The artillery roared, and the light waves of the explosion exploded like fireworks; Under the heavy bombardment of the Westphalia, the Hercules was hit by shells one after another. At 13:27, the battleship Hercules was hit again by a 305-mm shell near the amidship waterline, and this time there was no longer the belt-like low main suit to protect it. The shell tore through the 229 mm middle armor belt, crushed the loose coal seam with a density of no more than 1600 kg/m3 in the rear, broke through the 25 mm inclined dome, and fired straight into the auxiliary gun ammunition magazine on the left side of the battleship and exploded violently.

Although the power of these small beanias with a caliber of only 102 mm is far less earth-shattering than the detonation of the main artillery shells; However, its terrifying number, which is close to 1,000 rounds, still causes devastating damage. A huge hole of more than 100 square meters was blown open at the bottom of the port side of the battleship, and all the watertight structures near its interior were torn apart and shattered in the explosion, and countless tons of seawater poured into the hull of the ship with the momentum of a mountain and tsunami, and it was impossible to contain it at all. Less than ten minutes later, the battleship capsized and sank in a cloud of smoke and fire, and its propeller seemed so sad and lonely in the last moments of slow idling on the water.

"General, the Hercules has sunk!" On the Trafalgar, an adjutant hurried into the conning tower to report the news to Jericho, his words full of horror and frustration. At present, the two fleets have only been engaged in battle for just over 20 minutes, and they have lost three first-class capital ships, and although one of the German fleet's battle cruisers has been confirmed to have exploded and sunk, the battle loss ratio is undoubtedly far beyond the psychological expectations of the British officers and men.

Jericho nodded slightly, indicating that he already knew the news. His expression was still calm, but deep down his heart was already filled with a monstrous wave of horror and anger.

Judging from the current belligerent shì. The Royal Navy is undoubtedly the one who has the upper hand. The George V class after using a strong charge and firing a heavy bomb. Its 10 343mm guns obviously outweighed the firepower of the opponent's Caesar-class 8 350mm guns. And on the rear battle line. The firepower advantage of the Royal Navy ships was even more obvious: the German Helgoland and Nassau classes were armed with only 10 305mm guns, while the British Orion and Giant classes were armed with 8 or 10 343mm guns, and the Irish was armed with 356mm guns. The caliber of the German Deutschland-class and Bismarck-class guns is 283 mm, of which the latter is upgraded to a dreadnought because it is a halfway way home, and its main gun barrel length is only 42 times the diameter, which is a product of the pre-dreadnought era. The British St. Vincent class and Bellerophon class are orthodox dreadnoughts, armed with 305 mm naval guns, and the barrel length of the St. Vincent class has reached L50.

Arguably. Although the Royal Navy in the new century was challenged by the young Imperial German Navy from across the Channel, even more than Napoleon a hundred years earlier; However, with the current world's largest shipbuilding base, the Royal Navy is still stable in terms of quality. After all, for every inch of artillery caliber increases, its power will achieve a qualitative leap; The caliber of the artillery is one inch larger or one inch smaller, whether it is the effect of single shot damage or armor piercing depth, they are completely different realms.

It was precisely because of this that Jericho dared to choose to go to sea to engage the German fleet head-on when the number of capital ships was almost unprecedented. And God was also very kind to him, and the wounded Grand Fleet joined the other two fleets and did not fall behind at all. A miraculous battle line more than 22 kilometers long was calmly unfolded. At that time, Jericho's heart was full of longing, looking forward to a second brilliant victory comparable to the Battle of Trafalgar in his own hands; However, after a period of desperate confrontation. Only then did he realize that the actual situation was not acting according to the script he expected!

At present, the Royal Navy has indeed gained an advantage on the rear battle line: the 6th Battlefleet, consisting of 4 Bellerophon-class ships, has taken 4 German Bismarck-class ships. The decisive battle suit was shrouded in a sea of water and fire. However, these German "armored cruisers" were not at all a group of "five-minute ships" that could only hold on to half a cup of coffee on the battle line, as Jellicoe imagined. Under the fierce bombardment of the British dreadnoughts, they still did not tilt the hull and did not slow down, and the hard return fire of their 8 283mm L42 main guns also brought a lot of threat to the British dreadnoughts, which also forced the Bellerophons with a standing displacement of 18,800 tons to have to go all out to treat these 14,200 tons of "loading and patrolling"!

Jellicoe originally counted on his 6th Battleship Detachment to quickly clean up these "deformities from the mast to the propeller full of alternative elements", and use this as a key fulcrum to pry the entire battlefield to victory; Now, however, it seems almost impossible to achieve. If you want to abandon these alternatives first, you can't withstand the firepower of the other party that is completely equivalent to the level of a dreadnought. Now Jericho had cursed the evil German designers countless times in his mind: what kind of psychologically distorted person would come up with such a perverted strategy of using a combat torpedo tower arranged diagonally on the side to conceal the core intention of his all-heavy artillery? This is completely equivalent to conjuring a whole formation of dreadnoughts for the German Navy out of thin air!

And in the battle in the middle of the capital ship column, the British battleships were actually in a disadvantageous position. The 10 283-mm guns of the German class had an astonishing rate of fire and frequently hit target ships; However, the eight 305-mm guns that were put into the monoport of the St. Vincent class were slow to deliver a truly effective blow to the enemy ships. The firepower superiority of the Giants and Orions is also anxiously not revealed, and the Hercules has capsized and sunk, becoming the first sacrifice devoured in the belly of the Hell Demon God. At the front, the situation of the George V-class was even worse than that of the Orions in the rear: the 350-mm shells fired from the German Kaiser-class battleships were like thunderbolts; The terrifying power of its explosion on the hull of the ship terrifuges even the most seasoned veteran sailors!

The British battleships had already shown their accuracy in daily training, and were not inferior to their German counterparts in the current situation of straddle firing; However, the German battleships seemed to have a mysterious and strange endurance ability, which turned many British battleships into flesh and skin injuries that were bound to be achieved. Although their main turret will also jam when hit, and the gun mount will also be mechanically deformed and unable to function normally after being hit, it is difficult for the hull to tilt greatly under their own fire; Damage caused by explosions, such as fire, can also be extinguished and compensated with a very high efficiency. On the contrary, the severity of the injuries of British battleships depended almost entirely on character; The armor that was laid with a lot of money was almost useless in the face of the opponent's artillery fire, and it was repeatedly pierced through the chest without any suspense!

"God bless the Queen, God bless Britain......" Jericho clenched the silver-white cross in his pocket, muttering a prayer. At a time when victory was purely dependent on cold mechanical calculations, all he could do was face the saint with sincerity and beg luck to be on his side.

"Boom!" The salvo of four German-made SK-L45 350mm naval guns was like a surge of heavenly fire, and the starboard side of the "Catherine", which was in second place in the German battlefleet, once again swept up layers of purple and red waves, and the air waves rushed and exploded, stirring up large white water waves on the sea several meters below. In less than 20 seconds, a row of wide and towering walls of water suddenly rose around the British battleship Daring, and the wind was roaring; The water splashed up by the explosion and sprayed it colorfully, drenching the personnel on the open-air gun position of the Daring!

Less than a second after the shells roared into the sea, the British sailors aboard the Bold felt an unprecedented violent vibration from the bottom of the battleship, as if an angry bull was about to knock down the rider who dared to climb on his back. A 350-millimeter shell that entered the water 50 meters away from the Bold reproduced the Infolith's shell from the Moritz, which formed an underwater projectile with a very low probability after falling into the water, and then hit the underwater hull part of the Audacity with a bang.

Although the shell hit the boiler compartment, not an ammunition depot that could directly scare people into fainting; However, the British George V-class battleship, which still did not have any streaking underwater protection against torpedoes in the longitudinal neighbors, still made this cannonball like a dragon lance, blasting through the flesh and blood chest of the Daring. In the extremely sublimated thunder explosion, the four boilers instantly turned into a pile of scrap metal that shattered and exploded; The surging water poured down the shocking hole and swept towards the one cabin that could be touched. This shell dealt the Bold a fatal blow.

In order to save costs and shorten the man-hour cycle, British designers not only made a big fuss about the paper defense of the battleship, but also made great cuts to some hidden indicators, so that the ruins filled under its glossy appearance were simply shocking. Up to now, none of the British capital ships have a truly decent underwater defense longitudinal partition, and the sparse and unreasonably distributed watertight compartments have made the underwater defense capability of the British capital ships even worse. Historically, the 23,000-ton Bold was directly sunk by a cotton mine with a charge of only 180 pounds, losing its face as a super fearless; And the huge amount of water ingress caused by the current underwater bullet that penetrated directly into the body is also not something that the British warship can handle! (To be continued......)

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