Chapter 162: A Naval Battle Breaks Out

Although the speed of the Admiral-class destroyers was one minute slower than that of the Seahawk-class frigates, they still entered the battlefield an hour later! Looking at the rapidly advancing fleet, Lu Han's face tightened, this was the first time he had commanded a sea battle of this scale! Proud, worried, confident, and other emotions were intertwined, and his mood was very complicated, but he understood that he had to win for the Huo Jiajun in this war!

"Commander, the enemy fleet has entered the range of our 130mm guns!" replied Zhang Taoshen, the navigator of the destroyer Wang Qian, with some nervousness.

"Well! I see! Drive at full speed! When our fleet is 5,000 meters close to the enemy ships, we will seize the T-position, use the battle line tactics, and replace all the main guns of all the battleships with high-explosive bombs, and we must paralyze the combat effectiveness of the ironclad ship of the Seven Provinces Alliance, the flagship of the Dutch escort fleet, and the Empress Maria, the flagship of the Portuguese fleet's escort fleet, at the first time!"

Because of the use of the first-generation fire control system and the four 130mm caliber main guns of the same caliber on the battleship, the Mingjiang-class destroyer already has the conditions for the same main guns as the Dreadnought-class battleships of later generations! Therefore, Lu Han chose to use the battle line tactics to face the enemy at a distance of 5,000 meters, which can give full play to the power and hit rate of the Mingjiang-class 130mm main gun!

Because of the DC generators, telephones, and radios installed on the battleship, in less than a minute, the captains of the nine Admiral-class destroyers all received telegrams from the flagship!

"Commander! The escort fleets of the Netherlands and Portugal are beginning to shrink!" Wang Cunshan, the first mate of the destroyer Wang Qian, pointed to the fleets of the two countries that were slowly moving in the distance, and said with some surprise.

"Well! It seems that their admirals are not very stupid! There is a big gap between the speed of the voyage and us, and they have to guard as many as 50,000 land forces of the two countries! Under such circumstances, it is undoubtedly the best tactic to shrink the defense and give full play to their superiority in the number of warships and guns to fight our high-speed warships! It is a pity that they underestimated the range of our naval guns and the high hit rate with the assistance of the fire control system! Moreover, judging from their current formation, the Dutch are undoubtedly much faster than the Portuguese! It can be seen from this that the Dutch are much better at the ability to execute orders and analyze the layout of the battlefield than the Portuguese, whose navy has been in decline for hundreds of years! However, it seems that they are still in charge of each other, and have not formed a unified command! If we say so, we have a chance!" As a senior admiral, he is well aware of the dangers of disjointed command!

"Captain, we have reached the predetermined combat distance!" the captain's exhilarating words rang out in the command tower!

Lu Han looked at the fleets of the two countries that were shrinking backwards, and the look on his face suddenly became cold and cold!

"Fire!" "Fire!"

The rapid radio waves quickly transmitted the flagship's orders to the ships! The nine battleships that had already been swept horizontally and lined up in a beautiful battle line, and eighteen 130mm caliber naval guns roared at their respective targets!

"How is it possible? They don't have a flag, how can they change formation so quickly and play such a Qi shè!" said the god Welbeck, who was standing on the ironclad battleship of the Seven Provinces Alliance, in surprise.

"Boom......!"

The whistling cannonballs smashed heavily into the seawater, and the splash flew up for nearly 20 meters before it fell with a bang!

"It's so accurate, almost all of the bomb points are within 50 meters of the Dutch and Portuguese flagships, and the landing point of the latest shell is almost 20 meters! Is it just that the quality of their naval artillery has reached this level for many years? How is this possible?" Henrik held the telescope high, and secretly thought with some doubts in his heart!

Watch the fleet staff quickly input all kinds of data such as humidity, wind speed, and distance into the mechanical computer through the landing point of the shells! Then, in less than a minute, a new angle of shelling is derived, and then the artillery inside each turret is quickly notified through the telephone lines arranged on the battleship! This efficiency is at least five times more than the previous efficiency of shouting only by human brains and iron pipes!

After accurate calculations, it was not 18 naval guns that fired this time! It was the entire 36 130mm caliber naval guns, all of which fired high-explosive shells filled with new gunpowder at the enemy ships in the distance!

And the design efficiency of Huojia's warship guns once again shocked the three countries of Britain, France and Germany who were watching the battle, as well as the naval commanders of the Netherlands and Portugal who were on the enemy side!

"Boom..."

The violent explosion shook the entire hull of the ship, but fortunately, the tonnage of the ironclad ship of the Seven Provinces Alliance exceeded 6,000 tons, and the shaking was not too violent, otherwise the unprepared Dutch officers and soldiers would have been lying on the ground long ago!

"What about our main guns, why don't we fire them now?" Looking at the large hole in the foredeck that had been blown open by the shells and the soldiers lying on the ground and groaning around them, as well as the red blood, it stimulated Blake's already tense sensitive nerves!

"Commander! The speed of the enemy's warship is too fast, and our artillery can't aim at all! Now firing cannons is just a useless waste of shells! Unless God helps, we can't hit the enemy ship at all!" Welbeck replied with a frown!

"Are we just being beaten passively under the enemy's naval guns? In this case, what is the point of our current resistance? It is better to think about the surrender of those Chinese as soon as possible!" Blake yelled out with some gaffes!

Hearing his almost reprimanding words, Welbeck's eyebrows twitched violently, and an imperceptible hint of anger flashed in his eyes!

"The fleets of the Dutch and Portuguese are finished!" Putting down the binoculars in his hand, Henrik looked at the huge fleet that was retreating in the distance and said silently!

"Captain, they've just started the war, and the two sides haven't lost a single ship now, so it's a little too early for you to make up your mind about this war?" Baker asked with some surprise when he heard his words.

In fact, the outcome of this war was already doomed from the moment the Chinese warship hit the Seven Provinces Soyuz, the flagship of the Dutch escort fleet! Beck, don't be blinded by the pride in your heart! At a distance of five thousand meters, just after the first round of tentative shelling, the second round of shells accurately hit the enemy ship, and most of the shells hit within 20 meters, this kind of high hit rate even the most sharp naval artillery in the empire at this moment could not do it! On the contrary, the high speed of the Chinese warships and the 5,000-meter engagement distance limited the design of the main guns of their two warships, and even their huge number of warships lost their advantage because of the short secondary guns! If they did not change their current formation and tactics, then the Dutch and Portuguese escort fleets of more than 50 warships would probably not be able to survive even an hour when they could only be beaten passively and their confidence was frustrated!"

After hearing his words, Baker couldn't help but look into the distance in amazement, even in the eyes of the British Empire, it was a very large escort fleet of the two countries, and couldn't help muttering to himself: "Is this really the case? Is the fleet of the Dutch and Portuguese really so fragile?"