The decisive battle flag, also known as the flag of "seeing the enemy will be destroyed and invincible". The black letters on the red background slowly rose to the top of the mast of the Wuhan Fu, and fluttered slowly in the light breeze of the Strait of Malacca, which was the signal of the decisive battle!

"Raise the banner of the decisive battle! Prepare for nail head bullets! ”

The captain of every Ming warship that followed behind the Wuhan Mansion gave the same order when he saw this decisive battle flag. Subsequently, a piercing bell rang on each battleship, which was the sound of a battle siren, which meant that the battle had begun!

All of us must work hard and do our duty!

The heavenly reason that was high above seemed to have sensed the fighting will of these Ming naval warriors, and the originally warm southwest wind also strengthened suddenly, as if they wanted to let the two fleets sailing face to face meet as soon as possible.

"Report! The enemy fleet is ten thousand yards away! ”

When the observer aboard the Sealand Provincial Assembly shouted 10,000 yards, Trop and Davy. Jones was already able to see the array of Ming fleets with the naked eye.

The Ming fleet was set up in two parallel columns, one of which was in the front, consisting of five small galleys, which was a guard column, and the task was to fend off the enemy's arsonist ships, that is, to set them on fire with arsonistic bombs when they were far away from the main formation.

In the back column was the main column of the Chinese, with 11 battleships lined up in sequence, the big ones in front and the small ones behind, heading at full speed towards the Dutch fleet.

It is said to be full speed, but the wind power in the Strait of Malacca is limited after all, and it is only six or seven knots.

"They should turn right at a distance of 1,000 to 1,500 yards from us, take the T position or sail in the same direction as us, and shell the battle line."

David. Jones knew with his eyes closed that his opponent would fight - the "Battle Instructions" stipulated that the Ming army's warship detachment was on escort duty, so it could not sail past each other with the Dutch fleet in the opposite course, otherwise the landing fleet around Temasek Island and the Straits of Johor would suffer.

"How should we fight?" Trop asked.

"With a split tactic," said David. Jones said, "The Sealand Provincial detachment was in the same direction as the enemy, with the Seventh Provincial Detachment passing directly through their Sixth and Seventh ships, and the Holland Provincial Detachment outflanking from behind. ”

"When will the split begin?" It was rare for Tropp to be the commander of the handshake - who made his deputy know the Ming Dynasty navy too well?

David. Jones said: "Start when the two sides turn...... We can turn first and let them follow, so that we can get ahead of them in turning, and when we are done, both sides become downwind, and our ships have a larger sail area and are faster, and if we sail at full speed, it should be easy to cut them off. According to the "Battle Instructions" of the Ming Navy, once the array is cut off, the severed part will adopt chaotic tactics. We besieged them with two detachments of five ships and should have won quickly.

Immediately after the victory, the two detachments turned to the southeast to search for the enemy's second battleship detachment and landing detachment! ”

The teacher is the teacher in the end, and he guesses the student's deployment with his eyes closed. That's right, it's just that I guessed eighty out of nine, and it's still a little bit short.

At this point, the Ming fleet turned in advance, not at a distance of 1000-1500 yards from the Provincial Council of Zealand, but at a distance of 2500 yards.

The reason for the early turn was because after the nail-head shell, the Ming navy switched to medium-caliber long guns instead of large-caliber short guns. Long guns, on the other hand, have a longer effective range and a larger number of equipment, so they can engage the enemy at a greater distance.

"Damn, why did you turn ahead of schedule?" David. Jones was a little annoyed when he found out that his prediction had fallen short? Who's in command? How did this man pass the exam? Fail!

Could it be that without Dutch instructors, the level of naval training and officer education of the Chinese has plummeted?

"It doesn't matter, let's just turn around together, we have almost three times as many ships, and the tonnage of the main fleet is larger, and the number of heavy guns must be more...... So firing from a distance is good for us! ”

Trop wasn't angry, and the "failed" wasn't his student, so what was he angry about? And now the ratio of the two warships (not counting the light clippers) on the sea is 32 to 11, which is overwhelming! So no matter how you fight, you can win...... Now the question is just how much self-damage?

Under Trop's orders, the Dutch fleet also began to turn to the left under the Sealand Provincial Council, and at the time of the turn, the distance between the Sealand and Wuhan was about 2,000 yards, or more than 1,800 meters. But in the process of completing the turn, the distance between the two warships was further reduced to more than 1,000 yards.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, when the distance between the two sides was narrowed to within 1,000 yards, the first gun on the port side of the Ying Tianfu let out a roar and fired the first nail head bullet in history to be used in actual combat!

The roaring naval guns were like a signal, opening the curtain of the battle in the Sea of Malacca, which decided the hegemony of the entire Pacific Ocean!

Because of the appearance of isolated gun bays, it is difficult for battleships to achieve unified shelling - before the start of the shelling battle, the doors of each gun compartment must be closed to prevent the spread of fire and the detonation of ammunition. Therefore, each artillery squad can only fight on its own, but in order to facilitate command, the first gun compartment of each battleship, that is, the first gun bay from the bow of the ship, will be responsible for "firing the first gun", that is, receiving orders from the battleship's gun commander to fire the first shell.

And two or three minutes after the first shot, the battleship will fire the rest of the guns on the enemy side one after another - the flowering shells with woodpipe fuses cannot be loaded into the chamber of the gun before the fire is fired, that is to explode! Therefore, the rest of the guns on the enemy side of the battleship can only light the fuse after the first shot, and then start the loading operation, so don't think about salvo or anything.

And each gun fights independently, which is a great test of the gunner's quality of observation...... If it weren't for the 15-pound long gun, the observation level of the naval gunners of the Ming Dynasty (in fact, it is not low, but it is not comparable to the Netherlands), there would be no suspense about winning or losing today's battle!

But now, the 15-pound cannon is more accurate than the 30-pound and 40-pound short guns, and it is also easy to aim and the rate of fire is much faster...... In order to increase the rate of fire, these cannons are also expensive bronze cannons (copper has a high heat dissipation coefficient)! Moreover, because the 15-kilogram cannon is small and occupies less space, the number of equipment is also large.

On the side of Ying Tianfu, 16 15-kilogram cannons were placed! The two Flying Class ships have 12 15-kilogram guns on one side, the four Guard-class ships have 9 15-kilogram guns on one side, and the four Qianhusuo-class ships have 5 15-kilogram cannons on one side.

So on the left side of the 11 Ming ships, a total of 96 15-pound guns could fire at the same time. Compared with the spectacular scene of the Anglo-Dutch war, when hundreds of cannons were fired at the same time, 96 cannons firing together were really nothing. The Jones brothers were taken aback.

Why so many bombardments? It's almost hundreds...... And to fire so far away, how heavy does this have to be?

The first round of shelling seemed to be empty, after all, it was quite far away, and it was still firing on a bumpy battleship, so it was not easy to hit. However, some of the shells landed not far from the Sealand Provincial Council, and the shells caused a lot of rough splashes.

David. Jones looked at the splash and was stunned again - this is an 18-pounder cannon! At a distance of more than a thousand yards, how could an 18-pounder gun move the guard plate of the Sealand?

"Is it an 18-pounder gun?" Trop laughed, "David, you're not a good teacher!" ”

David. Jones shook his head and said, "That's not how I taught them...... It's that they didn't learn well! ”

"Alright, don't excuse yourself," Trop said, "give the order to fire...... It's time for the Chinese to learn how powerful the 40-pounder cannon is! ”

"Yes, Major General!" David. Jones nodded, and gave the order to open fire.

However, before the first gun of the Sealand Province was reloaded, the 15-pound guns of the Ming fleet fired again, and the accuracy this time was much better than the last one! I only heard a muffled sound of "bang", and a 15-pound cannonball had hit the stern of the Sealand Province!