Chapter 365: The Battle of Skagerrak (2)

The Yaman Navy used armor-piercing blasting projectiles with delayed fuzes, an advanced fuze technique from the Chinese Empire, which showed its great power as soon as it entered the battlefield. The Jamman Navy's shells had carbide armor that was enough to penetrate the armor of the opponent's strongest battleship, and the time-delay fuse allowed the shell to explode after entering the hull, which was naturally much more powerful than the Saar shells that exploded on the outside of the armor, so the first results were quickly produced in the Jarman Navy.

In order to cover the flagship, the cruiser 'Daring' of the Sahr Navy bravely penetrated in front of the flagship and used its hull to block the gunfire of the Yaman Navy, but unfortunately it was unlucky, and a shell was fired directly into the connection between its front main gun and the deck.

Due to the delay fuse, the artillery shell of the Yaman Navy did not explode directly, this shell not only penetrated the deck, but also slid into the ammunition depot of the front main gun along the ammunition hoisting channel, and before the Sahr sailors could react, the explosion of the shell ignited the ammunition in the ammunition depot of the main gun.

The Saar Navy never had the habit of closing the fireproof hatch after hoisting ammunition in naval battles, and this vice brought disaster to them, and the death of ammunition will' The bow of the Bold was completely blown to pieces, and the six-thousand-ton cruiser was blown up to the ground, out of the sea, and then fell down fiercely, and the second half of the warship, which was not broken, also entered a large number of waters, and soon sank to the bottom of the sea, and after a few minutes, there was only a piece of oil on the surface of the sea and a few soldiers who had fallen into the water, and they were all in the stern, and as for those soldiers who were close to the front of the warship, even the corpses could not be found.

Seeing such a quick victory, the morale of the Armies was boosted, and they immediately aimed their guns again at the 'Fast', which was closely behind. Since the Rapid was not far from the recently sunken Audacity, the Jarman Navy's gunners only needed to adjust the angle slightly to attack, so in the first round of fire, two close misses hit within 50 meters of the Rapid.

At this time, it showed that the Sahr Navy had not fought the shortcomings of the ironclad war, and they did not know that the warships on both sides of the ironclad war could only stick to the formation and bombard, and once the formation was disrupted, the bulky ironclad ships would be prone to confusion.

The captain of the 'Fast' still wanted to avoid the turn as he did in the days of sail warships, but unfortunately he was no longer piloting a sail battleship with small tonnage and flexible turns.

How could a steel cruiser with a displacement of up to 6,000 tons turn so easily, so as soon as the 'Fast' made a turn, it crashed head-on into the already badly damaged Saar Navy's flagship 'Ögardine'.

The 'Egadin' was already fighting the fire and plugging the leak, but it was hit by the 'Fast', and there was a big hole on the side of the ship, and the angry General Betty scolded his mother, but it was useless to scold, and now he could only announce that he had abandoned the ship, and the 'Fast' was also seriously damaged due to hitting the bow of the 'Egadin'.

In just twenty minutes, the Yaman navy sank two of the opposing ships and wounded one, although half of this victory came from the opponent's own own oolong, but Admiral Speer still succeeded in reversing the disadvantage, at this time the fog on the sea gradually dissipated, and the awakened Thar navy began to counterattack.

It turned out that although the Sahr Navy had no experience in ironclad combat, they were still the strongest navy in the world, and the three cruisers that were not damaged quickly returned the color to the Yaman Navy with accurate artillery fire.

The 'Elpin', which fell behind the Yaman Navy, was taken care of, and soon a shell pierced the side armor of the bow, fortunately, the hole was above the waterline, and it did not sink the warship immediately, but then in the dense rain of bullets, another shell hit its bow and detonated the torpedo in the torpedo tube.

While the warships on both sides were engaged in a fierce battle, no one had time to look up at the sky, and if they looked at the sky, they would see that a two-winged seaplane was circling over their heads, and then the plane flew southeast.

When the dense smoke appeared on the horizon, General Speer was extremely happy, he thought that his own signal flare had attracted the main fleet, and just as he was about to get closer to the main fleet, the sudden shelling made his mood fall from heaven to hell in an instant, and it was not the ocean fleet of the Yaman Empire, but the native fleet of the Saar Empire.

There is a reason why the native fleet of the Saar Empire was able to find them so quickly, when the Chinese Empire used bombers taking off from the port of Vladivostok to annihilate the Japanese naval fleet 300 kilometers away, the Saar Empire saw the importance of aircraft in naval warfare.

However, after consulting all aircraft experts in the Sahr Empire, it was concluded that unless there was a leap in the performance of the existing aircraft to the level of the aircraft of the Imperial Chinese Air Force, it would be impossible to sink large warships, especially battleships. And the range of land-based aircraft was not enough, and there was no threat to the Yaman Empire.

Seeing that the Yaman Empire occupied the coastline of the Western Continent, the Saar Empire began to worry that the bomber force of the Yaman Empire would seriously threaten its own navy, so the Saar Empire Navy began to study how to make planes fly across the strait and attack the Yaman Empire. Perhaps it was the hero's vision, or perhaps it was an inevitable trend, the Sahr Navy was the first to think of landing the plane on the warship, so a bold attempt was launched.

The Saar Navy laid a wooden runway on the foredeck of a cruiser for the aircraft to land, and the captain of the Army Air Corps, Major Manning, accepted the task, and the take-off went very well, but during the landing the plane rushed off the runway, and Major Manning drowned.

For this reason, the Saar Navy believes that with the current technology, the aircraft cannot complete the take-off and landing on the warship. However, an invention gave hope to the Sahr Navy, and a genius aircraft designer of the Saar Empire designed a seaplane that used pontoons to take off and land on the sea. When the aircraft was obtained, the Sahr Navy was so rewarded that they immediately installed a cargo ship on a crane and built it into a seaplane carrier.

The working principle of the seaplane carrier is very simple, usually the seaplane is placed on the deck of the mothership, once the aircraft needs to take off, the mothership will use the hanger to put the aircraft into the water, the aircraft uses the pontoon to take off in the water, and when landing, it also lands in the water, and then is hoisted back to the ship by the hanger.

Although the Sahr people were still unable to take off and land bombers, there was no problem with the reconnaissance planes, so the Sahr Empire's naval reconnaissance capabilities were greatly improved, and in this naval battle, the ship-converted 'Fury' seaplane carrier also came with it.

The seaplanes had been taking turns in the air to conduct reconnaissance, but General Speer's flare led the reconnaissance plane over, and then it returned to the mothership to make a report, so that the home fleet of the Sahr Navy did not miss the naval battle.