Since the Chao Yong had been hit a lot of bullets before, although they were only solid bullets that would not explode, for the sake of safety, the Yang Wei took the initiative to switch positions with the Chao Yong, so that with her in the way, the British ship could only fight this obstacle first. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

The change in the queue had some impact on the shelling of the two Chinese warships, and in addition, in order to save shells, Yang Yonglin ordered both warships to put the enemy closer, so the frequency of shelling was significantly lower than before. However, this paralyzed the enemy, and Vice Admiral Seymour became more and more firm in his judgment, "Sure enough, there are not many shells for the Chinese!" ”

However, Seymour was not happy for long, because the battleship HMS Queen of India had finally followed in the footsteps of HMS Royal Oak, and the only thing that comforted the British was that this time they were mentally prepared and the lifeboats were put away relatively early, so the survival rate was relatively high, reaching more than 200 people.

As the saying goes, "the house leak happened to rain overnight", shortly after the sinking of the battleship HMS Empress of India, Vice Admiral Seymour learned another bad news, "What? The Palisa armor-piercing bullets (in this case, solid bullets) on the Revenge have been exhausted? ”

It turned out that due to the lessons of the Battle of Dadonggou, the British Royal Navy had begun to completely eliminate solid armor-piercing shells and replace them with armor-piercing blasting shells (Note 1) that had just been successfully developed using the fuse at the bottom of the projectile. Finally, all the 343mm solid bullets on the Revenge were exhausted.

The Revenge ran out of solid bullets, and so did the Determination, which was closer to the two Chinese warships, and only two farther ones remained, but the distance and accuracy were poor, and it was estimated that even if it ran out, it might not be able to achieve any results.

Since there are no solid bullets, you can only choose armor-piercing (blasting) shells or blasting shells, Seymour considered that neither of them can penetrate the armor of the Haitian-class patrol anyway, so he chose a much larger explosive charge, and the result was a little surprise......

During the battle, a 343mm blaster struck the Yangwei's main turret on the left side, and after a loud bang, the turret itself was unharmed, but the severe shock and wind pressure from the explosion destroyed the turret's sights and rangefinders (Note 2). Fortunately, the current combat distance is very close, and with the high quality of the gunners on the Yangwei, the hit rate is not low only by relying on iron aiming and naked eye, otherwise the losses will be large.

Although the damage was not very large, this small episode initially exposed the weakness of optical instruments that can be easily damaged. At the time of the post-war review, some people of insight were keenly aware that with the deepening of the warship's dependence on optical instruments and the resulting trend of longer and farther combat distances, it may be easier and easier to paralyze the combat effectiveness of a warship, contrary to the increasing difficulty of sinking armored ships. This discovery had a profound impact on the later development of Chinese warship design ideas and naval tactics, and of course that is a story for later......

The brief silence of the left turret of the Levant caused the British officers and men to cheer, but before the cheers had completely subsided, the main turret roared again, and to the surprise of Vice Admiral Seymour, in the direction of the expeditionary fleet's advance, the lookout saw gray-white soot on the horizon......

"It's not good, how can you be so unlucky? Actually crashed into other warships of the Chinese? Vice Admiral Seymour immediately made the right judgment.

In pursuit of efficiency, civilian ships generally burn cheap and low-quality coal, and the smoke color is naturally black; As for the pursuit of performance of warships, unless they are as poor as the Beiyang Naval Division back then, they must burn the best coal, and the smoke is whiter. What's more, now that the Indian Ocean is a war zone, how can such a large-scale merchant fleet appear? Even if it is a military transport fleet, it must be escorted by warships, and the situation does not make much difference.

As for whether the warships that appeared in front of him were friends or foes, Vice Admiral Seymour also guessed accurately, "The British Empire can't send more warships to India to support us, so it must be the enemy!" ”

However, Vice Admiral Seymour also made a mistake. The British expeditionary fleet was not unlucky to collide with other Chinese warships, the latter was simply the reinforcements that Yang Yonglin took the initiative to call, in order to prevent the prey from running away, the nearest sea tiger and seal team deliberately detoured to the front of the enemy to intercept, so it has not finally appeared until now. Speaking of which, thanks to the radio station that can be contacted at any time, otherwise Yang Yonglin would definitely have to worry about whether something happened to them......

Because of this misjudgment, Vice Admiral Seymour could not help but take a chance and ordered the fleet to turn away, trying to avoid the Chinese fleet, but the enemy seemed to see the movement of the expeditionary fleet, and the British fleet turned in whichever way it turned, they also turned. By the time Vice Admiral Seymour finally realized the problem, the enemy ship was already in the lookout's view......

"It's actually two Haitian-class patrol ships?" , Vice Admiral Seymour's heart couldn't help but twitch, the two Haitian-class patrols had already lost almost half of his expeditionary fleet, and now two more ships, wouldn't it be completely annihilated?

Not to mention, there is really such a possibility, now there are only four British warships left, and the Chinese side is also four, even if Vice Admiral Seymour orders to disperse and escape, they will still be bitten one by one, don't want to get rid of it easily.

However, even if he knew this, Vice Admiral Seymour could only order to disperse and escape, because if he did it now, there was still some hope, and once he was approached by those two new Haitian, it would be really nine deaths!

Note 1: Due to the immaturity of the technology, although this kind of fuze has a time-delay design, in actual combat, because the delay of the fuze is too short, the armor-piercing ability shown is not much stronger than the blasting bullet of the bottom fuze. But then again, even if the fuse was fine, before the design of the quilt cap, as long as the shell was filled with explosives, it was difficult to break the protection of case-hardened armor......

Note 2: In the early days, the rangefinder could not calculate the difference in the position of each gun position, and if a warship only used a rangefinder, the effect was not as good as aiming at each gun position alone, so Li Hui installed one for each main turret, although the cost was a little higher, but from the performance of the actual battle, it was definitely worth it. (To be continued.) )