The sailors of the bottom compartment of the battleship Emanuel saved the fate of Admiral Fernand at this critical moment, and the timely closing of the bomb hatch avoided the doom of two 305mm high-explosive shells exploding in the forward compartment, however, at this point, the fate of the battleship Emanuel is obviously difficult to reverse, the front main gun was completely destroyed, which means that half of the combat power is lost, and what is more terrible is that at this moment, the twin 305mm main guns in the tail of the battleship cannot be pointed at the battleship Suleiman the Magnificent, which is firing at full strength on the T-position.

Rumble...... Boom Boom Boom ......

Seeing the third Ottoman battleship on the flank, the Orhan the Great, come into view, and when the side chord of the opposing battleship suddenly spewed out at least a dozen huge naval gun flames, Admiral Fernand had already understood his bad luck and actually ran into the entire naval strength of the Ottoman Navy here in one go...... And these three Ottoman warships, which have always been the object of the Italian Navy's exercises, he naturally understands the strength of the other party.

With the advent of dreadnoughts, countries began to turn to the construction of expensive and more expensive new warships, but in fact, the progress of the Italian Navy was not obvious, although the Italian naval designers seem to be the first in Europe to propose the concept of installing all single-caliber main guns, but the technology of Italian naval guns is clearly not enough to support this theory.

However, the Ottoman Navy, as the main opponent, has the latest warships built in China in the Far East, and the tonnage, main guns, and secondary guns have comprehensively surpassed the latest Queen Margarita class of the Italian Navy...... Of course, the Italian Navy never took the Ottoman Navy seriously, because the history of the old empire's new navy was so short that the Ottoman Navy did not even have decent armored ships before the purchase of Chinese warships.

But in the next three minutes, Admiral Fernand discovered that his understanding of the Ottoman Navy and almost all of the Italian naval officers was a huge and irreparable mistake......

At 3:15, the Xia-class battleship Orhan the Great, which appeared on the battlefield immediately after the Muradan the Great, fired the first salvo at a distance of 4,700 meters, and the target was still the battleship Emanuel, which was trying to turn away from the unfavorable battle situation, and 6 330-kilogram high-explosive shells roared, tearing through the drizzle and fog between the sea and the sky, and the first shot made a beautiful pinch.

However, in the face of the strong armor of the Italian battleship, the choice of high-explosive shells was obviously a small mistake, when a black fog rose into the sky, Rear Admiral François on the Suleiman the Magnificent held the telescope tightly but showed a disappointed expression, this accurately hit the armor of the main armor belt on the rear side of the battleship, obviously smashed a shocking crater, but failed to penetrate the opponent's 250mm Havin armor belt.

"General, the protection of the Italian battleships is good, I think that all ships should be ordered to attack with armor-piercing shells until the enemy ships are completely destroyed in counterattack fire!" Chen Han stood in front of the Rafale Shooting Commander Observation Scope, and immediately put forward his construction in a loud voice, and this construction was immediately transformed into a new combat order.

At this moment, the 4 Italian battleships, led by the flagship Emmanuel, have begun to accelerate their turn, trying to transform the battle form that occupies the T-shaped position, and the battleship Emanuel finally got the first chance to counterattack after being continuously attacked for nearly 10 minutes, but because the Suleiman the Magnificent has fully entered full speed operation at this moment, the speed of the battleship has almost reached the limit of 23 knots, and the Emmanuel has just climbed from 12 knots to 16 knots......

In this way, the Suleiman the Magnificent successfully controlled the best firing position at the top of the T-position with complete speed, and it was completely impossible for the battleship Emmanuel to point its sidestring fire at the Suleiman the Magnificent, so the first round of counterattacks ordered by General Fernand was directed at the battleship Orhan the Great, which was the last to enter the combat position......

The large-angle steering brought about by the battleship's strict tilt sideways, which made this round of shelling, the difficulty of hitting the opponent increased several times, and after the completion of the firing of the main gun and the second-stage 203mm main gun, Fernand will regret to see a bunch of outrageous waves, the only 203mm armor-piercing shell that hit the main armor belt on the rear side of the Orhan the Great could not penetrate the carburized armor belt of the opponent's 280mm or more.

Suddenly, a huge lightning bolt pierced the gray sky and rained down, and the electric light rolled in from far and near with the sound of thunder, and the original drizzle suddenly intensified, and the original bright white of the sky suddenly sank into gray......

Rumble...... Boom, boom, boom

The fierce main guns on the Suleiman the Magnificent sounded again, and the huge salvo kinetic energy violently pushed the battleship in the opposite direction, and the officer of the lookout pushed open the door of the command room violently, "Report, there is a thunderstorm warning on the fleet's advance, and the field of vision is obstructed, and it is difficult to judge the distance!" ”

Rear Admiral François at this moment broke out with the decision of the Turks, "Order, close the distance to the Emmanuel, attack with all your might, achieve the results as much as possible, and then fight a decisive battle with the other Italian ships!" ”

The gray Ionian Sea, huge and monstrous, the two fleets pounced on each other at full speed in an increasingly confused visual distance, neither of them was willing to lose in this decisive battle of narrow roads, but there was obviously only one result!

At 3:20, the Ottoman battleship led by Suleiman the Magnificent successfully forced the Emanuel battleship, which was counterattacking with all its might, to the point of no turn, and the three battleships firmly sandwiched the Italian battleship in the middle like a fist, and bombarded it at a close range of less than 2,500 meters with 18 305mm guns.

The Italians were obviously aware of the outcome of being besieged by several times the enemy at this distance, so the Emmanuel kept changing its turn and at the same time constantly firing heavily at any target that could be attacked with the remaining 305mm guns and four 203mm secondary guns, although the battleship Emanuel could reach speeds of more than 20 knots, but the whole acceleration process took at least 40 minutes, which finally led to the occurrence of the cups.

At 27 points, although the 305mm main gun in the tail of the battleship Emmanuel fired a round of high hits, two shells actually hit the front armor belt of the battleship Orhan the Great close at hand in the rain and fog at the same time, and after one shell penetrated the armor belt near the front of the side side, it exploded violently under the deck, but under this position was the coal bunker, although the explosion caused a fire, but there was no further effect.

The other 305mm shell that hit the front main gun position was a high-explosive shell, completely unable to penetrate the 350mm front armor belt of the turret that was pointing at him at the moment, although the huge impact of the explosion stunned several Ottoman artillery in the turret, but then, a fierce counterattack that broke out almost simultaneously in three directions completely sent the Italian battleship to hell.

At a distance of 2,500 meters, in fact, there is no longer such a distance in the Chinese Navy's exercises, and advanced fire control and firing commanders, even with a single gun position, can complete autonomous shooting within 9,000 meters under good observation conditions, but today's operations in low sea conditions will lead to the results of hand-to-hand combat between the battleships of both sides.

Boom Boom Boom ...... Boom Boom Boom ......

The ratio of 18 to 2 doomed the result of this round of hand-to-hand combat, the battleship was densely covered with burning and black smoke after shelling, so that the battleship Emmanuel was still clearly distinguishable in this poor vision, and the successive fierce shelling, armor-piercing shells gushing from all directions, all at once completely smashed this new battleship that had been in the water for only 6 years into a sieve.

At least half of the 18 armor-piercing shells hit the battleship Emanuel, which was turning, and the huge black plumes of smoke and fire that continued to rise in one minute appeared in various parts of the battleship, and the small-caliber secondary guns on each battleship were frantically pouring projectiles at a rate of at least 6 rounds per minute, so that the observation posts of each ship could not confirm the final hit.

Suddenly, almost everyone heard a harsh and dull loud pop in the rumbling cannon, and in an instant, the entire battlefield became extremely silent, and just a few seconds later, the battleship Emanuel, which was still desperately turning to the fleeing battleship, suddenly rose a puff of white smoke, and then, the stern, the front compartment, and the middle bilge of the battleship, a cloud of fire caught in the black smoke suddenly burst out.

Boom...... Boom Boom Boom ...... Boom......

A series of unbelievable strange explosions and crackling sounds rolled in, accompanied by the last earth-shattering explosion, Chen Han was also stunned to see that the Italian battleship was blown up into at least 4 pieces at once, and the huge explosion cloud that rose from the stern directly blew the turret of the remaining twin 305mm main gun on the tail of the Italian battleship obliquely......

What a lot of blasting energy, that turret is at least thirty or forty tons of big guys!

"Report! The Italian fleet has collapsed and is trying to flee in the southwest, west, and northwest directions! Just as Rear Admiral François was shocked by the feat of sinking the enemy ship, the lookout officer again rushed in and reported loudly.

He glanced at Chen Han, who was directing the artillery bombardment, and immediately shouted without hesitation: "Order, split up the pursuit, we are responsible for another Italian battleship, Muradan pursues the fleeing battleship to the west, and the Orhan pursues the battleship in the northwest!" ”

At this time, Chen Han turned his head inappropriately and said: "General, immediately send a war report, we must let Istanbul and Europe know about the rise of the Ottoman Navy as soon as possible!" ”——

A Chinese merchant ship sailed into Alexandria, Egypt, and several British soldiers hurriedly boarded the merchant ship for inspection, but soon left the merchant ship again, which surprised Rear Admiral Kelmer, who stayed in the cockpit and changed into civilian clothes, you know, Chinese carried most of the weapons and ammunition in front of him, including 100mm field guns, into the ship, and these British soldiers did not get out of the cabin at all......

However, what does this have to do with him, the important thing is that he has received important capital to support his military career, and in North Africa, he will command an army of his own for the first time. R1152