With the flames in full swing and the poisonous smoke billowing up, the forward generator room of the Lützov under the protection of the main armor was already a messy scene. Parts were scattered, shrapnel was everywhere, bulkhead decks were twisted and broken out of shape, and charred rotors were emitting thick black smoke. Nearly ten sailors in the cabin were also killed by this sudden blow, and when the German damage management troops arrived at the scene with rubber hoses, they could even step on the sticky flesh on the ground!

Although most of the British armor-piercing shells will explode early due to unstable fuses, there are not a few shells with normal fuses, and the German war cruisers in history have been penetrated by the opponent countless times in the Battle of Jutland with 230 mm and 200 mm turret and gun mount armor. The shot that hit the Lützov was a normal bullet with an insensitive fuse. Driven by a strong charge, the 635kg shell burst through the air at a terrifying speed of 863 m/s, and even though the warhead was covered with a soft quilt cap, it broke through the 320 mm main armor of the Lützov at a close range of less than 9,000 yards, and then exploded violently. The generator that provided the whirling power for the bow main turret suffered a ruined blow, and the four 350-mm guns were suddenly dumbed due to the loss of horizontal firing range, and the officers and men in the Anna and Bertha turrets could only watch the British battleship in the distance and could not shoot.

The artillery fire thundered fiercely, and the light and flames were like a rainbow. At a distance of less than 9,000 yards, the hits of both sides were a far improvement over the previous long-range artillery battles, and the hull of the Anglo-German battle cruisers continued to explode with blazing orange red. The deck shattered and exploded, the steel walls twisted and exploded, and flames erupted. Shrapnel rambling...... The sound of explosions and tears that roared like thunder or roared like wild beasts. It is even more terrifying and terrifying. The fear of death will come suddenly in the next moment. Thick smoke billowed and the waves were boiling, and the 12 battle cruisers with wide shoulders and waists were like Titans and Beamon, and every time they collided, they would bloom into thrilling and extreme fireworks; The officers and men of the torpedo boats escorting them all stared with bated breath, their palms drenched with sweat, and they watched the pinnacle battle between these giant beasts with fear but eagerness.

"Boom!" The Indomitable, which was at the end of the British battle cruiser column, once again participated in the current epic cannon giant ensemble with its six 305mm cannons that could be concentrated on the port side; Cannonballs roared into the sea. Stir up a rushing and surging frenzy. Just as the British lookouts were frantically beating their thighs because this round of salvo misses, the shells they fired out had an astonishing change that all the officers and men on the field did not expect.

Since the current distance is only less than 8000 meters, the armor-piercing ejection speed of the British 305 mm L45 naval gun can reach a fairly rapid 831 m/s; When an AP shell hit the surface of the water at a fairly straight angle, the rare qualified fuse of the British artillery shell did not activate immediately. Under the action of a series of complex forces, the shell did not sink to the bottom of the sea, but was righted by the buoyancy of the seawater, and moved rapidly in the sea at an angle almost parallel to the water level. And about 50 meters in front of this shell. It was the German battle cruiser Moritz who was fighting against the Indomitable!

Although the density of seawater is 800~900 times that of air, the speed of artillery shells traveling through water has dropped geometrically compared with that in air; However, its remnants are several times the speed of the aircraft at this stage. It was still the shell that effortlessly pierced through the 15 mm thick underwater shell of the Moritz. At this time, the dutiful shell fuse was still not activated; The shell, after crossing a distance of 3 meters in an instant, hit the 25 mm anti-torpedo armor of the shell of the aft ammunition depot of the Moritz again.

If you change to the D-Verblinger or Caesar-class, the armor thickness in this area is 50 mm; In the case of incoming shells that have stalled significantly after being blocked by the sea, there may be a chance to defend them. However, the Battlecruiser was an old ship that had been built in 1904 and did not have enough weight to lay the armor after reaching a speed of 25 knots. Originally, compared with the British battle patrol that was still naked underwater at the Lion level, the Moritz's highly elastic homogeneous steel used to absorb the impact of torpedo explosions was quite conscientious, but in the face of this underwater shell with an extremely low probability, it could only be torn apart and penetrated by it. And the fuse of the shell, which had been withstanding, was finally a tease that could not bear the continuous collision, and at the moment when the shell body pierced the armor and flew into the ammunition depot of the enemy ship, it fiercely stepped forward and topped the high explosive weighing 11.9kg at the front end!

"Boom!" With a loud bang, the stern of the Moritz with a displacement of 18,250 tons suddenly rushed out of an extremely red light that was more brilliant and dazzling than the sun; Endless smoke rose from it, surging over the rear chimneys, engulfing the forward bridge, followed by the anchor chains and bow. All kinds of debris flew out of the rain of smoke and fire like a storm, and the splash of water on the nearby sea instantly resembled a porcupine with thorns. When the fierce sea breeze blew away all the gunsmoke, people were shocked to see that the stern of the German battle cruiser had completely disappeared, and the bow of the ship was perpendicular to the sea level when the Titanic sank, and was sinking irretrievably into the sea with the momentum of the sky collapsing!

"Enemy ship explosion! Long live the glorious Royal Navy! "Seeing the evil German battleship break and sink in a blazing fire, the lookout on the mainmast of the Indomitable could not believe what he saw; After about 3 or 5 seconds of froze, he yelled loudly into the intercom in an ecstatic voice. Although he had clearly seen six columns of water flying through the air just now, and there was no sign of hitting the enemy ship, it was impossible for him to be wrong at this close range; But the strangeness of the explosion was soon overshadowed by the joy of filling the lungs. A thunderous cheer erupted from the bridge, deck, and cabins of the Indomitable, and everyone was indulging in their own feelings; Betty on the Lion also shook violently, and the look on her face was relieved.

However, luck is not the only factor in winning or losing a battle. In terms of firepower projection, the German battle cruiser had more than 50% of the British rate of fire; In the field of offensive and defensive performance of battleships, the German battle cruisers, which were essentially high-speed battleships, crushed the British goods with weak armor-piercing ability and armor like paper paste. Although the British fleet relied on the unavoidable appearance of a bomb in the water to win back a point, resulting in the Moritz of 1,048 people in service and only 7 people were rescued in the end, in this close interactive attack, they will be the first to be the weaker side!

In the middle of the British battle patrol line, the New Zealand, which was in third place, was being beaten by the Seydlitz one after another; Although both sides had lost the firepower of one of their main turrets in the previous battle, and were now using six 305 mm guns to fire each other, the Seydlitz had a huge advantage over the British ships with a standard displacement of 21,400 tons, a large 300 mm main armor belt on the side, and six 150 mm secondary guns to wash the deck. In the continuous bombardment of the German ships, a 305-mm shell finally found its position. The 450kg hard cap armor-piercing bullet swept through the 150 mm main armor in front of the capital ship and the 38 mm dome armor in the rear with the force of the iron horse sweeping away the gangsters with the mantis arm as a car, and rushed straight into the projectile chamber of the amidships.

Although the incoming shell was a dud, the extremely lively chemical properties of the propellant ignited instantaneously under the violent impact. Although the current New Zealand has consumed a lot of propellant in the artillery battle, there is still a lot of gunpowder in the arsenal; The violent combustion reaction of the propellant pack suddenly ignited like a grenade in the gasoline station. The surging waves of high temperature and pressure tore apart the horizontal deck compartment connected to the ammunition depot, and the tragedy of the Queen Mary was repeated at this moment. A hundred-meter-high pillar of optimus fire suddenly rushed up from the amidship of the New Zealand hull, and then the entire battleship began to crack intensively from the amidships, and in the billowing smoke, it turned into countless tiny fragments and danced in all directions, and disappeared into the sea in a very short time.

The fall of the New Zealand was only the beginning of the collapse of the British Battlecruiser. After nearly ten minutes of artillery fighting, the deadline for the Indomitable in the rear of the battle column also came.

This invincible-class battle cruiser with a standing displacement of 17,373 tons was originally at a disadvantage in the battle with the German Blucher-class battle cruiser Balfoss. The superstructure was baptized by the opponent's 150-mm high-explosive shells one after another, the steel bulkheads burst and exploded, and its paper-like armor belt was pierced by German 283-mm shells one after another, and a large amount of seawater flowed in. Had it not been for the cover of the coal seam behind the main armor belt, which prevented further damage to the internal structure of the hull by shrapnel gas waves, and the inclined dome armor played a certain role in retaining water, the ship would have been seriously wounded and would have withdrawn from the battle.

However, Rao is like this, and the Indomitable Ship, which has suffered repeated heavy blows, is also in flames, and the ship is tilted; Concentrated on the three main turrets on the port side, it desperately fired back at the German war cruisers in the scorched darkness of the ruins, hoping for an unexpected surprise. However, the indignant underwater bomb that had been fired by the Indomitable was not repeated on its sister ship. From the very beginning, the fighting between the two sides developed towards asymmetrical territory. A 283-mm shell whizzed, piercing through the main armor and exploding inside the ship; The shrapnel from the explosion devastated along the way, destroying a large number of cabin steel walls and leaking several watertight chambers that had been filled with seawater. A large amount of water ingress spread violently, and soon the British battleship, which had suffered a tragic waterproofing loss, was irreparable.

When the salvage failed, the British captain was forced to give the order to abandon the ship. The British sailors who survived the war were full of rejoicing at the scene: compared with the unlucky ones who had been fired continuously before, the sinking of the Indomitable obviously allowed more sailors to be rescued.

Just when the British battle cruiser fleet was crumbling, the contest between the main fleets of the two sides also burst into brilliant rainbows. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the reward of zhouyu1976~~