The "Vice Admiral" followed closely after the "Shooting Sound" and made a sharp right turn. Then came the USS Maryland, the USS Jefferson, the USS Mississippi River......

If you can take an airship and look down from the sky, the scene of a single column composed of 21 warships making a 90-degree bend is very spectacular: the blue and boundless sea is marked out by a huge arc-shaped white fissure, which stretches for several nautical miles in front and back; Dozens of black smoke rose from the white ribbon of water, tumbling and tumbling, heading into the sky.

After the last "Virginia" also turned a corner, the twenty-one warships were connected end to end, in a continuous line, and the "long snake formation" was formed.

Different from the previous "parade type" and "sea split type", the parade formation is farther away from the "Champion", and the distance between ships is also closer, so the 21 warships are in the field of vision, majestic line, and the momentum is even more incomparable.

In the "clairvoyant mirror", Cixi saw that all the ships, the "gun windows" on the side of the ship were all opened, and a black hole was sticking out of each "gun window".

In her heart, she couldn't help but feel a chill.

Guan Zhuofan settled the account for her on the side: The firepower of the "Shooting Horn" alone on one side of the ship included two "110-pound Armstrong rear-loading rifled guns", "nine 68-pound front-loading smoothbore guns", and "one 40-pounder Armstrong rear-loading rifled gun".

Added up, a total of "872 pounds", which is equivalent to 72 "12-pound Napoleonic cannons" -- the kind of cannons that the Queen Mother watched at the small station.

This is only half of the firepower of the entire ship of the "Shooting Voice" -- ah, no, the minister is wrong. Less than half. Far less than half. There is a "110-pounder Armstrong breech-loading rifled gun" in the bow and stern, which has not yet been counted.

Cixi thought to herself: This is just the firepower of one ship of the "Shooting Sound", and there are twenty ships behind it, all gathered together......

Shocking: This ...... It's really called "the power of destroying the country".

What the royal sister didn't think clearly was that the twenty ships that "followed behind" could not all be compared with the "Shooting Horn", such as the "Virginia". It's just a logistics ship, and the firepower is actually very limited. However, when it comes to "the power of destroying the country", it is probably not far from there.

Besides, I haven't counted the "champion" I am in.

After the "one-word long snake array", there is the "double dragon into the water array".

"'Ssangyong into the water'? Well, the name is interesting. ”

"Back to the Queen Mother, this 'Double Dragon into the Water' formation was created by the British famous general Nelson, known as the 'Nelson's Secret'. The minister replied to the Queen Mother: when Jiaqing was ten years old. France and Spain joined forces and fought a naval battle with England. Nelson was the head coach of the British Army. In this battle, the reason why the British army was able to defeat the French and Western coalition forces was quite beneficial to this formation. ”

These few words are not Guan Zhuofan fooling the royal sister.

The so-called "double dragon into the water" means that our fleet forms a double-column battle formation and a single-column battle formation with the enemy's army, forming a 90-degree right angle, vertically wedges into the enemy's formation, divides the enemy's fleet into three, and makes the enemy's avant-garde, the middle army, and the rear guard unable to care for each other, and then breaks through each of them.

In 1805, the British fleet blocked the combined French and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar, Spain. In this pinnacle duel in the era of sail warships, Nelson, the commander of the British army, judged the situation and made a clever move, changing a single column into a double column, changing parallel bombardment to a vertical wedge, and defeating the combined French and Spanish fleets. After this battle, the elite of the French navy was lost, and Napoleon's opportunity to conquer Britain was gone, and Britain's maritime supremacy was unshakable.

However, the formation of "Double Dragons into the Water" is an outlier, and not everyone can play it. Because they are directly wedged into the enemy formation, the enemy and us are too close to each other, and while disrupting the enemy formation, their own risks will also increase greatly, and they may even encounter the most brutal broadside battle.

What Guan Zhuofan did not tell the royal sister is: In the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson was shot by French snipers in the broadside battle, and before the battle was completely over, he was seriously injured and died.

In a sense, "Ssangyong into the water" is a "retro" tactic that goes against the trend. As the ships became faster, more maneuverable, and the guns more powerful, the chances of success in replicating Nelson became less and less. Therefore, although the British won a brilliant victory in the Battle of Trafalgar with this method of warfare, what is still in "Battle Teachings" is still a "long snake", not a "double dragon into the water".

However, although this "Double Dragon into the water" is not the mainstream combat formation of the navy, a long fleet has become two, and it is still very good-looking to use it for the royal sister to "rehearse the formation", so it is still included in the exercise plan.

When formulating the exercise plan, Kwan Zhuofan said that he would "pay tribute to Lord Nelson in a two-column battle formation". When Brian Joblin, Clifford, Hymanch, Dickdo, and other British advisers heard this, they were greatly excited, and they all said that His Royal Highness the Prince had made a "wise and noble" decision.

The whistle sounded for a long time, and the reading formation began to "change formation".

The "Vice Admiral" behind the "Shooting Sound" first turned left and sailed out of the formation, and was in a position with the "Shooting Sound" as the chief ship of the downwind column, and the two ships were about two chains apart; Then, the "Maryland" behind the original "Vice Admiral" moved forward to fill the position left by the "Vice Admiral" in the upwind column; Again, the "Jefferson" behind the "Maryland" turned left, sailed out of the formation, and after the "Vice Admiral", became the sub-ship of the downwind column.

In the upwind column, the "Mississippi River" moved forward......

And so and so and so on, until the "Virginia" moved forward into place, and the single-column battle formation became a two-column battle formation: the upwind column, headed by the "Shooting Voice", a total of eleven warships; The downwind column, headed by the "Vice Admiral", a total of ten warships.

The "one-word long snake array" became the "two dragons into the water array".

On the sea, the whistle sounded, black smoke billowed out, and huge ships came and went; On the bridge in front of the "Champion", Shuai Guan Jue was crisscrossing on the "disk", and a group of "ships", like butterflies wearing flowers, turned left and tended forward, all of which were unsatisfactory.

The Queen Mother was kind and happy, and nodded again and again: Awesome, awesome!

Cixi's excitement is not only because she feels "powerful", but also because: such a "powerful" "formation", I am a woman's family...... I actually understood!

The set of "wargame deduction" prepared by Guan Zhuofan has received very good results.

After "Ssangyong enters the water", the third and final "formation" to be practiced today is called "wild geese spread their wings".

This "wild goose spreading its wings" is actually the "wild goose marching formation", one of the mainstream combat formations of naval warfare in the ironclad era.

In this time and space, the first "wild goose marching array" - at least "one of the pioneers", and thus recorded in the annals of glorious history, Guan Jue Shuai Zhuo Fan is also.

*(To be continued......)