According to the idea of Vice Admiral Jerrod, the commander of the Second Fleet of the Gafia Imperial Navy, that is, the entire fleet, with six battleships as the core main force, is ready to participate in the decisive battle of the line, and destroy the patrol formation of the Southwest Fleet of the Daheng Imperial Navy in one fell swoop.

In order to be able to inflict heavy damage on the main force of the Southwest Fleet of the Great Heng Imperial Navy, he put together six battleships as the main force in the line decisive battle.

At the same time, two mounted cruisers and three 6,000-ton first-class dome cruisers were dispatched to form a cruiser formation located in the northwest front of the main formation, which was used as a flank high-speed formation, and when the battleship formation of its own side was fighting with the opponent's armored cruiser formation, it attacked the enemy's armored patrol formation from the flank, and it was also responsible for intercepting the approach of the Hengbarian light cruiser formation.

This kind of tactical positioning and the use of patrol are also more in line with the positioning of the navies of the Blue Star countries in large-scale naval battles in recent years, that is, to act as avant-garde high-speed warships to assist battleship formations in decisive battles.

Of course, breaking and counter-breaking is also an important task of contemporary patrols.

It's just that in this engagement, it is naturally impossible to talk about breaking diplomatic relations and counter-breaking diplomatic relations, and the two sides are fighting more traditional engagements, so the positioning of the patrol is more to act as an avant-garde warship, and as a two-wing high-speed battleship to assist the battleship formation in a decisive battle.

But what the Gafiians didn't expect was that their own patrol formation soon met the light patrol formation of the Daheng people, which led to Vice Admiral Ren Zhongping of the Southwest Fleet of the Daheng Imperial Navy, who decisively ordered a high-speed attack with the patrol formation, not only avoiding the battleship formation of the Gafiya, but also biting the cruiser formation of the Gafians.

Even so, the Gafians were not panicked, they thought that their two full-strength cruisers of more than 9,000 tons, plus three dome-armored cruisers of about 7,000 tons, the strength of the five warships was inferior to the opponent's four armored cruisers and two four-thousand-ton dome-armored cruisers, but they would not be defeated in a short time, and no matter how they were, they would be able to support them for a few hours.

As long as the patrol formation of Heng Manzi was dragged for a few hours, then the battleship formation in the rear would be able to rush over and use powerful firepower to directly annihilate the opponent.

But I didn't expect that it would only take more than ten minutes to engage the other party, and the flagship of its cruiser formation, the armored cruiser Metz, would be completely dumbfounded!

What to do?

What else can be done, naturally it is to distance yourself to avoid the battle, otherwise the remaining sister ship of the Metz, the Ambra, and the three first-class dome cruisers will also have to follow in their footsteps!

The cruiser formation of the Gafia Imperial Navy wanted to distance itself, but it was not so easy, the distance between the two sides was only three or four thousand meters, and the formation of Ren Zhongping's first squadron was two knots higher than them.

One of these two wanted to run and move closer to the battleship formation, and the other side pursued and blocked them.

At this time, the small and medium-sized warships of both sides also rushed over, and through the fire of small and medium-caliber rapid-fire guns or simply lightning strikes, they shared the pressure of their own capital ship formations.

However, it is worth noting that the light formations of both sides failed to achieve any effective results, although at one point the light formations of both sides wanted to get close to launch a torpedo attack on the enemy's capital ships.

However, due to the limitations of contemporary torpedoes, which generally have an effective range of only a few hundred meters, in order to get an effective hit, it is necessary to rush into a few hundred meters away from the enemy ship and launch torpedoes.

If such a close distance was a few years ago, it would naturally be no problem, but since the advent of rapid-fire guns, the navies of various countries are generally equipped with small- and medium-caliber rapid-fire guns, especially light rapid-fire guns below 60 mm, and the equipment of various countries is very common, and the small-caliber rapid-fire guns represented by the 57-mm rapid-fire guns and 47-mm rapid-fire guns of the Navy of the Krull Kingdom are very lethal to light ships.

During the Second Battle of Ian, the navy of the Kingdom of Krull used a large number of small-caliber rapid-fire guns to inflict great damage on the torpedo boat units of the Orr Kingdom Navy.

Although the torpedo boats of various countries have become larger, and large torpedo boats of various names such as large torpedo boats, torpedo boats, hunting ships, and other large torpedo boats of two or three hundred tons or even larger tonnage have appeared, which has improved the survivability of torpedo boats, the development of rapid-fire guns has been more rapid.

Although only the navy of the Great Heng Empire currently has rapid-fire guns of caliber of more than 150 mm, rapid-fire guns of caliber of 120 mm and below have been rapidly popularized, and the Gafia Empire is no exception.

Most of the secondary guns of their ships have been replaced with 120 mm rapid-fire guns, and with 70 mm rapid-fire guns, the lethality is very good against large torpedo boats of about 200 or 300 tons.

The short range of torpedoes and the popularity of rapid-fire guns led to the fact that the torpedo boat units on both sides failed to achieve any actual results in this battle, but suffered considerable losses.

The famous Dahengjia series torpedo boats were sunk in just a few minutes after sortie, and several others failed to break through the fire blockade of the enemy's light ships.

And they, not even getting the chance to fire even a single torpedo, were forced to retreat in disgrace, and in the end simply followed behind the Second Squadron in order to strengthen the firepower of the destroyer formation, and used themselves as real small destroyers.

Seeing this scene, Ren Zhongping also sighed: "The torpedo boat has only been brilliant for a few years, and now it is in decline!" ”

The chief of staff said: "In the final analysis, the current torpedoes are propelled by compressed air, and the effective range is too close, only a few hundred meters, if our torpedoes have an effective range of several thousand meters, our torpedo boats will inevitably have great results in this battle!" ”

Ren Zhongping said: "The effective range of the torpedo is not so easy to increase, and we have cooperated with the Kekel Empire to develop a new type of torpedo with thermal power, but it is not so easy to make it!" ”

Chief of Staff: "Alas, torpedo boats are useless, and torpedoes on our Yuanlin-class destroyers are useless, but anti-lightning combat is good!" ”

Ren Zhongping said: "That's right, our destroyer's lightning strike operation is unreliable, but the firepower is not bad, the anti-lightning strike operation is okay, and it can also hit the enemy's light formation!" ”

Yuanlin-class destroyers, because of the large number of mass production, have many upgraded and improved models, and the same as the Crane-class armored cruisers, they are divided into multiple batches, and their main guns are also in many different versions.

The earliest ones were four single-mounted 120mm short-barreled rapid-fire guns, which had the advantages of fast rate of fire, light weight, and low cost, but after the actual installation, it was found that this thing also had some flaws, such as poor accuracy and difficult ballistics to control.

In the following batches, the navy successively built a number of Yuanlin-class destroyers equipped with a number of 75-mm rapid-fire guns, but they felt that the caliber was too small, the firing range was short, and the power was small.

During this period, a 100-mm rapid-fire gun was also tried, but the naval gun of this caliber was not developed much by the Daheng Imperial Navy, so the performance was not good, and the only equipment was withdrawn after a few months, and finally returned to the old path of 120 mm rapid-fire.

Therefore, the later models are basically equipped with 120 mm rapid-fire guns, but it is not a 28 times the short-barreled model, but a standard model of 40 times the caliber, the standard model was equipped with the auxiliary guns on the capital ships in the early days, but later the auxiliary guns of the capital ships basically used 150 mm caliber secondary guns, so the caliber naval guns have a large number of surpluses and stocks, in order to avoid waste, so the naval guns were used as the main guns of third-class cruisers or destroyers.

In order to equip 120 mm and 40 times the caliber rapid-fire guns, the tonnage of the Yuanlin-class destroyers of the later model has been expanded.

The same is true for the Yuchi-class third-class cruisers, at the beginning, in order to emphasize anti-lightning operations, the main guns attached to them were only 75 mm rapid-fire guns, but after only two were built, it was found that it was a bit of a loss to use a hull of nearly 3,000 tons to specialize in anti-lightning operations, so in addition to the first two, the main guns of the Yuchi-class third-class cruisers in the back were also replaced with 120 mm and 40 times the caliber naval guns.

The firepower of these 120 mm rapid-fire guns is still quite ferocious, and the extremely fast rate of fire can effectively supplement the loopholes in the fire power of the 150 mm secondary guns of the capital ship.

When the torpedo boats and light cruisers of the two sides were dispatched before, one Yuchi-class cruiser cooperated with five Yuanlin-class destroyers to intercept the opposing torpedo boat formation with the fire of dense 120-mm rapid-fire guns, not to mention the light formation of the opposing side.

At the same time, it can also assist in the installation of patrol formations, and give intensive fire damage to several large cruisers of the enemy.

When the mounted cruisers of the two sides, the first-class dome cruisers and the second-class dome cruisers continued to fight fiercely, the third-class cruisers/destroyers and large torpedo boats of the two sides also fought each other brutally.

And the battle between the light ships of both sides, its casualties were even greater.

Under the cover of the light formation, Ren Zhongping continued to lead the patrol formation to constantly adjust the course and shell the opponent's cruiser formation.

Soon, another armored cruiser of the Gafian Navy, the Job, also because the superstructure was subjected to intensive fire and artillery bombardment, there was no firepower to counterattack under the heavy casualties, and it was even worse than the Metz, the Metz only lost firepower, and the power system was intact, so after losing its combat effectiveness, it quickly broke away from the battle line and withdrew to the rear.

The Job, on the other hand, was unlucky enough to be pierced by two successive 200-millimeter shells, which then caused a violent explosion near the power compartment, which eventually led to the loss of most of its power, and it could only sail at a speed of only five or six knots on the sea.