The short recuperation period passed quickly, and the battle began again.

Zeon's MS unit replenished its ammunition, replaced damaged parts, rested a little, and went into battle again.

"Ensign?"

"What's wrong with you, second lieutenant?"

After a few consecutive questions came from the communicator, Lear came back from his trance, and before he knew it, he had already driven the body to the hatch again, but he was so slow that the subordinates behind him asked worriedly.

"No, nothing."

After that, no matter how many problems there are, they always have to be solved one by one, so it's better to focus on the present first.

"Zagu Thunderlight, attack!" He forced himself to focus on what was in front of him.

The Zeon MS forces, which were largely unharmed, were next to face the main force of the 4th Mobile Fleet.

The Space Force Fleet, which consists of two Magellan-class battleships and six Salamis-class fast cruisers, is only a small number compared to the main fleets whose main warships are counted in the dozens, but if you underestimate their combat effectiveness because of this, you will suffer a big loss.

Lear just did that.

After leaving the cabin and entering the universe, the natural communication equipment could not be used, so Lear sent a light signal to the bridge of the Leipzig to signal that the troops were ready.

And on the side of the Federation Army, the 4th Mobile Fleet is also ready for battle.

Of course, Douglas understood that the purpose of the Zeon Army was to annihilate his fleet and avoid the meeting of the main force of the Fourth Mobile Fleet and the Federation Army, in this case, even if he did not take the initiative to engage or even avoid the battle, Zeon himself would find ways to engage him.

He had thought that his fighter force would be able to inflict heavy damage on the Zeons, or at least delay until his fleet was within combat distance, but the results did not turn out as he expected.

His own fighter unit was tortured and killed, so that the fleet's mobile forces were at a disadvantage all of a sudden, and the maneuverability of the battleships was not as good as that of the MS after all, and he had to change his tactics as soon as possible.

Although he believed that his fleet would be victorious, any extra losses were unacceptable, and he decided to fight steadily.

So instead of trying to catch the Zeon Rangers' ships, he was ready to sit back and use up the most mobile MS troops on the Zeon side with a strong defensive formation, and then the Salamis-class fast cruisers would kill the Zeon cruisers.

Of course, there is also the option of dividing the forces here, that is, to abandon the Magellan class and let the Salamis class, which is on the same speed as the Msey, chase the Zeon fleet first, because the Msey-class and the Papuya-class transports are dragged down, although it still runs faster than the Magellan-class, but it can't outrun the Salamis class, unless they are willing to abandon all the auxiliary ships.

But Douglas is not prepared to use such risky tactics, in any war, a rash division of troops is the beginning of failure, in case the Salamis class and the Msei class fall into a chaotic war, those MS can not stand it, Douglas is just confident, but not brainless arrogance, he will not put more prudent tactics without it, to bet that his cruiser fleet can still win under the double attack of Zeon cruisers and MS.

A crushing victory was unacceptable to him.

He was prepared to adopt the box tactic, a tactic that originated in the era of heavy bombers in the Western era, which later disappeared due to the popularization of high-precision guided weapons, and then was resurrected and carried forward in the cosmic century.

That is, it is used to divide the plural warships into two layers, upper and lower, forming a cube-shaped box. And many small boxes are combined into one large multi-layered box.

This not only makes it easier for all warships to be on the same plane, but also makes it easier to organize synchronous firing, and when there are space fighters or assault boats that want to launch a head-on attack, other warships on the side, above, and below the target warship can attack the fighter with anti-aircraft guns.

As a result, when a local fighter or assault boat flies into a formation of battleships, (in a head-on assault, this is almost inevitable) it will be cross-fired from multiple directions.

The only drawback of such a formation is that it is vulnerable to damage from weapons of wide destruction, but on the one hand, the battleship is not a vulnerable bomber, and on the other hand, with the superb gunnery of the Federation Space Force and the firepower density of the battleship group, it is unlikely that a fighter or assault boat will be able to break through to the effective distance of the missile.

Douglas commanded the 4th Mobile Fleet in a box-shaped formation, with two Magellan-class battleships at the core, the flagship Richelieu and the second Seleucus.

Six Salamis-class fast cruisers were located side by side at 2, 6 and 10 o'clock on the battleship.

They were the Portland and the Calcutta, which were located at two o'clock.

Port-au-Prince, Dominican at 6 o'clock.

The Hamilton and Strasbourg at 10 o'clock.

While Douglas was organizing the formation, Nolles ordered the Leipzig to fire an orange flare to signal the start of the attack.

The MS unit of the Zeon Army is divided into two teams, approaching the box line of the Federal Army in a V-shape, movement and speed are the core of all tactics, the strong are outflanked and strive for division and annihilation, and the weak is launched to launch a flank offensive, tearing apart the enemy's formation in a non-stop skirmish, at least Lear is convinced of this, he has preferred this set since the simulation of the military school, so that all his tactics have a strong style of sports warfare.

It just so happens that the most mobile on the battlefield at the moment is the MS troops, and the MS troops of the Zeon Army carrying C-type equipment do not have to worry about not being able to break the defense, and there is no way to tear the opponent's formation at all.

Because the Type C is equipped with a nuclear bomb, and the nuclear bomb, even today, is still the 'final answer to all problems'.

Douglas, who did not know about the situation, chose a box line of dense defense, which was the biggest defeat of this battle.

The box-shaped line of defense, which was originally used to deal with fighters, was originally more difficult to deal with the MS, which had much higher defense and attack power, and even more so against the MS carrying nuclear bombs.

Of course, the range of the nuclear rocket launcher is relatively limited, and its attack range is much lower than the distance of the Union Army's Mega Particle Cannon, so the focus of the battle between the Federation and Zeon is whether the MS forces can get close to the Federation fleet.

If you can get close, the Federation will definitely fail.

If you can't get close, you can only be consumed by the Federation's artillery fire.

Lear was clearly not the kind of person who would let his troops be consumed, and it was because of this that he avoided the firepower of the frontal Federation warships and split his forces into two to attack from the flanks of the fleet.

Because in the case of a box-shaped defensive line, on the side of the battleship cluster, there is always some firepower that will be blocked by one's own battleship.

The attack of the Federation Army starts from a position of 200 kilometers, and the distance at which the usual fleet artillery battles start is within 100-200, not that the range of the Mega particle cannon is only so short, on the contrary, unlike the MS beam weapon that will use E-CAP technology (Note 1) in the future, the large Mega particle cannon carried by the battleship is directly connected to the Minovsky particle reactor used by the battleship, and has the advantage that MS cannot compare with in any case in terms of output. dispersed to the point where it could not create a threat, there was also a range of at least a thousand kilometers,

However, although the Miga particle cannon is considered a beam weapon by people who do not know the principle, it has no connection with light, it is a jet of particles that is highly concentrated by Minovsky particles, and the speed of movement is very different from the speed of light.

And it also has a huge flaw, its movement is very large, because it has a pre-action of concentrating particles before firing the gun, and this action can be detected by equipment, so there is a high-energy response.

Because of this, when the combat distance exceeds 200 kilometers, the Miga particle cannon can be evaded by evasive actions, after all, compared with live ammunition weapons with a mysterious landing point, the high accuracy of the Miga particle cannon is an advantage, but also a disadvantage.

At the same time as the shooting, the anti-aircraft gunners of the Federation battleship were also waiting at the gun position, but their combat distance was about 10,000 meters, so they just watched the approaching Zeon MS troops through optical equipment, and their hands were covered with sweat.

It turned out to be an unlikely thing to try to stop the nimble MS with naval guns, and at a distance of 200 km to 50 km the MS units of the Zeon Army did not have any losses.

The real battle began from a position of 30 km.

———— Dividing Line————

Note 1: E-Cap (Energy Capacitor) is an energy storage device, which was used by almost all MS or MA that used beam weapons during the One-Year War.

In order to solve this problem, the Federal Army developed this technology called E-CAP, which uses the E-CAP device to store the Minovsky particles in a high-energy compressed state, so only a very small amount of energy is needed to create the final pressure to cause them to retract into Miga particles.

However, because the charging of the E-Cap device can only be carried out on the reactor of the battleship class, after using up the particles and energy stored in the E-Cap device, the MS must return to the battleship for replenishment, and the E-Cap itself has very limited reserves, even the E-Cap reserves of the RX-78-2 Gundam, one of the strongest MS during the one-year war, can only support 16 rounds of beam rifle fire, this number is difficult to support even a small-scale battle, and its cost of construction and maintenance is very high, It is inconvenient in use and maintenance.

Therefore, after the one-year war, Jim Chang, the follow-up body of the Federal Army, began to use live-ammunition weapons again, and this problem was not solved until 0087 a few years later, called E-Pack, which is the technology of energy packaging, so that MS is no longer limited by the reserves of E-Cap, but can use the E-Pack device like a magazine for ammunition supply, cost and ease of use, so that MS after the Battle of Gripps quickly began to popularize beam weapons.