Seeing that the western ships on the opposite side were firing back, it was a bit surprising to the soldiers of the Tang State.

"Sink it!" Chen Shiying's face was full of iron, the tenacity of the Spanish Kingdom Navy was far beyond the imagination of the Tang people, in the face of the huge strength gap, they actually dared to resist! This made him feel extremely angry and upset.

As the order was issued, the eight 130-mm secondary guns on the port side of the "Yunling" opened fire first, and the next five front main guns also began to fire a salvo, and after about 20 seconds, the two heavy cruisers "Qinling" and "Leizhou Peninsula" and "Liaodong Peninsula" that followed behind it also joined the ranks of firing.

In the high-speed pursuit, the hit rate of the naval guns can be described as miserable, and the four Tang warships fired nearly 20 front guns and more than 20 secondary guns in unison, splashing columns of water around the "San Salvador", but not a single shot fell on the damned "armed merchant ship" of the Kingdom of Spain within a few minutes. Admiral Chen Shiying, who has always been very strict with his subordinates, turned even more ugly, and after about three minutes, the secondary guns on the "Qinling" were the first to "open peace."

The ammunition projection density of the four battleships was too great, and even the "collision luck" could hit the auxiliary cruisers of the Kingdom of Spain, which were only more than 8,000 meters away from them in front.

The battle lasted for nearly another 10 minutes, and the "San Salvador" was blazing all over its body and had begun to capsize on the sea, and from that direction there would be bursts of explosions from time to time. Several Tang warships ceased fire and watched quietly from a distance of 3,000 meters as the steamer sank. The performance of the people of the Kingdom of Spain was enough to win the respect of the sailors of the Tang Kingdom, who fought stubbornly until the last moment.

A number of sailors jumped from the blazing deck into the water, but most of them were swept to the bottom of the ocean by the whirlpool as the ship sank. Two speedboats were lowered from the "Yunling" and "Peninsula" to salvage the sailors of the Kingdom of Spain who had fallen overboard, while the "Qinling" and "Liaodong Peninsula" carried out a vigilance mission on the side.

In the end, a total of 57 officers and sailors of the Royal Spanish Navy were rescued by the "Yunling" and became prisoners of war.

After rendezvous with the "Yadong", the task force continued its journey to the Caribbean Sea.

In mid-to-late November, the Imperial Navy received reports from long-range aircraft and submarine forces stationed in North America that European fleetmen were conducting landing operations in the outer waters of the Caribbean. Despite the destruction of European convoys by long-range bombers on the ground in Puerto Rico, the enemy had been massing troops, equipment, transport ships and naval forces in those areas in the previous weeks.

Everyone who has read the reconnaissance report knows very well that the Combined European Fleet wants to take control of this area first.

The enemy's mobile forces were based in New Jiaozhou (Port of Spain), which was the main base of the Navy in northeastern South America, and its importance and readiness were comparable to those of the new Jinzhou Port in the north and the New Tsushima Middle Port in the south. Both mobile forces of the European coalition are based on aircraft carriers, with at least four or five large new aircraft carriers in each fleet, and a smaller Spanish mobile fleet with two light carriers, four cruisers, and several large destroyers.

A glance at the map of the region shows that the enemy has taken control of some of the most important waterways on the periphery of the Caribbean Sea. If this Tang task force wanted to reach New Java (Cuba), it had to go around this island chain and travel at least 1,200 nautical miles.

The Datang task force left the Dongjiao Sea and headed north, from the hot equatorial sea area to the cold sea area in the north in winter, until the Tropic of Cancer area, Admiral Chen Shiying ordered the fleet to turn to the northwest, preparing to go to the base of the new Jinzhou port in North America, and then turn south.

On 23 November, two reconnaissance planes of the task force attacked a floating European submarine in the western edge of the Cape Verde basin and dived and dropped four light bombs. Although the pilots were convinced that the submarine had been sunk, they reported that the European submarine had seen large oil stains floating on the surface of the sea after it had sunk by the bombing.

In view of the fact that the pilots had exaggerated the results of the last war, the senior commanders of the fleet did not believe that just four light bombs could sink an enemy ocean-going submarine. Now that their location has been revealed, the enemy should be mobilizing troops to encircle them with all their might.

Although the officers and men of the fleet were full of confidence, waiting for the battle, and the mood for war was very high, Admiral Chen Shiying was not prepared to fight a decisive battle with the enemy so early.

The purpose of this task force was to disrupt the enemy's deployment and buy time for the Empire to move forces from within the country.

The longer the time dragged on, the more favorable the course of the war actually became for the Tang Empire.

The fleet strengthened its vigilance and began to send several groups of carrier-based aircraft to reconnoiter the surrounding area every day.

When the pilot is far away, the sound of most of the calls is very weak, and coupled with the interference of skyelectricity, it is generally somewhat inaudible. But as the planes approached, they could still hear their reports very clearly. Therefore, when the reconnaissance plane returned, the pilots had to re-report what they had reconnoitred.

Pilots use very small transmitters for internal communication in the air, so they can speak freely to each other under certain circumstances, and most of the time the internal communication between these aircraft is not heard from a few nautical miles away. In addition, all aircraft are equipped with high-power long-range transmitters that can speak at a distance of hundreds of nautical miles. Most of the speech heard in the radio room on a warship is transmitted through a low-power line, which must be amplified by a specialized receiver to be heard.

On November 26, the Tang State task force sailed into the Bermuda Sea area and began to turn to the North American base. The advantages of having an aircraft carrier became apparent at this time, and on November 17, the fleet dispatched carrier-based aircraft to sink the East Francian light cruiser "Emerald", which was tracking them, in the vicinity of the Sargasso Sea, which was also the first time in the world that an aircraft carrier used carrier-based aircraft to sink a large warship moving at sea.

The Franks were redeploying their troops, but they did not dare to get too close to the Tang fleet. They found that none of their capital ship detachments could compete with this huge Tang fleet, unless several fleets were combined. The problem is that in order to attack the outer island chain of the Caribbean, now that their main fleet is scattered everywhere, it is not easy to concentrate it.

After the Battle of New Borneo, in which the main forces of the Reich's North Atlantic Fleet lost most of their lives in Port-au-Prince, no one doubted the combat capabilities of aircraft carriers anymore.

"In fact, the key to the counterattack is not the operational problem of our fleet, but the need for the cooperation and coordination of the army air force." In the war room of the "Yunling," everyone was studying the focus of the counterattack, which should start with the "independent region" in northeastern North America, and Chief of Staff Tang Jinchao held a whip in his hand, pointed to the chart, and said: "In operations in this area, it is necessary to suppress the opponent's air force. ”

……