Li Kit's judgment was not wrong.

At 6:28 a.m., about 10 minutes after receiving a telegram from the 42nd Task Force, and less than five minutes after Li Jie ordered the radar to be turned on, the light cruiser "Tancheng," the flagship of the 43.2nd Detachment, which had opened the way ahead, sent a report that several enemy ships suspected to be capital ships had been spotted.

Less than a minute later, the light cruiser "Mengcheng", also numbered in the 43.2nd detachment, reported that it had spotted the muzzle flashing of the enemy ship.

Subsequently, four light cruisers successively reported shelling.

Because the distance was close enough, a short-haul voice radio was used, and when the captain reported, Li Jie also heard the explosion clearly.

That's right, it's the capital ship.

According to the report of the light cruiser, all the large-caliber shells that were fired by the enemy ships and fell nearby were exactly six.

The commander of the "Tancheng", the commander of the 43.2nd detachment, Lieutenant Commander Jian Yifu, reported that the enemy ships may have mistaken the light cruiser for a battleship.

This speculation is not unreasonable.

The distance is more than twenty kilometers, and on the radar screen, whether it is a light cruiser or a battleship, it is actually a bright point of light.

Do not forget that the light cruisers of the 43.2 detachment were also four.

As for speed, it is clearly not the basis for judgment.

Although the speed of a fast battleship was certainly inferior to that of a light cruiser, in normal sailing, there was not much difference in the speed of the two types of battleships.

There are no special circumstances, no kind of battleship will sail at high speed.

The most critical point is that the enemy ships are firing from a distance of twenty kilometers.

If the enemy ships already recognized that they were four light cruisers, not fast battleships, what reason was there to fire at such a distance?

Afraid of torpedoing?

Not to mention the heavy torpedoes of the Imperial Navy have a range of about 10 kilometers, and the maximum range of the "spears" of the Narrow Navy is only 20 kilometers.

If the range is too far and the hit rate is not guaranteed, it is tantamount to wasting a torpedo.

In fact, the Imperial Navy has always paid little attention to torpedo warfare.

In the words of Marshal Chen Bingxun: Only a weak navy will be opportunistic, and a strong navy can crush all opponents by virtue of strength.

Before the rise of aviation, naval artillery was the right way, and torpedoes were crooked.

Only by taking the four light cruisers of the 43.2nd Detachment as battleships will the Nuland battleships be the first to open fire, striving to seize the opportunity to start the war.

It was in this way that the 43.2nd detachment did not immediately retreat, but lured the enemy in front.

The four light cruisers made a left turn first, and after a few minutes to the north, they made another tactical left turn with a larger radius. While keeping a distance from the enemy ship, turn the course to the south. It's just that the four light cruisers never fired at the enemy ships.

As long as you use the main gun to fire, you will be detected by the enemy ship.

In order to confuse the enemy ships, the four light cruisers, taking advantage of the turn, fired flares at the enemy ships with anti-aircraft guns arranged on the side of the ship.

On the whole, it is to make the enemy ships feel that the four fast battleships of the 43rd Task Force do not have gun-aiming radars, or the radars are malfunctioning and cannot be used normally.

At the same time, the 43.1st detachment had switched to sailing eastward.

The tactic was very simple, the 43.1st detachment seized the advantageous position in front of the enemy fleet, and then the 43.2nd detachment brought the enemy fleet over.

Seizing the opportunity, it only takes a few salvos to take out a few enemy ships led by you, or at least incapacitate them.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Li Jie adjusted his engagement tactics.

The point was that it was necessary to take advantage of the favorable situation at the beginning of the engagement, and the four battleships concentrated their firepower to kill, or at least disable, the two enemy ships at the front.

In this way, after the enemy fleet has completed its tactical turn, only four battleships will be able to continue the battle.

Regardless of performance and combat effectiveness, in the decisive battle of the fleet, the strength or number of troops is still the number one decisive factor.

When the two fleets are fighting each other one-on-one, the side with the smaller number of warships will definitely suffer.

The battle with naval guns is not like a martial arts master's move, but more like a street gangster fighting in a group, and many times it is a fight for numbers.

If we can eliminate the gap in numbers, we will be able to give full play to the advantages in performance and be more confident in fighting an "easy battle".

Detachment 43.2 turned south at 6:42.

At 6:48, shortly after sunrise, the Asahimi's radar first detected six enemy ships coming from the northeast.

At this point, the distance is about 28 kilometers.

At 6:53, about 25 kilometers apart, the "Asahimi" took the lead in firing the first salvo.

Although the sky was already bright and the lookouts could see the silhouettes of the enemy ships, the four fast battleships were still provided with fire control data by gunning radars.

In long-range artillery battles, the ranging accuracy of artillery sighting radar is actually higher than that of optical rangefinders.

To say that, the artillery sighting radar is actually a ranging radar with particularly good anti-jamming performance.

As for the horizontal azimuth angle, it is not measured by the radar, but the angle at which the base of the circular motion is located when the radar receives the reflected signal.

With radar aiming, there was no half-salvo of school guns.

It was only at this time that the lookout on the battleship Nuland made an accurate judgment and determined that it was the fast battleship of the Liangxia Navy that was facing south.

At that time, the four light cruisers of the 43.2nd detachment were in the west, illuminated only a few minutes earlier by the dawn.

The sun rises in the east, so a few dozen kilometers to the west, the sunrise is a little later, in fact, only a few minutes.

A few minutes earlier, the lookouts on the battleship Nuland had not been able to see the four light cruisers, and therefore could not determine their identities by sight.

In addition, the four light cruisers did not sail completely to the south, but to the southwest.

The yaw angle is only a few degrees.

These deviations of a few degrees are equivalent to distancing themselves from the Newland battleship.

Anyway, when the dawn shone on the six Newland battleships, the four light cruisers of the 43.2nd Detachment were still hidden in the dark.

Also, consider the early morning sea fog.

Under the circumstances, it was very likely that the commander of the Nuland fleet had mistaken the four battleships that had appeared in the south as light cruisers, and suspected that the capital ships to the west were actively pulling away in order to force them to turn in pursuit so that the light cruisers to the south could launch a torpedo attack.

If the Nuland fleet pursued to the west, it would be tantamount to exposing the wide flanks to the "light cruisers".

All in all, it was not until the four fast battleships such as the "Asahi" opened fire that the lookout of the battleship Nuland concluded that they were four fast battleships.

Firing from a distance of 25 kilometers, it must have been a battleship.

The reason is the same: except for the main guns on battleships, no artillery is capable of being powerful enough at such a long range.

In fact, 25 kilometers is too far for a 14-inch naval gun.

The main guns of many old battleships have a maximum elevation angle of more than 20 kilometers. After the end of the last war, the first improvement that the Great Powers made to the old capital ships that remained was to increase the range of the main guns by increasing the maximum elevation angle of the main guns.

At this point, the battle between Task Force 43 and Task Force 11 Nuland began.

As the ten battleships on both sides began to bombard each other with huge cannons, not to mention the gunners in the turret, even the commander in the command tower did not care about anything else.

Air raids?

Who cares until they take out the enemy on the opposite side?

No matter how great the threat of carrier-based aircraft is, it is not as good as the shells fired from 16-inch or 400-mm naval guns 20 kilometers away! 8)