Chapter 1127: The Rising Sun Sets in the West

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During the period when the Qianguo ironclad fleet carried forward the tactics of chaotic warfare and attacked the ships of the Japanese Combined Fleet. Pen ~ fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info The 4th ships of the Japanese First Guerrilla Force led by Tsuboi Kozo were still struggling in the flames, and turned to the shallow water area to extinguish the fire and save themselves, but at this time, the warships "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan", which were in charge of guarding the Qianguo Fleet, arrived on the battlefield and opened heavy fire on the First Guerrilla Force. On the sides of the four Japanese navy's most cutting-edge cruisers, large-caliber rapid-fire guns fired frequently in an attempt to force the Qianguo warships to stay away, but the two Qianguo warships did not flinch, and while using heavy artillery bombardment, they worked hard to close the distance with the first guerrilla force, and the two sides actually formed another battlefield.

In the sequence of ships escorted the Ming army to land in Dadonggou, in addition to the 14 warships anchored 12 nautical miles away from the mouth of Dadonggou, some warships were directly deployed inside and outside Dadonggou in Dadonggou. Among them, a temporary squad composed of the coastal defense ironclad ship "Ningyuan" and the large cruiser "Jiyuan" was moored at the entrance of Dadong Port and assumed the mission of guarding the transfer site; the six mosquito boats "Zhendong", "Zhenxi", "Zhennan", "Zhenbei", "Zhenzhong", and "Zhenbian" and the torpedo boats "Fulong," "Fuhu," "Fujiao," and "Fuyan" were able to directly escort troop carriers into the harbor because of their shallow drafts.

At about 12:10 p.m. on the same day, an unusual scene on the sea in the distance temporarily interrupted the busy landing rhythm in Dadong Port: The soot over the main force of the fleet outside the mouth of the Dadong ditch suddenly increased, wisps of black smoke soared into the sky, and the warships flying the dragon flag rushed to anchor first, and at the same time, a group of flags were raised at the end of the mast truss of the fleet's flagship "Dingyuan." After confirming the discovery of the Japanese fleet, Admiral Ding Yuting of the Qianguo Fleet ordered the warships in the Dadong Ditch to come at anchor as soon as possible and join the main force of the fleet to fight together. The two ships "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan" in Dadong Port were the first to discover and identify the signal, and then set off at anchor and set off in groups. The 2 warships, like a reserve force, sailed away one after another under the awe-inspiring gaze of the army soldiers on the troop carrier, and after passing through the narrow Dadonggou waterway, they headed for the direction of the main force of the fleet, which was rushing towards the Japanese Combined Fleet in the distance. Six ships, including the mosquito ship "Zhendong", which were less maneuverable, were left behind in Daito Harbor because they were not suitable to participate in the decisive battle of the fleet in the open sea, playing their innate role: the water battery at the mouth of the mouth, and if a Japanese warship approached, they would defend the last line of defense.

The warships guarding the harbor departed one after another, and the cannon fire on the sea in the distance became more and more intense, indicating that a naval battle had clearly broken out. The appearance of enemy warships at such a time and place, according to normal logical reasoning, must have come for the troop transport fleet, and hastening to complete the landing is the best precautionary measure to avoid danger at present. Liu Shengxiu, commander of the Ming Army, anxiously looked into the Yalu River at the ship bureau on the shore of Dadong Port; the 315 wooden barges that had already sailed on the Yalu River in the early morning had not yet returned, and nearly a quarter of the officers and men and supplies on the troop transport ships in Dadong Port had not been transferred, and the landing time had been delayed for too long.

At that time, the reason why the transfer operation was so slow was that Dadonggou at the mouth of the Yalu River was a famous strong tide estuary in the north of Qianguo. The average tidal range is 4.59 meters, and the maximum tidal range can even reach more than 7 meters, second only to the Qiantang River estuary. The small one is only 100 stones, but Shandong bought a small boat"), in the sound of the slender man's trumpet, the more than 4,000 officers and soldiers of the Ming Army, as well as a large number of materials, were transported from the troop carrier to the Yalu River, and the degree of time and trouble was self-evident.

In order to prevent the Japanese army from entering the port, some of the artillery of the Ming army was also painstakingly transferred to the shore, and the soldiers of the artillery team began to build temporary artillery fortifications on the shore at the entrance of Dadong Port to cooperate with the mosquito boats to defend together. At the moment, the safety of these army officers and men and troop carriers is to a greater extent pinned hopes on the Qianguo Fleet, which is fighting a bloody battle with the Japanese Combined Fleet in the distance; if the Qianguo Fleet cannot drag the Japanese warships to the death on the naval battlefield, even if there are six mosquito boats and some small-caliber shore guns for defense, the consequences will still be unimaginable.

Because the position of the "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan" ships was far away from the anchorage of the main force of the fleet when they set off, and because the main force of the fleet had already anchored and attacked when they received the signal to return home, when the "Jingyuan" ships took the lead in the naval battle in the Yellow Sea, they still sailed the sea in the distance and failed to join the confrontation in the first period.

As the captain ship of the "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan" squadrons, "Ningyuan" belongs to the German "Siegfried" class ironclad ship, second only to the "Dingyuan" class ironclad ship in the fleet, and dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese Navy in the Battle of Toshima, but this time before the start of the Battle of Dadonggou, "Ningyuan" was not incorporated into the main force of the Qianguo fleet, Ding Yuting assigned this warship to Dadong Port, because the biggest advantage of this class of warships is coastal defense, and if necessary, it can act as the captain of six mosquito ships such as "Zhendong". Lead the mosquito fleet to defend the coast of Dadonggou.

The wingman "Jiyuan" that accompanied the operation of the "Ningyuan" ship was one of the two "Chicago" class cruisers ordered by Lin Yiqing in the United States, with a displacement of 4,752 tons, a warship length of 105.69 meters, a width of 15.23 meters, a draft of 5.76 meters, a main engine power of 5,400 horsepower, and a maximum speed of 16.5 knots. The most distinctive feature of the three-masted and double-chimney cruiser "Jiyuan" is her armament design, compared with other cruisers on the coastal defense of the Qianguo Dynasty in the same era, the artillery armament of this class of warships is somewhat unusual, its main guns are 4 190 mm 30 times the caliber Ghanaian guns, which are installed in the four ear stands on both sides of the warship, and the secondary guns are 10 140 mm 30 times the caliber Ghanaian guns, single gun mounts, 5 on the left and right sides, and 4 40 mm bang guns. As a first-class large cruiser, the "Jiyuan" was not equipped with any torpedo weapons such as torpedo tubes and torpedo launchers.

"Jiyuan" was originally incorporated by Ding Yuting into the cruiser fleet led by Zhang Cheng, vice admiral of the navy, to protect merchant ships, due to engine failure to enter Lushun for maintenance, just in time for this troop transport operation, in order to strengthen the strength of the main fleet, this large cruiser was temporarily incorporated into the main fleet by Ding Yuting.

It is not difficult to understand the reason why Ding Yuting assigned the "Jiyuan" ship to the Dadonggou area, and it is not difficult to understand after speculating on the characteristics of its armament: This class of large cruisers, which did not have a high speed but had strong firepower but were not equipped with torpedoes, could be used as the leader of the torpedo boat fleet when necessary, and led four torpedo boats to the battlefield at high speed to cover the torpedo boats with their own intensive firepower to launch a surprise attack on the enemy ships.

The "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan" that were set up as the lead ships of the mosquito boat and the torpedo boat respectively and stayed in the Dadonggou were not used in this way, and the "Ningyuan" ship rushed to the battlefield, probably unwilling to let such a heavyweight warship be placed in the harbor as a floating battery to passively wait for the enemy, and the "Jiyuan" ship was not used according to the torpedo boat leader ship, and the greater reason should be that this warship had not cooperated with the torpedo boat fleet in the past and had not yet had a good tacit understanding with each other.

In the first round, the Japanese warship "Yoshino," which was in disarray and set on fire under heavy artillery bombardment from the Qianguo ironclad ships, the lookouts clearly saw that two newly arrived Qianguo warships had appeared in the smoke of the battlefield, and the two warships "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan" were already approaching the battlefield at this time. They were not the main force on the front line of the Qianguo Fleet, and there were great differences in ship types, armaments, and speeds, and the two warships, "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan," which had never been used together in a group, were like tigers descending from the mountains, and immediately launched an attack on the First Guerrilla Force of the Japanese Combined Fleet after arriving at the battlefield.

At 14:30, the two warships "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan" entered the battlefield from the direction of the right flank of the Qianguo Fleet, crossed the course of the Japanese No. 1 Guerrilla Force, and blocked the way of the No. 1 Guerrilla Warship to go around the back of the formation of the Qianguo Fleet. The two Qianguo warships that suddenly rushed out of the oblique stab really surprised Tsuboi Kozo, and "Yoshino" and the follow-up "Takachiho", "Akitsusu", and "Naniwa" immediately began to exchange fire with "Ningyuan" and "Jiyuan".

Koukou

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