On August 8, 307, two warships of the Tang Imperial Navy attacked the Maddalena naval base in the Kingdom of Spain in the western part of the Azores.

The shocking news quickly spread from the North Atlantic's most important maritime transit and supply hubs to the entire world.

All of a sudden, the North Atlantic route, which was important to European countries, was in a state of semi-paralysis.

……

In the early hours of the morning, the western battleships of the Tang Empire were already preparing for an attack outside the port of Trincomalee, which was half a commercial port and half a naval base for the Spaniards and West Francians.

"Start shelling!"

With the order of Captain Zeng Chusheng, the twin "Beta" turret of the "Xing'anling" first began the first round of test firing, although it was impossible to see the situation in the port clearly in the dark night, but with the assistance of radar, the main gun did not need to use optical equipment to lock the direction of the target.

As the cannon began to rumble, the four main turrets on the "Xing'anling" took turns spewing out large clusters of orange-red fireballs, and the huge hull was shaken and jolted on the sea. In front of the "Xing'anling", the main guns of the cruiser "Jiangzhou" also began to fire fiercely, and it used only nine main guns to attack, and the other "Lola" turrets fired flares from time to time in the direction of the harbor.

At a distance of 10,000 meters, in the telescope, you can clearly see cannonballs in the shape of beer bottles in an arc and fly towards the large and small ships moored in the harbor.

After the shelling began, Zeng Chusheng had been standing in the command tower, holding a pair of large binoculars in both hands, watching the situation in the direction of the port. Both he and Ling Wencha were a little disappointed by the news from the observation post, and judging from the current situation, there were no Spanish warships in the harbor that they hoped to see, and the two rumored Spanish Navy heavy cruisers "Barcelona" and "Valencia" were not in the harbor.

The effect of the shelling was also not satisfactory, the shells were scattered very widely, from time to time shells fell to the shore, and some buildings could be seen being hit and catching fire. However, Zeng Chusheng did not give the order to attack the port facilities, which can only show that the gunners on the ship are not good at shooting, and such a big deviation makes Colonel Zeng Chusheng feel disgraced.

The attack was of little military significance, but it was sensational enough to disgrace the Combined European Fleet, and you can imagine with your toes how much shock the bombardment would cause in the Palais de Paris.

The shelling of the harbor did not go very smoothly, and it was not until more than ten minutes later that one of the steamers was hit and caught fire, and under the guidance of this fire, the shelling of the two warships gradually became more accurate. Two West Francian torpedo boats, only a little over 100 tons, bravely rushed out of the harbor under artillery fire, and the two light cruisers "Jiangzhou" and "Anzhou" had no choice but to transfer their main guns to them, while making a zigzag maneuver on the sea surface to avoid the torpedoes that the other side might fire.

In this way, the shooting at the port is even more inaccurate.

The four Tang warships wandered around the sea indiscriminately, just busy dodging the torpedo tracks that were reported from time to time, and from time to time there were also lookouts who reported the discovery of the periscope of the enemy's submarines, but in fact they had never seen a single torpedo coming, and all of them were false alarms from those nervous observers.

It wasn't until more than ten minutes later that the two brave Spanish torpedo boats were finally torn to shreds, and Ling Wencha, who was furious about this, finally decided not to pay attention to the reports of periscopes and torpedoes that did not exist at all, and ordered the two battleships to maintain a constant speed and approach in the direction of the port.

The chief of staff of the fleet also issued the same order to the "Jiangzhou" through a short-range wireless radio, and the situation finally stabilized again.

Four warships lined up in two columns, diagonally on the sea in the direction of the harbor, the Spaniards did not set up coastal defense turrets in this newly annexed Portuguese maritime territory, only some army artillery fire fell sparsely to the sea to return fire.

The secondary guns of the two battleships also began to pour out artillery fire, and the rate of fire of these anti-aircraft guns was significantly higher than that of the main guns, and soon the port of Trincomalee was ablaze with a dozen or so fires, and the facilities of the port were also bombarded with dense fire. The whole shelling operation lasted for a whole hour, and when Ling Wencha saw that the "Jiangzhou" in front was already within the range of the army artillery attack on the shore, he decisively ordered the fleet to start turning and retreating to the south with all its might.

Just after 8 a.m., after sailing more than 70 nautical miles, the fleet was attacked by a wave of aircraft from the shore.

Fortunately, the Europeans did not deploy many aircraft over the Azores, adding up to just over a hundred, and most of them were concentrated at the airfield in Porto Sansto. One-third of them were "Alphonse" fighters, another one-third were two-wing Bristol fighters, and only about 40 old Hawker biplane fighter-bombers were capable of carrying out bombing missions.

In addition, the more than 40 planes were divided into three directions to carry out search and bombing missions.

At 8:12 a.m., eleven Hawker planes swooped down on the two Tang warships heading south side by side, and several faster "Alphonse" fighters circled in the sky, and it was they who first discovered the traces of the Tang fleet. In the bright morning sun, the Spanish planes coming from the north could be seen clearly, and they were divided into two rows and swooped down from an altitude of 1,500 meters.

The anti-aircraft guns on the four Tang warships immediately opened fire with all their might, forming a barrage one after another, and the effect of paying attention to air defense drills for a long time was finally manifested, and the Spanish biplanes, which were very slow, were shot down from the air one after another, and some even disintegrated directly in the air.

None of the bombs hit the target, and after the hastily dropped bombs, there were only four Spanish bombers left in the sky. The Tang people fought a naval battle with the enemy at sea, but the result was a crushing defeat on the part of the fighters who launched the air attack, not only suffering heavy losses of their own, but also achieving no results.

This has led to a misconception for many people.

But the danger has not been lifted.

At 10:23, the Spaniards' second wave of aerial attacks followed.

This time it was twenty-three Hawkers, and the enemy pilots also became a little more cunning, first circling in the sky for a while, and then swooping down on the warship from three different directions in three groups.

This time, the Tang warships were not so lucky, their anti-aircraft fire finally leaked, and a bomber flying at a low altitude dropped a bomb close to the back chimney of the "Xing'anling". With a huge explosion, the entire warship clearly felt a violent tremor, and an anti-aircraft gun on the ship was thrown into the air, while a transport boat flew more than 30 meters away and landed directly on the sea.

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