More than 10 warships of the Japanese Hokkaido Fleet marched toward Nagasaki, including the "Yoshino," "Takachiho," "Akitsuzu," and "Nani," four clippers with an average voyage of 19.4 knots, and the "Matsushima," "Chiyoda," "Itsukushima," "Hashidate," "Saikyo Maru," and "Akagi," six warships with an average displacement of 3,500 tons

Yan Fu held a telescope on the "Changsheng" and looked at the sea in the northeast direction, saw that the "Chengfeng" was returning from the fire, and found the Japanese fleet with a flag

"Pull the anchor, discover the Japanese fleet, and prepare for battle," Yan Fu said to the soldiers beside him

The second formation slowly set up a long-practiced formation on the surface of the East China Sea, waiting for the arrival of the Japanese fleet

The commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, Heihachiro Togo, was on the deck of the "Yoshino" and also discovered the Daqing fleet

"Send the flag and tell the fleet behind that there is a Qing fleet in front of it, ready to fight"

Yan Fu put up a guerrilla formation, that is, in the four ironclad ships of "Changsheng", "Undefeated", "Victory", and "Triumph", "Riding the Wind" and "Breaking the Waves" were responsible for the left road, "Rising" was responsible for the right road, "Jingyuan", "Laiyuan", "Zhiyuan", "Jingyuan", and "Pingyuan" were five gunboats, and "Guangjia", "Guangji", "Guangbing", and "Guangding" followed closely behind the cruisers on the left and right, looking for opportunities

The Japanese fleet was originally going to reinforce the Japanese fleet, but the four clippers "Yoshino", "Takachiho", "Akitsuzu", and "Nanu" rushed to the front, while "Matsushima", "Chiyoda", "Itsukushima", "Hashidate", "Saikyo Maru", and "Akagi" dragged behind, and hastily changed formations after encountering the Qing fleet

On the one hand, "Yoshino", "Takachiho", "Akitsuzu", and "Nan" were divided into left and right sides, revealing a huge gap in the middle to avoid the main ironclad ships of the Qing army, and detoured to the left and right sides of the Qing army, allowing the "Matsushima", "Chiyoda", "Itsukushima", "Hashidate", "Saikyo Maru", and "Akagi" several high-tonnage ironclad ships to follow, while the four Japanese clippers tried to take advantage of their fast characteristics to detour back to the rear of the Qing fleet and attack its gunboats

Yan Fu had already anticipated this tactic of the Japanese army, and the torpedo ships on the left and right sides were constantly firing submarine torpedoes at the Japanese cruisers, so that they could not drive in a straight line, and when they dodged left and right and affected their degrees, they let them "ride the wind", "break the waves", and "rise" to strike at them

The first sentence of the opening sentence of the "Diagram of the Ship Formation" in the Jiangnan Naval Academy is: "It is the formation listed in the book, and in a formation, the number of ships and teams can be reduced and increased, and it is not a static and unchanging situation" It means that the number of warships that form a tactical detachment in the diagram and the number of detachments that constitute a formation are not hard and fast regulations, and a tactical detachment can be composed of 2 or 4 ships on the basis of following the operational rules of the detachment. It can be adapted and flexibly used according to the specific situation

Now Yan Fu has expanded this formation to three detachments, with two search cruisers and two torpedo ships on the left flank, one cruiser and two torpedo ships on the right flank, and four ironclad ships and five gunboats in the middle

However, Yan Fu still underestimated the strength of the Japanese "Yoshino" and other cruisers, and the warships that could reach up to 26 knots could easily dodge more than two torpedoes fired at the same time

The first encounter was the "Nagakatsu" and "Undefeated" on the left and the "Yoshino" and "Takachiho" of the Japanese fleet, and after the two sides entered the firing range, the sea level in the East China Sea turned into a silvery-white and orange glittering panorama, followed by a hail of huge explosive shells smashing at the Oshimizu Division, and the "Yoshino" and "Takachiho" uniform artillery attacks showed the "Riding the Wind" and "Breaking the Waves" what is the strength of Asia's first-class cruisers

As the flagship of the Hokkaido Fleet, the captain of the "Yoshino" was also the commander-in-chief of the fleet, and he desperately waved the saber in his hand and shouted at the two 5,700-ton giant cruisers of the Qing Dynasty: "Full rudder left, attack with side chords"

The "Yoshino" was equipped with four 150mm guns on the side chord, and according to the analysis of British naval experts, the firing of the British guns modified by Japan was six times that of the original successively loaded guns, and although the Qing fleet also uniformly modified the original rear-loading guns, the firing was only increased by two times

Shells exploded one after another around the Qing fleet, causing water columns more than 50 meters high to appear in many places, and the "Guangding" torpedo ship was directly sunk without firing a single shot

The "Changsheng" pipe belt Li He tried to get close to the "Yoshino" and dealt a fatal blow several times, but the "Changsheng" 19-knot voyage struggled like a child chasing an adult in front of the "Yoshino" 22.5-knot

From time to time, the "Yoshino" struck twice at the "Chengfeng" that was chasing him, and finally revealed its true purpose -- to eliminate the gunboats behind the main ships of the Qing army

Although the gunboats were powerful at close range, the Japanese warships would not give the gunboats a chance to get close at all, and constantly attacked the Qing gunboats through long-range guns

The "Yoshino" is like a leper dog, unable to catch up with him, but often bitten by him, although these five horsetail shipyard ironclad gunboats have 87mm thick steel plates, but they can't withstand multiple attacks

After the "Pingyuan" was continuously bombarded by "Yoshino", it first ignited a fire, withdrew from the battle under Yan Fu's order, and retreated to the Lushun Military Port for urgent repairs

"Don't worry about the cruisers of Little Japan, all the gunboats will go forward with me to destroy the Japanese main fleet in front," Yan Fu shouted loudly to the flag soldiers

"Boom ......"

A loud bang came from the "Undefeated", which fired at the oncoming 420mm guns of the Japanese fleet one after another, and hit the enemy ship "Matsushima", but due to the relatively long distance, it did not cause fatal damage, but it also shook the 4278-ton ironclad ship, although the steel plate was not pierced, but it still caused partial damage after the explosion

At this time, the two Japanese cruisers on the "Rise" have been encircled by the "Akitsu Island" and "Lang", facing the huge but only 19 knots of the cruiser, the same use of a roundabout way to constantly hit the "Rise" This is the first domestic production of ironclad cruisers, named "Rise", caused a sensation in the world when it was built, and at that time it was indeed a quite advanced cruiser, However, now the shipbuilding concept launched by the British twin steam engines has made the cruiser's voyage easily exceed 25, which is dwarfed by the "rise".

"Give the flag, let the wind go to the reinforcements to rise, and the 'torpedo ships don't shoot torpedoes at the enemy ships', and fire them on the route of the enemy ships instead" Yan Fu seemed to have seen something

Being able to find problems immediately in actual combat, and being able to change tactics even according to problems is the evaluation that Yan Fu gave him when he graduated from the Jiangnan Naval Academy

Indeed, the key to the problem that Yan Fu has accurately discovered now is that the torpedo ships are firing 80 kilometers per hour at the opposing warships at a distance of 4,000 meters, which poses no threat to the Japanese cruisers that can reach more than 24 degrees

Even if you see a torpedo coming towards you, you can easily change course and dodge it in 1 minute

Now, Yan Fu asked the torpedo ships to launch the torpedoes on their course of action, and these Japanese cruisers were not used to it, and often saw the Daqing cruiser approaching him, and when he was about to retreat, he found that there were torpedoes on the route behind them, and he could not visually check whether he would encounter them in such a short period of time, so he could only wait in place for the torpedoes to cross before leaving, thus giving the opportunity to "ride the wind", "break the waves", and "rise" to attack the Japanese cruisers

On the one hand, the ability to resist attacks such as "Chengfeng", which obviously has an advantage in tonnage, is much better than that of Japanese cruisers, and in addition, the caliber of artillery is much larger than that of Japanese cruisers, but the firing is slower, but basically a single shot can give a fatal blow to "Yoshino" and others

In this way, while the Daiqing Fish Mineship was "drawing grids" around the Japanese cruisers such as "Yoshino", the cruisers of the Daiqing Dynasty such as "Chengfeng" began to counterattack

"Boom ......" "Boom ......"

"Hit me, rush in and get rid of that wave with one shot," Chen He said loudly

Just when the situation on the battlefield was completely reversed, "Yoshino" first adapted to this tactic of the Qing Dynasty, just like a video game in later generations, attacking the gunboats of the Great Qing Dynasty on the sea and dodging the sneak attack of the fish and pedo

The 320mm main gun on the foredeck of "Yoshino" shook for a while, white smoke slowly came out, a shell easily tore apart, the thin steel plate of the "Jingyuan" exploded inside the warship, the hull was suddenly wrapped in yellow smoke, and the flames ignited by the explosion were extremely destructive, and the internal components of the "Jingyuan", the partitions in the cabin, etc., were all made of wood, and the immature places of the Qing Navy were also reflected here, in order to whitewash the appearance, the inner cabin was also painted with a large area of flammable paint, So soon the fire was out of control, and the fire spread in all directions in the "Jingyuan", converging into patches of flames, and its hull slowly sank

The Qing fleet, which was a little excited because the situation had been reversed, was like being poured on the head by a basin of cold water, completely devoid of the excitement just now, just mechanically repeating what it should do, completely lacking the passion just now