As soon as the battle began, the Han Seventh Fleet was already in a favorable position with a tailwind, and the Spaniards had to attack against the wind. Both sides adopted the most common naval tactics of the moment, line artillery battles.

However, the difference in strength between the two sides was too great, and the Spaniards not only went against the wind, but also lagged far behind the Han army in the number of warships, artillery, and soldiers.

The Seventh Fleet has more than 100 warships, large and small, and even excluding the marines who surrounded Manila on the shore, it still has tens of thousands of navies. In particular, the number of artillery pieces was quite staggering, and the total number of artillery pieces in the whole fleet reached more than four thousand. The Spaniards had only about 30 battleships with more than 50 guns, and only 10 battleships, with a total of just over 2,000 guns.

Despite the unfavorable situation, the Spaniards still came. Either they rot in the harbor and starve to death, or they fight to the death. Castro was the main force in the battle, and he believed that even if the Han army far outnumbered them, the battle at sea was not only won by numbers, but also by the art of command and naval experience.

In the face of the huge Han fleet, Castro instead divided his already weak patchwork fleet into two parts, in which thirty armed merchant ships with more than 50 guns would circle around from the outside, detour to the upper hand, and attack from the flank and rear of the Han fleet.

He himself led ten battleships and the remaining dozen or so armed merchant ships with less than fifty guns to engage the opponent's main force head-on, and then waited until the wind changed or dusk, and then used his huge arson fleet of hundreds of speedy sailing ships to launch a fire attack.

However, in this way, the task of the ten battleships led by Castro will be very difficult, they must at least be able to entangle and withstand the attack of the Han fleet for half a day, and cannot be broken by the Han army. It had to be dragged until the circuitous fleet circled and until dusk to facilitate the attack of the fire attack fleet.

Ten battleships, all seventy-four-gun double-gun deck battleships. This is placed in Europe, and it can be regarded as the main battleship. But now facing the Han fleet, Castro has little confidence.

On the opposite side there were six huge ships, two 100-4-gun three-gun deck 1st class ships, and four 90-gun three-gun deck 2nd class ships. These six giant ships are the flagship of the Spanish Navy's fleet, although they don't have those glittering decorations. There is no unique and beautiful bow statue, and there are not so many carvings in the stern, but it is so simple and clear, blue is mainly sandwiched with red battleship paint, and the black holes exposed in the gun windows are full of deterrence.

And the sea snake flag with nine heads fluttering in the wind on the mast made the fleet even more hideous.

After the Han fleet fired the first round of artillery from more than a thousand yards away, it did not continue to fire, but just pressed down with the wind.

Eight hundred yards. Seven hundred yards, six hundred yards.

The Han fleet was still approaching, and this time no Spaniards called the Han navy hillbillies.

When the distance between the two armies was only four hundred yards, the Spaniards were the first to lose their breath, and in a tense atmosphere, the flagship of the Spanish fleet, the St. Augustine, took the lead in launching a salvo against the Han fleet with its starboard naval guns, opening the prelude to the naval battle of Manila.

The cannonballs that rained down did not shake the Seventh Fleet in the slightest.

"Keep approaching!"

Fleet Commander Liu Yunwen displayed a textbook spirit of naval warfare. With a huge number of warships and a superior number of artillery, Liu Yunwen was ready to fight bayonets with the Spaniards at sea.

As he asked. Ships must be within 300 yards of the enemy ship before they are allowed to open fire.

Two first-class ships, four second-class ships, eight third-class ships, and sixteen fourth-class ships, all thirty of which had more than seventy-four guns. A long line was drawn at sea, and the sails were puffed up towards the Spanish army, and next to these huge ships were frigates of the fifth or sixth rank and smaller communication boats and gunboats.

The first round of shells of the Spanish battleships, mostly missed. Hit the surroundings of the Han warship, splashing countless water columns.

Another volley of shells was fired, and finally an unlucky Han gunboat was hit.

The hapless gunboat had received at least a dozen twenty-twenty-pound or eighteen-pound shells, and although they were all solid shells, the gunboat was a brig, with a crew of only a few dozen and only about twenty guns. No matter how flexible and mobile you are, if you eat such a saturation attack, it will be over immediately.

Not only were the two masts broken, but even the waterline was pierced through several large holes, and the gunboat quickly entered the water, and there was no urgency to save it. There was even a shell that detonated the ship's powder keg, causing the powder keg to explode and the cabin to catch fire, sending countless smoke up.

The captain of the gunboat had his hand pricked off by the wooden thorns that had been blown open by the shell, and he yelled in pain to abandon the ship and jump into the sea.

The Spaniards cheered for their good start, but on the battleships of the Han army, the Han generals showed a hideous smile. The two sides had come close to a distance of three hundred yards, which was the best range for an attack, but the stupid Spaniards had wasted this precious opportunity to shoot on a small gunboat.

Then, for at least a few minutes, the Spaniard's cannon would be in a state of reloading, while the Han's warship was on standby all the time.

Liu Yunwen was frowning and pondering while holding the admiral's officer's sword.

"Raise the flag, don't fire the cannon for the time being, continue to get closer, approach the enemy ship for 200 yards and then open fire!"

At a distance of 300 yards, the accuracy of naval guns can be much improved, but if it is close to within 200 yards, of course, the accuracy is higher.

"When you get closer, prepare to explode the bomb!"

The battleship rode the wind and waves and came a hundred yards closer.

At this point, the Spaniard finally finished reloading and once again preemptively launched another volley.

The thirty-two-pounder guns on the upper bottom of the ten Spanish battleships mixed with more eighteen pounder twelve-pounder guns fired a powerful salvo, and more than three hundred guns fired at the same time, again at a distance of two hundred yards.

Many of these shells hit the Han warships, and even the side of the flagship General Li Guang suffered considerable damage.

However, as it was all, solid shells did not cause more damage.

The armor plate of the ship of the Flying General Li Guang was so thick that even a thirty-two-pound shell could not sink a battleship with one shot. Limited by the artillery technology of this era, the naval guns were usually equipped with 32-pound guns on the lower decks of battleships, which could fire 32-pound heavy solid shells. However, because the bore pressure of this gun is too high, and the fuse technology of the explosive bomb is not enough, the naval guns on the battleship are very capable of firing explosive shells. No matter how heavy and big the solid bullet is. Unless you are lucky enough to break the mast directly, or if you are more lucky enough to hit the waterline, you will be fine even if you hit an enemy ship with more than ten or twenty rounds or even a hundred rounds.

In naval battles, it is often necessary to get closer. Using the 32-pounder gun at the bottom, he expects to hit the enemy ship's waterline and sink the enemy ship. Or use chain bullets to break the opponent's mast and make the enemy ship lose speed. Or, you can only use grapeshot, firing a bunch of shells at once, and bombarding intensively.

If you get closer, you can also use larger-caliber but shorter-range mortars and shotguns to bombard the soldiers on enemy ships.

Naval warfare in this era. In fact, it is quite vicious, sometimes even more cruel than the army, and at the end of a naval battle, the battleship may withstand hundreds of shells, many floods, countless damages, most of the casualties on board, and many people are even more unlucky. Directly sank with the ship and fed the fish.

Solid shells, broken chains, grapeshot. All kinds of shells whistled, and the artillery pieces on the opposite side lit up one after another, roaring.

The shattered hull armor and scattered sharp wood chips were the most lethal things in naval warfare, much more lethal than the scorching solid shells. A solid cannonball hits one or two people at most, but it can be a splash of wooden spikes. But it is possible to kill and injure dozens of sailors at once.

The sailor's canvas hammock, which was tied to the ship's side armor before the war, played a significant role at this time, successfully reducing the number of wooden thorns.

However, many soldiers on the Han warship were still wounded or even killed, with severed limbs and blood splattered, and the young men of the medical team on board hurriedly carried buckets of sand onto the deck. Sand hides blood. Avoid slipping on the deck due to blood.

Several sails were destroyed by chain bombs, the wrenched sail rigging collapsed and fell, and the speed of the ship slowed down.

No, at this time, the thirty main warships of the Han army were already less than two hundred yards away from the enemy ships.

Liu Yunwen finally did not change the order again, and no longer asked to get closer.

The signal flag for the shelling had been raised from the flagship, and the captains of the ships immediately gave the order for the shelling, and the gunners commanded the gunners in the cabin to open fire.

On the top deck, each ship also placed a lot of guns, in addition to the heavy railing guns in the bow, there were also many cannon grenades. Although these cannons did not shoot as far as the cannons below, they were the killer weapon of the Han Imperial Navy, and these cannons were specially designed to fire explosive shells.

The bore pressure of ordinary naval guns is too large, and the explosive bomb cannot withstand it, and the phenomenon of explosion in the bore will occur. But there will be no such problem with switching to the cannon, which was first equipped by the army, equipped with howitzers that solved the problem of delayed leadership, that is, explosive shells, and has amazing lethality.

The navy brought these guns and shells to warships, and used them against wooden warships, and the effect was far better than ordinary cannons. But this cannon also has a drawback, the firing range is short. However, if you get too close to the enemy ship, you may be hit by enemy artillery, and if the explosive bomb explodes on your own ship, the lethality is also very large.

If we compare these explosive bombs equipped with the Seventh Fleet with the traditional naval guns, the traditional naval guns are like bullets with three or eight large covers, with amazing penetration, and a single shot may be one in and one out of two eyes. And the explosive bomb, the strong is the explosive force, a shot hit, will not penetrate, but will explode.

Both shells have their own characteristics, but they are undoubtedly more lethal against sail warships, which are still mainly wooden.

Under normal circumstances, as long as it does not hit below the waterline, the sail battleship can still be alive even if it is hit by a hundred or so cannon solid shells, but if it hits a few explosive shells, it may not be. In particular, explosive bombs not only have amazing lethality of explosions, especially this kind of explosive bombs are also easy to cause ship fire, powder keg explosion, etc.

Historically, it was precisely because the navy was equipped with mature explosive bombs that the wooden warships were eventually extremely fragile, leading to the emergence of ironclad ships.

"Fire! Fuck it! ”

At a distance of less than two hundred yards, a salvo of naval guns was overwhelming, and the first salvo was riddled with holes for a fifty-gun armed merchant ship covering the flagship of the St. Augustine.

In particular, the explosive bombs exploded on the ship one after another, and the fire caused by it instantly ignited the ship's mast and sails, and what was even more unfortunate was that the fire also ignited the powder keg on the gun deck.

An even more fierce flame rolled, and the shock wave rushed out of the gun window on the side of the ship, and the violent explosion tore directly through the hull.

"Shoot the water dogs, set fire to that boat, sink it first!"

Although the fifty-gun armed merchant ship had not sunk, it was not much better, the ship was simply hell, the explosion made the gun deck even more a slaughterhouse, the ship had lost the ability to fight back, and the sails were on fire, which also made the ship lose power, it completely became a slaughterer, the Seventh Fleet beat the water dogs, and several more volleys, directly sinking the armed merchant ship into the sea.

The Han army took advantage of the victory and attacked fiercely.

At first, the Spaniards could still fire volleys back and forth, but it didn't take long for the Spaniards to maintain their formation and began to scatter.

In the end, it turned into a melee.

It is better to say that the Spanish fleet has been chased and fought by the Han army.

In the fierce battle, the Spanish flagship St. Augustine also suffered the same fate as the merchant ships that had escorted him before, and the battleship was hit by an explosive bomb at the ammunition depot, and the explosion continued.

The commander of the fleet, Castro, was killed directly.

The battleship then entered the water and began to sink.

The Han then wrenched the masts of two Spanish battleships, which were then surrounded by Han speedboats and had to face a gang attack by the Han army, and were eventually captured.

The rest of the Spanish ships were at this point in no fighting spirit and began to flee one after another.

In the end, only two battleships escaped from the main fleet led by Castro, three more than eight battleships were sunk, three including the flagship, five were wounded and captured, and three armed merchant ships were sunk and seven were captured.

Those fire attack boats were swept away by the Han army.

And when the battle on this side was over, the thirty armed merchant ships that Castro had sent out to make a detour had just made a big circle to gain the upper hand.

As a result, the Spanish merchant fleet that arrived was completely stunned, originally it was going around in a circle to attack from both sides, but now the main fleet has been destroyed, and they have been cut off from returning to port.

After a volley of Han troops, the merchant fleet still wanted to escape to the open sea, but it only took half a day to chase, and finally the thirty merchant ships were surrounded, and the Spanish merchant ship owners finally chose to raise the white flag and surrender.

It was nearly dusk, and the Battle of Manila Bay ended.

The Philippine fleet in Manila was almost completely annihilated, three battleships and three armed merchant ships were sunk, five battleships were captured, thirty-seven armed merchant ships were captured, only two wounded battleships escaped, and all those small fire attack ships were sunk. Five admirals, including Admiral Castro, and more than three thousand soldiers were killed or captured.

The Seventh Fleet, on the other hand, lost only three gunboats, two communication boats, and one sixth-class battleship, and lost no more than 500 soldiers.

Compared to the casualties, the victory of the Seventh Fleet was even more brilliant! (To be continued.) )