Both sides were in full swing to prepare, and the fleet led by Essen had completed all the preparations before leaving the port, and finally on a good night, with the help of the guide ship, secretly sailed out of Muroran Harbor and headed for the distant battlefield in the Yellow Sea. At the same time, the three main fleets of the Qing State, the Beiyang, the Outer Ocean, and the South Ocean, finally reached a consensus on the issue of coordination. The three warships of the South Seas, Zhenhai, Anhai (formerly Kurama of the Japanese Navy), and Jingtai were added to the task of providing escort for the transport ships, so that the Beiyang Fleet and the Foreign Ocean Fleet could free up more mobile forces to encircle the Russian fleet that broke diplomatic relations.

Compared with the elite new warships of the Beiyang and Foreign Fleets, the Nanyang Fleet is too old, the Zhenhai was completed in 1885, and the Anhai and Jingtai are a little later, but they are also a group of products that are behind the times. Needless to say, the Jingtai has changed its name. As for the Anhai, it can be regarded as the most successful dome cruiser of the British. Note the title, the most successful dome cruiser, not the most powerful. In the early years, the USS Black Dome cruiser was more powerful, and the Edgar class was only cost-effective enough to deal with a 4,000-ton second-class Dome cruiser, with enough endurance and more suitable for maintaining the colony. Moreover, after the tragic First Sino-Japanese War, these three battleships were covered with bruises, and the hull structure was seriously damaged. The combat effectiveness is far inferior to when it was just made!

Fortunately, before the start of the war, the Nanyang Fleet made a series of improvements to these three capital ships, which were already outdated. (carried out in British shipyards) increased the combat effectiveness of these three warships, with Zhenhai as the largest tonnage. The ships with the most firepower were first reinforced. The first was the replacement of the 4 twin 8-inch patio guns with 4 twin turret guns. And this change will naturally make the already somewhat overweight battleship even more overweight! However, this did not bother the engineers from the Beiyang, who decided to start with the armor of the battleship, and the 10-inch thick steel armor was replaced with a new 6-inch hardened armor. And appropriately expanded the protection area, the most rear, Beiyang boatmen also added a piece of "lightning protection protrusion" on both sides of the Zhenhai hull elsewhere to increase welfare. In this way, the problem of overweight has been solved. But the problem of speed came, the weight increased, and the underwater linearity was destroyed. Even with the new power, the maximum speed is 17 knots!

As for the Jingtai. After being taken over by Nanyang as the original Sanjing ship, the first thing he did was to replace the 320 Ghana gun of that pit father! Also removed was the huge terrace, and then a twin 8-inch turret gun was placed in the huge gun ring on the foredeck! Otherwise, the design of the Sanjing ship is still very commendable, and it is not easy for a small boat in the early 4,000 tons to put a twin turret gun in front and maintain balance! The tragic French boiler was then replaced. More than 10 rapid-fire 120 rapid-fire guns on it were retained. On the one hand, it is because of financial problems, and on the other hand, because if you simply sweep the deck, 120 guns can actually make do.

And the Anhai as a former cruiser of the first rank. The South Sea Fleet also invested a lot of money and energy in it. The British Empire designed ocean-going cruisers with a great deal of redundancy and good seaworthiness, and these were transformed into real combat effectiveness in the process of improvement. The single-mounted 9.2-inch guns at the bow and tail were replaced with twin 8-inch guns. A hardened armor belt more than 3 inches thick was added to the sides of the hull, which was not intended to protect against armor-piercing shells. Rather, it is designed to protect against picric acid explosives that have very little penetrating power but excellent arsonability. In the face of real high-power armor-piercing bullets, it still has to rely on the internal 6-inch inclined dome armor to resist. The improvement of the power system is not much, but the pipes of the boiler have been replaced, the defense of the 6-inch secondary gun has been strengthened, and the protection of the core compartments such as the bomb delivery channel and the power compartment of the ammunition depot has been improved. In this way, the combat effectiveness has also been greatly improved.

In this way, the commander of the Nanyang Naval Division, Zhu Qian, joined the Beiyang Fleet with three overhauled warships, except for the faster Anhai, which was more flexible, and the two two warships could only be used to escort the ship. An 8500-ton old armored cruiser and a 4000-ton crispy protective cruiser. Covering the navigation of 8 transport ships with a gross tonnage of 40,000 tons on the Yellow Sea. This was the first operation of the Nanyang Naval Division in this war. Therefore, he attaches great importance to this, which not only determines the life and death of thousands of people on the two warships and 8 transport ships, but also determines the future of the Nanyang Fleet! He needs to prove the ability of the Nanyang Sailor with his own practical actions. And then in the newly established navy in the future, it will protect a place for Nanyang!

At this stage, the Beiyang Naval Division and the Foreign Marine Division have been fully launched in the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea, and all the warships and a large number of notification ships have spread all over the sea, although there will be a serious lag in the timeliness of information due to the limitations of radio technology at that time. However, the deployment of so many warships in a relatively small sea area still reassured Jing Zhuangqian a lot.

Now he is a bit contradictory, on the one hand, he needs a victory to prove the role of the Nanyang Fleet, and on the other hand. He didn't trust his fleet very much. According to his own estimates, his fleet can ensure the safety of the transport fleet in the face of 1 Azov-type armored cruiser and 1 protective cruiser, if the opponent has more than two Azov-type battleships, then they have no better way than to cover the transport ship as soon as possible and then grab the beach as soon as possible, and even their own warships will be on board.

At this time, the assault fleet commanded by Essen was slowly unfolding. For the strong strength of the North and Foreign Fleets, Essen is still quite jealous. Faced with the possibility of Beiyang warships appearing at any time in the Yellow Sea, Essen did not dare to rush into this sea full of crises. So he first ordered the Vostok and the Tatar to search and advance on both sides of their predetermined route, and then the two Azov-type cruisers, after determining the safety of the two wings, entered the sea area along the predetermined route to break the diplomatic relationship. Two of the most powerful warships of the Russian Navy provided support and security in the rear. Although the efficiency is lower, the security is greatly improved, and the fleet is a whole, once it encounters the main force of the Beiyang Fleet, the Russian fleet can also unite to protect itself.

The Beiyang Fleet is relatively scattered compared to the Russian Navy, and before the situation of the Russian Fleet is known, the strength advantage of the Beiyang Fleet will be greatly reduced, and even in some cases, the Russian Fleet will gain regional superiority. Essen's idea has to be described as ingenious. And now, this huge fan-shaped formation composed of four cruisers of various types has gradually approached the Nanyang transport fleet commanded by Jing Tuoqian. However, the two sides did not know the situation on the battlefield. An encounter is about to break out in the waters of the Yellow Sea!

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