Concentrating fire on enemy ships No. 1 and No. 2 before dawn is nothing more than eliminating the numerical gap.

After achieving his goal, Li Jie immediately adjusted his tactics.

In fact, it is to make full use of the speed advantage, maintain the most favorable engagement distance with the enemy ship, and ensure that the ship is always in the most advantageous position.

The key is engagement distance.

Theoretically, as long as the new heavy armor-piercing shells are used, the "Xuhai" and "Beihe" classes can penetrate the armor of the old Nuland battleships within the full range of the main guns.

However, the old battleships of the Newland may not be able to do it.

If ordinary armor-piercing shells are used, even if they are 16-inch naval guns, the engagement distance must be shortened to 14 kilometers, so that it is possible to penetrate the main armor of the "Xuhai" class, or the main armor of the "Beihe" class at a distance of 17 kilometers. Even with heavy armor-piercing shells, these two distances are increased to 19 km and 21 km, respectively. As for the 14-inch naval guns, it may have to be shortened to 11 kilometers before they can hope to penetrate the main armor of the "Asahimi" class. To put it simply, in the full range of fire, even with heavy armor-piercing shells, the 14-inch naval gun cannot penetrate the horizontal armor and main armor belt of the "Xuhai" class, and the threat to the "Beihe" class is also limited.

Of course, these are only theoretical calculations.

In fact, these performance indicators were also published after the war.

During the Great War, the power of the armor-piercing shells of the battleship's main guns, as well as the armor protection, were absolute secrets of the Navy.

Not to mention that it is announced to the public, even within the Navy, not many people know about it.

Because it is difficult to obtain accurate information about the core performance of the enemy's capital ships, when designing battleships, the great powers are working behind closed doors, to be precise, according to their own artillery and shell technology, to measure and determine the level of protection that battleships need to achieve.

The Liang Xia Empire had first-class artillery and cannonball technology, and as a result, during the Great War, it was "overestimating" its opponents.

The artillery and shell technology of the Nuland Federation is also very advanced, and it is on a par with the Liangxia Empire, so there are many similarities between the two sides in the protection design of battleships.

If you have to say, the narrow-minded navy, which is technologically backward in artillery and shells, has been "underestimating" its opponents.

The most typical is the "Narrow" class super battleship, which has high hopes for the narrow navy and is used as a decisive weapon.

This kind of super battleship with a full load displacement of nearly 70,000 tons and 9 460 mm guns did not exceed the fast battleships built by the Liang Xia Empire and the Nuland Federation in the same era in terms of firepower and protection, with a full load displacement of less than 60,000 tons and a much faster speed.

Before the war, intelligence agencies only gave a relatively general figure, and it was safer to keep the distance of engagement at more than 20 kilometers.

If you want to be safer, it's best to expand to more than 22 kilometers.

As long as it is more than 25 kilometers, it is absolutely safe.

However, the problem is that beyond 25 kilometers, even if the artillery aiming radar is used to command, it may not be able to make the accuracy of the ship's artillery bombardment reach an acceptable level.

Disturbed by clutter reflected from the sea surface, even if the weather is clear, the operating distance of the gunsight radar is about 25 kilometers.

No matter how far you go, you can't measure it for sure.

When the weather is fine, it is safest to keep the engagement distance to about 22 kilometers.

The rest of the battle is based on this basic principle.

Almost throughout the day, the four fast battleships of the 43rd Task Force, under the command of Li Jie, maintained a combat distance of about 22 kilometers from the four battleships of the 11th Task Force of the Newland, and sank the four Newland battleships one after another during the nearly 8-hour battle.

Before 9 o'clock in the morning, the "Yanhai", which had shown great courage, once again performed a miracle, sending the No. 4 enemy ship, that is, the "Xinmo", to the bottom of the sea with three consecutive almost impeccable salvos.

According to the battle records of the "Yanhai", in the salvo from the 31st to the 33rd round, the direct hits observed by the lookout alone reached 5.

Because there are 2 hits that are not observed, it is 7 times!

In the 33rd salvo, an armor-piercing shell hit the turret of the B turret of the "Xinmo" directly, and it turned in the bill of lading tunnel and drilled into the ammunition magazine of the main gun.

It was this shell that buried the "New Ink".

In the aftermath of the explosion, only six of the ship's nearly 2,000 officers and men survived.

The six men were all in the watchtower of the mainmast at the time, and were thrown out of the watchtower at the time of the explosion, and they survived.

The rest sank to the bottom of the sea with the "New Ink".

About half an hour later, the "Northern River" alone sank the fifth enemy ship "Missy".

This outcome is questionable.

Judging from the situation at that time, it is very likely that it was the "Yanhai" that sank the "Missy".

The reason was that before the explosion of the anti-aircraft gun depot on the starboard side of the "Missy", the No. 3 enemy ship "Seaver" in front released a smoke screen in an attempt to adjust its course under the cover of the smoke screen. As a result, the "Yanhai", which was assisting the "Asahimi" at that time, could not take aim, so it had to adjust its target and fire at the No. 5 enemy ship "Missy" behind, and fired two salvos in five minutes.

The first salvo was actually for the school artillery.

At that time, the main gun of the "Yanhai" had already fired dozens of salvos, and all of them were fired with a full charge, and the body barrel was very badly worn, and it was necessary to observe the calibration deviation of the impact point.

As a result, after the "Yanhai" fired a second salvo, the "Missy" capsized and sank due to the explosion of the anti-aircraft gun ammunition depot.

Because there was an interval of about 5 minutes, no one believed that it was the result of the "Yanhai".

But the problem is that about 30 seconds before the explosion of the "Missy", the "North River" fired the 42nd salvo.

That is, it is equally unlikely that it was the shells of the "North River" that hit the ammunition depot of the "Missy".

After gathering more than 20 kilometers, the shells flew for almost 1 minute.

For this result, Jin Hong later went to the naval headquarters.

Unfortunately, he was unable to come up with evidence that the "Yanhai" sank the "Missy", so according to the convention, that is, the principle of "combating object", the result of the battle was calculated to the "Beihe".

After that, near 12 o'clock, the sixth enemy ship "Aihe" was sunk by the "Nanjiang".

The battle continued until about 2:30 p.m., when the No. 3 enemy ship "Seaver" slowly sank into the sea under the heavy shelling of the "Asahimi".

At this point, all the battleships of the 11th Nuland Task Force were sunk, except for the "Mali", which escaped before dawn.

The battle dragged on for so long, in fact, there was only one reason.

At around 12 o'clock, all four fast battleships of Task Force 43 had run out of heavy armor-piercing shells and could only use old-fashioned armor-piercing shells.

In fact, there are not many old-fashioned armor-piercing bullets.

To this end, Li Jie issued an order before 12 o'clock, that is, before the sinking of the "Aihe", to extend the interval between salvo shots to 10 minutes.

This was also done so that the barrel of the main gun could be sufficiently cooled.

Compared with shells, the barrels of battleship main guns are much more expensive, have a short usable life, and are very troublesome to replace.

After sinking the last battleship, it took about an hour to expel the Newland cruisers and destroyers who had rushed to rescue the officers and men who had fallen into the water.

It was only after 3:30 p.m. that the battle officially ended.

At that time, the 43.2nd detachment had also arrived, and there was a light cruiser near the "Asahi", and Li Jie asked the cruiser to send a telegram.