"Tell me the truth, Colonel, what a chance do we have?" Shi Yezhi asked Guo Yi in a cautious tone.

As if it was because he was infected by Shi Yezhi's tone, Guo Yi's expression was also a little serious: "According to the current situation, the difference between us and the enemy is about five or five!" ”

As he spoke, he pointed to a simple hand-drawn map on the table, which indicated the main defenses of the Chinese army, the number of troops, etc., and there were also signs of several small boats outside the port of Honolulu.

"According to the intelligence reality we have learned, the British, French and American forces hired by Carva Hamiha V have a total of ten ships, of which five are combat ships, and the other five are transport ships and coal carriers, etc., and it is preliminarily determined that the fleet has about 90 large and small naval guns, but most of them are front-loading smoothbore guns, and a small number are front-loading rifled guns, and they have not been found to have rear-loading rifled guns for the time being!"

"Their warships, like ours, are sail-steam-wooden warships, and the performance and protection of the ships are comparable to each other. And our advantage lies in the naval guns, the standard naval guns of our ships are breech-loading rifled guns, which have a great advantage in rapid-fire and range, accuracy, but in the number of warships, we have one less!

However, if we carry out the defensive strategy, we can still get the support of the battery, but the support will not be too strong! ”

"Based on these considerations, we believe that once the war starts, if we go out to the open sea to fight them, the victory or defeat should be five to five, and if it is a defensive operation outside the port, then our chances of victory will increase to sixty percent!"

Hearing these words of Colonel Guo Yi, Shi Yezhi didn't care much, he was not a military general, and he didn't care about the so-called victory rate. He was concerned only about whether he could hold Hawaii.

So he said, "Just tell me if we can hold Hawaii!" ”

Hearing this, Colonel Guo Yi took a deep breath and said with a colored face: "Please also rest assured Minister Shi, the officers and men of our Imperial Navy will do everything they can." Defend the territory of the Empire. Even if we lose the naval battle, as long as we retreat to the land, with the bravery of our soldiers, unless the enemy continues to reinforce and the number of troops reaches more than 1,000, otherwise, they will definitely not be able to defeat us on land! ”

Although as a naval officer, it is a bit of a loss of naval dignity to say that you have to rely on land warfare to win, but your own family knows your own affairs.

Although the Imperial Navy has been formed for many years. However, there is still a big gap in the quality of all aspects, whether it is the quality of the gunners or the quality of the officers, compared with the British, the world's number one naval power, and this gap is not a short-term training, still less can be made up with a few slogans.

Although he said that there would be a fifty or even sixty percent victory, in fact, Guo Yi knew very well that once a naval battle started. It is quite possible that its own Hawaiian task force is no match for the combined fleet of Britain, France and the United States.

His only reliance is on land!

Unlike the navies of many modern countries, the navies of other countries do not have a sizable land force. However, in the Royal Navy of the Chinese Empire, there is a formed marine corps that directly belongs to the navy.

These Imperial Marines were based on companies as tactical units, and according to the actual conditions of each sea, they formed independent combat units of different sizes at the battalion and regimental levels, and in the process, some sailors and gunners serving on warships would also be temporarily organized to become part of the Marine Corps.

Leave aside the words of the coastal defense forces. At present, the Imperial Navy has a total of three independent regiments and six independent battalions, and the three regiments are deployed in Shanghai, Japan, Vladivostok, and the Heilongjiang River valley.

The independent battalion is deployed in Hue, Tokyo (Hanoi) and other places in Vietnam, and at present, a battalion-level establishment has also been temporarily formed on the Hawaiian side.

It currently has two infantry companies of the Marine Corps, one artillery company. Then there was an infantry company and an artillery company improvised by sailors.

It has a total of about 600 land troops.

These six hundred may sound like a small number, but in the waters of the Hawaiian archipelago, they are already a huge force.

If the fleet led by Colonel Guo Yi loses the naval battle, then he will move the remaining sailors and the ship's artillery to land, and the land battle force will exceed 1,000 by then.

In this case, the British, French, and American forces may be able to defeat the Hawaiian task force in naval battles, but it will be quite difficult to land and capture Hawaii.

At that time, the victory or defeat of the two sides will probably have to be a decisive battle on land before it can be decided.

However, at this point, it is estimated that it will also cause a full-scale backlash of the Chinese Empire, and when the time comes, the imperial military and political dignitaries who feel that they have been slapped in the face will definitely shout for all-out war or something, and then the war will not only be in Hawaii, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Burma and other places There may be wars.

A full-scale colonial war could break out!

Although Shi Yezhi and Guo Yi are worried about the situation in Hawaii, but these inner thoughts will never be shown, in front of their subordinates, these two people are still full of confidence, Colonel Guo Yi personally inspected the troops many times, boosted the morale of the troops, and said that the imperial soldiers were able to defeat the British and French forces once before, so this time they can also do it, and the empire will be invincible!

Hearing hundreds of naval officers shouting that they were invincible, Shi Yezhi was also a little relieved, with these hundreds of tigers, why wouldn't the empire be happy!

Only if he can win a military victory, or at least remain undefeated, can he, as a diplomat, have enough confidence to continue to negotiate with Britain, France, and the United States, and then strive for the greatest interests of the empire.

And in this situation, on February 5, after some artillery bombardment of the batteries, the combined fleet of the British, American and French forces sailed towards the harbor again, trying to block the fleet of the Imperial Navy in the harbor and destroy them one by one.

At this time, although Colonel Guo Yi was not optimistic about the outcome of the naval battle, he would not say that he would sit back and watch his fleet be blocked in the port, and then be named and eliminated one by one.

Immediately he personally led the fleet out of the port!

Since his fleet was always in combat readiness, the steam engine never went out, so he moved extremely quickly, and soon sailed out of the port.

Seeing the fleet of the Imperial Navy leave the port. The combined fleets of Britain, France and the United States also did not dare to be careless, after all, the number of ships on both sides was equal, five warships on the one hand, and four warships on the other, and everyone's protection and power were comparable, in terms of firepower. The Combined Fleet had a somewhat larger number of guns, but the Imperial Navy's task force had an advantage in performance.

Immediately, under the command of the Provisional Commander of the Combined Fleet, a British lieutenant colonel, the Combined Fleet began to set up the traditional one-line artillery bombardment formation, trying to suppress the Imperial Navy task force with side-rotating artillery.

As a result, the fleets of both sides carried out various tactical maneuvers in a small area near the harbor, and since the distance between the two sides was not far away, they soon came close to within a thousand yards.

Among them, the Taiyuan, which was closest to the enemy, took the lead. Be the first to fire at a distance of about a thousand yards from an American battleship!

In fact, the large-caliber naval guns equipped on the warships, even the front-loading smoothbore guns, can easily hit the range of several kilometers, but this extreme range is useless at all, because the hit rate is negligible.

Generally speaking, the distance of naval warfare in the area is generally about 500 yards, and sometimes even about 200 or 300 yards for short distances.

If it's a breech-loading rifled gun. Then the engagement distance can be stretched to more than five hundred yards, and fire can be carried out at eight hundred yards or even a thousand yards. Because the hitting accuracy of the rear-loading rifled gun is much higher than that of the front-loading smoothbore gun, although the hit is not high at a long distance, it cannot be said that there is none.

Colonel Guo Yi's tactics are very simple, that is, keep a distance, use the range and accuracy of his own naval guns, and hang the enemy fleet at a long distance.

Colonel Guo Yi thought so. The commanders of the British, French, and American combined fleets are not stupid, they know that there is a certain gap in the performance of their naval guns, but they have a lot of artillery, so they immediately command the fleet to rush over and try to get close and carry out artillery bombardment.

As a result, the fleets of both sides are constantly maneuvering tactically. At the beginning of the first half hour, the two sides were able to barely maintain their formation, but it was already completely chaotic when they hit the back.

The reason why the Imperial Navy's Hawaiian task force formation is out of shape cannot be blamed on others, but it is purely due to the lack of training level of its own family, and it is difficult to maintain the complete formation of the fleet from beginning to end under the tense battle.

As for the British, French, and American combined fleets, it was because they were three fleets formed improvised, and although the British lieutenant colonel who served as the commander was outstanding, he could not hide the shortcomings of the lack of cooperation between the warships of the three countries, and the warships of the three countries had their own ideas.

In this way, the naval battle between the two families changed from a complete formation at the beginning to a proper melee in which they fought separately.

As the two fleets engaged in a fierce battle off the coast of Honolulu, the rumbling of cannon could be heard on the sea, and the flames and smoke could be seen.

This made Shi Yezhi, who had been watching the battle with a telescope, quite nervous.

But the look of Rakhawa standing beside him was a little unnatural, although he had outwardly stood on the side of the Chinese Empire, but in his heart he also knew that he was just a puppet supported by the Chinese, and he did not even have real power, and from the beginning to the present, he has been under house arrest and control by the Chinese.

And now, the two fleets outside the harbor are fighting, why are they fighting, they are fighting for Hawaii.

Today's Hawaiian kingdom is like a piece of fat, being fought over by tigers and wolves, and its own country is being fought over as fat by outsiders, how can this make Karawaha feel good!

But there is no way to feel uncomfortable, the current situation in Hawaii has nothing to do with the Hawaiian Kingdom itself, I dare not say that it is Kawahameha V or Rakhahava, they are just puppets, and they can't even express their opinions freely.

What Kalahava can hope for now is that if the Chinese Empire can win this war and take control of the Kingdom of Hawaii, it will not hurt its own people too much.

As long as his people can live a stable life, he can't control anything else!

Under the attention of many people, the battle between the Hawaiian task force of the Imperial Chinese Navy and the combined fleet of Britain, France, and the United States lasted from 11 o'clock in the morning to more than 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

And looking at the remaining warships on the sea, it is obvious that the winner has been decided! (To be continued.) )