The blow came so quickly, and the progress was so rapid, that the British did not react at all from beginning to end!

The "Counterattack" was badly wounded and covered in holes, and in just one or two minutes, the hull of the ship obviously tilted to the right. The injured mainmast let out a tooth-aching groan, and then the last few pulling cables snapped, cutting through the air with a heart-wrenching howl, whipping at the nearby seawater.

Immediately after, the heavy upper half of the body drove down the waist completely, and the big tree branches slapped on the sea. A spark erupted from the broken tail, and the trunk stumbled up on the side of the ship, hitting the top of the Command Tower as it fell.

"Bang!"

The thick armored tower trembled violently, all the glass shattered, and the snow-bright glass pieces flying in the sky reflected the frightened and discolored faces, some of which swooped mercilessly, piercing them all over their bodies as miserable as hedgehogs!

Surrounded by the officers of the headquarters, Vice Admiral Seymour fled to the port side in panic and grabbed the railing to secure himself, and just as the sailors shouted to put down the lifeboat, he turned his head and looked blankly at the burning bridge, unable to believe that this qiē was real!

"General, please get into the lifeboat immediately! Our battleship is about to explode, we must get out of ......! ”

The staff officer roared loudly beside him, ringing his ears. Otherwise, it would be difficult to overpower the explosions on the battleship and the desperate howls of the wounded sailors.

Lieutenant General Seymour shuddered and came back to his senses, subconsciously twisted and broke free from the arms that grabbed him, and said angrily: "Bastard! We can't just run away, the battleship can still be saved. Immediately put out the fire. Open the valve to fill the balance. Pack up the turret and fight back against that damn guy, fight back ......! ”

This is the "Counterattack", and the mission given to her from the beginning of its construction is not to maintain the dignity and regain confidence of the British Empire at a critical moment? How can you just give up like that!

The staff officer grabbed his arm again and shouted, "We have done our best, General! This is a completely unequal battle, and someone is in charge of saving the battleship, and you must get out of here immediately. The United Navy needs you, and the glory of the Empire needs you to lead us to fight it back! ”

While shouting, he lowered him from the higher and higher side side, and then the officers of the headquarters hurriedly climbed down like dumplings. It's really too late, just jump into the icy water, in short, it would be good to be able to leave this inevitable battleship a moment earlier.

Vice Admiral Seymour passively got into the lifeboat, and when he struggled to paddle away, he tried his best to look back and saw that at the top of the command tower, the captain of the "Counterattack" was covered in blood, but he stubbornly straightened his body. Shouted at the sailors who were still running below.

Never give up hope until the last moment! Captain of the British Empire. It should live and die with her ship!

A tragic feeling welled up in his heart, and Seymour solemnly raised his hand at the battleship and saluted.

The Dingyuan did not continue to fire at her, and all gun emplacements fell silent for a short time, pointing their guns at the "Revenge" that accelerated out of the crowd.

Liu Buyun looked through the telescope and watched coldly as the "Counterattack" fell apart in the fire explosion. The fire that permeated the ship not only burned all the teak, flammables, and oil, but the flames that burned inside the breach even ignited the coal, and the hot steam exploded from the boiler to intensify the damage to the ship's hull, and the sturdy steel monster shuddered from the inside.

After the mainmast collapsed, the damaged chimney followed by a squeaky and strange scream, black smoke billowing out and permeating the surroundings, large and small auxiliary guns, small artillery positions, the ammunition ignited by the fire kept detonating, one by one explosion will be where the steel is shattered, dozens of tons of parts from time to time suddenly fly out of the fireworks, a throw of dozens of meters or even hundreds of meters, plopping and smashing out of one after another bright water column.

A large number of surviving sailors jumped into the water in panic, desperately swimming away from the distance, and the starboard side of the battleship sank at an astonishing speed, and in a short time the lower deck was completely submerged in the water, and capsizing was inevitable.

Liu Buyun's heart was full of emotion, how heavy is the price of the generation gap in technology and backward concepts!

Is heavy armor and high speed enough? The number of main guns is insufficient, the performance is unstable, and it is difficult to fire and counterattack once it is hit, which is a big drawback. The road to battleships is far from ripe.

After a short period of emotion, he stared at the "Revenge" that was covered in gunsmoke and bombarded non-stop, and gave a categorical order: "Keep moving, target the No. 2 enemy ship, hit hard!" ”

At this time, the "Revenge" had tried its best to maneuver forward and launched all the available artillery fire, but the effect was not good, and it was unable to run to the front to act as a shield for the flagship.

The heavy warships of this era were extremely slow to pick up speed, and it would take more time than five minutes of firefighting to catch up with them from a few kilometers apart. Maneuvering is even more clumsy, with a power of about 10,000 horsepower and a displacement of about 15,000 tons, any plan that needs to be changed in a short period of time should not be expected to succeed.

So until now, the "Revenge" has only been about a kilometer closer than before, and you have to be very careful not to crash carelessly.

Seeing that the "Counterattack" had fallen to that end, and without even having a chance to get close to the other party, it was bombed and was about to sink with fire all over its body, and the officers on the ships of several countries behind were all frightened! However, it is too far away to judge what the situation is, and only the "Revenge" in the back and the "Elector" on the right can really see it!

It's horrible! From firing from 12 kilometers away to ending the battle at 5 kilometers, from the beginning to the end, the "counterattack" did not inflict even a single hit on the "Dingyuan" with the main gun, and in turn hit an unknown number of deadly shells, which was simply a one-sided massacre!

At this time, navies around the world believed that warships should not be more than five kilometers away. It wasn't until a decade later that the French began to equip rangefinders with a baseline of only 2.3 meters, because they didn't pay much attention to long-range firefights. The British were the first to install a rangefinder firing command center on the foremast and aftermast, on the No. 2 ship of the Edward 7 class dreadnought, completed in July 1905.

Until then, navies had generally believed that hitting a target at high speed was a very astonishing thing. And the British don't think either. Their advanced nickel steel armor can be pierced far away!

Naval tacticians summed up their experience and believed. Eight thousand to ten thousand meters is the firing area of heavy artillery. The theoretical hit rate is basically negligible. 5,000 to 8,000 meters is the range where heavy medium artillery exerts lethality, and the targets of destruction are mainly personnel and unarmored ships.

The real interval between 3,000 and 5,000 meters is the real interval between the effectiveness of the artillery, and those who can successfully hit the target within this range are considered good hands.

The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were the truncation of the rapid development of the world's naval equipment and tactics. From the era of sails to the era of all-steel armor; From multi-caliber turrets to all-main guns, all seemingly advanced warships need to be launched. It means to be overtaken. Those who can lead by ten years are considered super-good.

The capital ships used by the navies of various countries today were designed and built before the First Sino-Japanese War. After that, they learned lessons from observing Chinese and Japanese ships, and applied them to the technical improvement of subsequent warships, which was not reflected at all! Without sufficient preparation, they rashly relied on the battleships to rush up to find faults, and the result was not tragic!

"Revenge" rushed up and found that the flagship in front was already incorrigible. But at this time they could not retreat, and the pride and self-confidence of the Royal Navy of the British Empire did not allow them to have any self-doubt. After the "Dingyuan" staggered proudly past the burning flagship. The straight-line distance between the two of them was also stretched to about six thousand meters, and the shells fired by the front main gun and the side secondary gun. began to fall messily around the "Dingyuan".

"Dingyuan" did not change its course without any course, re-locked the target, and opened fire with a bang!

This is almost a copy of the previous battle, let the sparse cannonballs in the distance smash over, and the shells fired by the main gun of the "Revenge" in the bumps every two minutes let alone hit, even if it can be accurate to the coordinates, it can't even make the corners of Liu Buyun's eyes jump a little.

Their secondary guns can fire rapid-fire strikes, but the poor armor-piercing shells, even if they hit once in a while, will be a long shot off the advanced armor, let alone destroy, and it would be nice to leave a little dent.

But the blow of the "Dingyuan" is completely different!

After only three rounds of twin cannon salvos, an armor-piercing shell hit the amidship of the "Revenge", opened a large hole for him and blew up half of the secondary gun, followed by multiple 152mm grenades above it, causing a raging fire! After a few more rounds of firing, just as the two sides passed by, a 305mm armor-piercing bullet burst through the armor of the main turret behind it and smashed in, and the explosive flames rushed into the lower ammunition compartment, causing an earth-shattering explosion!

The stern of the "Revenge" suddenly jumped upward, and a fireworks of hundreds of meters high were launched, and hundreds of tons of steel in place disintegrated in response, and then roared into the sky and sprinkled into the sea!

The inboard gun of the "Monarch Class" once again made a contribution, transmitting the raging flames forward without hindrance, spreading destruction along the way, until it rushed out of the front turret, and God almost overturned the command tower from the bottom!

This battleship, declared finished!

At this time, the two "Nile-class" battleships finally rushed over in a slanted spur and aimed their fat hulls in front.

This battleship is unprecedentedly heavy armored, and its thickest side armor belt is as much as 508mm! The total armor is a full 4320 tons!

Its length is only 112.16 meters, and the displacement is 11,940 tons. And the extremely low freeboard, when running on the sea, looking from a distance, will make people worry that this guy may be drowned by the waves at any time.

But today, the two warships had no choice but to risk speeding up, even if there was a danger of capsizing, they had to provide effective support to the guys in front of them first.

But if you want to rush from the rear to the front, it is not an ordinary difficulty. To force within a 5,000-meter combat distance, they not only have to speed up to catch up with the two "Sovereign Level", but also have to maneuver horizontally to intercept them, which is not a good job!

For more than ten minutes, the two ships were only barely able to complete the stability after a 30-degree maneuver, and in order to ensure that the ship could fire safely, they had to increase their speed and then slow down.

After such a toss, the battleship "Nile" rushing ahead suddenly found that the powerful enemy had rushed in front of them!

The "Dingyuan" did not maneuver and change direction from beginning to end, and ran in a straight line to ensure the stability of the hull. Only the artillery was constantly spinning and firing. Even now. Two big iron cans mean to intercept horizontally!

Liu Buyun was fearless, and ordered the battleship to continue to speed up, and the two sides continued to close until the distance was four thousand meters, and the "Nile" opened fire excitedly, and the twin 343mm main guns in front of it rumbled into the air, and the side 119mm secondary guns all smoked continuously, and hail also sprinkled a bunch of fragments around.

"With this kind of means, you dare to come to my Chinese territorial waters to spread wild?"

gave his own high-precision rapid-fire cannon an appetite. Liu Buyun really couldn't look down on these backward things that couldn't hold back a fart for half a day, so he laughed disdainfully, and simply didn't even save the command.

From close to parallel, the "Dingyuan" fired more than 30 large-caliber shells at the other side in a row, hitting the "Nile" six rounds! Recently, the two sides dropped a heavy blow to each other in less than 3,000 meters, and the British 343mm cannon did not blast through the modern armor of the "Dingyuan", and the warhead was bounced off, leaving only a clear impact mark.

However, the "Nile" actually opened six holes, the narrow waterline armor belt was pierced twice, most of the bridge was blown up by three shots, and the front main gun was served with one pot. Then hundreds of 152mm shells swept through the entire superstructure in a whirlwind, washing it almost from head to toe!

The "Trafalgar", which had been dragged to the end, finally crossed straight ahead. Liu Buyun was not interested in dying with him, so he commanded the battleship to turn the rudder to the right, and swept past the burning "Nile" in an extremely dangerous manner, and while bombarding it with port gun fire, it cut into the column formation of the rest of the British and French battleships in the rear.

At this time, the foreign devils on the battleship behind are almost stupid! Losing the unified command of the flagship in front, they didn't know how to deal with it for a while. Acting in accordance with the final order, the column changed the arc to outflank the formation and launched a siege, but the "Dingyuan" single-handedly killed like a bamboo, this posture was too much, too wild, a group of oceanic horses were unable to parry, and the wolf bèi was unbearable!

The British battleships rushed up without fear, and no matter what formation was not formed, all the artillery that could be reached opened up in unison. It happened that the "Dingyuan" crashed into it, so seven or eight cruisers sprayed the main guns wildly at the fastest speed, but in the face of its speed of up to 16 knots, let alone such a stupid thing as aiming, it would be an eye-opener if it could be hit by one shot!

The two main guns of the "Trafalgar" were quickly dumbfounded, and the British once again cheated on the usual irregular stacking of ammunition, and a martyrdom blew the front half to shreds, drowning it in the billowing smoke and dust!

The besieging cruisers smashed no less than hundreds of shells, large and small, of which twenty or thirty left dark marks on the "Dingyuan", but no matter whether they hit the armored side or hit the towering bridge, they could not penetrate without exception. On the contrary, even if they were hit by a 152mm secondary armor-piercing shell, they immediately broke through the hole, exploded and caught fire, burning five tuberculosis and seven wounds!

The French battleships behind did not say a word of greeting, and the left-turn rudder of Qi Brush deflected the attack course, and when the "Dingyuan" broke out of the encirclement, they had already run out ten kilometers away and blended into the end of the column on the left!

"Shameless Frenchman, don't want any moderation."

Liu Buyun shook his head disdainfully, let the "Dingyuan" slow down and turn right, and chased the French ass in a big circle.

At this time, the main force of the Beiyang Fleet, which had been left behind, finally caught up, and surrounded by various light ships, the "Zhenyuan", which was one size smaller, rushed to the front of the messy battle formation!

The "Elector" had already been killed, and looking at the familiar shape from a distance, Commander Dietrich breathed a sigh of relief, and said undignifiedly: "What good luck! The shipbuilding capacity of the Chinese is still very limited, and this ironclad ship has not been converted into such a terrible one. ”

The staff officer next to him reminded him not optimistic at all: "General, according to our intelligence, the guns used by this battleship are also very powerful, and they have a longer range than the previous model. Especially their 152mm secondary gun, which is simply an incredible monster, so don't be careless! ”

Dietrich pouted haughtily: "That kind of thing can't pose much of a threat to us, and Greater Germany needs to show determination and strength." Attack it! ”

Persimmon wants to pick a soft pinch, who is stupid to go head-to-head with the strongest battleship? And Dietrich also learned to be obedient, not daring to let his flagship charge ahead, but let the "Wiesenburg" behind the crowd come out of the crowd, meet the "Zhenyuan" in the oblique stab, and fire with its two 280mm twin turrets in front and in the middle.

There is no doubt that the Germans have excellent artillery technology, whether it is a 40 times gun in front or a 35 times gun in the middle, the range and accuracy are the choice of contemporary choice. They also learned to be obedient, firing nine kilometers away in the morning, and the two ships together fired the most violent main gun shells since the outbreak of the battle.

The "Zhenyuan" was fearless, steadily aimed at the "Wiessenburg" with its twin main guns, and fired one after another at a rate of one round per minute. After wasting a dozen shells on each other, a 305mm armor-piercing shell suddenly hit the side of the "Wiessenburg", blasted through its waterline armor, and the explosion tore apart the protruding terrace!

Commander Dietrich felt a chill in his heart, this guy is not easy to deal with!

The "Brandenburg-class" battleship was not a successful design, its upper inward hull was well adapted to the waters of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, and the Krupp armor was strong enough, but the firepower ratio was not ideal, and it was still conservative.

In the same way, the Germans are no different from other countries, and their weapons and tactics need to be brought closer to each other in order to play, but looking at the current situation, they are afraid that they will not be able to support that time!

The first shell hit, as if blowing the horn of the attack. In the next minute or two, the "Zhenyuan" successively hit one 305mm armor-piercing bullet and five or six 152mm grenades, causing the "Weisenburg" to smoke all over its body.

When the four "Weihai-class" frigates rushed out from behind like sharks and rapidly approached at a speed of more than 20 knots, Dietrich had a bad premonition in his heart, and immediately ordered the entire fleet: "Don't entangle with them, rush out!" (To be continued......)