Guan Gong casually ordered three large cement warships and a group of small ships to take the lead. As soon as these ships received the flags from their flagships, they took anchor and unhurriedly approached Soochow's defensive line. The biggest disadvantage of these cement warships is that they are too bulky to move slowly.

But the power of these giant warships was quite terrifying, crashing into the fishing net array of Soochow as if it were no man's land, and the fishing nets in the channel were emptied in an instant.

Guan Gong did not intend to empty the entire section of the river, because that would be too laborious, the Yangtze River is very wide, although the Soochow people have tried to choose a relatively narrow section of the river to build this defense line, but it is still very wide. It took hundreds of thousands of people in Soochow to build this defense line and several months to build, so you can imagine how large the amount of earthwork was in it.

The people of Dongwu simply have the spirit of Jingwei reclamation. If the entire river were to be emptied, it would take months to do so. Of course, Guan Gong didn't want to wait so long, he held his breath, he had been holding back for several years to find the people of Dongwu to avenge the revenge of the arrow, and now it was time for a full liquidation, and he couldn't wait to jump to Jianye tomorrow to devour all the monarchs and ministers of Dongwu alive.

Guan Gong's plan was to clear only one channel in the middle of the river, and the channel should not be too wide, just enough for large warships to pass through. Why do you want to do this in the middle of the river? The reason is very simple, generally speaking, the center of the river is the deepest place, and the depth of the water means that it is particularly difficult for the Soochow people to build reefs here, so the reefs in the middle of the river are the least and the easiest to clean up.

If this is the case, first, the river water will be blocked and cannot be vented, which will cause flooding, and second, such a huge project is simply an impossible task. Their reefs are one to the east and one to the west, scattered in a haphazard manner in an area.

If you're brave enough to drive your boat all the way through, you may be lucky enough that you won't hit a reef, but if you're unlucky, you may soon hit a reef and kill your boat.

As a large-scale water army, there can be no fluke mentality. The naval warships are like clouds, almost the entire river can be lined up, the sails cover the sky, like a cloud, if so many ships are lined up in a wide formation to pass through this water, then most of the ships will definitely hit the reef.

Therefore, the Jingzhou Navy must clear a safe channel before it can march calmly. The width of the channel planned by Guan Gong was about the width of three large warships running side by side, so this time he sent three large warships to take the lead.

I saw that these three warships were advancing in front of them in unison, pushing and destroying the fishing net array of Soochow all the way, followed by dozens of warships, they were going to wait for the three warships to stop, and then continue to move.

These ships were followed by two ships, which were not warships or transports, but had a special name, survey ships. The two ships flanked the three large warships in front of them on either side of the channel, dropping an anchored buoy at intervals.

Of course, the crew of the ship did not throw buoys indiscriminately, and there were many surveyors among them, constantly measuring the distance and trying to make the channel as straight and equal width as possible.

Just when Guan Gong thought that everything was going according to plan, he suddenly saw the three large warships walking in front of him stop one after another. He put down his binoculars and said to a staff officer beside him, "Go and ask why those three warships stopped, have they reached the edge of the reef area?" ”

The staff officer answered the "promise" and ran to find someone to issue a flag, and after a long time, he came back to resume his life:

"General, the propulsion systems of the 103rd, 104th, and 105th ships are stuck and cannot be pushed, and the ship's mechanics can't check the reason, so it is recommended to send someone to go into the water to investigate."

"What the hell is going on? How so? Let them quickly find out the cause and report it. Guan Gong's heart burned in a hurry. As soon as the war started, it was unfavorable to leave the division, and it was impossible to find out the reason, and whoever was replaced as the commander would be anxious.

"No!" The staff officer answered the promise and ran to give the order. After a quarter of an hour, I finally waited for the news: "Report to the general, the 104th ship sent a message, they sent ~ water ghosts (divers) to go into the water to check, and found that the propeller of the battleship was entangled in fishing nets. Now they have sent more than a dozen water ghosts into the water to clean up the tangled fishing nets. ”

Guan Gong slapped his forehead, feeling very annoyed because he had made a low-level mistake. Of course, not only him, but also the staff and even the entire Jingzhou Navy ignored this issue. This time, they broke a lot of fishing nets of the Dongwu people, and the fishing nets were densely distributed in this area, and the number was terrifying.

Although the nets are knocked off, they still float in the water and then become entangled in the propellers under the agitation of the propellers. If it's one or two fishing nets, it's probably not a big problem, but there are so many that it's entirely possible that the propeller will get stuck.

In the case of an old-style warship, which was powered by sails and oars, this problem would not have existed, and it would have been a matter of pumping the oars up and removing the nets that had been wrapped around them. However, a large part of the ships of the Jingzhou Navy used fixed propellers instead of rowing as propulsion structures, which was a big problem.

Of course, propellers have incomparable advantages over paddling, but there is also a fatal disadvantage, that is, if they are entangled by some filaments, such as fishing nets, aquatic plants, etc., it is very likely to be stuck, and even the entire structure will be damaged.

If the people of Eastern Wu knew that they would use this to deal with the Jingzhou Navy, then the Jingzhou Navy's army would definitely be completely paralyzed. Fortunately, the shipyard in Jingzhou is a top-secret military unit, and the security measures and confidentiality measures are very strict, and this secret has not been detected by the Dongwu people for the time being.

The propeller warships of the Jingzhou Navy have not yet been captured by the enemy, so the people of the Eastern Wu did not know that the Jingzhou Navy warships had such structural weaknesses. However, even if they knew the structure of the Jingzhou Navy warships, they might not have thought of using this trick to deal with these warships, because even the high-level of the Jingzhou Navy were not aware of this problem.

The Jingzhou Navy has been using this kind of warship for many years, but because they are all used in the big rivers, there is no chance to rub the aquatic plants at the bottom of the river, the river water in this era is so clean that there is no mess such as plastic bags floating everywhere in later generations, so far, they have not found the accident caused by the propeller being entangled, so they have not realized the seriousness of the problem.

"Immediately~ tell the results of the investigation of the 104 ships to the other two ships, and ask them to immediately send ~ water ghosts to clean up. At the same time, let them turn the battleship sideways on the spot and start shelling the Soochow naval forces. Guan Gong ordered.