Artillery fire roared, bullets rained down, and the avant-garde light ships of the two sides collided head-on at a relative speed of more than 60 knots, and it took only a few minutes for a fierce close confrontation to begin again. In this field of rapid-fire shells flying in the air, the sailors on the Anglo-German destroyers were eager for their warships to have enough protection against these threats; However, its cannon fodder attribute of running naked in all its way is destined for these ships to adhere to Fisher's theory of "speed is armor", relying on high speed and the favor of Lady Luck to rush out of the rain of bullets!

"Boom!" A 150-millimeter high-explosive bomb slammed into the forward bow of a British destroyer like a comet; Although this is a painless attack for the capital ship, the consequences of hitting the destroyer are very different. The front of the British destroyer suddenly exploded into a huge fireball with a radius of several meters, and then most of the bow of the ship was blown away in the explosion into thousands of fragments; The entire destroyer suddenly lost speed as if it had been filled with lead, and began to plunge headlong into the sea.

The shells of the two sides were densely staggered, constantly flying on each other's hulls, setting off red fire balls and bewitching blood flowers. The British and German sailors were all prostrate on the deck, lest a single shrapnel from nowhere kill them; But the hard-working gunner could only grit his teeth and stick to his post in the open air, firing at the opponent's ships with all his might, in order to destroy the opponent before he was knocked down!

Since the German torpedo boats were only armed with 88mm rapid-fire guns, they were once again downloaded by the 102mm guns of the British destroyers in the current close-quarters combat, but this time, they were no longer purely defensive. Rather, it danced against the attacking group of British destroyers. Heading straight for the main force of the British war patrol in the distance. The roaring operation room of the boiler main engine. The superiority of the German torpedo boat force at speeds up to 34 knots was finally demonstrated. Although the rapid projectile rain of British dense ensembles had damaged and slowed down or even sunk as many as four German torpedo boats in a matter of minutes, there were still two squads of eight torpedo boats rushing high and low on the rough sea, like barracuda flying by, only a line away from breaking through the British destroyers' blockade!

"Stop them!" In the fire control room of the battlecruiser Lion, Lieutenant Colonel Edla, the gunnery officer, let out a hoarse roar into the microphone; Waves of orange fire erupted from the scarred port side of the battle cruiser, whipping up a dense column of water around the German torpedo boats at high speed. Not long after, a German torpedo boat was hit by a rain of bullets flying in the sky. The flames exploded one after another, and the whole body was shaped like a colander, sinking downward in a cloud of smoke. However, seeing this, Lieutenant Colonel Edra did not have the slightest joy in his heart, but was full of urgent anxiety. In the previous battle, the Lion had already hit 11 rounds of 350mm shells and 9 150mm high-explosive shells, and the deck hull had exploded, and the losses of personnel and auxiliary guns were extremely heavy; At present, only 5 102-mm secondary guns can be used on the port side, which is nearly half of the normal 8. The speed of the opposing torpedo boat is extremely fast, at least a quarter faster than its own destroyer; This will definitely make the gunners who have been using their own destroyers as the target of anti-lightning drills for a long time feel extremely uncomfortable. The current low interception efficiency is enough to prove it!

"Torpedoes were found 5000 meters in front of the left, number 4. Speed 37 knots! In the midst of the roar of small-caliber artillery, the angry and frightened voices of the lookouts suddenly came from the navigation room. The captain, Colonel Chatfield, looked forward with his telescope in high and saw that a German torpedo boat had turned its hull sideways; And those four clear white lines were like four wild dogs that had escaped from the reins, rushing towards their own battleship! He quickly pondered in his heart for a moment, and suddenly said loudly: "The battleship accelerates to 23 knots, and the full rudder turns right two compass points!" ”

The waves agitated, the waves flew, and the huge hull of the Lion began to turn and accelerate on the surface of the sea; Judging by the trajectory of the opponent's torpedoes, the torpedo boat, which attacked from a distance of 5,000 meters, will not achieve any results. However, before Chatfield could catch his breath, the enemy torpedo boats in the telescope began to turn en masse; He was suddenly startled in his heart, and then he saw rows of torpedo fans composed of four white ripples appear one after another in the sea, and shoot angrily at his lion one after another!

"Epsom!" Colonel Chatfield roared loudly, the pupils of his eyes constricted, and fine beads of sweat instantly crawled all over his forehead. The Germans turned a blind eye to the rest of their fleet, and chose to concentrate all their torpedo fire on their own ships! Looking at the white streaks of water speeding in, a strong feeling of vertigo appeared in Chatfield's brain. From a rough point of view, there are definitely more than 20 torpedoes fired at the other side, and once one shot hits successfully, his own battleship, which has now entered nearly 2,000 tons of water, will be almost 100% explained here today!

"Boom! Rumble! "The small-caliber guns on the Lion Patrol turned their muzzles and began firing desperately at the white waterline in the middle of the sea, which represented death and destruction, in order to detonate them in the middle of the way. The Royal Princess, in the rear, also abandoned punishment for the perpetrators and instead helped the flagship prioritize these imminent threats. In the navigation room of the Lion Battle Cruise, the sweaty captain Chatfield was staring at the torpedoes diagonally ahead, almost pinching his stopwatch to give orders to the wheelhouse to turn or change speed. On the scarred deck, the British sailors were all pale, and the fear in their hearts was like a nightmare.

The efforts of the British gunners paid off, and two torpedoes exploded under the direct fire of the shells; The sea suddenly swept wildly, and at the explosion point, it exploded and opened a shocking wave dozens of meters high. However, a large number of torpedoes still rushed straight towards the British war cruisers with a long rainbow through the sun; After a short time, the first batch of torpedoes was less than 500 meters away from the target, which made the hearts of nearly a thousand people on board instantly hang!

"Whoosh! Sou! "The water splashed, foamed at the foam, and a row of torpedo fans staggered past a position behind the Lion's side. Chatfield Card was punctual and gave a loud command to reverse the full rudder; The massive battleship shifted shape in a metallic groan of pain, and another row of torpedoes brushed not far from the side of the battleship, the nearest of which was less than 20 meters away from the battleship. Several staff officers saw darkness in front of them, their legs were weak, and they staggered and fell to the spot, and they thought that the battleship had been hit because of their poor vision!

Due to the initial effective evasion of the agitation, a wave of more than a dozen torpedoes has been left behind by the Lion, but the crisis of the Lion is still not resolved. A few hundred meters in front of its side, two torpedoes were already roaring and rushing towards them, and they were less than half a minute away from colliding! Captain Chatfield saw that it was impossible to turn the rudder to evade, so he ordered the whole ship to reverse, intending to stop the forward momentum of the battleship to get out of the way of the two torpedoes; However, the current Lion has already been flooded with a lot of water in the previous battle, and its huge inertia has made it no longer as agile as it was when the ship was in good condition!

"Boom!" There was a shocking sound, the hull of the ship shook violently, and a column of rolling water more than 100 meters high suddenly rose near the bow of the port side of the Lion, like a white dragon breaking through the sea, straight through the sky. Due to the reversing, another torpedo flew away close to the bow of the battleship; However, it was this torpedo that directly gave the Lion a heavy blow to the devastation. The high explosive, which was more than 8 times the charge of the 350 mm armor-piercing projectile, exploded in the sea water, directly tearing a huge hole in the underwater side of the battleship 8 meters long and nearly 5 meters wide; The high-pressure sea swept away all the nearby compartments and shattered them, and the endless sea rushed into it. A dozen British sailors did not have time to react, and they were instantly drowned by the surging waves that swept their heads; The sea roared and raged along the way, flooding all the cabins in the bow in a very short time, and continued to sprint towards the space in the amidships!

"General, the Lion is no longer out of control when it enters the water, you can take a dinghy to the Royal Princess!" Captain Chatfield staggered into the conning tower and shouted to the young lieutenant general in front of him, who was not very tall, "Our bow compartments are all finished, and now the water ingress situation is getting worse every moment, and the reserve buoyancy provided by the rest of the watertight compartments can only play a role in slowing down the sinking of the battleship." In less than 20 minutes, the lion will sink completely; I have ordered all men to abandon the ship, so please evacuate quickly! ”

"General, general?" Seeing Betty standing like a sculpture, Chatfield couldn't help but call out loudly and repeatedly, and his voice even drowned out the roar of cannon fire in the wind. After a few moments, Betty's figure finally moved slightly, and she slowly turned around. Chatfield's face was shocked, for he suddenly discovered that the new star of the navy, who had conquered the hearts of all of Great Britain's subjects with his energetic and aggressive image, was now red; Two lines of tears like a waterfall flowed indulgently on that resolute face.

"Your Majesty and the people have placed their trust in me, and have put such a mighty fleet under my command; Now that the precious battlecruisers have lost so much in my hands, and countless good lads of Britain are buried here, what face shall I have to flee back to meet them? Betty spoke, her words already choked slightly. He took a deep breath, looked around at the staff officers in the command tower, and said slowly: "Colonel, you can go by yourself." When he arrived on the Royal Princess, he sent a report to the Trafalgar: The fast fleet has completely failed, and the guilty will be David? Betty has sunk with the Lion! (To be continued......)

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