Chapter 79: The Battle in the South China Sea (1)

But now is not the time to sit down and make a cup of tea and discuss slowly, Liu Shen is not stupid at all, he immediately decided, the other side has three warships, there are 5 on his side, this naval battle, he Liu Shen has indeed not fought yet, but he has also participated in the exercises conducted by the Beiyang Fleet.

The Beiyang Naval Division, not known as the elite of the Qing Dynasty, this does not hit a fixed target, it is also measured and measured with a rope, and it is only shot at more than 1,000 yards before the cannon shoots, and it is five against three on his side, even if he can't beat it, can't he escape?

The flagship "Chengqing" immediately hung out the banner of an oblique advance, and the five warships shortened their spacing, preparing to bypass the enemy from the upper right corner in a straight formation, and at the same time sailing sideways upward, and also forming a pattern of the main guns forward, if the opponent wanted to intercept himself, he had to fight with the five front main guns of his fleet.

Wan Dafu as Liu Shen's love will take the lead with the "Wu" warship, ready to break north from the right side of the sea, at this time the queue order is "Wu", "Chengqing", "Yuankai", "Dengyingzhou", "Jingyuan", Liu Shen is also considered an old man, his own warship is also familiar, the main gun of the Nanyang Naval Division rotates left and right in the arc of Xiaoxiao, only about 15o degrees, which causes only the ship to the enemy, can effectively swing the power of the main gun.

But obviously, if the ship is against the enemy, it will soon enter a close-range battle of flat fire between the two sides, everyone shoots at each other's muzzles, Liu Shen is shocked when he thinks about it, Liu Shen does not intend to achieve his own reputation in the South China Sea thousands of miles away, so he chooses to advance sideways upward, if the other party wants to intercept him, he must also turn sideways and advance to the front of his own route, in that case, his own artillery can also wield power.

Now, the French flags on the three battleships on the opposite side have been clearly visible, Liu Shen actually still has a glimmer of hope in his heart, it is best that the three battleships in front are here to play soy sauce, and the two sides will go their separate ways as soon as they see each other, so he still hung out the flag of not firing first. This order is not difficult to carry out for the next three ships, but as the vanguard of the fleet, the "Wu" ship, at this time, Wan Dafu is somewhat depressed.

He could see the battleship on the opposite side clearly, and his own battleship immediately turned around and pounced on it violently, if he said that the other party just came to say hello and greet each other, even he didn't believe it, but this was not a request to fire first...... This battle is really embarrassing.

The pro-soldier next to him saw General Wan's strange expression, and he didn't give an order, so he had to ask: "General, there is still an order waiting for the artillery over there, ...... you see?"

Wan Dafu glared at his own soldiers, "Look at what, I don't have any orders, I ordered to load the shells for me, even the Green cannon will also send someone to load it, as long as the opposite battleship has a shot, we will immediately return fire!" ”

Liu Shen's fleet sailed straight up in the direction of 6o degrees obliquely, and at this time, the "Jingyuan" warship with the tail sailed only 9 knots, in order to maintain the formation, so the entire fleet could only cruise at 9 knots, and the three French battleships on the opposite side did not show weakness and caught up from the front with an inward arc.

In terms of inward arc, the opponent's battleship obviously wants to make one more turn, but after the corner is over, it can form a way in the same direction as Liu Shen's fleet and fully wield the full firepower of the cruiser. The distance between the two sides has been rapidly shortened from the original 7 kilometers to 5 kilometers, but the movements and ships displayed by the three battleships on the opposite side made Liu Shen immediately understand the result of a cup, and the degree of his own fleet was completely incomparable to that of the other party.

Just by visually inspecting the ship, the other side is already cruising at a speed of 9 knots faster than its own, estimated at about 14 knots. In this naval battle, the degree of disparity is a fatal weakness, not to mention the gap of more than 5o......

5km…… 4km…… The distance between the two fleets is getting tighter and tighter, and at this time, the opposite battleship has hung out a flag asking Liu Shen's fleet to stop and surrender, which completely shatters Liu Shen's extravagant hope, the muscles on his face twitched twice, and the teapot in his hand was smashed with a snap! "*** French devil, don't give Lao Tzu a way to live, and Lao Tzu won't give you face."

"TMD, order to prepare for battle, fire the damn within range, repel the French, and return to the horsetail with a heavy reward!" Liu Shen hysterically gave the order for a decisive battle.

At this time, Liu Shen's fleet had 5 iron-wedged battleships, 4 178mm guns, 1 15omm gun, and 5 13omm guns. The French Gallok fleet had 3 armored cruisers, 6 2OMM guns, 3 19OMM guns, and 12OMM guns, and the gun ratio was 1O:21, but the French cruiser's gunwales could only be put into two on one side when firing, so when the actual engagement, it was 1O:15, which was a great advantage in terms of firepower. ,

If Liu Shen goes all out to attack, the two sides will fight each other for life and death after entering the flat shooting distance, although it is self-evident that the other side will defeat these 5 warships, and it is bound to pay a certain price! After all, there is no huge difference in the caliber of the guns of the two sides, and at a flat firing distance, the shells of both sides can easily break through the opponent's ships.

The distance between the two sides was already close to 4 kilometers, and at this time, the French armored cruiser suddenly stopped the cut corner of the inner arc and turned straight towards the last battleship of Liu Shen's fleet, the "Jingyuan"!

The artillery battle started from the farthest Jingyuan gunboat, seeing that the other side was menacing, at a distance of 35oom, the 15omm main gun and the 13omm secondary gun on the "Jingyuan" opened fire at the same time,

This move of the other party is obviously intended to impact the sequence of Liu Shen's fleet, starting to attack from the tail of the fleet, the French are naturally not stupid at all, obviously they have observed that the Qing fleet on the opposite side has not installed a rotating battery like them, and the degree of the battleship is far lower than their own, in this case, if the attack is launched from the rear, the opponent's main gun will not be able to wave, which is obviously the best offensive plan.

"Wu", "Chengqing", "Yuan Kai", and "Deng Yingzhou" saw that the Jingyuan ship had opened fire, and naturally followed closely to shoot at the French cruiser, and after the artillery aimed nervously, Ling 1uan fired a cannonball! At this time, the formation of the two sides is in a closed figure-of-eight, but the direction of travel is opposite, and the distance between the two sides is about 3ooom, which is already within the firing range.

But in the naval warfare of this era, it was almost impossible to hit the wheel unless it was the favor of the god of luck, and the first round of 13o shells, including the 13omm secondary gun, were scattered on the sea, and the closest to the French gunboats was also more than 2oom.

After seeing the landing point of the shell, the gunners nervously loaded the shell again, and made slight adjustments based on experience, but it was only ...... For them, who only do reloading training for a year and may not shoot live ammunition once, this experience only comes from their own imagination.

To hit the three French cruisers advancing at all 15 knots, to be honest, it was indeed difficult for the Nanyang Naval Division, which rarely trained live ammunition, and seeing that the opponent's warships were all copied to his own back road, Liu Shen was naturally not stupid, and quickly thought of the reason.

To change this situation of being passively beaten, only by turning to the tail to chase the other party, and then carrying out an artillery attack in the way of the ship forward, can the power of the main gun be wielded, otherwise after the two sides pass by, at most a few rounds of attacks, all the warships on their side can only use the tail gun to counterattack, which is a cup to make matters worse.

But turning means losing the possibility of retreat...... After thinking about it, Liu Shen once again made a jaw-dropping decision, asking his men to hang out the flag for pressurizing the boiler room, advancing, and dividing the troops into two ways, and the French battleship was finally approaching the first round of shelling.

Colonel Karlok saw the roar of the opponent's artillery and the explosion of the cannon shells on the water, he was even more determined to copy the rear of the enemy, obviously the artillery of the Qing State is also a relatively good rifled gun, which is far more powerful than the iron ball fired on the generalized battery, in order to achieve a perfect victory, it is natural to make full use of his own artillery and degree advantages.

"Attack in sequence, the opponent's second battleship is the flagship, keep changing the flag, let the Nielli focus on taking care of it!" At this point, Gallok felt that he had taken the lead.

According to the sequence, at this time, the Desdan at the head of the row shelled the "Yuankai" ship in the third row, while the Nielli in the second position corresponded to the Chengqing, and the Laperuz attacked the "Wu" ship at the head of the line. During the flank attack, the three La Perlouz-class cruisers were capable of wielding fire with two 2OMM guns, one 19OMM secondary gun, and two 12OMM gunwales.

The black smoke rising from the muzzle of the gun made the French battleship in the distance like a monster version of the hideous, shooting at a distance of three thousand meters, the hit rate of the 2oomm heavy gun with an effective range of only 4.5 kilometers was not high, not to mention the shooting, 15 shells suddenly whistled, and the shells were scattered in the front and rear of Liu Shen's fleet, but they did not cause any damage at all.

After a short silence between the two sides, Wu Xian, the leader of Liu Shen's fleet, completed the loading and took the lead in the second round of artillery bombardment. ”

He held the clairvoyant eye to observe the landing point of his own cannonball, but unfortunately one cannonball crossed the hull of the opponent's ship and made a huge explosion on the sea behind the battleship, while the other cannonball landed at least a hundred meters in front of the opponent's battleship, only a little 1anghua. ,

The Chengqing and Deng Yingzhou also fired shells one after another, but none of them made any achievements, and at this time, the officers and men of the battleships showed their superiority, under the threat of the opponent's artillery, and the battleships were moving at a high level, even if they were extremely skilled in loading and clearing the reloading and clearing actions in the previous training, the gunners were a little out of shape.

In the training, the 178mm main gun can fully reach the degree of firing of one cannon in 2 minutes, and the fastest "Wu" ship at this time also spent nearly 3 minutes to complete the loading, and then adjust the aiming and shooting, and the whole artillery fire takes 4 to 5 minutes, which is directly related to the outdated batteries in Liu Shen's fleet, and each shot needs to be re-targeted, rather than fine-tuning according to the position of the last shot, which takes a lot of time.

When the Deng Yingzhou finished firing, the French battleships Destan, La Perlouse, and Nielli completed the second round of loading almost at the same time, and the guns roared again, and fifteen different artillery battles swept towards the three Nanyang Naval Division warships in front of the queue like a raging wind.

This time, the French did not return empty-handed, a 12omm conical shell fired by the La Perlouse hit the middle and front position of the warships at the head of the platoon, and the huge kinetic energy easily penetrated the wooden deck, drilled into the underground boiler room, and then grazed a steam pipe, fortunately, the shell again penetrated the ship's plank above the waterline on the right side and fell on the surface of the sea before it exploded!

Dick, the commander of the La Perouse, was depressed to see that the cannonball that had hit it had failed to wield it, and he shook his head helplessly, but soon, the "Wu" ship at the head of his line was significantly reduced, and it seemed that this cannonball must have affected some parts of the opponent's power system!

"Herald! The opponent's first battleship has been slightly injured, and the soldiers with 12omm gun emplacements are commended! Lieutenant Colonel Dick smiled slightly, it seems that this merit is still to be picked up by our La Perlouse, the loss that I suffered in the generalized battery just now, now is the time to make a big profit!

Although the two warships "Yuan Kai" and "Jingyuan" were a little slow to load, they finally fired a second round of artillery bombardment, "Jingyuan" was actually the farthest away from the enemy ships at this time, and his guns were also the weakest in the fleet, only 15omm and 13omm, but no one expected that they were the first to make contributions.

The 15omm shell flew high, and actually crossed the Destan in front of them, and very unexpectedly hit the right side of the Nielli, which was in second place. It's all a stroke of luck......

Although the gunwales on the cruiser did not meet the standard of shooting guns, due to the integrated design of the shells used, and the weight of the shells was much lighter, they could reach the firing degree of 2 guns in 1 minute in training, and at this time, the advantage of 1 ù was obviously much larger than the old breech 13ommxiao caliber guns equipped by the Nanyang Naval Division.

However, this round of firing was obviously futile, but the superiority of the French ship's gunwales had already been demonstrated, and in less than a minute later, the six 12omm gunwales fired another round, and it was not until the ship's gunwales had completed three shots that the cruiser's main and secondary guns fired another round.

However, of the 18 12omm shells and 9 19o-2omm main and auxiliary shells fired at close range, only one produced results, but it achieved important results. The 19omm secondary cannon fired from the Desdan successfully hit the aft side of the "Yuan Kai", which was in third place, and after easily tearing the outer wooden hull double-layer planks, it exploded in the hull!

The explosion caused a large crack with a diameter of one meter under the waterline of the bilge side of the "Yuan Kai", and the crew of the bilge immediately carried out emergency repairs, although the water inlet was successfully blocked, but the bilge has entered dozens of tons of water, and the worse situation is that the bilge penetrated to the boiler room, which affected the operation of the boiler room, and the pressure of the steam engine continued to drop!

At this moment, Liu Shen's unreasonable order to change formations in battle was being carried out, and the two battleships "Wu" and "Chengqing", which were in the first and second place, turned sideways and leaned towards the periphery, while the "Yuankai", "Dengyingzhou", and "Jingyuan" in the rear were ordered to turn to the front, preparing to form a formation of three on the left and two on the right.

At this time, Liu Shen didn't take into account the damage received by the power systems of "Wu" and "Yuan Kai", and his command to change the formation actually turned into a decision to completely break up the formation! The two ships "Dengyingzhou" and "Jingyuan" at the rear tried to move forward, but they were blocked by the "Yuankai" ...... that was permeating water in the boiler room.

Captain Karrok, the commander of the Destein, who was in pursuit, immediately noticed the change in the formation of the opposing fleet...... That's not actually a change, it looks more like a formation collapse, the first battleship seems to have slowed down, and the second flagship actually turned outward, is it preparing to escape?!

And the third Chinese battleship that was hit by his own secondary artillery was obviously not lightly injured, at this time, in addition to the obvious drop of the ship, the draft of the stern was significantly increased, obviously that cannon caused a certain amount of damage to the bilge, and what made him strange was that the last two battleships did not show the intention of collapsing, and were rushing to the front, trying to protect their flagship?

This qiē came so suddenly that it was difficult for Gallok to judge the intentions of the other party, but one thing was clear: the balance of victory had been completely tilted in his favor, and it was not time to consider how to win...... Rather, he wanted a perfect victory, and he immediately ordered: "Turn the rudder to the left, press the high cut into the Qing fleet, and approach the assault within a distance of 25oom!" Be sure to annihilate them all! ”

Due to the turn of Liu Shen's flagship, the last two battleships were cutting into the periphery of the "Yuan Kai" ship, which was slow to be injured, causing that at this time, only Wu He's injured Yuan Kai of the Nanyang Naval Division of the 5 warships could counterattack, and the 4 guns finally roared after a slight pause!

Apparently this roar was a great success! The 178mm shell fired by the main gun in front of the injured "Yuankai" directly hit the ship of the Nielli, which was approaching, completely shredding a large piece of the steel armor on the side of the opposing ship, and then exploded and ignited a Xiao-type fire...... But it was quickly extinguished by the French!

However, the duel between the only four guns and the opponent's 15 guns was destined to be the result of the cup, and before the "Dengyingzhou" and "Jingyuan" could follow up in place, in the next round of roaring artillery fire of the French army, another 2oomm heavy gun hit the front gun position of the "Yuankai" ship, and the flying shrapnel immediately swept down more than a dozen soldiers who were preparing to shoot, and for a time the blood on the front deck flew sideways and the flames soared into the sky.

At this time, the flagship of the "Chengqing" had been transferred to a safe position on the right side of the fleet, Liu Shen saw that the "Yuankai" on the right rear side was in flames, and he had already lost his mind in fright, and under great pressure, he finally gave up any decision to resist, and immediately ordered to hang up the flag of retreat, and took the lead in fleeing to the northeast, he seemed to have no time to think about how to get rid of the pursuit of the other party's 15 knots in this 1o knot......