When Betty's flagship "Lion" finally rushed out of the smoke from the starboard side of Jericho's main force column and circled back to the avant-garde position, the artillery battle between the two capital ships had lasted for more than ten minutes

"God...... Is this the hell you have revealed to us......"

Betty seemed to reverently raise her hand to draw a cross on her chest, and then straightened her military hat in a rare manner, before standing up straight and solemnly ordering: "Give the order to the royal princess and the tiger: concentrate on attacking the enemy's lead ship." ”

A few minutes later, the "Royal Princess" and "Tiger", which were closely followed by the "Lion" inserted in front of the lead ship "Orion", turned their guns one after another, and together with the "Orion" and "Lion", they aimed at the "Pinghai", the lead ship of the East Asian Army, and opened fierce fire, and the 34 13.5-inch (343 mm) main guns on the four giant ships were regularly adjusted, exploded, breathed fire, tremor, spitted smoke, recoiled, and adjusted...... With wave after wave of white water column forest, the "Pinghai" was shaded, splashed, surrounded, watered, covered, and splashed...... Until the dark gray shadow of the ship magically jumped out one after another, and one after another, a bright fireball burst out with bitter acid.

Betty frowned, looking at the doorway, judging from the size and brightness of the fireball that exploded, it was obvious that her own armor-piercing projectile exploded in advance before it penetrated into the depths of the opponent's hull, and it also caused a large amount of seawater on the deck that could not be extinguished by the jet of water that missed the bullet, and at a glance the opponent was simply bathed in a sea of fire! In the next second, it will melt into molten iron and flow into the sea, and then the sea water will consolidate into a twisted iron lump, turning into a nameless reef under the bottom of the sea where it is difficult to distinguish the form of man-made objects.

The illusion, the dazzling firelight, is nothing more than a brilliant illusion with a blindness, covered with a horizontal deck of high-grade armor steel more than three inches thick, and it is impossible to blow through and burn with only the little ** filled in the armor-piercing projectile. The original purpose of firing armor-piercing shells was to penetrate the opponent's armor and destroy the fragile power system with a small amount of ** to detonate the ammunition depot. If it explodes in advance on the surface of the armor plate, then it will become a grenade with reduced charge? How is it possible to sink a modern, well-armoured battleship with a small amount of armor and limited destructive power by using a grenade with limited armor and heavy armor?

Betty, who was in a hurry, was quickly interrupted by another piece of bad news: "A Thunderbolt battlecruiser appeared in front of the enemy pilot ship...... 1, no, 2...... 3 ships! ”

Betty rubbed the sharp stubble on her chin, and twisted a vertical line between her eyebrows: "Looped back so quickly?" Just now it was not ambushed by the main column. Beat it up, right? Look back and see if Thomas's squad is keeping up? ”

"The Vengeance is in position, and the Queen and Courage are on the way."

Betty's eyes sank, and she quickly made up her mind

"Order, direct detachment to transfer firepower, one-on-one attack on the newly emerged enemy battlecruiser column, with Thomas's detachment concentrating on attacking the enemy's lead ship"

Before the staff officer of the execution ground could bring his face closer to the voice pipe leading to the command tower. A new discovery made Betty chill in the sound tube of the Unicom observation post: "It is confirmed that 6 Thunderbolt battlecruisers have appeared in front of the enemy's Pinghai battleship detachment!" ”

"What? Not a lot of one? Did the main forces just fry fish with their main guns? ”

Indignation to indignation. Taunts are taunts. The reality is brutally. 3 to 6. No future. Thomas's detachment did not come up. It didn't take long for her own subordinate detachment to hold the above thoughts, so Betty had to change the order. Pull up all 3 new battleships in Thomas's detachment. 6 against 6. Vengeance and the Queen's Ground Armor Cannon can add to the odds. As for the "Pinghai" that was beaten halfway up by the group. I had to go it alone again with the Orion.

"That's it. It's a fair duel......"

Betty sighed insincerely, aimlessly.

17,000 yards away. "Thunderbolt".

Patches of milky white firefighting foam were piled up all over the deck, and the thin steel plates turned outwards and the twisted deck gun mounts were still emitting green smoke from one by one. The bullet-riddled chimney spewed black smoke from the large and small holes, and even the outer wall of the bridge towering between the command tower and the front mainmast also left excessive black marks, and inside the bridge, the bare sweat-stained and shiny bald head, Vice Admiral Yuan Feng was gritting his teeth to accept the bandaging of the ship's chief medical officer, and the two staff officers with intact limbs were bending over and sweeping the broken glass all over the ground.

In those nightmarish 20 minutes, the "Thunderbolt," the flagship of the reconnaissance unit, was hit head-on by 17 battleships of the other side, trembling and shuttling between waves of dense water columns.

Probably because the opponent test-fired too many ground warships at the same time, it was difficult to distinguish the bullets. Before leading the team to complete a 90-degree sharp turn, the "Thunderbolt" was extremely lucky to miss a single bomb, but at the same point it followed the follow-up ship that turned around and repeatedly hit the attack, and the rear ship "Haruna" ate seven 12-inch and 13.5-inch bombs in five minutes, and a sky-high fire broke out in the middle of the superstructure.

After the whole team completed the turn, Yuan Feng commanded the counterattack, and at the same time ordered the light ships in front and behind to release the smoke screen at regular intervals to cover the covert deployment of the main force approaching from the port side.

The targets of the counterattack were five British "George V" ships (including the requisitioned Chilean "Canada") and one French "Corbet" ship in the middle of the enemy ship column, which were engaged in one-on-one engagement. So. The two ships at the head and tail of your own column will have to withstand the concentrated attack of the 5 ships in the front and 8 ships in the rear of the opponent's column!

Within 10 minutes of engagement, at least 15 13.5-inch bombs swept across the surface of the "Thunderbolt." The fire engulfed the entire superstructure, destroying more than half of the exposed 75-mm rapid-fire guns and anti-aircraft gun mounts, and a single bullet hitting the lower part of the front mainmast structure shattered all the bridge portholes, causing more than half of the casualties in the reconnaissance unit headquarters, including Yuan Feng himself, who fell to the ground due to the close contact between his forehead and broken glass, and was bleeding profusely.

Within 8 minutes of the first firing of the ship's main guns, the "Haruna" at the tail of the column ate the above 12-inch shells: the No. 2 chimney was pierced by one of the shells from the middle section, and a large amount of waste smoke leaked out of the huge hole, hindering the work of the rear rangefinder; Most of the steel pipe of the main support of the emast was blown off, and it was crumbling under the barely support of the two side braces of the triangular structure, and the personnel of the emast observation post were forced to evacuate; The bow and stern part of the ship that the main armor belt does not extend to is deformed and seeped into the hull due to continuous critical hits at the waterline; And the fire, which was even more ferocious than that on the "Thunder", surrounded the bridge three layers inside and three layers outside, and finally Captain Sato, who could not bear it, ignored Yuan Feng's order to "hold the battle line" and arbitrarily ordered the ship to release the smoke screen and withdraw from the battle column.

In this way, the "Kirishima", which was located in front of "Haruna", became the target of concentrated attacks in the rear of the opposing column, and because the "Barham", which temporarily broke out of Betty's avant-garde forces, finally caught up and joined Jellico's main column, the number of enemy ships that the "Kirishima" faced alone suddenly increased to 10!

The "Kirishimma", which had been hit by three 13.5-inch shells, ate five or six large-caliber shells in a row after the "Haruna" withdrew from the battle, and when a fire broke out in the rear of the superstructure, and it was about to be unable to support it, it finally received a signal from the flagship that "the whole ship will release the smoke screen and turn left together", and finally fell to a more tragic point than the "Haruna".

In this way, Yuan Feng's reconnaissance unit finally escaped without losing a single ship, and the ships that caught fire temporarily requisitioned cooks, military bands, and engineers and gunners who were not necessary to participate in the damage management, and finally controlled the fires in various places before bypassing the port side of the main force column and returning to the avant-garde position.

What did the prelude battle with the disparity in strength prove half an hour ago, at this moment, Yuan Feng didn't care at all, in his eyes, there was only the "Lion", the flagship of the ship shadow Betty, who was already familiar with it 17,000 yards away.

"Come on, it's now, one-on-one, Lao Tzu has endured until now, and this is what I'm waiting for......"

A hint of an inhuman sneer twisted out of the corner of his mouth, and his hand itched to touch the bandage that had just been wrapped on his head, Yuan Feng got up with his knife, approached the window hole filled with a large amount of warm sea breeze, and waved his hand to order: "This ship aims at the enemy's lead ship, and the subsequent ships will engage one-on-one in order, and carry out the first firepower reserve plan." ”

At 15:25 on September 9, 1915, a scene unprecedented in human history unfolded off the coast of the eastern coast of the Indian subcontinent: two long steel snakes 15 kilometers apart and each more than 20 kilometers long were sailing parallel to the southeast at a speed of more than 30 kilometers per hour.

These two long snakes, spitting fire and spitting smoke and just straightening their bodies, were a battle line made of dreadnoughts, or the most powerful weapon ever made by man, and yes, the battle line, even if it was a term used in the Age of Sails, was not inappropriate to use here.

Coincidence or the expectation of one side, at this moment, the number of dreadnoughts on both sides was exactly equal, 24 ships: the battle line of the East Asian Combined Fleet to the north consisted of 6 battlecruisers and 18 battleships, and the battle line of the Combined Entente Fleet to the south consisted of 3 battlecruisers and 21 battleships.

Coincidentally, the commanders of both sides chose to fight one-on-one, which had nothing to do with chivalry, and everyone thought about one thing: "use all the firepower on the side to strike each other as much as possible." ”

In order to give full play to the broadside firepower, and for the sake of calibration convenience, it is naturally the best choice to aim at the enemy ship in the parallel position of the ship.

The duel began, from the "Thunder" versus the "Lion" at the very end of the two ships, to the "Nanyue" versus the "Barham" at the very end, the 48 giant ships of more than 400 huge barrels of 305 mm to 381 mm caliber were far away, and they continued to pour hundreds of tons of steel and ** ......

The hurricanes of the times converge here, and the fate of the world is in whose hands? God may not care......