Volume 3: Confrontation! The Run of Civilization Chapter 565: Battle of Santiago
"Impact point, 200 meters past the enemy's rightmost ship, cross-fire!"
"Victory!"
"Well done, brothers! Keep adjusting the shooting parameters and keep firing!"
"yes!"
While Zhang Hong, Gao Yingxiang and others were still discussing the next strategy in the tent of the Tiya rebels in the Andes Mountains, the Du Youning Detachment on the sea encountered the main fleet of the Spanish Navy.
As time travelers, Zhu Youdong and Philip both knew something about history. In their opinion, ships are built to be used, and the existence of a fleet is absolutely unacceptable. Therefore, when both sides built new ironclad ships, they all sent out all the new ships without any prior agreement.
Barudis had prepared a pocket formation for the Ming fleet near the reef-filled port of Aisen, but after waiting for a long time, he could not see any trace of the Ming fleet. As a result, the Spanish-Indian hybrids near Santiago discovered a group of guys whose appearance was obviously different from the local natives, and rushed this information to Barudis's fleet. Barudis then realized that the other party had arrived long ago.
Then he took all the warships north and finally found Du Youning's fleet in the waters near San Diego.
The Du Youning fleet that was discovered still had a large number of transport ships that had not yet unloaded cargo, so he did not even have the qualifications to maneuver or evade, and could only line up and fight.
At this time, the fleets of both sides were a mixture of ironclad and sailing ships. The range of a sailing was only a few hundred meters. The effective range of the steam ironclad ship's breech-loading gun, the 150mm heavy gun on the Ming side, reached 8,000 meters, and the effective range of the 100mm main gun on the Spanish side was also around 5,000 meters. Therefore, as soon as the two sides came into contact, they naturally divided the battle into two parts: sails against sails, and ironclad against ironclad.
On the sail side, the Ming Dynasty was at a complete disadvantage with 20 to 60. Du Youning ordered the commander of the squadron, Zheng Zhilong, to fight in a mobile manner and try to delay until dark or until the ironclad ships came to support.
On the ironclad ship side, the Ming Dynasty was outnumbered 3 to 5, which was a disadvantage in terms of numbers. However, the Ming Dynasty had a 5,000-ton ship. Although it was a bit slow, it had powerful firepower and solid defense, so it still had an advantage in quality.
Therefore, as soon as the naval battle broke out in the vast sea area near Santiago, the two squadrons of both sides displayed completely different tactics.
On the sailing warship side, the Spanish desperately chased the Ming fleet, while on the ironclad side, the Spanish relied on their speed advantage to wander around the three Ming ironclad ships.
However, no matter how the Spanish moved, the tubes on their ships were much thinner than those of the Songjiang, and their range was far inferior. Therefore, the five Spanish ironclad ships were always within the range of the Songjiang.
As the battle continued, Songjiang's shells became more and more accurate. Gradually, the number of near misses increased, and now, cross-misses finally occurred!
"Maldita Sea!" Seeing the Basque, the ship on the far right of his battleship line , being straddled by the enemy, Barudis, who was commanding on the new Casti, was extremely anxious: "Is General Fernando of our sailing warship detachment stupid? He has so many more ships than the enemy, why are they all circling around the enemy? Don't they know to allocate some of them to search for the enemy's supply ships? The enemy has come across the vast Pacific Ocean, how could they all be warships without supply ships? Find the supply ships and sink them. We don't need to sink these enemy warships at all, they will naturally be destroyed!"
"Sir, I will immediately send a signalman to raise a flag to alert the major general."
"Hey!" Shaking his head, he turned around and said to his gunner, "What? When can we score a hit?"
"Sir, we are firing at the enemy at the maximum range of 5,000 meters. It is too difficult for us to hit the enemy at this distance... Boom~!"
Before the gunnery chief finished speaking, a loud roar was heard not far away. The officers in the command tower of the Casti felt their hearts tighten at the same time, and then swarmed out of the command tower, picking up telescopes and looking around in unison.
"Sir, it was the Basque that was hit. It seems that the deck was hit, so it's not a serious problem."
"Hey!" Barudis slammed the railing and made up his mind immediately: "Our five ironclad ships will approach the enemy within 3,000 meters and open fire. The entire fleet will first focus on attacking the small ships on the left side of the enemy's large ship, then the small ships on the right side, and finally surround and annihilate the enemy's large ship together."
"As you command, sir."
Following Barudis's order, the Spanish ironclad fleet changed its tactics and began to approach the Ming ironclad fleet. As the distance shortened, the hit rate of both sides began to increase rapidly.
“Boom~”
After a huge explosion, all the crew members on the Shuntian, which was on the right side of the Songjiang, felt a violent shake.
"Where was it shot?"
"Captain, our ship was hit on the side amidships. The impact point is on the waterline, but the armor has not been...blasted~"
Before the subordinate in the copper tube finished his report, another huge roar sounded throughout the ship, and the Shuntian was hit by another shot.
"Where is it this time ?"
"Captain, our ship's rear main gun position was hit, seven gunners were killed, and the gunner was seriously injured!"
The captain of the Shuntian was Chen Jiuxiang, the son of Chen Lin, a famous general who fought against the Japanese invaders. As the son of a famous general, although he was not as talented as his father, he still had basic military knowledge. In such a situation, how could he not know that his ship had become the target of the enemy fleet's concentrated fire attack.
"Yan Jiachan, you actually chose my ship to attack first, do you think I'm easy to bully?" He slammed the chart table hard and said to the staff officer beside him: "Signal the flagship, this ship requests to leave the formation and maneuver freely. I'm going to force it!"
"yes!"
Du Youning, who was on the Songjiang, naturally saw that the Shuntian was under concentrated fire, and after Chen Jiuxiang quickly sent a signal requesting free maneuver, he also made a prompt decision: "Captain Chen's request will be slightly modified. The Songjiang will leave the battle line, and the Shuntian and Yingtian ships will support each other!"
The Songjiang and the Shuntian and Yingtian ships were not originally of the same level of warships. If they were forced to form a battle line, the two small ships would be attacked and the large ships would be unable to perform.
At first, Du Youning and others who were commanding an ironclad ship for the first time did not react at all. But after seeing the five ships of the same level working closely together, the Fangshan students who were good at learning immediately put their learning into practice: separate. The Songjiang stood alone in a row to block at least one side of the shells for the other two ships. Then they used their 150mm heavy artillery to call out the names of the other ships one by one.
With just a slight adjustment, the situation quickly turned around: Shuntian was still being bombarded, but when there was an open fire on the ship or the armor below the waterline was penetrated, he would go around to the back of Songjiang to hide and carry out damage control and repair. When he was almost done, he would go around and continue to fire at the enemy. And what about Songjiang? Please, when Zhu Youxiao designed this warship, he determined that the armor of this warship should withstand the attack of 150mm heavy artillery.
Therefore, after two or three hours of fighting, the Songjiang was hit by many shells, but except for the shells that fell on the deck and caused some casualties to its sailors, the armor below the waterline was completely intact.
Relatively speaking, the situation on the Spanish fleet's side was not optimistic: being hit by the 100mm main guns of Shuntian and Yingtian was still tolerable, but being hit by a 150mm main gun on the Songjiang, although it would not be a fatal blow, it would be very dangerous if it really hit below the waterline and opened a big hole.
Therefore, in the battle on the ironclad side, although it seemed that the three Ming ships had more black smoke, the Spanish side was actually in a worse condition.
When the Ming Dynasty gradually gained the upper hand on the ironclad ships, the situation on the sailing ships was reversed.
It’s simple, 20 versus 60, this battle is simply impossible to win!
When the battle just started, Zheng Zhilong, the commander of the Ming Dynasty Sailing Detachment, his first reaction was to write a suicide note to his family!
Zheng Zhilong fought bravely with this in mind. However, personal bravery was of limited use in this era of artillery. As soon as the two sides exchanged fire, the Ming army felt heavy pressure.
Although the enemy commander sent 20 warships to bypass Zheng Zhilong's fleet and search for the Ming transport fleet in the middle of the battle, the Ming fleet was still badly beaten with 20 to 40.
After more than two hours of fighting, six of Zheng Zhilong's 20 warships were forced to withdraw from the battle. The remaining warships were also badly damaged and struggled to hold on.
"It seems like he really can't escape death today. Unfortunately, my Da Mu is not even three years old yet. I can't teach him myself. I hope my comrades in the army can take good care of him."
"captain?!"
"What's going on? Which ship is going to launch a battle line again?"
"No!" The staff officer beside him said loudly with surprise: "Our transport ships have joined the battle. It's the two Tiejian transport ships that have joined the battle!"
"Huh?" Zheng Zhilong raised his telescope and took a look. He suddenly laughed: "Yeah, why are we so stupid! These two transport ships are armored. What if they don't have guns? We can just ram them!"
