The battle continues. www.biquge.info In the face of Zhu Zhi's surprise attack, Gao Heng quickly issued an order to abandon the three battleships that were blocked, and let the battleships behind them circle and turn into a dragon maneuver again. This is undoubtedly a strong man's broken wrist-style decision, but there is no other way for Gao Heng to think about it at the moment. He couldn't have stopped his fleet and went to the rescue of his comrades, because he knew that if he did, he might be able to save them, but he would undoubtedly put the entire fleet in trouble. If the Jiangdong fleet is compared to infantry, then Gao Heng's fleet is undoubtedly a cavalry with strong mobility, and the cavalry and infantry cannot stop, they must maneuver, which is the guarantee of their survival.

"Take care...... looked at the three warships that had to stop, and the enemy's wolf-like ant-possessed attack, turned his head and glanced at Gao Heng with tears in his eyes and said softly, then resolutely turned around and ordered again: "Turn to the right flank, we must cooperate with our brothers on land to completely cripple a part of the enemy." He grinned, letting his fleet spread its sharpest minions. He knows very well what advantages his fleet has over Jiangdong's fleet - "speed, maneuverability, firepower, and protection", in terms of the ability of a single ship, in these four points, his own warships are stronger than Jiangdong's warships, but when it comes to overall strength, he wants to strengthen the country's Jiangdong side undoubtedly only speed and maneuver. “…… Since that's the case, then I have to play to my strengths thoroughly. Thinking like this, Gao Heng formulated the current battle plan called "Double Circle": that is, at the beginning of the war, with the strength of the whole fleet, pounce on the enemy's left flank, so that the enemy's left flank is in danger, so as to mobilize the enemy's right flank and the rescue of the middle two parts, and then resolutely shake off the contact with their left flank, and quickly pounce on their right flank and work with the trebuchet group in the public security city to carry out a saturation attack on the enemy's right flank and completely destroy their right flank. Since the entire fleet was running in two circles on the river, this plan was called the "double circle".

"Twenty minutes north...... Twenty ......minutes to the north, "The helmsman and sailman of the battleship worked together under this command. The sails on three masts swayed and swayed, adjusting their angles to better ride the wind. Since it was not a real headwind, and because the sails of the battleships were more than those of the Jiangdong Army, the speed of Li Shengjun's warships was much faster than that of the Jiangdong Army even when sailing downwind in this way. This sudden turn caught the Jiangdong army off guard, and they never thought that Li Shengjun would give up when he said he would give up, and he would cruelly abandon his own warship and slip away.

"What are their thoughts? This time the turn is really to shift his goal...... Still is? Just a pretense? For Gao Heng's determination, Jiang Qin had more and more headaches, he felt that Gao Heng had the same possibility in both aspects, and the fundamental thing was to deal with his own actions.

"Speed...... The key is speed. The speed of our warships, even the fastest warships, is not comparable to the other side, and this is where our biggest headache lies. Jiang Qin found this, but secretly made up his mind in his heart, "After this battle, I definitely have to suggest to my lord that we must develop a more high-speed warship." ”

Of course, that will be for the future, and for now, Jiang Qin decided to have a relatively conservative tactic: he did not intend to pay attention to Gao Heng's turn, but single-mindedly let his fleet speed up to meet Cheng Pu's left flank.

"Why would you give such an order?" Although he said that he would hand over the command of the water battle to Jiang Qin, Lu Meng did not completely ignore the process of the water war, and he raised his own questions about Jiang Qin's seemingly unreasonable order.

"Because our ships can't keep up with each other's speed, we can't follow each other's actions because that would keep us running behind each other's butts forever, which is not good for us. Besides, let's not pay too much attention to each other's turns. Judging from the situation that has already emerged, whether the other side chooses the left or the right, they will not be able to eat a part of us in a short period of time. If they do keep pestering us, they will definitely be caught in our flanks. Hehe, I just want them to do that......? Jiang Qin said with a smile, he had already discovered the shortcomings of Li Shengjun's warships in attack: "The design idea of their warships is to attack the enemy's hull, which is originally a direction, but it seems to be difficult to achieve this point with current weapons." That's where we can take advantage of it. ”

"I see." Lu Meng nodded in understanding, and then stopped speaking.

Under Jiang Qin's watchful side, Gao Heng easily completed the turn of the fleet, and he now went around to the position of two miles in front of the Jiangdong Army led by Han Dang and Huang Gai, and lined up to occupy the upper hand.

"All the bed crossbow ammunition was replaced by heavy mine rockets, and all the catapults were filled with fuel tanks. We don't have Cao Cao's black oil, but we also have vegetable oil, which can also make Jiangdongjun drink a pot. Gao Heng ordered in a loud voice: "In addition, give General Xu a signal to let their catapult troops support us, this time I don't want the damned Jiangdong Army to escape easily." ”

"No!" The soldiers roared angrily and quickly conveyed the order. I met after the time of half a cup of tea. This time, unlike when facing the left flank fleet of the Jiangdong Army, Gao Heng's fleet no longer carried out free continuous attacks but carried out salvo-shaped attacks, and he gave an order for all the close warships to exert their firepower against one target at the same time. Attacking a building ship with the firepower of two to three ballista warships, so as to be able to completely incapacitate a building ship - this is also a very important tactical "concentrated salvo" that was later listed as a very important tactical "concentrated salvo" in Li Shengjun's naval army tactical specifications.

The trebuchet made a clattering sound, and the bed crossbow was rattling, which was mixed with the whistling sound of some rockets, which suppressed the faint and monotonous sound of attack on the side of the Jiangdong Army. Countless clay pots loaded with vegetable oil smashed on the body of the Jiangdong Army's ship, because of the previous experience, Gao Heng realized that the Jiangdong Army's ship did not seem to pose much threat to himself, so he took the fleet closer to the Jiangdong Army's warship. Due to the proximity of the two sides, the hit rate of the catapults was also greatly increased, and the explosions of large and small thunder rockets emitted by bed crossbows and rockets continued to increase, and the right-wing naval army in Jiangdong undoubtedly suffered heavy casualties under the tactics of concentrated salvo fire carried out by Li Sheng. Not only the slightly fragile ships and warships that the Jiangdong Army thought were the strongest in their own army, but also caught fire one after another under such blows, and fell into an inexplicable dangerous situation. The strong strength of Li Sheng's fleet once again stunned the people of Jiangdong.

As far as the shipbuilding technology of the Jiangdong Army is concerned, the warships they build are not afraid of general rocket attacks, nor are they afraid of the explosion of more than a dozen thunder rockets; first, their ships are large enough to have enough space for them to toss, and second, the Jiangdong Army, which has always attached importance to the development of the naval army, has a deeper understanding of such things as fire attack and fire prevention. Although Li Sheng's side has never been able to figure out what is unique about the fire prevention measures on the side of the Jiangdong Navy, it is a general fact that the warships of the Jiangdong Army are more fire-resistant. This can be seen from the fact that Gao Heng continued to use rockets, thunder rockets and other weapons to launch fire attacks on the Jiangdong Army, but with little effect.

Under the circumstances of this fact, Gao Heng had to use oil fire attacks, that is, throwing a large amount of oil onto the warships of the Jiangdong Army and making their warships burn. Judging from the current situation, this move undoubtedly had a great effect, and under such a neat and targeted attack by the Second Fleet, the warships of the Jiangdong Army could be said to have suffered heavy losses.

"Firefighting...... Firefighting......" Huang Gai stood on his ship with a dark face, and shouted heartbreakingly. It's just that this kind of shout seems to have no effect, under the attack just now, his ship has been hit by thirty heavy thunder rockets and twelve heavy oil tanks, and the fire quickly burned on the deck, and the flames that could not be extinguished made him and his men can only watch the ship be burned down little by little, without any way.

Compared to him, the other governor of the entire right wing, Han Dang's ship, also looked quite bad. Under the overwhelming thunder rocket attack, the entire battleship was already full of loopholes, especially the loopholes that appeared under the gunwales of the battleship, which were very huge and completely threatened the safety of the entire upper part of the building, and the flames caused by the four oil tanks were not too big to lick and burn on the battleship, making the whole battleship look very bad.

"Damn, the whole battleship is like a building that will collapse at any moment, and the danger is so tight." Han Dang first discovered his danger and decided to abandon the ship and move immediately.

On the other side, Huang Gai seemed to have a lot of feelings for his ship, but he was helplessly transferred to a new battleship under the condition that his subordinates were dead and alive.

For a time, with the destruction of Huang Gai's ship and Han Dang's ship, the two governors invariably transferred, which caused the command of the Jiangdong Army fleet to fall into a kind of chaos. This kind of chaos is what Gao Heng wants to see the most, and in such a situation, he constantly orders his fleet: "Attack and attack again......"

The danger of the battleship undoubtedly dealt a great blow to the morale of the Jiangdong naval army. If it is said that the destruction of the ships and boats in front of them can be explained by the seemingly correct reason that the destruction of small ships by big ships is Tianli, then the destruction of the warships that the Jiangdong Army is most proud of at the moment will undoubtedly make their pride disappear without a trace. Although such a destruction occurred when the other side attacked one with three ships, which was a normal thing, this normal thing was not normal for the Jiangdong Navy Army. All the Jiangdong soldiers who saw all this happening couldn't help but think like this: "Our Jiangdong as the main force of the ship, the ship, the ship is not as good as the other party, and now even our most trusted ship has been destroyed, in the face of Li Shengjun's attack, what should we use to resist?" Trouble...... It's a real nightmare for us. Everyone thought so, and even Jiang Qin had to admit that Li Shengjun's level on the warship was far beyond that of the Jiangdong side.

The nightmare doesn't end. For the right wing of the Jiangdong Army, although Li Shengjun's attack from the left was sharp, because the formation of the entire fleet was a relatively thick mixed fleet array like the left wing, and the right wing fleet itself also had the task of attacking Gong'an City, the formation of the right wing fleet was a double slash formation, which was far stronger than Cheng Pu's left wing fleet in terms of resistance to strikes, and it was still able to withstand the blows of its own left flank. After changing to a new flagship, both Han Dang and Huang Gai both realized the strength of Li Shengjun, and realized that if they still maintained the current diagonal formation of this fleet, they would not be able to compete with Li Shengjun. So, they referred to Cheng Pu's diamond formation and used the flag to try to reorganize their fleet into a thicker formation.

After seeing with their own eyes how Cheng Pu turned and what kind of losses he suffered, Han Dang and Huang Gai naturally had an idea of the losses that their right-wing fleet would suffer. They thought it was a loss they could afford. But a fierce attack from the north shore put them in an even more critical situation—countless clay pots with vegetable oil were thrown out of the woods on the right flank, and some of them landed on the battleship, some landed in the river, but without exception there were violent explosions.

Unlike the weapons thrown from the warships, these clay pots thrown from the shore seem to be more powerful. Although their accuracy was somewhat problematic, they made up for it with a covering attack: Xu Ding used a full 600 catapults to throw this clay pot that could hold three catties of gunpowder and two catties of gravel, and the right flank of the entire Jiangdong Army's right flank fleet, that is, the part near the river, was smashed. As soon as the bombardment fell, there were six ships, twelve warships, and more than 30 ships destroyed under this storm-like sudden attack. Suddenly, the broken slabs and stumps on the river floated together, and the sound of the river flow and wailing rose together, but the miserable appearance made everyone stunned.

"Damn it...... How could Li Shengjun have such a terrifying weapon? Han Dang and Huang Gai said in shock, and the shock of anger and heartbreak made them speechless for a while. And Gao Heng on Li Sheng's side looked at all this, but said lightly: "Sure enough, the lord repeatedly emphasized that gunpowder weapons will be the main equipment of our navy in the future." The power under one blow is so powerful, it's really ......" Gao Heng said that there were no words here, he didn't know much about the literati's set, he couldn't use those rich words to describe the shock in his heart, he could only say vigorously: "Tough, strong!" ”

The salvo of six hundred large trebuchets was undoubtedly shocking to everyone, but the battle on the river did not stop with the shock. The mutual firing between the fleets and the fleets continued, but because the shocking influence in front had not yet subsided, the attacks on Gao Heng's side were getting more and more fierce and smoother, and the Jiangdong Army here, although Huang Gai and Han Dang continued to encourage their soldiers, but they always had little effect. In the face of the overwhelming attacks on Li Shengjun's side, which seemed to have no interruption at all, the Jiangdong army only reacted very little, and their counterattack was completely purely coping.

"The right wing is in danger......" has already joined the Cheng Pu department of the left wing, Jiang Qin saw this scene and deeply felt that he had miscalculated, he finally realized that he knew too little about Li Shengjun on his side. If some of the previous events can be explained by Li Sheng's deliberate intelligence blockade, then what is happening here now does not seem to be able to be explained by this reason: "Why didn't our people find out that Li Sheng had transported so many and such powerful catapults to the public security and concealed them?" ”

"Because what Li Sheng showed us was not a catapult at all!" Regarding Jiang Qin's question, Lu Meng thought carefully about giving him such an answer.

"What?" Jiang Qin was stunned by this, he didn't know why Lu Meng would give him such an answer that people knew was "wrong" at a glance: "It's not a catapult, is it something else?" ”

"Exactly something else!" Lu Meng nodded in an aggravated tone: "Two days ago, we received information that a large number of box trucks were found in this public security city, at that time I thought these were just Li Shengjun's ordnance and didn't pay much attention to it, but at the moment, these box trucks are Li Shengjun's trebuchets - they have completely developed this kind of heavy weapons that can be loaded in cars in peacetime and assembled in wartime." ”

"How is this possible?" Jiang Qin was surprised, he couldn't believe this at all: "How could Li Shengjun have such equipment?" You say it like a dream! ”

"Things in a dream? Perhaps, but if you think carefully about Li Shengjun's strength, you can understand that it is entirely possible for them to do this—a strength that could produce such a powerful warship ten years ago, a strength that can use the power of the Heavenly Thunder God for their own use, and a force that can make the water flow higher, can you underestimate them and think that they can't do what we can't do? I would underestimate them. Lu Meng said lightly, and Jiang Qin felt a chill in his heart when he heard it.

"It's horrible." Jiang Qin muttered to himself.

"Terrible? That's really ......," Lu Meng nodded solemnly.

"Governor Lü, you say, can we win a battle with such an enemy?" Jiang Qin was somewhat unconfident, and for the first time he had doubts about whether his army could win the war, because he felt that the enemy was really a little surprisingly strong. "Such a strong enemy coupled with such a complex situation? Can the Jiangdong Army do it? He didn't know the bottom of his mind.

"Whether it works or not, we have to fight. We have already fallen out with Li Sheng, saying that it is useless to say that what we have and what we don't have, we can only fight and win desperately. Jiang Qin seemed to be a little frightened, and Lu Meng had to tell him with a solemn expression, "Actually, we are not without a chance to win. The fighting on the right flank has not stopped. Although it has suffered heavy losses, the right wing still has 20 ships, 50 ships and nearly 100 ships, and its strength can still support it for a while. If we rush over now and pass past the side of Li Sheng's army, I think there will be no problem dealing with their fleet. ”

"And what about those trebuchets they have on the shore?" Jiang Qin listened to Lu Meng's statement, nodded understandingly, and asked again.

"After dealing with the opposing fleet, we can get those quick ships to seize the gap between the shots of their trebuchets and attack. The salvo tactics used by Li Shengjun. Although this tactic works well, there is an important problem, that is, the time it takes for them to shoot each time. If we had struck them quickly with heavy ships after an attack, I think we would have been able to wipe out all of their trebuchets before they could start their next attack. Lu Meng thought about it and said such a way that was not a solution.

"That's okay too." Jiang Qin thought about it for a while, and then agreed, after all, at the moment, they could only seize Li Shengjun's weakness and take advantage of it.

"Turn to the Northwest ...... Lined up in a diamond formation...... The whole army is ready for assault. After discovering that the "atmospheric" slash formation could not resist the attack of Li Shengjun's fleet very well, Jiang Qin decisively gave up the slightly "thin" slash formation and replaced it with a diamond-shaped formation that could have strong resistance under Li Shengjun's attack, which was also the formation that Cheng Pu, Han Dang, and Huang Gai worked hard to form after discovering Li Shengjun's strength. Although the Jiangdong Navy also suffered a lot of losses in the process of adjustment, after the adjustment, the defense capability of the Jiangdong Navy was greatly strengthened, and the losses were greatly reduced - the losses at the time of adjustment were caused by the chaos of the team, and the situation after the adjustment showed that the diamond array was very effective in the defense of the fleet. In this case, let's directly adjust the formation and rush over, and save those unnecessary losses. Jiang Qin thought of this and gave the order directly.

Three quarters of an hour later, the fleet completed the formation with difficulty: the rearranged Jiangdong Army fleet used the not very high-speed Louchuan battleships as the periphery of the fleet, and set up a strong defense with two side-by-side formations, and the warships such as warships and Louchuan, which were quite high-speed but had low defense, were pressed towards Li Shengjun like a heavy city wall. Although the speed of the fleet was slowed down in this way, the whole fleet appeared thick, and the gathering of such a large number of warships was also very beneficial to the recovery of the morale of the entire fleet.

After the rendezvous, the Jiangdong Army fleet moved forward slowly, and the right flank fleet at this time was even more dilapidated than at the beginning. Despite their efforts to defend and evade, the entire right flank fleet suffered considerable losses under the onslaught of Li Sheng's naval forces and the combined attack of the army's catapults. By the time Jiang Qin and the others arrived, there were only 12 ships left in the right flank fleet, 30 ships and about 50 ships.

"It's miserable." The Jiangdong army finally met together, and Jiang Qin sent people to take Han Dang and Huang Gai, the two veterans, and looked at and joined the fleet and said helplessly.

"The enemy commander is a slippery man." Han Dang said appreciatively. The reason why he said this was mainly because when Jiang Qin and the others rushed over, Li Shengjun's fleet would actually speed up and escape from the gap between the two teeth that were about to be gritted. At present, the fleet of the Jiangdong Army has gathered together and strengthened its strength, and Li Shengjun's fleet has not flinched because of this, and they are immediately wandering on the side of the Jiangdong Army and constantly attacking the fleet of the Jiangdong Army with all long-range attack weapons. At this moment, the distance between the two sides is about a mile, and each other can only use bed crossbows to greet each other, but it has no effect.

The battle between the two sides reached a stalemate. Although Jiang Qin's side intended to use the thickness of his fleet formation to have a head-on duel with Li Sheng's navy, the slowness of the Lou ship warship made it impossible for the entire Jiangdong Army to bite Li Sheng's fleet. As for the fast-moving ships and boats, they simply could not rush forward rashly before the Jiangdong Army had completely suppressed Li Sheng's warships. Because these warships are too small and their survivability is too low, they are often hit by Li Shengjun's several thunder rockets, and they will be extremely miserable and silent.

"In such a large ship duel, small warships have no effect at all...... although this is a bit arbitrary, it is also a fact for the current war situation.

The mutual helplessness of the shooting continues. Gao Heng let his fleet maneuver dexterously, causing Jiang Qin's side to fall into a situation of being beaten everywhere. However, the thickness of the battleship and the "weakness" of Gao Heng's gunpowder weapons make this behavior like an ant gnawing on an elephant - despite the elephant's constant attacks, its thick skin and flesh make the attack ineffective. This is how the two sides kept going around and then sat back and watched the time pass.

Over the next few hours, neither side made much progress in their attacks, as their ships were relatively durable. As for the catapults on the ground that could cause considerable damage to the Jiangdong Army, they could not play a role because the Jiangdong Army deliberately avoided them and stayed away from the river bank. You can only continue to carry out such a duel between fleets and fleets, use your own efforts to destroy the opponent's fleet little by little, and use your patience to win the favor of heaven. The battle has clearly become a attrition, a contrition of arrows.

"It seems that today is impossible to tell the winner......!" The sun was gradually turning west, and the sky was turning towards darkness, Jiang Qin looked at the battle situation that was still inseparable, and made such a comment helplessly.

This is obviously very pertinent, because in the battle just passed, more than a dozen warships on each side were sunk, although the losses between each other were not small, but the Jiangdong Army's side of the warships was naturally nothing, and Li Sheng's side was also able to withstand it because most of the losses were medium-sized building ships and warships. What's more, the original tactical goal of Li Sheng's side was to protect Jiangling by holding the public security. As for things like wanting to annihilate the Jiangdong Naval Army, that was Gao Heng's own idea, but it was not the original purpose of Li Sheng and Pang Tong.

"Collect the troops......! I think we should do another study of Li Sheng's army. Today's performance of Li Sheng's water army is very different from the original. Looking up at Tianri, and looking at the situation in front of him, Lu Meng said helplessly. Night is not suitable for water battles, this is already the consensus of everyone.

"Ding...... Ding ......" a crisp symphony resounded above the Koto Army fleet. Listening to the sound of Jiang Dongjun's voice, Gao Heng couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, and said secretly: "It's okay! He didn't know why the Jiangdong Army would "can't hold on" and order Mingjin first, but he understood that if the Jiangdong Army didn't give this order, then it would definitely be himself who would order Mingjin in a moment. Although the fleet on his side has received a certain amount of training in night warfare, and he is not as clueless about night warfare as the Jiangdong side, there is a big problem on his side, that is, the arrows and ammunition brought by the battleships are running out. After a day of high-intensity fighting, even if no one informed me about the situation, I clearly felt the difference - the violent consumption of ammunition made the ship float slightly, and the speed was much faster than before. This kind of situation did not occur on his own ship, Gao Heng clearly saw that the speed of the entire fleet was about ten percent faster than the beginning, which made him have a rough and surprising estimate of the combat attrition. "We have to resupply." That was his last thought. Facing the fleet that was slowly retreating eastward on the Jiangdong side, he issued an order similar to that of the other party: "Return to Hong Kong......!" ”

As a result, the crisp sound of gold also echoed above Li Shengjun's fleet. As the two sides turned around, the long water battle finally came to an end as the night fell.