When the Princess Maria and the Okendo arrived, the end of the Taifeng was also set, there were only two ways to surrender or be sunk, there was no other choice, although the guns on the Taifeng made it live like a fire-breathing hedgehog, but it was only a hedgehog, and now it was facing two steel behemoths armed to the teeth! Although the tonnage of Taifeng is larger than these two cruisers, it is an amateur after all, and they are really professionals!

Faced with the siege of these two tigers and a leopard, Taifeng, an oversized fire hedgehog, finally realized his end. Just when the three warships formed an encirclement and pressed over, the Taifeng decisively raised the white flag. Seeing this, the three warships did not continue to fire, but organized some personnel to take a traffic boat to control the Taifeng.

More than half an hour later, the Taifeng sailed towards Yang Yonglin's team under the escort of three warships, and after some investigation, the Spaniards finally figured out the basic situation of this huge merchant ship, and Jericho couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat after reading the confession provided by the bearer and the report obtained by the technical personnel after the investigation! Therefore, after meeting with Yang Yonglin, he beckoned Scheer to hurriedly board the King and discuss this strange ship with Yang Yonglin and Sipel and others!

"After our investigation, and the synthesis of the confessions of the prisoners of war, we finally have an approximate impact on this merchant ship loaded with cannons. How to put it, the improved Taifeng is more appropriate than a merchant ship as an oversized unprotected cruiser. Jericho said as he handed a report to Yang Yonglin.

"The boat has more than 2 inches of steel plates added to the side of the ship, plus the outer hull plates. Part of the ship's side chords had about 3 inches of protection, and in order to continue to increase the protection, some of the rear compartments were equipped with coal bunkers with horizontal armor. And in the core compartments such as the power compartment and the ammunition depot they set up, there is additional protection. Its protection principle is close to that of the New York, that is, it uses a 3-inch outer plate to defend against small-caliber shells, and coal bunkers to assist in defense. Then protect the core cabin with horizontal armor. It's just that the protective area is much smaller than that of New York. Jericho said as he drew a sketch.

"And then there's a huge ship. There is a very large redundancy. Its comprehensive level of protection should be no less than that of an ordinary protective cruiser. The ship should have been changed very early, and I estimate that it took at least half a year. In other words, the U.S. Navy considered converting some large high-speed merchant ships into unprotected cruisers before the start of the war. Although it is a civilian ship, its combat effectiveness is still okay. Jericho said here. There was already a worried look on his face.

"Even more terrifying is the firepower on this battleship, 4 8-inch guns and as many as 12 6-inch guns are deployed on this battleship, although not turret guns. However, the 8-inch guns arranged at the 4 corners of the hull had a good firing range and more advanced ammunition supply equipment, and after the surrender, some people tried to break the gun latch, but we stopped them. At the same time, the 8-inch gun position has better protection, which can resist the attack of rapid-fire guns with a caliber of less than 6 inches, and the ship's secondary gun is also protected to resist the design of machine guns. In addition to these main medium-caliber guns, there were a number of 6-pounder and 3-pounder guns on the ship, which were no weaker than the Fury in terms of overall firepower. As for speed? The ship is said to have reached a high speed of 22 knots during sea trials. Jericho looked at the others with a heavy face.

"Is the other one sunk a similarly modified warship?" Yang Yonglin asked.

"It's also such a battleship, the ghost knows it. How many of these auxiliary warships did the U.S. Navy get. But fortunately, there are not many auxiliary warships of more than 10,000 tons like this, and according to the prisoners' confessions, there may only be 2 or 3 at most. But there seem to be a lot of such slow ships, and there are 5 or 6 of them. The captain of the Taifeng is a retired lieutenant commander in the Navy. Later, he was recalled by the U.S. Navy, so there are more people who know about it. Jericho replied. …,

"It seems that our plan is about to change again, the strength of the two navies is a little different from the estimate we went first, and we may have to deal with a poor protection and slow speed. But with the fierce firepower of the warship, it seems that this war is still very likely to drag on. Scheer was also a little disappointed. It's not that he's afraid of war. On the contrary, this man is competitive in his bones. But this kind of life as a mercenary fighting for other countries is not what he imagined.

"The situation is not good." Yang Yonglin said in his heart. It was thought that after a major war, the total naval strength of the two sides would tend to be balanced. The Spanish side has a mobility and performance advantage. Even if you fight hard, you won't suffer a big loss, but now it seems that after adding an unknown number of auxiliary cruisers, in the face of the increased strength of the US Navy, the Spanish Navy, whose warships are generally in a sub-healthy state, still has to be a man with its tail between its legs.

These auxiliary warships are indeed vulnerable, and if the Spanish fleet in Cuba has sufficient supplies and good ship repair and maintenance facilities, Yang Yonglin is not afraid. You can use your speed and performance advantage to consume the opponent's auxiliary ships little by little until the two sides reach a balance point again. However, in the current situation, even if you can destroy the opponent's auxiliary warship, it is difficult to fundamentally repair the damage caused by the opponent to your own warship, and the result is that the performance of the battleship is getting worse and worse until it completely loses its combat effectiveness. And with absolute superiority in firepower, it is possible that the battleships below the San Diego class will be destroyed without even having a chance to repair them. Each sinking battleship was a huge loss for the Spanish Navy in this matter.

And more importantly, the US Navy can constantly improve such warships. If other factors are excluded, it is definitely a matter of advantage to use these shoddy warships to consume the elite warships of the Spanish Navy, and as long as the U.S. Navy does not lose its capital ships, then simply sinking these warships will not inflict heavy damage on the opponent.

This is not the most serious, the most serious situation is that the US Navy is all assembled to cover the landing of the army, as long as a large number of US troops land in Cuba, Yang Yonglin does not think that the Spanish Army under the internal and external attack can defeat the opponent, if such a situation really happens, even if the US Navy is severely damaged, it may not be able to save the defeat, after all, Cuba is not the northeast of the Qing Dynasty, and there are enough columns and manpower to consume. The Cuban slaves all rebelled against the Spaniards, and with the United States, the defeat of the Spanish Army seemed to him to be a certainty.

Of course, there is a premise for this, that is, the American people and the army can bear a large number of casualties, after all, the US Navy cannot guarantee that any transport ship will not be sunk, and if it really sinks a transport ship, the US Army may have to count in thousands! Perhaps in order to avoid this from happening, both sides fought more restrainedly, and Yang Yonglin did not rush to kill them all, after all, it is one thing to fight, and it is another thing to slaughter and make enemies!

"After the meeting is dismissed, everyone should think about what to do, and after returning to the port of Santiago, we will discuss the future plan with General Severa, this is no longer a battle that can be solved, we need to plan the overall situation." To everyone's surprise, Yang Yonglin did not express his opinion, but chose to temporarily adjourn the meeting.

Comrades, this morning I got up sideways and looked at the subscription query, and there were only 360 subscriptions in total! I still have 6200+ collections, and I only have 360 subscriptions~~ This is too pitiful——! How does this motivate the author to write——!

But I still want to thank the book friends Songlin Pony and Shan Qingying for their rewards, as well as the book friends Kongchen and Dugu Nameless for their monthly ticket support. Anyway, can you support it more——! (Your support is my biggest motivation.) )