The Europeans were equipped with cannons on their warships, which had shorter barrels and were often only six or seven hundred meters long. Pen ~ Fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info In other words, beyond one mile, the cannon's accuracy will basically be lost, and the power will be greatly reduced.

The reason why European navies are equipped with such short-range guns is that the sea waves are very bumpy and the ships are constantly shaking. The shooting accuracy at a distance of 1,000 meters is very low. Moreover, the hulls of European battleships are getting thicker and thicker, and artillery fire from a distance cannot effectively damage the armor of battleships like turtle shells.

So the general artillery battles take place at a distance of 500 to 300 meters.

However, Li Zhi was equipped with rifled guns, and his shooting accuracy was greatly improved. Even if the cannon is fired from a greater distance, the ironclad gun will be able to achieve an effective hit rate.

At a distance of seven hundred meters, the 600 guns of the forty ironclad ships erupted tongues of fire and fired deadly cones of lead-hulled steel cores at the three southernmost enemy ships.

Six hundred shells were like six hundred bolts of lightning, straight across the sea, smashing into the battleships of the Anglo-Dutch fleet.

In the bumpy waves, the gunner's hit rate was much worse than that of a shot on the ground, and in the end only one percent of the shells hit the enemy ship. But even if only sixty or seventy steel-core flowering shells hit, it would have caused devastating damage to the Anglo-Dutch combined fleet.

It was difficult for a round smoothbore shell to blow open the hull, and in European naval battles, battleships often hit hundreds of guns and still fight. Even a thirty-pound smoothbore cannon bombarding a battleship's hull from a distance of a mile often cracked only a part of the hull, splashing some pieces of wood inside the hull.

For smoothbore guns, which could only use spherical shells, it would be necessary for heavier guns to blast at closer distances if they wanted to penetrate the hull of a battleship, especially the hull attached to the waterline.

So in fact the number of ships sunk in battleship artillery battles in Europe was very small. At the Battle of Lostoft in 1665, the British sent one hundred and seven battleships into the battle, fought a whole day of artillery battles, and in the end only one battleship was sunk.

However, when it came to Li Zhi's steel core flowering bomb, the situation was completely different.

In the face of nineteenth-century technology, hardwood hulls were as fragile as pieces of paper. Sharp conical shells and round smoothbore artillery shells are fundamentally different in armor-piercing capabilities. The cone-shaped projectile of the steel core rotates extremely fast, and compared to the spherical shell, it is like the difference between drilling a wall with an electric drill and smashing a wall with a steel ball. There is no doubt that an electric drill can easily break through the impotent walls of steel balls.

The conical steel core projectile rotated at high speed and mercilessly broke through the hardwood hulls of European battleships dozens of centimeters thick.

The cone-shaped catapult was castrated after being ejected into the hull, rampage through the hull, killing an unknown number of hapless sailors and shattering several layers of fragile decks.

Then, more than twenty pounds of flowering bombs exploded.

At this time, Li Zhi's artillery fuse had been improved, and after the flowering catapult was fired into the battleship, it was silent for only about a second, and then all of them detonated.

Instead of black powder, the explosives contained in the flowering bomb are more powerful nitrocellulose, which multiplies the destructive power of the flowering bomb. The scorching blast of the violent explosion swept through the nearby space like a storm. All the people that the shock wave encountered, whether European sailors, sailors or artillerymen, were immediately shocked to death and scorched without mercy.

If you get too close to the point of explosion, your entire body will be shattered by the shockwave, turning into limbs and minced flesh, which will spill out with the shockwave.

Even a heavy smoothbore cannon would be shaken out of position in the face of the shock wave of nitrocellulose, sliding across the deck like a shot put.

Some of the flowering shells that fell near the hull of the ship directly shattered the hull several tens of centimeters thick, blowing up a large hole one or two meters wide in the hull. Flying pieces of wood and red flames erupted from the hole and splattered above the sea, making it look like flowers blooming on the hull of a battleship.

At the same time as the shockwave burst out was a deathly shattered steel slag, which flew faster than a dart at this time. Many European sailors who were far away from the explosion site dodged the shock wave of the explosion, but they could not dodge the steel slag, and their bodies were mercilessly broken by these sharp objects.

Some sailors were cut in the stomach and stabbed into the intestines by steel slag, and rolled on the ground in pain. Some have been cut off to their hands and feet, and can even cut off half of one hand alive, leaving only half of it connected by flesh and bone to hang from their arms. Even more unfortunate were the sailors who were shot in the throat and even in the head by the steel slag, and in an instant, these vital parts burst out with blood flowers, and then these sailors died under the destructive power of the steel slag.

Two of the three battleships were hit by about twenty shells, and the decks inside the hull became hell on earth. Especially on the all-access deck where the artillery was loaded, the steel slag fired from the explosion claimed the lives of almost all the artillerymen, and there were screams, blood and broken limbs everywhere.

More than 20 explosions had blown holes in the hull, and there was already chaos in the hull.

Basically, these two battleships have lost their combat effectiveness.

The most tragic was the southernmost Dutch battleship, which was hit by more than 30 flowering shells at once. The whole battleship was like a flower, and it was blown up with holes everywhere. With the exception of the top deck, which was unharmed, the gunners and sailors on the lower deck were almost all killed.

Not only were the casualties enormous, but the hull of the ship near the waterline was also blown up. The sea water poured into the hull with tremendous pressure. Carrying more than 100 sailors who were still alive and more than 200 sailors who were killed and wounded, the whole ship sank into the sea little by little.

The sailors on the top deck saw that the ship was no longer saved, and one by one they jumped into the sea in a panic. It was like a penguin jumping into the sea in Antarctica.

However, huge shipwrecks with a displacement of 1,000 tons have created huge whirlpools on the surface of the sea, which are so deadly that they will swallow the fleeing sailors into the deep sea. More than 100 fugitive sailors do not know how many will escape.

With just one shelling, rifled guns finished off three battleships.

On the Dutch flagship Swordfish, the Dutch commander Adalbert and the British fleet captain Gascoigne saw the lethality of the rifled guns, and suddenly fell into an ice cave.

If Li Zhi's ironclad ship just now robbed the T-shaped advantageous position and made the Dutch and British panic, now the Europeans are in despair.

The Ming fleet fired at a distance of 700 meters, and most of the guns of the combined fleet at this distance could not penetrate the enemy ships, and only the heaviest cannons could break through the armor of the ironclads. However, each of Li Zhi's rifled guns could penetrate the hull of the battleship.

Moreover, the combined fleet uses solid shells, and even if it hits an enemy ship, it will only make a hole, and if you are lucky, you can kill one or two sailors. However, Li Zhi's flowering bomb can set off a big explosion inside the battleship, and even sink the sturdy battleship.

The battle was lost.

Gascoigne could no longer stand, and he used all the strength of his hands to prop himself up on the railing, barely succumbing to the deck.

Adalbert's face was equally pale, and his body trembled uncontrollably.

But he's ready to make the last struggle.

The Dutch gritted his teeth and shouted: "The whole fleet abandons the battle line, approaches at full speed, and gathers in the center to shoot at the enemy ships!" ”