Alien Arms Empire

Chapter 417 Chapter 417 The First Collision of the New Navy

The sun will rise as usual every day, and the first to usher in the light is the Datang Group naval fleet across the sea.

At this time, the Datang Group and the mirage navy that rushed over almost simultaneously discovered the thick smoke billowing across the sea.

That's right, when both sides have steam ships involved in the battle, it is easy to spot the enemy's fleet at a long distance.

In the next second, the Datang Group's fleet seemed to be caught in the middle - a fleet appeared to the south and north of them, and they were menacing and malicious at first glance.

Bernard put down the binoculars and made a battle plan. He ordered all the slow-moving Burners-class ironclad ships in his fleet to stay behind to cover the transport and landing fleet. The mirage fleet in the direction of Fengshun City killed it.

According to Bernard's idea, he should command the faster cruiser fleet, and quickly go south to eat the mirage fleet in the direction of Fengshun City, which should be relatively weak.

After completely eradicating the threat in the south, he will use his faster speed to lead the fleet in a circle, and together with the left-behind Burnas-class ironclad ships, they will attack the enemy fleet from the north.

Soon, cruiser Wolf 1 took Wolf 3 and Wolf 4 out of the landing fleet, and the three warships formed a long snake formation and quickly rushed towards the enemy fleet to the south.

At the same time, the fleet sailing northward from Fengshun City also found that the enemy army was approaching them.

As a result, the mirage commander, who was familiar with sea battles, immediately ordered his fleet to cross the bow of the ship, forming a flank formation to meet the enemy, with the paddle steamer as the core, preparing to face the incoming Datang fleet.

The atmosphere suddenly became tense, the waves beat against the hull, all the gun ports on the hull were opened, and the Cyric muzzle guns were pushed out one by one, pointing the muzzles at the black smoke in the distance.

In the telescope of Captain Mirage, three black warships are rapidly approaching them, and the speed is unbelievable.

Those warships that looked very far away seemed to be slightly turning their bows, as if they were about to bite the tail of the mirage fleet.

"The opponent's speed is very fast..." A mid-level mirage officer put down his binoculars and said worriedly.

The opponent's battleship looked slimmer and faster than their paddle steamer, obviously not easy to deal with.

These are not the backward, powerless sailing warships of Zheng Guo. Just from the momentum, the enemy army in front of them is definitely more than ten times more difficult than Zheng Guo's navy.

"It seems that they are very confident in their speed, and they are ready to bite our tail." The commander standing next to the mid-level officer of the Mirage Navy also put down his binoculars and said.He is the captain of this warship and also the commander-in-chief of this fleet.

"Obviously, their speed is indeed fast enough to be worthy of their trust." The middle-level commander looked at the black smoke that was getting closer and said a little uneasy.

"Don't be afraid, we are ironclad battleships, they are definitely not our opponents!" The captain sneered, a little dismissive.

He also trusts the battleship under his feet, because this battleship is a wooden and iron-hulled battleship, and its defense is obviously several times stronger than that of ordinary sailed battleships!
What's even more advantageous is that this kind of paddle steamer warship not only has a slight advantage in speed, it is slightly faster than a sailboat, and it also lacks the sails and masts that sailboats are most vulnerable to attack.

Without these easy-to-hit targets, his battleship is even lower, and it can be described as a technologically advanced sailing ship.

The 130mm caliber cannon he relies on adopts the latest breech loading technology, which has a faster rate of fire and more powerful explosive bullets, so even if there are only two cannons at the front and rear, the firepower is still better than that of traditional sailing ships.

In fact, his battleship not only has two 130mm main guns, but also four 4mm cannons on one side.

This kind of artillery is also a product of Cyric's plagiarism from the Datang Group. It is much less powerful, and it is completely a secondary weapon for making up numbers.

However, even if it's just this kind of secondary weapon that can't be put on the table, its power is already much greater than Cyric's muzzle gun before.

At least they were breech-loading guns, allowing the crew to hide in the cabin to reload, protected and had a high rate of fire.

It's just that what they don't know is that they are rushing towards their opponents. Each battleship is equipped with 10 150 mm caliber naval guns, which can concentrate 6 guns on the side, which is much more powerful than them.

At 5 o'clock in the morning, the distance between the two sides was already very close, and the battleship of the Datang Group began to turn under the command of Bernard, showing its flanks.

Because of its absolute advantage in speed, the slender wolf-class cruiser quickly showed its fangs.

At 5:11, the ready-made Datang Group cruiser fleet began shelling, firing violently at a distance of 1300 meters.

The sudden artillery fire made all the mirage navy sailors shrink their necks. They had never seen an opponent who fired at this distance.

But soon the reality made them nervous—accompanied by the continuous artillery fire from the opponent, the sailing warships at the rear of the mirage fleet began to sink one after another.

Obviously, the attack of the Datang Group's naval warships worked, and the Phantom Navy was caught off guard and didn't even have a chance to adjust, so it fell into a passive state.

A few minutes later, Bernard began shelling the paddle steamer in the middle of the enemy fleet, and at this moment, the distance between the two sides had been shortened to about 1200 meters.

The paddle wheel of Mirage's paddle steamer is protected by iron armor, and the outer layer of the constantly rotating waterwheel is defended by iron plates ranging from 4 mm to 20 mm.

Logically speaking, these iron armors can resist the enemy's attacks at a longer distance, and the defense power is not known to be higher than that of wooden boards.

But obviously, such iron plate defense is not prepared for Datang Group's 150mm caliber artillery.

The main guns on the Wolf-class cruiser of the Datang Group, which was already completely overpowered, suddenly found a sense when attacking the wooden paddle steamer with iron plate defense.

Those collision fuzes that are not suitable for attacking wooden sailboats, when bombarding this kind of paddle steamer with an iron-clad shell and a wooden hull, their power was released perfectly.

The impact fuze would have exploded inside the hull after hitting the wooden hull. Because the wooden hull is ventilated from all sides, the damage effect can only be said to be mediocre.

The actual result of destroying a sailing ship with one shot actually depends entirely on the super-excessive power of the shell itself, not the reasonable type of shell.

Now it's all right, when the fuze that explodes on touch is attacking the iron-hulled ship, the timing of the shell's explosion is just the moment it penetrates the hull, so the destructive force is completely applied to the hull, and the damage effect is even more obvious.

The direct result of this is that when a shell hit a paddle steamer of the mirage navy, the explosion knocked off one side oar of the paddle steamer!
It's not an exaggeration at all, the explosion caused the oar on this side to fall off, and it fell directly into the sea water.

In the face of a wooden iron-hulled paddle steamer that is basically invincible with solid bullets, it exposed its various problems the moment it collided with a real steel cruiser.

However, as the main force of the Mirage, the Mirage Navy's combat effectiveness is still very strong. Even after the battle broke out, they knew that they had fallen into a passive position and were already at a disadvantage, but they were still fighting tenaciously.

They kept firing at the warships of the Datang Group, and even caused a lot of trouble for the Datang Group for a while.

For the first time, a 130mm caliber bomb hit a Datang Group battleship. The bombardment hit the side of the hull, leaving a fist-sized hole in it.

The explosion made the wolf-class cruiser shiver, but because no more damage was caused, the battleship was still firing.

Compared with sailing warships and front-loading guns, the new paddle ships and breech-loading guns did cause some troubles for the Datang Group's naval fleet.

The stronger hull also significantly reduced the speed at which the Datang Group's navy could sink enemy ships.No matter how bad it is, it is an iron boat, which must be much stronger than a wooden boat.

There was an iron-hulled paddle steamer, even after being hit by 13 shots, it was still floating on the water, which made Bernard very helpless.

Seeing that the warship of the Phantom Navy was almost beaten to the point of leaving only one hull, it didn't explode or sink, and just floated on the sea like a tomb.

However, the current Northward Fleet of Fengshun City in Mirage has completely lost its combat effectiveness, and all 15 sailing warships have been sunk here.

Both paddle steamers are also now paralyzed, one is slowly sinking, and the other seems to have only a hull left floating at sea.

Bernard, who was already very anxious, immediately let the Wolf 3 warship that had just been shot and injured stay and continue to fire, ensuring that all the Mirage warships were sunk, while he himself immediately took the Wolf 4 battleship northward to reinforce the trapped The hard-fought landing fleet went.

Because, just when he completely wiped out the northbound fleet of Fengshun Port, the landing fleet sent news that the enemy fleet had entered the landing field and began to attack Liberty Ship.

This news made Bernard very anxious, because if something went wrong with his landing fleet, even if he wiped out all the enemy fleet in this battle, it would definitely be a disastrous defeat.

Therefore, he hurried back to the battlefield with two cruisers, and went north to expel the enemy fleet that entered the landing field.

For a while, the sea was clouded with battle clouds, and it was still a question mark who could win this naval battle.At this moment, the sun had crossed the coastline and shone onto Dongwan Island, and the army troops of both sides finally collided.

(End of this chapter)