Both sides are also in a wide frontal search formation, and they are all opposite to each other, from the moment the two sides put on a fight, the first head-on collision of the combined fleet of China and Russia and the Netherlands will be inevitable! Neither side knows the strength of the other side, so it can only be speculated. But in the face of a formidable opponent, the advance fleets of both sides decided to strike with all their might! A big war is about to break out, and all that both sides need is to determine the other's position!

Lin Yingqi's fleet, which had just recovered from the excitement of destroying the oil depot, was also far away from the coast of Kalimantan Island at this time, and the center of gravity of the entire fleet began to move southward, and Lin Yingqi's fleet, which was the reconnaissance detachment on the right wing of the entire fleet, must also follow south, and he was now 30 nautical miles in front of Lin Yongsheng's fleet, and if a situation was encountered, Lin Yongsheng's fleet could arrive at the scene within an hour and a half. "It's been 2 days since the shelling, the Russian fleet should have arrived, right?" Looking at the calm sea, Lin Yingqi muttered to herself. As a battle-hardened general, although he has never been in charge alone, his grasp of the battle situation is still very good, and in his opinion, the first collision of the two fleets is about to happen!

The goddess of war did not make Lin Yingqi wait too long, at 9 a.m. on March 21, 1905. Two faint pillars of smoke appeared in Lin Yingqi's field of vision. In this sea area, Huaxia has no friends. So whether the other party is a transport ship or a battleship, Lin Yingqi plans to go up and bump it! And almost at the same time, the opponent in the distance also discovered Lin Yingqi's existence, and the two light cruisers flying the Andre flag did not hesitate at all, sending out signals. After no response, the two battleships began to accelerate their charge!

"Isn't it any different from the 1895 Dome cruiser? It feels like a copy of a Takasago. Lin Yingqi carefully looked at the enemy ship in the telescope, pouted and said. If you talk about firepower. These two ships were not bad, with two 6-inch guns at the bow and stern, and five 4.7-inch gun galleries on each side in the middle. The displacement is about 3,800 tons, there is no waterline armor, only dome armor, if I have to say that it is better than my colleagues more than ten years ago, it is probably speed and artillery protection. The maximum speed reached 25 knots. And the gun shield on the gun emplacement can finally protect against direct fire from small-caliber guns.

"Rush up and kill them, and send a report to General Lin that we have engaged the enemy, and the opponent is two light cruisers. It is unknown whether there are other warships in the rear, so ask him to be ready for battle. Lin Yingqi ordered decisively, and then, along with the black heavy oil, was injected into the boiler. The steam turbine speed of the Snow Leopard-class light cruiser slowly increased. Verses 18, 20, 22, 24! The two battleships rushed towards the distant target like arrows from the string. The two sides hedged at high speed like sabre-brandished light cavalry. Then, at close range, the moment you get close to your opponent, you can give your opponent a fatal blow!

"All high-explosive bombs, turn them into torches!" Lin Yingqi continued to order. In the face of this kind of battleship with only one iron pants, the use of high-explosive shells is obviously more than armor-piercing shells, and armor-piercing shells may not be able to penetrate that iron pants, but high-explosive shells can definitely burn the opponent! The two battleships, each with 7 6-inch guns with black holes on the side chord, were like shark teeth against the enemy ships approaching at high speed, and they easily cut through the water like knives. Ships are like horses, and cannons are like sharp blades. The Snow Leopard is like a knight wielding a long knife, when the two sides are 6KM apart. The Snow Leopard was the first to spew out a deadly tongue of fire!

The battle between the capital ship and the auxiliary warship is different, and the main gun and rapid-fire gun are also different, if the capital ship only sees the engagement, it is like two heavy armored cavalrymen keeping a distance and shooting each other with crossbow arrows in their hands. Then the battle between the light cruisers is like two light infantry hand-to-hand combat, the former attacking fiercely but slowly, while the latter, once encountered, is to fight fast and drown the opponent with a storm of rapid-fire shells!

In the conditions of high-speed hedging between the two sides, rapid changes in distance and angles, the rangefinder simply could not track the opponent in real time, let alone provide reliable data for gun emplacements. However, fortunately, the light cruisers of the Huaxia Fleet are also equipped with telescopic sights, and targets within 6KM can be aimed directly through sights! The miserable Russians, on the other hand, could only rely on the sights suggested on the artillery to attack, and the difference in the level of artillery skills between the two sides made a superior judgment.

The whistling sound of shells came from a distance like a terrible ghost, and the dense rain of bullets from 6-inch guns and 12-pounder guns formed a barrage that directly covered the rushing Russian light cruisers. One by one, the yellow-green water column rose into the sky. Then it turns into a trace of water vapor in the air, and a rainbow appears under the light of the sun. And behind these rainbows is a battleship that is gradually turning into hell!

The relative speed of the two sides was as high as 40 knots, and the distance of 6 kilometers was quickly reduced to about 2 kilometers, and the warships of both sides moved at high speed to swim and fight on the blue sea. What formation and what tactics are no longer useful in this almost hand-to-hand combat, reload, aim, excite, reload! The protection of the sailors on both sides is integrated into the artillery, becoming a part of the artillery, and the mechanical execution of the command.

Several shells hit the hull of one of the leading Russian light cruisers almost simultaneously, and clusters of orange flames rose up on the surface of the ship almost simultaneously, and a deck about 40 meters long turned into a sea of fire in an instant. The flames that rose into the sky turned this deck into a veritable Shura hell, and all the exposed Russian crew members were burned to char in a matter of seconds! Immediately, under the blowing of the sea breeze, the flowing flames began to spread in all directions!

At first, the Russian damage management team tried to control the flames, but the shrapnel accompanied by the picric high-explosive bomb directly turned this hope into a shattered soap bubble! Based on years of experience, the Beiyang Fleet has found that the best way to deal with a warship lacking waterline armor is a medium-caliber gun that fires high-explosive shells, and a 12-pounder gun fires a howitzer! THE FORMER CAN OPEN A BIG HOLE IN THE UNPROTECTED HULL ANYWHERE AND CAUSE A FIRE, BUT THE 75MM GUN IS DIFFERENT, IF YOU USE A HIGH-EXPLOSIVE BOMB TO HIT THE SHIP'S SURFACE, IT WILL NATURALLY BE A FIRE, BUT IF IT HITS THE HULL PLATE ON THE WATERLINE, THE LETHALITY IS INSUFFICIENT, SO IT IS BETTER TO USE A SHRAPNEL BOMB, THE UPPER CAN HIT THE DECK TO DESTROY THE TUBE, AND THE LOWER CAN BEAT THE HULL INTO A SIEVE!

When the Russian damage control team members wearing gas masks were dragged out of the water dragon under the coercion of the officers, they were greeted by a rain of bullets like flying locusts, and steel balls with a diameter of about 5MM were overwhelming, directly beating the Russian naval soldiers into blood gourds! Under the effect of inertia, the soldier who had lost his life still walked a few steps and then fell unwillingly, being swallowed by the raging fire below!

The blows in hand-to-hand combat are mutual, the Snow Leopard-class light cruiser turns the opponent into a burning torch, and it also bears the blow of the opponent, but in the face of the intensive firepower of the Russians, under the command of Lin Yingqi, the two Snow Leopard-class ships are like agile cheetahs in this battle, firmly grasping the rhythm of the war. The Russians' 120 shells were also high-explosive, but in order to save money, these battleships were not equipped with expensive shrapnels. Coupled with the backwardness of sighting equipment and problems with the range of artillery, there were significantly fewer shells that fell on the Snow Leopard.

However, despite the small amount, the fire caused by the picric acid high explosive cannot be underestimated, although some of them were bounced off by the waterline armor, but the remaining flames that fell on the teak deck of the hull could cause a lot of trouble if they spread. Therefore, Lin Yingqi commanded the battleship to always maintain a long distance, and only when the shells from the gun position were raised, the Snow Leopard would quickly approach the opponent and then use up the shells at the highest rate of fire, and then open the distance to avoid the opponent's counterattack, and wait until the second batch of shells were mentioned in a compartment similar to a dressing room, and then approach. This kind of play from far and near makes the Russians who are like brutes very uncomfortable, they are bent on getting close to the opponent and then crushing the opponent, but they don't want the other party to give you this opportunity at all! Chaos and order is the true portrayal of Lin Yingqi in the chaotic war!

When temporarily away from the Russian warship, the long-prepared damage control team quickly used hoses and fire extinguishers to suppress the fire points on the ship, and the few fire points were quickly extinguished under the dense water hose. And because of the large compartment and thick partition design on the bridge, the shrapnel from the explosion could not penetrate the partition, so a single shell destroyed at most one compartment without carrying shrapnel and flames to other places. This directly limits the spread of the fire, and for these internal flames, the team members wearing a full set of fireproof clothing can pick up a bottle of fire extinguisher at most and rush in and spray it!

After a short battle, the number of victories and defeats on both sides was already clear, and the hulls of the two Russian light cruisers were blazing with gas, and bright yellow flames mixed with black smoke rose to form two columns of smoke. There is almost no complete cabin above the waterline, except for the conning tower and a few armored protected places, what remains is a sea of fire, and the waterline has also been beaten into a sieve by high-explosive shells and shrapnel shells, and the turbulent sea water has been drilled into the cavities of large or small sizes, and in just over half an hour of fighting, the entire battleship has been filled with hundreds of tons of seawater! The guns on the side were also destroyed one after another in the fierce firefight. The originally dense rain of bullets gradually thinned out in the continuous fire, and everyone could see that these two battleships were going to end sooner or later!

"My lord, General Lin Yongsheng's warship is only 20 nautical miles away from us." At this moment, the first mate stepped forward and said, "General Lin wants to know if there are other Russian warships in our vicinity. Especially frontal and northeast-oriented. ”

"Leave these two small fish to General Lin, let's go, the Snow Leopard will continue to reconnoitre, and the Sea Lion will reconnoiter to the northeast." Lin Yingqi said with regret in his eyes. It's a shame that I couldn't send these two little guys into the deep sea!

Thanks to the book friend Demon God Prodigal Son and the old students for their monthly ticket support~~~. (To be continued......)