Nishimura Shoji's absence suddenly made the Japanese a little panicked, at this time Yura was half-disabled, Murayu was hanged, and Chunyu basically lost its combat capability, it can be said that the Fourth Destroyer Fleet has lost half of its combat effectiveness, and there are still Yutachi, Chaoyun, Fengyun and Xiayun struggling to support.

Of course, there was good news for the Japanese, as the Myoko, Haguro and Kumano, Suzuya, Mikukuma, and Mogami of the 5th and 7th cruiser fleets had followed. On the battlefield were six Japanese heavy cruisers and four destroyers against the Red Navy four heavy cruisers, one light cruiser and one destroyer. It should be said that this battle still has to be fought.

"The situation was not good, the enemy was much stronger than expected," Gorshkov recalled, "and large clusters of light appeared on the radar screen one after another, each of which represented a Japanese ship." What's worse is that there are more and more such points of light! ”

The only good news was that the battlefield was now chaotic, and the newly arrived Japanese fleet did not dare to release torpedoes casually, and the destroyers closer to Gorshkov were easier to deal with, and if the Japanese heavy cruisers could sink or destroy more enemy destroyers before they were in full force into battle, the battle situation would be much better.

Of course, while Gorshkov was preparing for battle, on the other hand he was nervously calling for reinforcements, Kuznetsov later recalled: "The situation on the side of Comrade Gorshkov was very serious, and both he and the Ro-2 reconnaissance aircraft emphasized the appearance of a large number of enemy cruisers on the battlefield, and the preliminary estimate was more than six. This discovery made me nervous about why there were so many enemy cruisers here. You must know that the Nagumo Tadachi fleet in the north does not seem to have such a strong surface formation. ”

Given the dire nature of the situation. Kuznetsov immediately asked the battlecruiser First Fleet to accelerate reinforcements to Gorshkov. In addition, he ordered the Kronstadt to lead the destroyers Tempest and Unforgettable to reinforcements.

To be honest, this is very risky, because in addition to the four battle cruisers and the Kronstadt formation, the remaining escort formations of the Kiev and Minsk are two light cruisers and four destroyers, and once they encounter the Japanese fleet again, they may not be able to fight back.

However, Kuznetsov did not think this was likely, and he judged the situation very accurately, believing that the night battle was more like an encounter for which neither side was prepared. It is not like the result of a careful premeditation by the Japanese. Well, apparently, the main forces of the Japanese fleet should be in the stern direction, so the Minsk and Kiev are safe. Based on this idea, he once wanted to order the other two light cruisers to go to Gorshkov as well, but later considered that the other two light cruisers were at the forefront of the fleet and would take too much time to go to the battlefield, so he had to give up.

Gorshkov was relieved to hear that the battlecruisers were coming soon, and now all he needed to do was to deal with the enemy as much as he could. And to achieve this. He thought that the most important thing was to close the formation, so he immediately ordered Lieutenant Colonel Kokorin and Major Yurisic to move closer to him.

Meanwhile. He also gave an interesting order: "Release the smoke!" The more the merrier! ”

Casting smoke is not uncommon in naval battles, and when the weaker side is ready to escape, they will use this method that weasels are very good at. But as mentioned earlier, Gorshkov did not intend to run away, he was ready to continue the fight, so what is the purpose of releasing smoke at this time?

He just wanted to interfere with the Japanese vision, and through the exchange of fire just now, he found that the Japanese were indeed very capable of night warfare, almost on par with the Red Navy with radar. In order to play to his strengths and avoid his weaknesses, he believes that it is necessary to interfere with the devil's aiming.

The optical targeting system is still very disturbed by the environment, even if the laser is a bit out of the way to smoke such as "haze", as for the devils who do not have laser and infrared observation devices, relying purely on optical lenses and eyes, it is easier to interfere.

Releasing a large amount of smoke is a good choice, after all, even destroyers in the Red Navy have a complete radar system, and air and sea search radars are readily available, even if the optical system fails, the radar can still guide it to shoot accurately.

Soon, the devils who rushed to the battlefield found that the cruiser of the American animal was releasing a lot of smoke, making the night when the visibility was not very good even more "hazy".

"Lost target!"

"Lose track of the enemy!"

Similar reports made Vice Admiral Takeo Takagi and Vice Admiral Keno Kurita frown, as they thought it was the enemy preparing to flee, which made them hesitate a little. What are you hesitating about? Originally, according to the idea of these two, they were preparing to launch a wave of torpedo attacks, but now that the enemy is about to run, the hit rate of lightning strikes at this time may be worrying.

At this time, should you keep the formation and continue to pursue, or do you release the torpedo first?

After a short period of thought, the two decided not to release the torpedo for the time being, but to pursue it first, because the effect of releasing the torpedo at this time was not good, and the sea surface 10 kilometers away was already white, and even if the Japanese kept firing flares, they still could not accurately locate the location of the "beautiful animal".

This made many Japanese naval soldiers feel that the "beautiful animals" were nothing more than that, and they did not even have the courage to fight a war, and they were very angry and wanted to rush forward to teach their opponents a good lesson.

It's just that what the Japanese didn't expect was that Gorshkov's fleet did not retreat, he hid his fleet well in the smoke, and firmly locked on the enemy with fire control radar, and after adjusting the formation, he categorically ordered to continue firing.

At first, the Japanese didn't pay much attention to the shells flying out of the smoke, they thought that they were fleeing beautiful animals blindly firing in order to harass them and prevent them from "taking advantage of the victory".

The first to notice that something was wrong was Kurita Keno, the vice admiral who first noticed that the firepower of the fleeing American animals had not decreased. Generally speaking, the guns in the bow of retreating and fleeing ships are basically unusable, and can only be returned with the guns in the stern, and the density of fire is generally reduced by at least a third. However, Kurita observed that the enemy's firepower density had not decreased in the slightest, and that there were so many before and still so much, which indicated that the enemy did not seem to be fleeing.

Again, that's the first point. The second point is that Kurita Keno's accuracy in discovering the enemy fleet has not decreased significantly. This made him even more incredible. The vast smoke obscured the vision, how did the beautiful animal aim? You say they are confused, but they can only be confused once or twice, and it is impossible to be stunned all the time!

Yes, right in front of Keno Kurita's eyes, the destroyer Yutachi was first paralyzed on the surface of the sea by a rain of bullets, and in those few minutes, the poor destroyer seemed to be under fire from dozens of guns. The column of water formed by the shells falling into the sea did not stop for a moment, and the continuous bullets made the destroyer like a leaky sieve, and the poor Yutachi could only clumsily turn the rudder and withdraw from the battlefield.

It was not only the Yutachi that was unlucky, but the Asukun behind the Yutachi was not much better, the bridge of the ship was shot one after another, and the captain was just dragged out, and the deputy captain who took over the command immediately fell again, followed by the chief navigator, and in the end almost all the main officers of the ship were killed. And that's not the worst of it, because he was shot one after another. The ship's hull above the waterline was ablaze with flames. There were almost no people standing on the deck, first the shells were blown up, followed by the spare Type 93 acid torpedoes, and Kurita Keno later recalled: "After a dazzling flash, the Asahun disappeared into the sea......

In the end, the explosion may have been an explosion of the ammunition depot, and the devil on the nearest Fengyun recalled: "The Chaoyun was completely shattered, and the flying hull fragments 'attacked' our ship, destroying the magnetic compass and rangefinder on the navigation bridge, which directly caused our ship to lose the ability to continue shooting......"

In fact, even if the rangefinder on the Fengyun is not damaged, the Fengyun can't fire, and the target can't be seen at all, how can it fire? Gorshkov also recalled: "After the release of smoke, the pressure on the fleet suddenly decreased. The enemy's shelling became disorganized, and most of the shells fell on the sea more than a thousand meters behind us. ”

Without the interference of the Japanese ships' artillery fire, the gunners of the Red Navy naturally shot calmly, and according to Gorshkov's requirements, the six battleships attacked two targets at a time, concentrating superior firepower to attack the Japanese ships. And this set of tactics quickly paralyzed the Xili and Chaoyun, and in the next ten or so minutes, they successively forced the Fengyun and Xia Yun, who rushed to the front, to withdraw from the battlefield for emergency repairs.

At this point, if Kurita Keno and Takagi Takeo didn't know the plans of the "beautiful animal", then their military career could be regarded as living on a dog. Extremely depressed, they could only order one side to accelerate forward and shorten the distance, and the other side to hit the depths of the smoke!

The so-called hard attack is naturally to launch torpedoes, but this is quite a headache for the head of the Japanese army's torpedo department, and it is not clear how to set up the target to launch Zhuyuan? You can't really shoot blindly, right? Now, it's really blind shooting!

However, blind shots must also be fired, and Takagi Takeo and Kurita Keno knew very well that measures had to be taken to force their opponents out of the smoke, and the only way now was to shoot with torpedo covers. I have to say that the lightning strike ability of the devil's cruiser is really extremely important, and the heavy cruisers like Miao Senior and the Most Superior also maintain a fairly strong lightning strike ability. So when this batch of heavy cruisers, along with the four destroyers of the 8th destroyer detachment, threw torpedoes together, the scene was quite spectacular.

In order to be able to force the "beautiful animal" out of the smoke, this wave of torpedo firing was completely covered, and according to the ideas of Takagi Takeo and Kurita Keno, it was not necessary to get many hits, as long as the enemy could be driven out. But what made the two vice admirals depressed was that after this wave of torpedoes was fired, there was no reaction in the smoke on the opposite side, and there was neither a violent explosion nor a panicked enemy ship. This batch of torpedoes was like a pebble thrown into a pond, useless.

Ten minutes passed, and Kurita Keno was very sad to find that the enemy was still hiding in the smoke and attacking with cold guns, which fully showed that the previous lightning strike was meaningless. But he couldn't figure it out, so many torpedoes were shot out, it was impossible for none of them to hit, how could the luck of the Great Japanese Navy be so bad?

This is really not a matter of luck, the reason why the Japanese did not hit any of them was not because they were unlucky, but because the Red Navy hid in time. So how did the Red Navy in the smoke dodge the Japanese torpedo shots?

Sonar! This group of Red Navy ships that volunteered to join the US Navy, and the destroyers and above were temporarily equipped with the latest high-precision active sonar produced by Nokia. This active sonar can detect small targets at ranges up to 900 meters and can be used against torpedoes and mines.

At that time, the maximum speed of the Japanese Type 93 oxygen torpedo was 50 knots (92.6 km/h), which is converted. It can run about 25.71 meters per second. At a distance of 900 meters. That's just over 35 seconds. This 35 seconds of reaction time is particularly precious, excluding the time consumed in conveying the enemy's situation, leaving the reaction time of the Red Navy ships to be about 25 to 30 seconds. Although these times are very tight, if you react in time, you can still dodge.

Therefore, after the war, Gorshkov was quite grateful to a certain immortal, because this batch of temporarily installed sonar was specially ordered by a certain immortal to be added in order to counter Japan's powerful lightning strike ability. It turns out that this set of active sonar really works, as long as the sonar is turned on. These deadly torpedoes can generally be avoided. The only regret for Gorshkov was: "Because of the cost and volume, this system could only be installed on cruisers at that time." If the Prestige had also had this system, it would not have suffered such heavy losses. ”

With the help of sonar, Gorshkov's formation managed to escape a fatal lightning strike. The most frustrating of them all was Yurisic, whose Kokang danced on the tip of the knife because it was not equipped with such sonar. Of course, when the battle broke out, Kokorin had ordered him to break away from the formation, because according to Gorshkov's tactics, the Kokang really had to take a big risk. But Urisic flatly refused the order. He believed that the disparity between the forces of the enemy and the enemy was so great that every ship capable of fighting had to stay behind and continue fighting.

Fortunately, the Kokang had good luck that night. Several brushes with death, it is said that two acid torpedoes almost grazed the hull of the ship. Anyway, the crew of the Kokang was scared enough.

Dodging the torpedo, Gorshkov knew that the chances of victory were a few points higher, and it was entirely possible to continue to release smoke to interfere with the enemy's line of sight and strive for another victory. He's confident anyway.

However, the Japanese did not eat dry food, Takagi Takeo and Kurita Keno saw that the torpedo attack had no effect, and the enemy was still hiding in the smoke and releasing cold arrows, and it was not a way to continue to sit and be beaten, so they began to maneuver frequently and tried to accelerate to Gorshkov.

I have to say that the power system of the Japanese heavy patrol is still very powerful, for example, the highest level can soar to 37 knots, the Miao advanced can also reach 35 knots, and Kaohsiung can run more than 35 knots beyond the design index. Even if the structure was later modified and reinforced, resulting in a slight reduction in speed, it was generally able to run to about 34 knots. The heavy cruisers of the Red Navy generally did not have such high requirements for maximum speed, generally only required to reach a speed of about 32 knots, and they were modified to a certain extent during the war (such as the installation of high-precision active sonar in the bow, and the speed of Shanghai was reduced to a certain extent), so the distance between the two sides was gradually shortened.

During this period, Gorshkov also seized the opportunity to strike at the enemy, and successively inflicted heavy damage on the destroyers Asahi and Arrashio, forcing them to withdraw from the battle. By the time the distance between the two sides approached about 3,000 meters, the naval battle had turned into a battle between cruisers, and there was no other destroyer except for the "unsociable" Kokang, which "stubbornly" remained on the battlefield to destroy the atmosphere.

When the distance between the two sides was shortened to less than 3,000 meters, the Japanese finally played a role, although they could not fully see the movements and positions of each Red Navy ship, at least they could identify a considerable part of it. And due to the considerable proximity of the distance, the rate of artillery hits on both sides is rising in a straight line.

At this time, the competition is who is more resistant to beating, and on the whole, the quality of the Red Navy's heavy patrol is better, because it was built later, and many new technologies can be applied, the main armor is thicker, the division of watertight compartments is more reasonable, and the firefighting and damage management equipment is better.

Of course, the devil is not without advantages, for example, in terms of firepower, its heavy cruisers have a certain advantage, Gorshkov's four heavy cruisers are all standard three-seat triple 203 mm main guns, and then there is a 76 mm high-level dual-purpose gun. The devil is different, the second senior, Kaohsiung class and the most advanced level are five twin 203 mm main guns with four twin 127 mm secondary guns. The main gun is one more than that of the Red Navy, and the caliber of the secondary gun is two grades larger, which has a certain advantage in close firing.

Of course, the Red Navy also has weapons that the devils do not have, and in this three-thousand-meter confrontation, the Red Navy's AK-630 played an unexpectedly good effect. This rapid-fire cannon with a maximum rate of fire of 3,000 rounds per minute can sweep across the devil's deck, although the power of the 30mm grenade is on the low side, but the defense level of the treaty-type heavy patrol is just like that, except for the main armor belt is a little thicker, the other parts are not much different from streaking.

The AK-630's ammunition is extremely lethal to personnel, and the short-burst fire (a group of 50 rounds) hit rate is amazingly high, the AK-630 operators are basically aimed at the enemy's ship's secondary guns, through concentrated fire to paralyze the opponent, and later the Japanese were also shocked to find that the gunners in the gun positions above the deck suffered heavy casualties, almost "all of them were broken".

Kurita Keno was also stunned by the ferocious firepower of the "beautiful animal", admitting that he had never seen such a fierce fire, and did not understand how the enemy's "heavy machine gun" could be so powerful. Yes, the vice admiral mistook the AK-630 for an anti-aircraft heavy machine gun, believing that the Americans had developed a special armor-piercing shell for its anti-aircraft machine gun, and after the war he strongly demanded that similar ammunition be developed immediately to bridge the gap...... (To be continued.) )

PS: Bow and thank you to the giants of giants, 13452314, Akula-class nuclear submarine observers, Sevastopol sailors, Heba Zixin, Southern Wanderers, Juventus, ghoul kiss ink and comrade Mending Knife King!