The distance between the two sides is close to the distance that they can penetrate each other. Although the actual breakdown distance will be closer than the theoretical breakdown distance, at this time, neither the Bismarck-class battleship nor the Vengeance-class battleship can guarantee that they will be immune to the opponent's shells! If you hit it again at this distance, it will no longer be a shock to some equipment, and it is not impossible to be shot into the soul!

There is a story in the West that because a blacksmith was careless when he hit the horse's shoe, he led a group of war horses to lose their footing, and the lost war horse led a general to be captured, and the captured general led the defeat of a battle, and the final result turned out to be the destruction of a country. The probability of a chain reaction of these things is too low, but it is undeniable that the slightest mistake in the war can lead to a huge disaster, and the Royal Oak allowed the Saxony to seize the opportunity when it beat Frederick the Great, perhaps by luck, or for some other reason, after a salvo of amazing results, Saxony succeeded in preemptively inflicting a heavy blow on the Monarch who had caught it!

The 10 guns of the Saxony actually hit 3 shots in one salvo! One of the shells landed behind the Sovereign-class No. 1 turret, but due to the angle, the fuse of the shell was destroyed and did not cause an explosion, but then the shell, which had been transformed from a cannonball, into a solid shell, crashed under the turret of No. 2. The problem was that the turrets of both turrets were deformed in different ways, with one turret only being able to rotate in a smaller range, while the other was completely stuck!

The roof leak happened to rain overnight, and the other two shells made a hole in the port side of the Sovereign. The shell, weighing more than 800 kilograms, crashed all the way into the boiler room, blowing up four boilers into the sky. Another shell destroyed a secondary artillery ammunition lifting channel, igniting dozens of 6-inch shells and propellant packs inside! A large orange fireball erupted from the side chord. The entire battleship seemed to tremble in a violent explosion.

However, although he was seriously injured. However, the formidable Sovereign changed colors, and a 15-inch shell successfully penetrated the turret of the Saxony's No. 3 turret, igniting the ammunition inside. A fire dragon rushed towards the lower ammunition depot, and although the heavy armored fire door blocked the fatal blow, the violent impact still caused it to undergo severe deformation, and in desperation, the Saxony could only fill the ammunition depot of the No. 3 turret. As a result, a fifth of the firepower was completely lost. Another shell hit the bow of the Saxony, destroying several of the compartments and filling them with hundreds of tons of seawater.

If both the Saxony and the Sovereign are lions. Then the former can be called an African lion, while the latter can only be called a cougar, although everyone is a big category, but the combat effectiveness is still different. Although the latter gave the other party a scratch in the face. But at most, it's out of phase. In the ensuing battle, the Saxony, with its eight 15-inch guns, managed to suppress the Sovereign, which had only four main guns left. In this situation where they can already penetrate their opponents with each other, the side with more guns and faster rate of fire will always have the advantage!

But even so, the Sovereign, which was already at a disadvantage, still held out for more than 20 minutes. During this time, the distance between the two sides was reduced to only 10KM, and at this distance, the Saxony hit the other side at least 19 times! That's a full 19 rounds of 15-inch shells! "The side chords of the Sovereign are almost beaten into a sieve, and looking through the binoculars, we can clearly see the large and small holes in the Sovereign. Many of them were still billowing smoke, and the most concentrated area of the bullet was in the amidships. We had at least 6 shells hit his power compartment. The entire boiler compartment should have been completely destroyed visually, and even the chimney on the ship was not smoking, but thanks to the excellent fire extinguishing and compartmentalization, the battleship could still float at sea, but as a battleship, he had lost the value of continuing to save zài, and he began to slowly withdraw from the front, the entire battleship was tilted at least 15 degrees, and a large amount of seawater continued to pour into the hull, there was no power, and it was only a matter of time before the Sovereign, which suffered heavy casualties, was finally abandoned. This is how a German officer described the final fate of the Sovereign.

The Sovereign was the first battleship to be armed with a 15-inch gun in this battle. The bomb was definitely not the last, and the German officers and men on the Saxony had not yet had time to celebrate their victory, and the storm of steel coming from the side and rear directly made the Germans re-aware of the existence of the other side. After destroying Frederick the Great, the Royal Oak realigned its guns to aim at the already scarred Saxony. As the saying goes, when people walk in the rivers and lakes, how can they not be knifed? At the same time that the Saxony took away the Sovereign with about 2 dozen shells, it was also hit by nearly a dozen shells himself! After the battle of the Sovereign, the number of main guns available on the Saxony was reduced to five, two of which were cut off by one shell, and the servo of the other gun was malfunctioning. And what's even more tragic is that at this time, the attack of the Royal Oak began!

Later generations once joked that the Bismarck-class battleships and the British Queen and Revenge-class battleships were just revenge-class battleships with two more guns. Although it is biased, it is really similar in terms of combat effectiveness, and at this time, the Saxony, which has lost half of its firepower, is at most half a pound or eight taels with the Royal Oak. This is a real parity, punches and bites, and as the distance is closer, the attacks of both sides have left scars on each other's bodies. From time to time, there were bursts of violent explosions on the battleship, flames and a large amount of smoke poured out from the breach in the hull, and countless shrapnel jumped and bounced between the cabins, tearing to pieces groups of officers and men of the two countries who tried to save the battleship.

The main battleships of the two sides were already extremely close, and the auxiliary warships were even closer, and a large number of destroyers and light cruisers rushed out of the direct gap of the fleet, firing at each other at an extremely close distance to launch torpedoes, how far is 10KM? At a speed of 30 knots for a torpedo boat, it would take no more than 12 minutes to cover this distance in a straight line. And if you want to include the opponent in your torpedo attack range, it will take even less time! When the capital ships of both sides were busy fighting, these miscellaneous fish that could not be on the table at all finally became powerful! These torpedo boats were to be the last straw that crushed the battleship Saxony!

The main gun has heavy armor protection, and it may not be penetrated, but the protection of the secondary gun can be described as a broiler, and the two sides can easily sweep away the opponent's secondary guns, and even some open-air deck guns are also blown up together. At this time, the Saxony lacked enough rapid-fire guns to provide anti-lightning firepower, and Jericho also put in a full 8 destroyers in time, and rushed to the Saxony under the cover of 2 light cruisers! Although there was also a complete light cruiser formation in Hipper's fleet, it could not be sent all over after all, and the only light cruiser that came to support fell into the crossfire of two British light cruisers in an instant, and the remaining three destroyers were also crushed in the siege of a group of British destroyers.

No matter how high the kung fu is, I'm afraid of torpedoes! Shortly after breaking through the blockade, 4 British destroyers finally rushed to a distance of less than 2000 meters from the Saxony and fired a full 12 torpedoes! The Saxony, which wanted to cry without tears, managed to dodge only 10 of them, and the other two torpedoes hit the side chord of the Saxony! A shell exploded at the ammunition depot at the lower part of the No. 1 turret, and although the No. 1 turret had been destroyed in a fierce artillery battle, this torpedo still had extremely severe consequences for the Saxony, and the explosion caused by this torpedo spread to the ammunition depot! The high-temperature and high-pressure bubbles produced by the violent explosion and the seawater smashed the underwater protection system like a hammer, and then the aftermath hit the ammunition depot unabated! But fortunately, the water injection is quite timely. There was no guide zhì ammunition to detonate.

Another torpedo exploded near the power distribution compartment in the front of the Saxony, and the violent explosion completely destroyed the cabin, so that the entire front of the battleship lost its power supply, and a qiē lighting and damage pipe could not be carried out, and what was even more terrifying was that these two torpedoes brought nearly 4,000 tons of water to the Saxony! The entire foredeck of the hull was submerged, and the barrel of the No. 1 turret was almost flush with the water! Even the propeller at the stern of the ship was exposed from time to time, and the Saxony had a stern tilt!

"The front part of the hull has almost been beaten to pieces, and the armor box has also been flooded, even if the battle is stopped now, the success rate of the Saxony's withdrawal will not exceed 3 percent, it is too big, and the damage is also very serious, in the fierce confrontation with the Royal Oak, the few remaining main guns of Saxony have also been destroyed, but fortunately, our enemy is not in good condition, it seems to have been attacked by submarines!" A German officer on board the Saxony wrote so in the report.

During the battle of the Grand Fleet, one of the capital ships of one side was struck by lightning, and this seemingly impossible thing actually happened in the decisive battle between Britain and Germany! The submarine was an Assassin, but the Assassin moved very slowly, and with enough frigates to protect him, the Assassin would never be able to walk less than 2,000 meters away from the opponent and deliver a fatal blow. In all the large-scale naval battles, not a single capital ship was destroyed by a submarine-launched torpedo during the engagement!

But this time, a lucky German submarine actually sneaked closer to a distance of less than 1,000 meters from the Royal Oak, and then decisively fired 4 torpedoes, hitting three of them, two of which hit less than 5 meters apart! With a loud bang, the Royal Oak, which was already riddled with holes in the side chord, was directly cut a 15-meter-long hole by the violent explosion! The Royal Oak, which was supposed to die in the U2 torpedo attack in World War 2, actually died in World War I like this, and the only thing that is the same is that they all died at the hands of submarines! Is this the fate of the legend?

Thanks to the book friend zhouyu1976 for the reward~~~, as well as the book friend Kongchen, Yanbo Enchanting, Lonely Medusa, and Orphein's monthly ticket support ~~~. (To be continued......)