When the fleet of the Eight-Nation Coalition finally assembled from its own ports in the Mediterranean, after bargaining, an agreement was reached, and England finally agreed that the fleets of the Oros and the Japanese would pass through the Suez Canal, and the Combined Fleet of the Oros and the Japanese, which had already advanced a long distance south, had to turn back again and take a shortcut from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

As a result, the Oro fleet has been delayed for nearly half a month.

The Huaxia Empire knew the exact itinerary of the coalition forces and would definitely take action, which would continue to delay the itinerary of the coalition fleet.

When the Otto-Japanese fleet entered the Suez Canal, two large-tonnage transport freighters in the Suez Canal exploded violently, blocking the way of the Otto-Japanese fleet.

The fleet had no choice but to stop where it was, waiting for the Suez Canal authorities to clear the channel before entering the Red Sea.

Unexpectedly, another large-tonnage freighter exploded behind the Otto-Japanese fleet, blocking the passage of the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, which completely trapped the E-Japanese fleet in the middle of the Suez Canal.

Since the entire fleet was blocked in the Suez Canal, the engineering ships that cleared the channel could not pass, and the work of clearing the channel was difficult.

The commander of the fleet was the famous Admiral Stepan Osipovi Makarov, a scholar-type soldier who had written a number of naval academic monographs, and in the face of this sudden situation, he quickly made an appropriate decision:

After sending people to communicate with the Suez Canal authorities in the British colony, they used the main guns on the capital ship to bombard the shipwreck on the Red Sea side, hoping to blow the sunken ship to pieces and quickly enter the Red Sea.

It's just that the narrow channel of the Suez Canal can only accommodate a capital ship with a displacement of tens of thousands of tons rushing ahead, and Makarov handed over the task of shelling and sinking the ship to the main battleship Emperor Alexander III.

The Emperor Alexander III, with a full load displacement of 15,275 tons and four 305-mm guns as its main guns, cautiously drove to a distance of about 500 meters in front of the wreck to begin shelling, but the canal was so narrow that it could only be shelled with guns on the bow side.

The large and small guns of the bow of the Emperor Alexander III fired at the sunken ship, and such a freighter could not withstand the bombardment of the battleship's main guns, but in three minutes, everything that the sunken ship was exposed to the water was gone.

But the wreck, which blocked the channel under the water, did not disintegrate, and Makarov had to give the order to bombard the underwater part of the sunken ship.

Although the battleships were mighty, they were only used to sink enemy ships, not to clear the waterways, and the Emperor Alexander III could not completely blow up the sunken ship under the water for a whole day.

Makarov ordered the sailors to dive into the wreck and found a situation that almost collapsed: the wreck was not loaded with cargo, but with huge stones, and even if the wreck was completely scattered, the large stones remained in the channel, causing great trouble for the passage of the capital warships with huge displacement.

When Makarov learned the news, his heart was half cold, he knew that this must be the ghost of the Chinese Empire's lurkers in the Suez Canal, but he had no choice but to command the battleship Emperor Alexander III, which was at the forefront of the fleet, to continue to bombard and sink the ship, and communicate with the Canal Authority, requesting that the canal channel dredging tools be dispersed and transported to the front for dredging.

It took three days to remove the first shipwreck with stones from its hull, but when it was time to clean up the second shipwreck, the army found that four more large freighters had been blown up and sunk in the canal, and these freighters were full of huge stones.

The Canal Authority hastily transferred more than 30,000 troops from the Egyptian colonial government to defend both ends of the canal, and ordered all ships near the canal to stop and inspect before entering the canal.

This move was still very effective, and sure enough, no more shipwrecks were blown up and sunk in the canal to block the channel.

The canal crew, who had experience in cleaning up the first shipwreck, brought in more personnel and spent only ten days to clean up day and night, and several other shipwrecks were finally blown up and disintegrated, and all the debris in the channel was removed using dredging tools.

But on this night, the Hubei army and the Japanese army who participated in the cleaning of the channel fell asleep after a tiring day, and they were safe until dawn the next day, which made the sentry personnel a little relaxed.

Five small sampans suddenly appeared in the harbor on the side of the canal, rowing slowly towards the Otto-Japanese fleet, and when the sentry found them, it was too late, and suddenly there was a mechanical sound on the sampan, as if some mechanical device was at work to make the sampan accelerate suddenly.

The Hubei and Japanese sentries immediately opened fire on the sampan.

But a few bullets did not stop the sampan from moving forward, and the sentry tried to fire at the sampan, but it was too late, and the speed of the sampan became faster and faster, and one of them quickly crashed into the bow of the Japanese army Nisshin armored cruiser, and there was a violent explosion.

The remaining four sampans were sunk by battleship gunfire, and only one of them came into play, but it sank the Nisshin.

The armored cruiser Nisshin was built at the Ansaldo shipyard in ******, Italy, with a full load displacement of 7,698 tons, but it was blown up by three tons of explosives on the sampan and hit the bow torpedo storage, triggering a violent series of explosions.

It's an unbelievable offense.

A small sampan turned out to sink a large warship with a displacement of several thousand tons.

It was the intelligence officers of the Chinese Empire, inspired by Hu Zhen and with the close assistance of the African Kingdom of Digab, which is close to the Suez Canal, that blew up and sank the warship of the Japanese army in one fell swoop.

Later, the combined fleet salvaged the fragments of the small sampan and found that the small sampan was equipped with a simple engine, and the bow of the sampan was equipped with a huge magnet, which would accelerate and stick to the metal warship when it touched it, and automatically activate the explosive device. Before the explosion, the man who operated the small sampan jumped into the water and fled.

The sinking of an enemy armored cruiser was really nothing for the Huaxia Navy's record, but it was a Japanese warship that was blown up and sunk in the middle of the Suez Canal, blocking the allied fleet's shipping route to the Indian Ocean and delaying the movement of the European Combined Fleet.

Makarov still used heavy artillery bombardment to blow up the Nisshin and then tow it away.

The battleship sank in the canal, and unlike ordinary freighters, it was structurally sturdy, which was more difficult to blow up and tow away than ordinary freighters.

In order to clear the Nisshin, the coalition fleet nervously strengthened its vigilance and cleared the channel day and night, which delayed for another five days.

The shipwrecks in the channel had been cleared, and the time had finally reached the time when the huge fleet could sail through, it was already the twentieth day since the arrival of the Ota fleet in the Suez Canal.

At this time, the fleet of the Eight-Nation Alliance had also passed through the Mediterranean Sea and arrived at the entrance of the Suez Canal, where it could join forces with the United Fleet and advance eastward together.

But in any case, the delay in the Suez Canal gave the Chinese Empire another twenty days to prepare for war. (To be continued.) )