Chapter 78: An Accident Within an Accident

When night fell, Qin Kai was staring at the map with Lu Han and Xu Shoushan to discuss, when they arrived at Guangyi, the observation post on the mast happened to see the end of the generalized artillery battle, and immediately sounded the alarm, Qin Kai heard the rumbling cannon sound in the distance, and originally thought that he had caught up with Liu Shen's fleet, but who expected to encounter the French fleet!

The current shape is becoming more and more ploppy, and to the south is the area that the French are currently controlling, and the Viet French have already had an artillery battle in the broad sense, which means that the French are indeed starting to move, and now is the time to make a choice, return to Hue, or move on.

"Supervisor, the other side has three warships, and the tonnage is not very large, so it stands to reason that it should not take the initiative to attack this generalized battery?" Xu Shoushan raised his own suspicions.

Lu Han immediately realized an important piece of information, and immediately said: "This means that the French are very determined to fight in the broad sense, and they heard a few rounds of artillery today, which could be that the other party is testing Xìng's attack!" ”

Qin Kai nodded, and suddenly asked: "Gengtang, Yù Shan, I think so too, the French will not come to attack this broken place for no reason, if I am the commander of the French fleet, I would rather bypass this broad sense and attack Da Nang behind, after the occupation, this broad sense is a dead land, and it will be broken without attacking!" ”

"Superintendent, you think this is part of the French plan? Is it true that they are against us? Lu Han heard the meaning of Qin Kai's words, but immediately shook his head again, "This seems a little unlikely!" ”

"It's really unlikely that it will be aimed at us alone, after all, we only have two warships, but if the French know that the five warships of the Nanyang Naval Division are patrolling the South China Sea, what do you think they will do?"

"Two possibilities, attack to annihilate the Nanyang Naval Division, and the second to intercept the Nanyang Naval Division in a broad sense, so that the Qing fleet will retreat in the face of difficulties......" Xu Shoushan immediately expressed his opinion.

"Yes, the three ships are too far apart today to know what they are, but I think their purpose in the broad sense is to intercept our first fleet...... Or the outpost fleet of the French army, followed by other fleets," Qin Kai threw out his hypothesis, judging from historical data, the commander of the French Jiāo Toe China Navy Gu Ba is definitely a militant, since he is ready to go to war, it seems too big to send only three warships to attack one target.

The three of them deliberated for a while, and finally reached an agreement, first sailing the fleet to the Qingjiang River in the broad sense, and starting tomorrow, the fastest 501 ship will rush forward to reconnoitre, while the Ji'an ship will take the other two merchant ships under training to the rear 10 nautical miles, and will temporarily maintain this situation in the two days to observe the situation in the broad sense.

Early the next morning, Tian Sè actually changed the good weather a few days ago, and it looked a little heavy, according to the plan, the officers and men on the 501 ship got up early, and today's routine training has been canceled, and everyone from the officers to the soldiers has received instructions for first-level combat readiness, which means that war may happen at any time!

Therefore, from the workers in the boiler room to the officers in the turret, they all began to check the equipment on the ship early in the morning, Chen Mo is now temporarily assigned to the position of the No. 1 main gun for training, to be honest, when he came in on the first day, he was really startled by this huge steel can, this long turret, even the British battleship has not seen anything like it, obviously there is no need to ask, this must be designed by the Qin supervisor...... A few days after he said this, his ears were calloused.

A shè strike group consists of 10 soldiers, two rotating xiǎo groups, this artillery shè is a heavy body lì work, although the shells, fire yào packing and filling are done by the lifting machine, but cleaning the gun chamber and swinging the gun latch can exhaust people to death.

Chen Mo is now arranged next to the shè strike officer, and he has no special tasks, anyway, he is basically a miscellaneous man. The officer was Tang Qingshan, a student of the Mawei Ship Master School in 1876, but he didn't have much politeness to Chen Mo, who was personally brought by Xu Shoushan, and Chen Mo's first job was to lead people to clean up the artillery inside and out.

After completing the task, Chen Mo found that Tang Qingshan was standing in front of an instrument observing the situation outside, and before he could take out a pen and record something in the notebook he carried, he turned his head to look at a large piece of paper with dense numbers written on the side.

"Chen Mo, haven't you seen this?" Tang Qingshan lowered his head and wrote something, but suddenly asked.

"Yes, Lord Tang!"

"This is ......," Tang Qingshan suddenly changed his words halfway through his words, "This is a GX10 baseline rangefinder, which can determine the distance between the target and our artillery!" Chen Mo, come and see! ”,

Chen Mo had already understood the first half of the words of grinding his ears, this was the masterpiece of the Qin Supervision Office, he hurriedly went up and observed the peaks on the coastline in the distance through the guò rangefinder, Tang Qingshan explained the calculation method again, he was not a specialty in this area, and he couldn't figure it out after pondering for a while.

"Lord Tang, is this accurate?"

"Of course it's accurate, 5000m is said to have an error of about 150m, and the rangefinder in the command room is even larger, which is higher than this jīng degree!" Chen Mo was immediately attracted by this thing, and stayed next to Tang Qingshan to learn how he tested.

In the command room, Qin Kai looked at the chart, Lu Han was holding a steel ruler and a triangle plate on the side, and after a while, he looked up and said: "Supervisor, if we sail in this outer circle, we can find the enemy at the first time, as long as we turn, they will not be able to judge the size of our battleship at the longest distance, so we can choose the opportunity to move!" The only downside is that it's a long detour! ”

"Gengtang, you have an idea about this matter, the enemy is strong and I am weak, we must pay attention step by step! Reserve the way back! Qin Kai thought absentmindedly.

At this time, outside the port of Qiujiang in South Vietnam, the three warships of the Destan, La Peruz and Nielli also left the port early after completing the supply, after all, the patrol task in the past few days has been arduous, and the Qing fleet that came to the South China Sea to inspect has not been caught, which makes Colonel Karrok quite angry, so he ordered today to open the farthest sight distance and go all the way up from Qiujiang.

After sailing for four days, the fleet approached the vicinity of the battery in the broad sense again, and Colonel Gallok saw that he had been running in vain for half a day, and a sudden thought flashed through him, and he hoisted the concentrated flag again and contracted the fleet.

Major Sikov on the side was surveying and mapping on the chart, and when he saw that the colonel ordered the fleet to assemble, he asked, "Colonel, don't you continue to cruise to Da Nang today?" ”

"It's been cruising for a few days, if the Qing fleet is coming, it should have come a long time ago, we replenished a lot of ammunition yesterday, I think we can take advantage of the fact that it's still early, and clean up the batteries here, if we can defeat the Vietnamese army here by the way, it will be even more perfect!" Colonel Gallok was clearly a little disgusted with the idle cruises of the past few days, and he needed a way to vent, and destroying the two nasty batteries here was undoubtedly a good way to do it.

As a staff officer of Gallok's partner for several years, Major Sikov naturally knew the temper of the young French admiral, and he had always been the type to make decisions without hesitation, so he said, "Yesterday at the 3500 shè distance, the fleet's artillery hit rate was very unsatisfactory, and today you can try to get down to the shè shot." ”

Gallok laughed and said, "That's what I mean, command...... La Perouse arrives first and strikes closely! Distance: 2500m. ”

According to the shè range of yesterday's battery, 2500m is also a very safe distance, so the La Perlouse, after receiving the order, did not hesitate to turn the rudder to the coastline, while the other two cruisers remained at a distance of 3500 to participate in the shelling.

The generalized fort obviously observed the approach of the French ** ship, and the commander of today's artillery battle was still General Wu Fang, seeing that the other party fell into the trap set by his eldest brother yesterday, he couldn't help but be secretly excited, "Raise the black flag, still show weakness, look at the other party's movements!" Only 4mén artillery was left to fire! ”

After the La Perlouse approached the south side of the battery, the speed had been reduced to 6 knots, at this distance, even the 120mm guns on the side of the ship could participate in the attack, under the order of the shè strike officer, the elevation angle of the main gun port slowly raised, obviously the shè strike officers all chose to throw shè attack, directly shelling the inside of the battery!

Today, the first round of attacks was launched by the Vietnamese, and after thick black smoke rose from the battery, several solid shells smashed into the water two hundred meters away! The La Perlouse immediately responded with a 120mm gun on the side of the ship as quickly as possible, and after a muffled sound of shelling, two shells flew towards the distant battery.

The feeling of shè hand was very bāng, two shells hit the stone fence on the outside of the fort, and after one explosion, a large depression was blown into the wall of the fort, and the other shot hit the protective fence on the side of the fort, and a huge stone was blown off and fell from the fort into the sea.

This is not a sudden exertion of artillery, at a distance of 2500m, the artillery almost entered the range of straight shè, the arc of the shells became xiǎo, aiming became much easier, and now maintained at a speed of 6 knots, the impact on the shelling was also the most xiǎo chengdù.

Then the main and secondary guns of the La Perouse also let out a roar, and the hit rate was also greatly improved, and a 200mm cannon shell directly hit the wall of the battery, causing the collapse of a corner of the battery again. ,

On the other hand, the shelling of the Destein and the Nielli, the difference in distance of this kilometer, the hit rate of shè is absolutely worlds apart, and none of the six main and auxiliary shells of the two cruisers hit.

There was another counterattack on the battery, and the speed of the counterattack was significantly faster today, which surprised Colonel Karlok, but what does it matter, now it is like a giant and a dwarf are having a boxing match, and the giant wants to fight the dwarf there, and the dwarf can't reach anything except the giant's feet!

"Continue the shelling, away from the rear cut outer circle, into the channel of the La Perlouz," Gallok thought for a moment and gave a new order! However, there was a feeling of uneasiness that inexplicably swept through his mind.

The slowly moving La Perouse had already fired two rounds of shells, and the 120-caliber gunwald had shelled as many as eight times, and the outer wall of the Vietnamese battery's southern fort was covered with rubble, and the French soldiers were very excited to see it.

Soon the Destein and the Nielli accelerated into the outer channel, preparing to detour to the La Perouse and attack the South Fort in the broad sense at a distance of 2,500 meters.

However, suddenly, there were several red flags on the Vietnamese battery, which made Gallok a little surprised, but an even more unexpected situation happened, the two Vietnamese batteries with weak artillery, suddenly the artillery roared, and Gallok glanced at the flashes of the batteries and turned out to be close to 10, and he immediately realized that the Vietnamese of the dog/day/game had played a trick......

At this time, the ironclad cruiser La Perlouse also fell into an embarrassing situation at this time, after the steam engine ship slowed down, it was a delicate job to re-accelerate, and it would take at least 10 minutes to complete the pressurization of the boiler, but fortunately, it had not yet anchored, and the battleship was crawling at a speed of 4 knots, if the ship was completely parked, it would be depressing. Seeing the solid iron eggs jī around the battleship, the French soldiers on the La Perouse felt panicked for the first time.

The front main gun suppressed the south battery, and the tail gun and mid-waist 120mm guns suppressed the north battery, and the commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dick, showed his composure, and he immediately took the best plan to save La Perlouse. The loaded artillery immediately carried out a round of shè bombardment on the north side of the battery, and the shells only hit the stone fence of the fort, but the movement caused obviously slowed down the efficiency of the Vietnamese who were shèring.

It wasn't until the third round of artillery fire that the Vietnamese's ploy finally paid off, a solid iron ball hit the middle mast impartially, and the huge kinetic energy completely penetrated the top mast, and pierced the soldier on the lookout post directly! The whole lookout fell with a bang! Another iron ball concentrated on the bow of the ship, but it only smashed the thin armor of the ship's board into a big dòng, and then fell into the cabin, and did not produce more damage!

The slamming lookout finally pierced the nerves of the French, and the 200mm main gun roared again, this time the god of luck finally favored the Gallic jī, and a heavy cannon directly hit a gun emplacement, causing a fierce explosion, and even saw a mén cannon being torn off the battery by the blasting force and falling into the vast sea under the mountain, and the fire seemed to have caused something on the gun emplacement to burn violently, and for a while, there was a thick smoke on the left side of the south battery, and the fire was in the sky!

However, the next round of artillery bombardment by the Vietnamese also immediately returned the favor, and an iron ball concentrated on the outer wall of the bridge, but failed to penetrate the 130mm steel armor protection position, and the huge impact sound startled Lieutenant Colonel Dick in the command room! Even more unfortunate was the 120mm gun emplacement on the left side of the La Perlouse, where another iron ball hit two soldiers who were loading shells, and finally detonated a 120mm shell on the ground, killing seven gunners and a xiǎo fire.

The two sides squandered the shell in the shè that approached each other, but the next five rounds of shelling did not accomplish anything, and by this time the Destein and Nielli had just finished turning, and Colonel Gallok had already issued a flag for the cruiser La Perlouse to return to the group.

Suddenly, the alarm bell indicating the location of the lookout post rang, startling Colonel Gallok, who was considering how to teach the Vietnamese a second lesson, and immediately an officer came in to report, "Colonel, there is an unknown fleet directly in front of us, far away, in unknown numbers!" ”

Straight ahead...... That is the territory of our French, could it be that Vice Admiral Gu Ba led the fleet to support? It's impossible, I'm just on the fire...... Could it be the Qing fleet? That's impossible, how did they get to the back of the road!! ,

"Order La Perlouse to follow the fleet, and we'll catch up and see!" Karlok immediately ordered.

With the detachment of the La Perlouse from the Broad Battery, this great victory in the later propaganda of the Vietnamese came to an end, and the Vietnamese achieved the result of killing less than 10 French soldiers, but it caused unpleasant problems to the cruiser La Perlouse, and after Lieutenant Commander Dick gave the order to follow the fleet, he was immediately busy directing the extinguishing of the fire, and after the loss of the first lookout, the second lookout, which was obviously low, did not find that a mast appeared at sea level at the far end behind the stern.

The 501 ship has observed the ongoing artillery battle in the distance, in the command room, Lu Han and Xu Shoushan are urgently negotiating, now is not the time to rush up to attack at all, the flames rising from the generalized battery in the distance show the good combat power of the opposing battleship, of course, they did not expect that the Laperuz, which is in charge of the rear of the opposing fleet, will be a ghostly destroyed lookout. And it was this little accident that was an important factor that changed the trend of the entire battle.

"Let's continue to observe from a distance," Lu Han drew an outer arc on the chart, "Let's cut the course of this outer arc and see what the other party wants to do?" How do you always beat half and slip away, these French people are really strange! ”

Qin Kai was in the command room at this time, but he was holding the GX10 baseline rangefinder, and he didn't come to get involved in this matter, the first battle he faced, he still had some strange feelings in his heart, although he was full of confidence, but he was very anxious, and suddenly a cute smile of an NV child appeared in his mind out of place, by the way, he hadn't communicated with Qi Mei NV for several months......

After sailing on the sea for a few days in fear, Commander Liu finally saw the long-lost coastline early this morning, and now he finally stopped sailing, this coastline must be somewhere in Vietnam, as for where it is, the Nanyang guide can't figure it out, but one thing is certain, to the north and then to the north, there is the way back!

This time I went back to the Xishan Temple to ask for a sign that really worked, every qiē turned evil into auspiciousness, Liu Shen sat on the bridge and was secretly proud, and he must put on a stick of incense after he went back...... No, I still have to donate 20 taels...... 15 taels, more than the last time, the Bodhisattva will definitely be even happier.

"My lord, General Wan's super military ship in front seems to be a warning!" The master on the side suddenly reminded out of place.

"Warning!" Liu Shen was stunned for a moment, jumped up, took a clairvoyant look, and it was true that the red flag of warning was hung on the super military ship - 3 enemy ships ahead!

TMD, it's really a pot that can't be opened, it's impossible to retreat now, it's the territory of the French how to run behind, Vietnam on the left, and Vietnam on the right, and it's a question of whether the fuel is enough! Liu Shen's face darkened a lot all of a sudden......