The gunners operated the guns in an orderly manner in accordance with the rules and regulations of the previous training and test guns.

"Attention to the artillery, save ammunition, do not fire without an order! The front and rear main guns are all aimed at the starboard side, ready for zero-angle flat fire, and the time fuse is set to the shortest! ”

The captain's command was faithfully transmitted through the microphone into the improvised receiver earpiece in the ears of the two gun commanders.

Before the gunners in the front and rear gun positions began to set the length of the fuse, Huang Huan gave the order to intervene in time, thus avoiding the situation that the gunners were at a loss because they did not know the distance between friend and foe and could not determine the fuse burning time.

Two gunners quickly cut the wooden tube to its shortest and inserted it into the shell; The second gunner skillfully took the shells that were already ready to be fired, filled them into the barrel together with the medicine bag, and compacted them with a push rod. Immediately afterwards, the gunner and the two gunners worked together to turn the turret of the Caron gun 90 degrees to the left and right along the curved slide, so that the front and rear main gun muzzles were aligned with the side side. After that, the gunner took out an iron hammer, pierced the medicine bag through the ignition port, and immediately put the fire hose into the ignition hole, and then straightened the attached fire cable.

"Damn, I opened the defective products that didn't even have the artillery rangefinder and sights in place! What the hell! Young Master Huang secretly cursed in the inaudible voice of others.

The young captain knew very well what the advantages and disadvantages of his ships and sailors were. Although the 32-pounder Caron gun was terrifying and had a large projection, its range was very short and its accuracy was quite poor, and it was no longer accurate to shoot at a target at a distance of 150 meters. At the same time, because the outfitting of the "Spring Equinox" was not actually completed, and the angle-differential rangefinder and the jumping eye artillery sight scope were not installed, the gunners of the various gun positions had no way to observe the distance between the "Spring Equinox" and the enemy ship, nor did they have the means to calculate the angle between the gunboat's hull and the enemy ship and the relative speed of the enemy and our ships. As a result, time-delay shells, which can only estimate the length of the fuse from the distance between friend and foe, are not very effective.

Originally, in the case of the failure of this ranging method, the captain of the ship could order the commanders of each gun to choose their own targets and shoot freely, and completely entrust the task of aiming to the naked eye observation and experience accumulation of the two gun commanders. But...... The two knives of the Huang family, who were still wearing Shui Yong's coat two days ago, obviously did not have this kind of perfect artillery skills that only the old artillery commander had, so this possibility was also ruled out.

From this point of view, Captain Huang just ordered each gun position to be loaded with blasting shells, which was actually a dogmatic mistake--- when there was a rangefinder, the first blasting bullet was naturally a routine operation; But now there is no rangefinder on the ship, and the level of training of the sailors is still very poor, and the use of explosive shells is not the best choice.

"Alas, it's really not so easy to unite knowledge and action!" Huang Huan lamented.

However, Captain Huang's latest order to intervene has done a good job of remedying the mistakes he has made. Since there is no rangefinder and the gunner's gunnery is too scummy, then just get closer to the gun, so close that the muzzle can be slammed on the tip of the enemy's nose?! If you can't measure the relative speed and grasp the advance, then use the maneuverability of the steam gunboat to seize the T-shaped position, fire a volley from the side when the enemy is stationary relative to our ship, and beat him hard?! There is no way to calculate the length of the fuse, so simply press the shortest and put the muzzle flat to shoot! The worst-case scenario is a volley of shells, in which case the fragments are even more lethal!

"Hold your breath at all gun emplacements and put the enemy closer!" Captain Huang ordered in a deep voice, "No matter how effective the shot is, the next shot will be replaced with a heavy shotgun!" Repeat, the next shot is shot at close range! ”

"Understood!"

Immediately afterwards, he ordered the steering and marine engines:

"Prepare for a sharp turn!"

"Engineer forward three! Left full rudder! Left and right turbine asynchronous two! ”

"It's now! Turn! ”

At this time, the distance between the "Spring Equinox" and the pursuing and fleeing sides has been shortened to within 150 meters, and the firing accuracy of the artillery will be sharply improved within this distance. The gunboat was now moving towards the pursuing boat, with the bow facing the gap between the large ship and the small boat, and the trajectory of the ship was about 30 degrees acute to the straight line where the large and small boats were. With the order to make a sharp turn to the left, the sharp angle between the gunboat and the track of the large and small ships rapidly expanded, and the "Spring Equinox" happened to be like a sharp dagger, which happened to be inserted horizontally into the gap between the big ship and the small boat, and the hull of the ship was vertically blocking the way for the small boat to continue the pursuit.

The fleeing ship seemed to realize that the strange ship and the pursuers behind it were not only not in a group, but the enemy, so they made a sharp turn to the right very tacitly, avoiding the "Spring Equinox" inserted in the oncoming oblique thorn, and quickly broke away from the battlefield. However, the pursuers behind were not so agile, and due to the high speed, the boat had no time to turn, and could only rush straight towards the starboard side of the "Vernal Equinox".

At the same time, the steam gunboat had also completed a sharp turn to the left, successfully occupying the T-shape, separating the "fugitives" from the "pursuers", and the muzzles of the two black holes on the starboard side happened to be aimed at a dragon boat at the front.

"Cannon !!" Huang Huan's face was distorted, and he suddenly burst into tears.

The muzzles of the two Caron guns burst out of a dazzling fireball almost simultaneously, and the high-speed expansion of gunpowder gas pushed the projectile, allowing the spherical blasting projectile to rush out of the gun chamber with an initial velocity of 270M/s and fly towards the target, and the muzzle storm and shock wave swept across the water surface of the gunboat's starboard side like an invisible wall, setting off a ripple; The gun body recoiled hard along the slide under the action of the huge recoil force, until the gun mount hit a special elastic cushion at the end of the slide, and the gun stopped recoil and was pushed back to its original position by the elastic force.

Two black shadows crossed the trajectory visible to the naked eye, accurately hitting the target--- first shell fell near the port side of the dragon boat, exploding at the moment of falling into the water, setting off a high column of water, and the surge caused by the near miss directly crushed the fragile hull of the dragon boat, causing the entire bow to break off. But before the rift caused by the first hit could begin to flood, a second shell came in the blink of an eye. The blasting bomb hit the middle deck of the dragon boat impartially, and the violent explosion directly tore the long, narrow and fragile wooden ship to pieces, and wood chips, human limbs, broken arms, broken oars, rotten armor, and various weapon parts flew everywhere with the flames of the explosion. The poor leader dragon boat didn't even have time to struggle to save himself, and drowned in the waves of the river.

One round of shelling will take away an enemy ship, Huang Huan is very satisfied with the effectiveness of such shooting--- nonsense, the distance has been shortened to within 80 meters, if they still can't hit, these sailors of the Huang family will simply bury their heads in the river and drown themselves!

"Right rudder one! Turbine Forward Four! Get ready to turn right!

"Heavy shotgun! Load! Target: The second dragon boat of the enemy fleet! “

Captain Huang continued to give orders calmly and methodically.

The second gunner carried the 32 small one-inch diameter iron balls on the deck and filled them into the chamber with the medicine bag--- because the Caron gun used the unique "smokeless black medicine" of the plane, so the clearance step before firing the shotgun could be directly omitted.

"Shotgun flat fire! Put! ”

At the same time as the "Spring Equinox" maneuvered to the right front of the Hongjia fleet, the two guns in the bow and stern of the ship roared again. The shotgun canister was pushed out of the barrel, and the thin tin wall was torn open by the tremendous stress of the projectile inside, and the shotgun flew away like a death elf in an instant, covering a large fan-shaped area of water within a few tens of meters in front of the muzzle like iron rain. When the river surface landed, dozens of small water columns splashed like water boiling pots, and the water columns themselves were also distributed in a fan shape, and the side closer to the center of the fan-shaped circle was the cannon mouth, and the side near the circumference was the poor worm of the Hong family that was instantly covered by the rain of bullets.

Shotgun strikes are not as sound and light as blasters, but they are as bloody as they are. An iron ball the size of a baby's fist pierced a person's body, tearing through a person's limbs, and blasting the wooden deck and boat into a sieve. After the sound of the cannon, the soldiers of the Hong family on the deck turned into a pile of flesh and blood, and their limbs were beaten into the air, and the splattered blood formed a layer of pink mist on the water surface, and the originally intact dragon boat also fell apart at once.

The second dragon boat was also reimbursed.

"Change to light shotguns! Free firing at all gun emplacements! Free Fire! Captain Huang announced the end of this one-sided battle with the order of "free fire", --- unpowered rowing boats were not capable of fighting the modern steam gunboats, and could only stand there and be slaughtered.

To be precise, this is a dimensionality reduction blow.

The remaining five dragon boats had long realized that they could not do anything, but the fire attack of the "Spring Equinox" was too sudden and too violent, so that they had no time to react. By the time they realized they should run away, they were already turtles in an urn.

The dull firing of the Caron cannon "tom" and "tom" sounded rhythmically again. The two captains of the bow and stern of the ship directed the gun crews to fire double light shotguns at extremely close range of thirty or even twenty meters, firing 200 buckshot-sized projectiles at the remaining enemy ships in a single shot. Under this near-execution-like blow, Hong's water warriors and boats melted as quickly as ice cubes under the scorching sun--- yes, "melted", because the human body and ship planks hit by dozens of light shotguns at the same time would only turn into a pile of debris and fall into the water, leaving no trace. From God's point of view, the "Spring Equinox" is like a huge bullfrog, leisurely circling around a group of insects, while popping out a long "tongue" from time to time, sweeping away a prey as a meal--- of course, this "tongue" is actually a barrage of shotguns.

Just before the last glimmer of light at dusk disappeared, the last dragon boat was also sent to the bottom of the river by the "Spring Equinox".

The battle is over.