Hit!

But that's not the crux of the question, the crux of the question is whether it is penetrated?

The Queen Elizabeth's 14-inch main gun is undoubtedly the sharpest "spear" of the British Royal Navy today, and the main belt of the Great Zhou is the strongest shield of the Ming Navy! Now the sharpest spear pierces the strongest shield, whether it can be pierced or not will determine the outcome of today's naval battle, and will also determine the rise and fall of the empire on which the sun never sets!

Although this is a bit of a "weapon-only theory", today's naval warfare is about a ship with strong guns, and the survival and failure of the current empire is also determined by the victory or defeat at sea. In other words, whoever has a stronger ship with stronger guns and sharper guns, and whose volume is large enough, will be the master of the world!

William, who had just climbed up from the floor of the conning tower. Baga, who had already grabbed a good seat to watch the battle at this time, raised his binoculars and stared at the fire that came out of the side of the Great Zhou, and his heart was in his throat - the waterline armor of the King William IV, the strongest battleship of the British Empire, had already made several holes in the enemy's artillery, and if the 14-inch guns of the William IV could not penetrate the opponent's waterline armor, then the British Empire would be ...... It's over!

The smoke from the 14-inch shell cleared in a blink of an eye, and then a large area of charred black was revealed. Baga's face darkened with it. Because he knew that this scorched black was left by the picric acid charge after it burned violently on the metal surface - and the picric acid charge burned a large area of pitch black on the surface of the steel plate of the Daming battleship, which means that the 14-inch armor-piercing bullet definitely did not penetrate the armor steel plate of the Daming battleship. Otherwise, it should have exploded in the belly of that battleship, and a hole should have been opened on the surface to smoke and smoke outside!

"No, no breakdown...... How is this possible?" Major General Jervis's voice at William. Baga's ears rang, and he trembled a little when he heard it, obviously frightened by the solidity of the 30,000-ton battleship of the Ming Dynasty.

"Certainly, it must be the damn fuse that is in trouble!" William. Of course, Baga was not willing to end like this, and he immediately made a reason for the 14-inch shell that could not penetrate the main belt of the 30,000-ton battleship of the Ming Dynasty - the shell was good, but the fuse was too sensitive and would explode at the slightest touch...... This is an old problem, since the beginning of the war, the Royal Navy has been mentioning this with the arsenal, but it is not good to change it, it is really a mistake for the country and the king!

Thinking of this, William. Baga then commanded in a loud voice, "Keep fighting, don't stop...... Be sure to pierce the armor of the Ming battleship!"

"Yes, sir!"

......

"Admiral, damage management report, there is no visible damage to the starboard main armor belt, our battleship withstands!"

"Hooray! Daming Wansheng ...... Invincible tomorrow!"

At this moment, there was jubilation in the command tower of the Great Zhou.

The thickness of the main belt on the side of the Great Zhou is 175 mm - 350 mm, and the thickness of the upper main belt is 175 mm, all of which have a certain inclination, which can increase a certain protection capacity when being shot.

In addition, the bulletproof steel plate used by the Great Zhou is the latest "deep hardened plate", which is harder than the earlier case-hardened armor steel - one is carburized and hardened on the face, and the other is hard to the inside, so it is even harder. And the price of armor steel produced using this process is extremely high, almost 20-30 times that of ordinary steel plates! In addition, the steel plate hardened by this process is difficult to post-process (too hard), so it must be processed into the desired shape before hardening. This is also quite a challenge for the shipbuilding industry. Only an industrial country with a strong shipbuilding and metallurgy can play ...... And Daming is such an industrial country.

However, you get what you pay for, and the bulletproof ability of this "deep hardened plate" is also just, almost equivalent to 2.5 times that of ordinary armor steel, and 15%-25% stronger than armor steel with only surface hardening technology.

In other words, the 350 mm of deep-hardened steel armor that came out of the main belt on the side of the Great Zhou would have to be 400 mm upwards if converted to the case-hardened steel used on British battleships. If you take into account the enhanced bulletproof effect produced by the tilting of the steel plate, it should be equivalent to more than 450 mm! 1

4-inch (356 mm) armor-piercing shells, there is no hood, the fuse is not very reliable, and the passivation of the picric charge is not in place...... This should be worn on the thicker parts of the main installation, and it must be the shipyard cutting corners.

However, Admiral Li Kezhi of the 102nd Fleet knows that now is not the time to be happy - victory is not yet in hand!

Li Kezhi ordered loudly: "Continue to gather fire to the British ship No. 1 and hit me hard!"

"Yes, Admiral!"

......

The admirals on both sides are determined to beat each other to death!

The gunners in the main gun turrets on both sides did not stop for a second, and they were always reloading and firing with all their might, and the 14-inch, 12-inch, 360-mm, and 300-mm shells were coming and going, and they were fighting happily. Although the quality of the armor-piercing shells of the British was indeed poor, they now had more than 200 cannons firing shells at the four battleships of the Ming Dynasty, and the armor-piercing shells filled with picric acid rained down, both in terms of power and momentum, it was very amazing.

At 6:36, the British fleet finally gave Daming a hard blow, and the side of the No. 4 turret of the battleship Chengzhong Wang was pierced by a 12-inch shell, and an explosion occurred on the spot.

But after only a minute, the 360mm cannon of the "Great Zhou" class was still colored, and two armor-piercing shells of more than 700 kg hit the King William IV again, one of which hit a secondary gun, and the turret was blown up, exploding a huge fireball! And the other one pierced through the bow of the ship, and it also penetrated directly into the torpedo compartment of the bow!

Loading a battleship with torpedoes...... To be honest, it's a pretty puzzling design! It's okay to say here that they have powerful steam gas torpedoes after all! It can be launched from a distance of 10 kilometers, and the speed of more than 30 knots looks terrifying. But the British steam gas torpedoes were not yet in service, so their battleships were equipped with compressed air torpedoes, which could only hit a kilometer or two...... What is the use of loading a battleship? Can the battleship still rush to within 2 km of the opponent? I'm going to hit it!

However, the British warship designers stubbornly equipped their battleships with torpedo tubes, and also built a torpedo compartment in the bow, which also stored some air compressed torpedoes!

As a result, now the torpedo did not cause any damage to the enemy, but it was about to bring disaster to the British Empire! This 360-mm armor-piercing projectile not only penetrated the armor of the bow of the King William IV, but also easily broke through the armor of the torpedo compartment and got into the torpedo compartment with a big explosion!

It was a violent explosion! All the people in the command tower of the William IV could not stand, and once again fell to the ground...... William. Baga fell very hard, his head hit the steel plate hard, and there were bursts of sharp pain, but his mind was still clear. He knew that such a violent explosion could not have been blown up by an armor-piercing shell that did not contain much picric acid, something must have been detonated.

As soon as he thought of this, he didn't know who shouted, "It's over, it's over...... The bow torpedo bay has blown up, the bow is gone, and we are sinking rapidly......