If there is a one-on-one battle between the ten Beiyang ships, the only "domestic product" - Pingyuan can at least rank fifth, because she is an ironclad ship; And because of the French inward tilting design, the waterline armor actually formed an inclined armor, and the width was much larger than the half-hung Jinglai Second Ship, if only the defense power, the Pingyuan was even stronger than the Jinglai Second Ship.

However, with the standard row of only more than 2,000 tons of Pingyuan, too much attention to defense will inevitably pay a huge price, resulting in its not only extremely slow speed, but also very poor seaworthiness, so it is positioned as a coastal defense ship in the Beiyang Naval Division, and belongs to the embarrassing type of ship that has no other branch in the fleet.

In addition, the Pingyuan was built by the Fuzhou Shipmaster that Li Hongzhang has always looked down on, so since she joined the Beiyang Naval Division with great difficulty, she has been very unpopular, which can be seen from the Pingyuan's pipe belt Li He only has the rank of Du Division, which is the lowest among the top ten pipe belts of the Beiyang Naval Division, and is even inferior to the first officer and even the second officer on most warships.

Therefore, in the past, Li He had no right to speak at all at the officer meeting of the Beiyang Naval Division, and it was not until the appearance of the "Zhuge Liang Meeting" that the number of participants was greatly increased, and Li He finally had the opportunity to make suggestions.

However, due to the long-term psychological shadow, Li He, who was afraid of offending people, never spoke, and it was not until this time that everyone was stumped by the problem that was not difficult to solve in his eyes, and Li He finally couldn't help but speak

"Form a separate team of Pingyuan and Chaoyang, and only the five ships of Dingzhen Jinglai and Jiyuan will be left as the main force?" After hearing this, Li Hui first subconsciously frowned, because this suggestion was clearly to let the Beiyang Naval Division further disperse its forces, but after thinking about it, he realized that he was too worried, "If half of the strength of the Japanese Navy is on one tour and four ships, then more than two-thirds of the strength of the Beiyang Naval Division is concentrated in the two ironclad giant ships of Dingzhen, so as long as these two ships are not separated, the strength of the Beiyang Naval Division cannot be overly dispersed." And if it is only to provide the necessary cover for the second ship of the given town, there is not much difference between the three warships and the six warships, but because the number of ships is small, the difficulty of coordination can be greatly reduced."

And Liu Buyun, who was born in a professional class, understood the beauty of Li He's suggestion more quickly, "If you remove Chaoyang and Pingyuan, there will be 5 warships left in the main force, with Dingzhen in the front and three ships in the rear, forming an inverted W formation, and the steering speed can be twice as fast as the eight-ship formation!" Even if it's a fast fleet of the Japanese people, it's not so easy to get around our backs! And even if they are rounded to the back, the threat is far smaller than before, because the new formation is more compact, Jinglai and Jiyuan will be placed within the protection range of our Dingzhen main guns, and the main guns of the Dingzhen two ships are all laid out on both sides, not afraid of the enemy attacking from behind, the Japanese want to rely on the speed to avoid the real attack, but it is not so easy,"

And Deng Shichang was more sensitive to the speed of the flight, so he thought even deeper, "Zixiang, the advantages of the new formation are not limited to this, have you noticed, after removing Chaoyang and Pingyuan, the speed of our main formation has actually surpassed the Japanese Navy!" Not only the slow and aging rear team, but even the front team composed of the Mikei and the Chiyoda is not half cheap compared to us in terms of speed, and the Japanese people take a diagonal line, and we take a straight line! ”

"That's right, in this case, we can directly attack the front team of the Japanese and intercept most of the Japanese team", at this moment, even Lin Taizeng, who has always been a gentle temperament, was excited, but he quickly realized the price that must be paid for this tactic, sighed slightly, and looked at Li He, the Pingyuan pipe belt who made this suggestion, with a complicated expression

"This is the opportunity to sacrifice three weak ships in exchange for a devastating blow to the Japanese Navy! However, this method should indeed be feasible, with the ironclad ship of Pingyuan, even if it is a siege, it should be able to last for more than an hour, and now the firepower of the Beiyang Naval Division is not what it used to be, and an hour is enough to kill the Sanjing ship and Chiyoda! Li Hui also reacted at this time, although he has very complicated feelings for the Beiyang Naval Division, but after all, he is an outsider, and he has no instinctive rejection of the abandonment tactic, as long as the goal can be achieved, why not sacrifice three weak ships?

But for the generals of the Beiyang Naval Division, such a determination is not so easy to make, after all, it is their own robes that have to be sacrificed, especially Lin Taizeng, who once served as the pipe band of Chaoyong, and Deng Shichang, who once served as the pipe band of Yangwei, are even more panicked

Both of these are warriors who are not afraid of life and death (although Lin Taizeng has an indecisive personality, he is not a bad breed who is afraid of death. But at the expense of others, especially if there are so many of their old subordinates on the super-Yang, then they can't say it.

Compared with these two, Liu Buyun is more courageous, no wonder he can become the de facto leader of the Beiyang Naval Division with only the third-ranked official rank, "Since there is no better way at present, then it can only be like this, my generation served the country in the army, and put life and death out of the way, today they were martyred and sacrificed, and it may be our turn tomorrow, so why bother to be a child in order to be a child sooner or later?" Moreover, in a sense, the same tactics adopted by the Wei people are abandoning their children, and they have the courage to sacrifice for the country, don't we Chinese? ”

If someone else said this, Li Hui might suspect that he was just talking about it, but in history, Liu Buyun finally fulfilled the oath he made when he was young with his life, and it would be absolutely heartfelt for such a man to say such a thing. However, praise is admiration, what should be said still has to be said, Li Hui just mentioned a little, and the somewhat tragic atmosphere on the scene immediately changed, "In fact, Chaoyang doesn't need to be braced, if he is seriously injured, he will withdraw from the battlefield to save himself, these two are old ships with basically no armor protection, even if they hold on until they sink, they can only buy a few more minutes, and it is not worth sacrificing too many veterans for this." The only one who really has to fight to the death is actually the Pingyuan, which is an ironclad ship with strong defensive power, especially strong anti-sinking ability, and compared with the Chaoyang II ship, the Pingyuan has a larger tonnage, newer ship condition, and more than ten times stronger survivability? Even if the Pingyuan resists the siege of the Japanese four ships alone, it should be able to hold out for a long time, and even if it is fatally damaged, it may not sink soon, as long as Pingyuan can hold on, it can buy enough time for the main battlefield and finally win the decisive battle! Of course, the officers and soldiers on the Pingyuan will definitely suffer heavy casualties as a result, but I think that since Li Dusi made a proposal, he should have the determination to sacrifice for it, right? ”