"Fire!"

The British sailors on the cruiser Yurias, following the orders of the commander, operated the 100-pounder Armstrong gun to fire shells at the enemy warship, and one shell after another filled with nitro explosives continued to fall on the hull of the Chinese warship, exploding dazzling sparks on the hull. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

For the Royal Navy, the use of the Armstrong gun was entirely influenced by the Chinese Navy, which had sent the US Far East Fleet to the icy bottom of the sea a few years earlier with its sharp breech-loading rifled guns.

After that naval battle, rear-loading rifled guns, new explosives, and new instantaneous fuses became new benchmarks for navies of various countries. The Royal Navy acquired the latter two directly from China, while the former used rear-loading rifled guns produced by Armstrong.

However, because the gun was too sophisticated to be produced, it was still used by large warships until a few years ago. However, in the past few years, with the solution of production problems, especially the reality of the use of breech-loading rifled guns by the navies of various countries under the stimulation of the Chinese Navy, the Royal Navy has begun to promote the breech-loading of naval guns.

However, compared to the wedge rear-loading guns used by the Chinese Navy, the Armstrong gun was extremely cumbersome to operate, but compared to the front-loading gun, it had a longer range and faster rate of fire. However, even so, it was difficult for the shells it fired to penetrate the heavy steel armor of the "Hubei", and even the armor of the "Wuchang" was difficult to penetrate.

The shells that landed on the battleship "Hubei" were like dazzling fireworks, exploding dazzling sparks, and although the steel fragments flew sideways on the deck, they sometimes took the lives of the sailors on the deck, causing a large number of casualties, but in the eyes of the British sailors, they continued to sail without any reaction.

At this time, the Hubei, Guangdong, Wuchang and completely by virtue of their rough skin and thick flesh were there to meet the British fire.

But when the British fleet came into view, the two twin 254 mm turrets in the bow and stern began to turn, and with the help of steam engines, the heavy armored turrets rotated and pointed at the target, the cruiser Yuriaris.

When the huge barrel was pointed at the enemy, a thought suddenly came to the minds of the British sailors on the cruiser Yuriaris.

My God!

In the next moment, they saw two huge balls of smoke erupt from the huge barrel.

"Put!"

With the order of the gun commander in the turret, the two 254 mm main guns of the front turret of the "Hubei" were aimed at the cruiser Yuriaris less than 800 meters away at the same time and opened fire, and the smoke and smoke from the muzzle of the guns instantly enveloped half of the warship.

After a long period of silence, the Hubei finally launched a counterattack!

In just an instant, the roar of the 254 mm cannon resounded throughout the ocean, and even those watching the battle in Cologne, a few nautical miles away, could feel the roar of the giant cannon coming from the ocean.

Because of the extreme proximity of the two sides, and the smokeless propellant used by the Chinese Navy gave it a higher muzzle velocity, and even before the recoiled impact of the giant cannon stopped, one of the shells accurately hit the cruiser Yuriaris.

Despite the extremely sensitive tubes used to fire the shells, the high-speed, 500-pound high-explosive shells still penetrated the wooden hull of the cruiser Yuriaris, and only at the moment when the tail entered the compartment, it exploded violently .......

The power of the tens of kilograms of high explosives in the shells was amazing, and in the violent explosion, the entire amidships of the cruiser Yuriaris were blown away, and in the huge cloud of explosion smoke, an Armstrong cannon could be faintly seen blown into the air.

Another shell that did not hit the warship was a near-miss, and the impact of the shell that exploded in the sea and the steel fragments tore the stern of the cruiser Yuriaris apart with a single blow.

Under normal circumstances, it is difficult to sink a wood-hulled warship, because wood itself has its own buoyancy, but now, the cruiser Yuriaris in the shell completely subverted this common sense, and in a violent explosion, its amidships broke, and it sank straight into the sea without even knowing that the sailors on the warship jumped into the water.

"The cruiser Yuriaris is finished......"

Even before the Royal Navy officers and men behind were saddened by the sinking of the cruiser Yuriaris, the stern turret of the battleship "Hubei" also sounded, and the battleship "Canton" also opened fire on the backward wooden-hulled warships of the British fleet.

This naval battle is no longer a simple naval battle, but has evolved into a massacre!

It was a one-sided slaughter!

If it weren't for the slow rate of fire of the main guns, the rate of fire of one shot per 2 minutes limited the play of four ironclad ships, the naval battle might have ended even in just a few minutes.

Although the rate of fire of the main guns was extremely slow, the secondary guns of the four warships were not idle, compared to the main guns, the 150 mm secondary guns of the Hubei-class combat ships could fire one shell per minute, while the 120 mm secondary guns used by the "Wuchang-class" armored cruisers had a slightly faster rate of fire.

"Fire!"

The gunners of the sub-guns on the side of the gun, howling excitedly, loaded the shells into the chambers, charged the cartridges, and pulled the fire rope, although the whole cabin was shrouded in gunsmoke, but the faces of the gunners were all unconcealable with excitement.

Through the armored gun window, you can clearly see that the warships of the British Royal Navy, which had flaunted their might, were struggling and twisting in the shelling.

Although the power of the secondary guns is relatively limited compared to the main guns, the power of picric acid explosives is amazing, and those British warships are all blown up with thousands of holes, and the huge table-like gaps blown up in the hull of the ships are simply unstoppable.

And what is more deadly is the flame - this is the biggest characteristic of picric acid explosives, after the explosion, it can even burn on the surface of the sea, and the wooden warship will become the best fuel, at the same time as the shell explodes, the wooden hull, deck is also ignited, although the warship did not immediately sink to the bottom of the sea, but without exception was swallowed by the flames, as for the British sailors on board, not only need to endure the burning of the fire, but also need to endure different pungent yellow smoke, It was a deadly poisonous gas produced when a picric acid explosive burned after it exploded.

The naval battle has turned into a catastrophe.

For the British sailors at the center of the disaster, they did not even have the power to fight back, but struggled powerlessly in the flames and poisonous smoke.

In the blazing flames, the ammunition on the deck was constantly ignited and detonated, which further exacerbated the defeat of the British fleet.

With a loud and violent explosion, a British battleship that had not yet identified the name of the ship exploded in the cabin, and the violent explosion even blew up a boiler weighing more than ten tons into the sky, and the boiler spewed white steam in the air.

Only the explosion of the ammunition depot could have been so violent, and when the boiler fell in mid-air, the warship, which had been blown in two, turned into the sea like a weighing stone falling into the water, and the British sailors on board sank with the warship without even rushing to escape.

Witnessing the sinking of the cruiser Amphitrite, the British sailors on the Crown, who had been seriously flooded, were all stunned, they were not even under it, they were desperately trying to extinguish the flames on the deck with buckets before, but looked in horror at the Amphitrite that sank into the water like an iron ingot.

Now one thought pops into each of their minds - we're finished!

"No more......"

I don't know who first shouted this sentence, and then without waiting for others to react, he jumped into the sea, and the other sailors saw this scene and all made the most direct reaction - jumping into the sea.

As sailors, they know that this is the warm Caribbean Sea, not the icy North Sea, and that it is only a few nautical miles from land, and that they may even swim ashore, of course, by that time, they will become prisoners of the Chinese.

But it's better than just dying for nothing.

Of course, there are also some people who hesitate there, they look at the officers in a daze, look at their captains, and in the face of the gaze of their subordinates, the officers also don't know what to do, whether to abandon the ship, or continue to fight?

But in the next moment, the Chinese navy's shells made a decision for them - a 254-millimeter shell accurately hit its bow, blowing its bow into the sky, and if it were not for the wooden warship, perhaps at this time, it would have sunk to the bottom of the sea like an iron ingot.

There was no longer any hesitation, and in the face of the reality that the warship was completely incapacitated, the officers immediately gave the order to abandon the ship/

Now there is no need for orders from the officers, everyone knows that they are competing with death, and if they abandon the ship a minute earlier, the probability of survival will be higher. Despite this, they did not panic, but first raised the white flag to indicate that they had renounced the battle, and at the same time began to lower the wooden sampan from the side of the gunwale.

"Sir, the British have surrendered!"

On the bridge of the "Hubei", there was a burst of excited cheers because of the raising of the white flag, and for any navy soldier, they knew what it meant. Almost no one has ever been able to force the Royal Navy to raise that white flag on the battlefield, and now, the white flag raised by this Royal Navy warship is telling them the truth that the Royal Navy is not invincible.

In the face of the excitement and congratulations of his subordinates, Zhang Di seemed very calm, he just said calmly.

"It's just a warship, it's not a big deal, tell the whole ship, we're going to annihilate the Royal Navy here today!"

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