And the situation in the actual battle confirmed Jericho's idea. The two American cruisers, taking advantage of the Spanish fleet's change of course, quickly approached the target and gave full play to the lethality of 12 6-inch guns on their side chords at their ideal combat distance! Shells rained down on the Spanish fleet, and the two light cruisers, which were in first and second place, were quickly covered in a rain of bullets! Jericho's flagship, the Manila, was hit first by two 6-inch shells, one hitting the amidship armor belt and deflecting off, while the other was an armor-piercing shell and plunged headlong into the bridge, blowing up the soldiers' canteen. Later, the Santiago was also hit by a 6-inch high-explosive bomb on the bridge, lighting a small fire on the rear of the hull.

And while the sailors on the American battleships were cheering for their hits, the opportunity for their surprise attack had been wiped out over time! The two largely unattacked Pluto and the Fury gradually aimed their guns at the two American cruisers! And the Manila and Santiago, having completed the turn, also aimed their guns at these two daring battleships! In the face of these two warships of more than 5,000 tons and strong guns, the American cruisers are much inferior, if the ultimate improved version of the Guiyuan class is the Lion, then the two American cruisers are hyenas at most. At most, it will cause a little trouble by surprise, but once the lion gets serious, the hyena will only be beaten! What's more, there are not only 2 lions on the opposite side, but also two leopards!

"Hell, we're on fire!" Just a few minutes later, the firepower of the 4 Spanish battleships gave the Americans a real glimpse of what a rain of bullets was! The attack of nearly 30 medium-caliber rapid-fire guns and more than 20 12-pounder guns turned the tide of the battle in an instant. The shells fired by dozens of various artillery pieces directly covered the two American cruisers, and the water column that was close to the bullet and the smoke of the shell explosion covered the two battleships like a curtain!

"We couldn't count how many hits were fired on the ground in just ten minutes, we just saw fireballs erupt from the hulls of the two American cruisers less than 2,000 meters from the fleet, and then the fire covered almost the entire side of the ship, under the strong sea breeze. Flames flowed like flowing magma on the side of the opposing ship. Later, because the rate of fire of the artillery was too fast, in order to save ammunition as much as possible and improve the hit rate, the gun commanders invariably chose to reduce the rate of fire. Afterwards, Jericho described this phase of the battle in his combat report.

And at this moment, the officers and men on the two American battleships are far less comfortable than Jericho! In just a few minutes, they realized what it means to fall from heaven to hell! All kinds of high-explosive and armor-piercing shells poured down on the two battleships as if they didn't want money. In just a few minutes, the two battleships were smashed into two flaming dragons. Many American soldiers were directly hit by the sudden and powerful blow and collapsed. They gave up what they were doing, and ran desperately to a corner that seemed safe to them. Shrink there motionless, let the chief insult and kick you just don't come out!

Under the attack of 8-inch guns and 6-inch guns, these two battleships that were commissioned in the early 90s basically did not have any place to achieve effective protection, and even the so-called dome armor was less than 3 inches thick! And not hardened armor yet! In the face of the blow of the Spanish fleet, this can only be counted as a paper pants! And this situation was recorded very dutifully by one of the guns commander of the Philadelphia!

"I have to say, I'm a lucky one. Shortly after I left the gun emplacement for some reason. A loud bang came from behind me, and then a scorching stream of air rushed from behind, knocking me straight to the ground. But fortunately, I was not hurt too much, and when I got up and forgot about it with difficulty, I saw the sea! , the original gun position was directly destroyed by a powerful cannonball! Not only did it destroy, but it separated the entire ear from the hull and fell into the sea. Faced with the onslaught of flames and poisonous smoke, I had to get out of here. Ran towards the inner compartments of the hull. ”…,

"And when I first entered a passage, the smoke mixed with the pungent smell of picric acid explosion and the smell of burnt meat poured directly into my nostrils, I couldn't help coughing, and when I looked up, the whole aisle was full of charred corpses and all kinds of debris, several large holes like the mouths of giant beasts, and a large amount of air poured in not only failed to disperse the smoke, but made the fire in the cabin burn even more vigorously! The entire battleship trembled under the blows of artillery fire. It was like an earthquake. Just as I was struggling to move forward, suddenly, there was a burst of my feet. I was knocked to the ground, and then a white vapor burst through the floor 10 meters away! My heart tightened. I know that we are dead, the power compartment has been hit! ”

The artillery commander analyzed it very correctly, and when he was struggling to save himself, an 8-inch armor-piercing bullet easily shredded less than 3 inches of dome armor. Flying fragments of armor cut off several steam pipes. And even worse, the shell exploded outside the boiler room. The huge explosion force directly shut down the 3 too boiler. This directly led to an immediate drop in the speed of the USS Philadelphia, and the ship's deadline had arrived!

And the San Francisco behind the Philadelphia, after a short hesitation, immediately broke away from the formation, killed the rudder to the right, broke away from the battle, and headed for the three American cruisers in the distance.

Just when the Philadelphia was in a desperate situation, Brigadier General Shelly, who was in the distance, was like a knife at this moment! Originally, dozens of minutes ago, the battle that seemed to him to be evenly matched actually turned out like this! One battleship is doomed to silence while the other has already been badly damaged! After a brief hesitation, Commodore Shelly decided to retreat immediately, "If you're lucky, you should be able to get rid of 3 or 4 ships!" Shelly reckoned.

The American fleet ran in such a hurry that it turned up its speed to the limit and headed northeast before the San Francisco behind it could return. At this time, Jericho, who was concentrating his fire on the USS Philadelphia, noticed the escape of the San Francisco, but did not notice that Shelly's fleet behind the heavy smoke had also withdrawn from the battlefield, and this short delay allowed Shelly's fleet to run out of the city for at least 3KM!

And after beating the USS Philadelphia into a pile of burning iron boxes floating on the surface of the sea. Jericho finally noticed the San Francisco and the other ships of Shelly's fleet further away. "It's pretty fast. It's a cowboy. Jericho sneered, expanding the results of the battle is certain, and the San Francisco has been heavily damaged, the speed has dropped, and there is no problem in catching up and solving it with a violent fight. However, Jericho always hesitated to continue the pursuit of Shelly's fleet, it would be dark in more than 1 hour, and the fleet should not engage at night, and if it continued to sail northeast, then it would be closer to the other fleets of the United States! And the U.S. Second Fleet was all first-class cruisers, and Jericho didn't dare to take risks casually.

"Contact General Yang again to determine the location of the rendezvous. Let's go kill the San Francisco first! "Jericho's order means that the Shelly fleet is temporarily rid of this difficult opponent, and it also means that another Philadelphia-class battleship is in danger! The battleship, which had been heavily flooded, was staggering to try to get away from the reaper-like fleet behind it, but its low speed had made it impossible to escape.

But at this time, the American 2-tier cruiser was still going to make the last move. It decisively chose one and the direction of the Shelly fleet fled the battlefield to the left. Faced with this either-or choice, Jericho, who was cautious by nature, decided to continue the pursuit of the San Francisco. Because in his opinion, it is very risky to divide the already small fleet at this time. At this time, another telegram made Jericho more relieved to pursue the battleship. Because, the two warships led by Yang Yonglin have used the time of the battle between the two sides to cut across to the direction of the US fleet's plan to evacuate, if nothing else, the two sides are very likely to meet!

For the next half hour, the São Francisco made the last leg of the journey. At first, the battleship wanted to use the remaining few guns to fight to the death, but in just a few minutes, the resistance of the American battleship was ended by a dense rain of bullets, and the left hull of the battlering side was already full of holes, and the tilt angle of the entire battleship reached about 15 degrees. In less than an hour, the US Navy has already lost 2 cruisers! And this does not mean the end of the battle!

Thank you book friends athlon9427 and Kong Chen for their tips~~, and thank you book friends for their support from Dugu Nameless Monthly Pass~~. The current forecast is that after the end of the avant-garde war, it will be the collision of the main cruisers, everyone support ~~~ (Your support is my biggest motivation.) )