However, although Ye Fei was impulsive, he was not reckless, after three rounds of shelling in a row to hit the British unprepared, he ordered the two heavy patrols to turn around and retreat, but at the same time he asked that even in the process of retreating, the two warships could not stop shelling, the front main gun and the side chord secondary guns could not be used, and the rear main guns! However, it must be noted that this decision was made because the enemy was too strong to be able to defeat the enemy, and it was also because the two heavy cruises captured by the Japanese in the task force had been refitted in particular to take into account this combat method of "fighting and retreating."

The U-turn and retreat of the two Chinese heavy cruisers prevented the enemy ships from the fire on the side chords that had been the largest bomb surface, and the seven British warships immediately turned to concentrate on bombarding the rear main turrets of the enemy ships, because this part was also a vital point. However, these officers and men of the British Royal Navy did not know that when the two heavy cruisers were refitted, Hu Weidong took into account that the overall strength of the Chinese Navy was relatively weak, so under normal circumstances, he would not put a limited number of capital ships into a frontal fleet decisive battle, but would choose a tactic similar to guerrilla, focusing on those enemies who could be defeated, and immediately retreating when he encountered those who could not be provoked. Therefore, he believes that the sidestring protection that warships generally attach great importance to in this era does not have much practical significance for the Chinese Navy, but the front main turret that will be set on fire by the enemy ship during the pursuit and the rear main turret that will be set on fire when retreating need to be strengthened protection, but because a large area of changing the thickness of the armor may seriously affect the stability of the warship, it was not until the beginning of the Sino-German secret cooperation that the Qingdao shipyard, which received the support of German Jishu equipment and designers, had the ability to implement it. It was finally completed almost half a month before the two ships went to sea. Now it's finally time to test its effectiveness

The effect of the modification was quite significant, the main turret with a defensive force almost comparable to that of a battleship was destroyed by the baptism of hundreds of shells from the British warship, while the British had already sunk two destroyers, and the only light cruiser was also heavily damaged and almost completely lost its speed, and could only withdraw from the battle column very slowly like a snail, as for the three heavy cruisers as the main force, although they were basically not much injured because they were not the focus of the task force's attack, However, after the task force first chose to kill the light warships of the British, with the remaining three heavy cruisers having a maximum speed of only 32 knots, there was no possibility of catching up with the task force. At this time, the distance that had been widened greatly reduced the accuracy of the shelling of British warships. Even if they noticed the unbelievably strong turret defenses of the enemy ships and switched to the tail rudders of two Chinese heavy cruisers, it was difficult to hit such a small (relatively speaking) target at such a distance, given the British Navy's historically poor artillery accuracy (compared to the German Navy).

Not only that. After pulling the distance between the two sides to about 20 kilometers. The bold and careful Ye Fei even had the idea of destroying the British fleet. Ye Fei's confidence did not arise in a vacuum. It was because he noticed that the accuracy of the British warships' shelling had decreased significantly after the distance was widened, while the two heavy cruisers on the Chinese side were equipped with the Shijie's first optical sighting device provided by the Germans, and the main guns still had a fairly high hit rate at a distance of 20 kilometers. In addition, in the state of the two heavy cruisers facing the enemy head to tail, the British, who could not penetrate the frontal armor of their main turrets, could only inflict substantial damage on them by accurately hitting the rudder position. In addition, even if the main guns are compared, the new 203mm naval guns equipped on the two Chinese heavy cruisers are far from being comparable to the British artillery, and they are superior in range, accuracy and rate of fire. Therefore, from the perspective of probability theory, although the British warships have the advantage in numbers, the actual killing efficiency of the Chinese warships is more than 20 times that of the British warships under the position of the two warships facing each other.

The officers and men of the Royal Navy on the remaining three British heavy cruisers were alarmed after noticing the sudden slowdown of the enemy ships, but the glorious history of the Royal Navy of the British Empire made it impossible for them to retreat voluntarily after the shaved heads of the Chinese they had always looked down upon, and as a result, the heavy cruiser "Dorset" was first subjected to concentrated shelling by the task force, as "Dorsetshire" ("Shire") The main turret of the third batch of heavy cruisers has only 25mm of frontal armor, which has become its most fatal weakness in battle, if it is a conventional side-chord bombardment, the enemy's armor-piercing shells are likely to directly penetrate the turret of the "Dorset" heavy cruiser and fall into the sea, and cannot cause substantial damage, but the problem is that its turret is now hit by large-caliber armor-piercing blasting shells from enemy ships. As a result, the extremely penetrating shell penetrated through the front of the main turret of the "Dorset" and then penetrated the armor plate outside the ammunition depot again and drilled into it, only to explode inside, which immediately caused a fierce explosion, and the huge bow of the heavy cruiser "Dorset" suddenly sank, and then it was raised high, and the keel of the warship could not withstand such a powerful liliang and broke off with a bang, and the "Dorset", which became two parts, immediately sank into the sea without any suspense. He was joined by more than 600 people from the captain down to the ship, and almost no one on board was spared due to the terrible whirlpool created by the rapid sinking of this huge warship

The rapid sinking of the "Dorset" plunged the two remaining British warships into an unprecedented crisis, but the British Royal Navy has always been known for its brave and resolute attacks, and even in the face of such a predicament, the officers and men of the two ships still did not choose to retreat. However, most of the officers on the two heavy cruisers had experienced a war and had very rich experience in actual combat, and it was soon seen that the design of the two enemy ships seemed to have a great advantage in facing the enemy from head to end, while the British warships were designed in accordance with the traditional requirements of side-chord bombardment, so in the pursuit battle, the weakness was completely exposed.

In view of this, although the two Kent-class heavy cruisers did not retreat, they did not dare to continue the pursuit, but turned the rudder to face the two enemy ships with a side chord, so that if the enemy ships wanted to continue fighting, they would fall into the most taboo "T" position in naval warfare, and the Chinese warships only had a total of 8 203mm main guns in the bow or stern to attack, while the two British warships could use all the main guns and half of the secondary guns to fight back, and the fire density was much greater than that of the enemy. The captains of the two British warships are experts, and they know that due to the limited buoyancy, the design of the warships cannot be exhaustive, and the vertical defense of the Chinese warships is so strong, then their horizontal defense must be very weak (to be continued......