Han Mingguang continued: "The four fastest warships in the Ryukyu fleet, the Yoshino, are now called the Jingzhong ship, and the maximum speed is 23 knots, the Lang speed ship, now called the Zhongmeng ship, the Akitsu Zhou ship, now the Zhongrui ship, the Chiyoda ship, and now the Zhongsheng ship, and the maximum speed of these three warships is only 19 knots."

"On the other hand, there are three Japanese warships of the same class as the Yoshino, and the age of the ships is shorter than that of Yoshino, and the speed may be faster than that of Yoshino, and there are two Asama-class cruisers, with a maximum speed of twenty knots, our speed is not superior, how can we lure the enemy deeper? will be overtaken by enemy ships. ”

Lin Yuan said: "The firepower and protection of the cruiser are far weaker than the battleship, and the Japanese are afraid that our battleships are deliberately luring the enemy, so they may not dare to let the high-speed cruiser pursue it with all their might, so as long as we carefully arrange the route and method of luring the enemy, we will definitely be able to lure the enemy over, and I plan to modify these four warships." ”

These words made the ship experts present frown, if they want to speed up the warship, the best way is to change the engine, change the piston steam engine to a steam turbine, or even a gas turbine, then it is the best, and then replace the propeller with a propeller that is more in line with the shape of hydrodynamics, but under the current conditions, these are nonsense.

Lin Yuan said: "I think about it this way, in order to make our battleship faster, the first step is to reduce the weight, taking the Yoshino ship as an example, it is equipped with 8 120mm rapid-fire guns, 22 47mm rapid-fire guns, and 5 360mm torpedo tubes, these things can be dismantled, as well as the shells and torpedoes equipped for them, there is no need to bring, together with the personnel who use these equipment, there are also six small boats on it, which can also be removed, so that the weight of several hundred tons is removed." ”

Lin Yuan continued: "I would like to ask experts in the ship to help me analyze, after this is dismantled, will it have an adverse impact on the ship?" ”

Wan Ling, a ship expert and chief designer of the Beijing ship, said: "After the weight of the ship is reduced, the stability is not good, and in layman's terms, it can't hold down the water, but our use environment is offshore, and the waves are not very fluctuating, so there is no fatal impact." ”

Lin Yuan nodded, and said: "That's good, the following improvement work needs mechanical experts, everyone knows that the propeller and the engine are not directly connected, there will be a gearbox between them, the transmission efficiency of the gear in this era is definitely not as high as ours, so I plan to replace the gears in the gearbox and replace them with spare gears on our Beijing ship, and the comrades in mechanical design will look up the information for a while to see if this method is feasible." "After the plan was agreed, everyone went their separate ways, and everyone was pleased that the spare gear on the Beijing ship could indeed be connected to the shaft of the four warships, and when the plan was completed, the speed of the four warships, the slowest Zhongrui ship reached 22 knots, and the Jingzhong ship reached 26 knots with its strong horsepower.

The process of refit took three days, and on April 30, four battleships, under the command of the Beijing ship, sailed towards the Japanese fleet, and their purpose was not to lead the Japanese fleet into the encirclement, but to attack the Japanese first, provoke them, and then let them chase them into the ambush circle.

These days, in order to retaliate, the Japanese fleet unscrupulously robbed the merchant ships of the Qing State at sea, and at ten o'clock in the morning of this day, the Japanese fleet aimed at a group of Qing fleets.

This Qing fleet is not ordinary, with the yellow dragon flag floating on the mast, and the cargo on board is about to press the ship's side into the water! This fleet consisted of twelve ships, which were full of silver, which was borrowed from abroad, and the Qing used silver as currency, and after fighting for so long, the money supply was out of supply, so they had to borrow it from abroad.

Merchant ships were generally slow, like snails in front of the battleships, and the Japanese warships quickly caught up with them, and the Japanese warships pretended to ask the merchant ships to stop for inspection, and the merchant ships had been on the vast sea before, and they did not know about the massacre of civilians by the Japanese warships, so they stopped the ship.

At this moment, the sound of cannon fire was heard on the sea.

The merchant ships were puzzled, and the Japanese warships were even more puzzled, and Heihachiro Togo hurriedly waved the flag and asked who fired the cannon!

At this moment, Heihachiro Togo saw that the farthest Takasago ship seemed to have been hit by a shell, and the foremast was wobbly and could fall down at any moment.

At this time, the observer reported: "At a bearing of 90 and a distance of 3,000 meters, four ships of unknown nationality are heading towards us. ”

Without waiting for Heihachiro Togo to give an order, another shell exploded next to the Asama, and he thought to himself, "Which country's warship is this?" Is it really from the Ryukyus? ”

At this time, the observer reported: "The opposing warship sent us a flag telling us that they are Ryukyu warships, and let us surrender quickly!" ”

Higashigo Heihachiro was furious when he heard this, and said angrily: "These things that betrayed our Great Japanese Empire, they didn't fight them, but they beat us up." ”

The Japanese fleet was lined up, and the Ryukyu battleships were right behind them, and Heihachiro Togo quickly ordered, turned the bow of the ship, and fired back! He did not give the order to return fire with the tail cannon, because firing at the enemy at a distance of three thousand meters was nothing more than a shell in vain.

Before this, the merchant fleet had slowed down, and the Japanese fleet had also slowed down, and if the battleship wanted to turn around, it had to turn the rudder, but the rudder was at low speed, and the pressure of the water was not enough to make the ship turn, and the Japanese fleet had to accelerate first if it wanted to turn around, but these days, they had robbed a lot of good things, all of which were hard currencies like gold and silver, so the acceleration was slow.

The four warships in the back are the four ships that have been transformed by Lin Yuan, and the reason why their guns are accurate is because there are drones from the Beijing ship in the sky correcting and shooting for them.

As mentioned earlier, when Lin Yuan was practicing sea-air coordination, he found that it was difficult to distinguish from the photos that the impact point was produced by the shells fired by the warship, and later, Deng Shichang and the officers and men of the Beijing ship came up with an ingenious method, they took out the signal flare on the Beijing ship, took out the pyrotechnic agent that can emit colors inside, and put it into the warhead of the shell, so that when the shell explodes, it can produce smoke of different colors.

It happens that one battleship is one color, so the drone accurately corrected the shooting for the battleship, and all four battleships only retained the main guns at the head and tail, 150 mm guns, the power is not very large, but it is rare to be accurate.

The main guns of the four battleships were aimed at the Takasago ship, and soon four more shells hit the Takasago ship, and the fire spread, Deng Shichang saw it and immediately ordered: "Don't hit the hull again, hit the water!" Slow down the rate of fire! ”

The main guns are also rapid-fire guns, using a spring-type retreat and re-entry system, the rate of fire can reach ten rounds per minute, Deng Shichang's two orders, the purpose is to tell the Japanese, we can hit you is pure luck, you come to chase us! Catch up with us and sink us.

Togo Heihachiro really hit the plan, he was still wondering, why did the Ryukyu warships hit so accurately? Later, when I saw the shells plunging into the water, I thought, "They're just lucky!" ”

By the time the Japanese fleet turned its head, Togo Heihachiro's nose was almost crooked!