous smoothbore guns to aim at the battle.

On the other hand, it is purely a limitation of human beings, and it is difficult to obtain an effective hit from a distance simply by relying on the gunner's naked eye to aim and aiming manually with personal experience.

This can be seen from the previous shelling at a distance of more than 1,500 meters, without getting a single hit.

In addition, there is another problem, that is, the artillery currently equipped in the navy is actually temporarily modified from the army artillery, and there are many problems such as insufficient power, even instability, and malfunction.

Among them, the navy has high hopes and is also the main ship gun with more equipment, the 100-mm naval gun, which is directly replaced with a gun mount from the army's 100-mm cannon.

It turned out that this cannon was not suitable for the Navy!

In order to control the weight of this artillery and at the same time ensure the firing range, the army has actually made trade-offs in the thickness of the barrel and the performance of sustainable shooting, and the firing is also light bullets, and the firing frequency is also greatly limited.

After being converted to the Navy, the Navy used armor-piercing shells and grenades with increased weight, and during the battle, a relatively high rate of fire was fired for a long time, and as a result, the gun could not hold up.

It turned out to be an explosion accident.

The other two 75-mm and 120-mm naval guns are also modified from army artillery, and although they can also be used in battle, the feedback from the navy is that they are still not very easy to use.

It's not that it's bad, but it's awkward to use!

The only naval gun that the navy was satisfied with was the 150 mm naval gun, which was designed and developed from the naval gun, although this thing was later used by the army as a train gun.

However, this is still a serious naval gun.

This naval gun, which is also the largest caliber naval gun currently used by the Navy, performs well in actual combat, is not small, and the accuracy is also good, but it is the main naval gun of the enemy's two cruisers that was heavily damaged in this battle.

In fact, the Navy also has a naval gun with a larger caliber and has been produced, that is, a 200-millimeter naval gun, but this gun is currently only equipped on the Pingbo.

This large-caliber gun has too high requirements for the layout of the gun emplacements, and requires specially designed gun emplacements to be deployed, which is difficult to deploy directly on these current active warships, unless the hull is extensively modified.

But that would be too much work, and the current situation does not allow too many capital ships to enter the slipway for refit that will take at least three or four months.

Subsequently, the navy submitted a formal report to increase the number of 150-mm naval guns and proposed to re-develop special 100-mm, 120-mm, and 75-mm naval guns.

However, Lin Ziran put forward an additional request, that is, to develop a fire control system for auxiliary shooting.

In order to fully exploit the strength of the breech-loading rifled gun, it is not feasible to rely on the experience of the gunner, and it is necessary to use auxiliary fire control equipment.

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