Chapter Twenty-Eight: The End of Iron Armor
Soon, the "Meng Chun", which had been continuously subjected to saturation shelling, could no longer support it, the hull continued to tilt to the left, the propeller at the bottom of the ship on the right side gradually exposed the water, and the warship's roll gradually reached a terrible 90 degrees, while the artillery fire of the Chinese warship continued to pour into the "Meng Chun", and a larger fire ignited in the bow of the ship. Two minutes later, "Meng Chun" flipped to the left and capsized into the sea.
At this time, the commander of the Japanese fleet did not have Lin Yiqing's perspective on the "Dong" ironclad ship, and did not know the news that the "Fengxiang" and "Meng Chun" had been destroyed, but was still directing the "Dong" ironclad ship and five Chinese cruisers to maneuver around to buy time for the "Rijin," which had already been injured and caught fire, to save itself.
Since the radius of the "Dong" circling the "Rijin" was much smaller than that of the Chinese cruisers, although the Chinese cruisers tried to bypass the "Dong" and sink the "Rijin" with weak protection first, the "Dong" was always able to stand in front of the "Rijin" at the right time, which made the Chinese gunners blaze and the officers of the Chinese Navy admired.
After a few more large circles, the Chinese cruiser fleet lost patience and, while continuing to shorten the distance between itself and the enemy ships, simply poured all its artillery fire on the ironclad ship "Dong".
The heroic actions of the Japanese in covering the "Nisshin" with the "To" with strong armor and thick armor were rewarded to a certain extent, and under the desperate cover of the "To", the "Nisshin" finally extinguished the fire and returned to normal speed.
But the life of the Japanese battleship was also coming to an end.
The ironclad ship "Dong" fired another shell at the flagship of the Chinese cruiser fleet, "Fujing", but the huge shell still did not hit the Chinese warship, but flew past the side and rear of the Chinese fleet and fell far into the sea.
Because the speed of the Chinese cruiser was too fast, the rate of fire of the breech main gun of the "Dong" was too slow, and the firing range of the gun window was extremely limited, Lin Yiqing found that from the beginning of the war to the present, the main gun of the "Dong" had fired a total of only 7 shells, and none of them had achieved results!
But almost at the same time, a large-caliber armor-piercing projectile fired by the "Fujing" fiercely penetrated the armor plate of the "East" gun room, as if a duel prevailed in the Middle Ages, almost at the same moment when the "Fujing" hit the "East", the "Fujing" was also hit by the guns on the side of the "East" one after another, and in the simple artillery confrontation, although the "Fujing" with three large-caliber breech guns on each side had the upper hand, the combat distance between the two sides had been shortened to 600 meters at this time. In the fierce shelling, the side of the "Fujing" ship was hit, and the shells loaded with black powder exploded on the side armor plate of the "Fujing", bursting the armor plate, but it failed to penetrate it.
Although the main guns of the "East" ironclad ship were unusable, the Japanese sailors who fought on the open deck still showed high combat qualities despite the overwhelming fire of the Chinese warships. Soon after the main guns fell silent, the Japanese gunners continued to fire these secondary guns, but at this time, several five-barreled Haqikaisi single-barreled machine guns equipped on the "Fujing" ship kept roaring and hit the "East" one after another. Seeing that the side guns of the "Dong" hit their battleship, the Chinese gunners were even more angry and manipulated the machine guns to concentrate on attacking the side gun positions of the "Dong" that had just fired at their battleship.
Up to this point in the battle, the Japanese fleet's active tactics of attacking in small units have not been able to achieve the goal of disrupting the enemy's line. Instead of inflicting large losses on the Chinese fleet, the Japanese fleet was put in a desperate situation on the battlefield. After adapting and adjusting in the early stage of the war, the Chinese fleet formulated and gradually completed the strategy of encircling and attacking the Japanese fleet. Moreover, the cruiser formation of the Chinese fleet has the characteristics of high speed and agile action, and it can always maintain an appropriate distance from the Japanese fleet by taking advantage of its mechanical superiority, so that the Japanese fleet, which is already slow, cannot approach and launch a chaotic battle and attack, forcing it to carry out artillery confrontation in which it does not have an advantage. The Chinese fleet had a huge advantage in the number of gun emplacements, the rate of fire of the guns, and the types of ammunition enough to completely overwhelm the Japanese fleet in terms of firepower. Now the Japanese fleet has completely fallen into a situation of passive beating.
The "Chaowu" at the end of the Chinese fleet performed a miraculous feat, and the main gun of the ship hit the ironclad ship "Dong" with a high-explosive shell, and this shell just hit the part of the armor plate that was cracked under the anchor chain hole on the left side of the bow of the "Dong", and drilled into the interior of the "Dong". The raging fire devoured all the items that could be ignited in the cabin at a very fast speed, and the raging flames spread rapidly from the bullet holes and the stairway hatches in the ship with a scorching high temperature, and soon there were fires on the first floor and the main deck, and the black smoke completely enveloped the front of the entire "East" ironclad ship, Lin Yiqing clearly saw that the "East" ironclad ship was almost completely surrounded by thick smoke, and the bow part of the ship was still bursting out with firelight, like a monster struggling in the flames.
Seeing a rare opportunity, five cutting-edge Chinese cruisers approached the "Dong," which was almost powerless to fight back, and concentrated its large and small artillery fire to concentrate its attack; at this time, the Chinese artillery fleet also rushed to the battlefield and continued to attack from behind, and the rain of bullets poured on the "Dong" and the sound of explosions continued to sound, and the situation was extremely critical.
And just when the "East" was in great danger, the "Nisshin" suddenly turned around and sailed desperately in the direction of the coast.
Lin Yiqing knew that the "Rijin" might not want to abandon the friendly ship and escape, unlike the ironclad ship "Dong", which dared to come forward to cover itself, the "Rijin" did not have such a strong protective force. The process of confronting the guns of the five warships of the Chinese cruiser just now was tantamount to a process of slowly depleting the lives of the "Rijin", whose hull had already been penetrated in many places, and some of the wounds appeared near the waterline, and a large amount of seawater poured into the ship, and the hull of the ship tilted to the right of nearly 30 degrees, which was a fatal danger for any ship.
At this time, the "Nisshin" ship, which had been heavily damaged, suddenly rushed to the coast because the Japanese captain probably had estimated that his warship would not be able to support it for too long, and instead of sinking it senselessly, it was better to rush to the beach and run aground to save the lives of the warship and the officers and men on board.
It is a pity that the Chinese fleet did not give the "Rijin" such an opportunity.
――――Dividing Line――――
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