national surname chiming

Chapter 502 Asia's No. [-] Naval Battle
"Zheng Zuo can be regarded as the hero of the party. This courage is big and fat enough. He actually thought of intercepting me while I was on my way back. Hehe, it's a pity that I still underestimate Zheng Chenggong."

When Zheng Chenggong saw the Vietnamese fleet more than [-] miles away to the north through the high-powered binoculars, a trace of surprise appeared on the corner of his mouth, followed by a smug grin.

In good conscience, Zheng Zuo's plan this time is very in line with the art of war.

If Zhu Shuren himself could go to the battlefield and witness this naval battle, he might exclaim: Zheng Zuo's thinking is so similar to Togo Heihachiro's in parallel time and space more than 200 years later.

Togo Heihachiro during the Japan-Luo War, in the Battle of Tsushima, was fighting "taking advantage of the fleet transferred by the Lucians from the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, which had just sailed [-] nautical miles across the ocean to the Far East, before they had time to replenish. Kill it halfway" idea.

It's a pity that Zheng Zuo didn't expect that Zheng Chenggong was the naval god of all mankind on the earth in the seventeenth century.Zheng Chenggong had already prevented the risk of all the tricks he could think of.

In the Tsushima sea battle in history, Togo Heihachiro Nengyin to Rozhestwinski, an important reason is that all countries in future generations must abide by international law.During the outbreak of war, the military ports of neutral countries cannot allow warships of belligerent countries to dock for supplies.

Therefore, the Rakshasa Fleet had no supplies for [-] nautical miles, not only the pro-Japanese Britain at the time, but also France and Germany.

But now, the situation that Zheng Chenggong is facing is quite different from that of Rojjestwinski-how can the Dutch of this era have any neutral ethics?
In the process of conquering Burma, Zheng Chenggong had just caught the handle of the Dutch selling cannons and muskets to Burmese Hongyi, and even thousands of muskets. It is suspected that the Dutch delivered them after the war between Ming and Burma, but Ming did not Obtaining conclusive evidence can only be reasoning.

But this is enough for Zheng Chenggong to threaten the Dutch in Malacca. What's more, the latest news he got also shows that the Dutch have sold warships to Vietnam's Zheng and Nguyen Phuc in the past two years.

All kinds of pressure made Zheng Chenggong threaten the Dutch when he stopped in Malacca on his return voyage and sold ammunition, grain, fruits and vegetables, and medicine to the Ming Fleet.

If the Dutch don't sell it, then Zheng Chenggong will have to weigh it with the other party: Your homeland is [-] miles away (the sea route goes around the Cape of Good Hope), if you really fight with Ming in Malacca or Batavia, the Netherlands will have time to go around half of it. Earth for reinforcements?

In the end, the Dutch chose to make money through harmony, and both sides sold arms to make war money.

In fact, Zheng Chenggong didn’t care much about Dutch artillery and muskets. All he wanted were gunpowder and shells. He thought these shells were of poor quality. They were solid shells rather than Ming-style explosive shells. .

After resting for three days in Malacca, Zheng Chenggong sharpened his knife and continued northward at the firewood cutting site.During these three days, the troops also went ashore and ate a few meals of fresh meat, as well as enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Take care of it to the best, just in case.

Under such circumstances, Zheng Zuo thought that he had caught Zheng Chenggong, who was out of ammunition and food, but in fact Zheng Chenggong had already saved his hand, and spent enough money in Malacca to replenish supplies.

When Zheng Zuo was happy to catch the enemy, he didn't know that Zheng Chenggong was happier than him.

……

"Is this Zheng Chenggong's largest battleship? It looks more powerful than the heaviest Galen gunship of the Hongyi people, but why is there no poop? This ship is definitely not suitable for observation, nor is it suitable for firing from the deck with musketeers in close combat , the deck is too flat and too low, if you are caught on board, you will definitely be hacked and killed miserably."

Zheng Zuo's eldest son, Zheng Gen, is the de facto fleet commander for today's sea battle.When Zheng Gen first saw Daming's 80-gun sailing battleship in the binoculars, he was also a little apprehensive. Although he felt that Zheng Chenggong lacked supplies and ammunition, how could such a large ship not make people speechless.

Fortunately, Zheng Gen also understood naval warfare tactics and art of war, and he could see the advantages and disadvantages of sailing battleships at a glance.I just don't know if those black cannons will give people a chance to get a hand-to-hand fight.

However, observing the number of warships on both sides through a telescope, the size advantage of the Vietnamese Zheng family is still obvious. After all, they are fighting at the door of their house, and they can overwhelm all the warships, big and small, and the whole family.

Zheng and Ruan Phuc teamed up to produce a total of eight Galen warships, more than [-] heavy Karak warships, and thirty to fifty small western gunboats with triangular sails and Latin sails. Cannon's Guangzhou boat, this is already the overwhelming power of the Vietnamese navy.

In contrast, if Zheng Chenggong fled back to the country this time and came out after being fully prepared, then Zheng Chenggong would also be able to bring many small and medium-sized Fuzhou ships to help in the battle.

However, this time, precisely because he was on his way back from the ocean, those warships with less than [-] materials were not seaworthy to sail to Burma and return. Large and medium-sized ocean-going fleets fight alone.

After Zheng Gen's observation, he only saw that Zheng Chenggong had 2 largest 80-gun sail battleships and 4 smaller 66-gun sail battleships (he didn't know the name of this ship was a sail battleship, and he had never seen it before) ,

6 sail frigates with 38 guns and 12 small sail frigates with 24 to 32 guns, the total combat power is 24 gunboats.The others are some large troop carriers with insufficient firepower, generally with less than 10 guns, and there are dozens of them.The rest of the transport ships were left by Zheng Chenggong in Myanmar and used to maintain the logistics route of the Irrawaddy River for the occupying forces left behind by Li Dingguo.

In terms of quantity, there are about 24 large ships in the Vietnamese Navy, [-] Latin sail Western gunboats, and hundreds of ordinary Guangzhou ships.Zheng Chenggong has only [-] large gunboats, no small gunboats, and an order of magnitude fewer transport ships than the Vietnamese Navy.

Zheng Gen felt that he had a good chance, but until now, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and the brave would win when they met on a narrow road.

……

The distance between the vanguards of the two fleets quickly approached within ten miles, and then eight miles and seven miles fought each other quickly while adjusting their formations.It was at this moment that Zheng Gen noticed that Zheng Chenggong's fleet formation was very different from his.

In this era, the "sail battleship" has not yet appeared in the West, and that thing was not fully mature until the Seven Years War in the 18s.In the third Anglo-Dutch war decades before that, the British and the Dutch each tried to upgrade their warships in actual combat, and gradually figured out the advantages of battleships. Only then did they completely eliminate the Galen gunboats with high stern towers.

Therefore, in this time and space, Ming became the inventor of the battleship.And since the West does not have the concept of battleships, there will be no T-shaped horizontal formations against artillery tactics.

Even if the two sides exchanged gunfire, they would attack each other head-on, and then bombard each other when they passed by on the wrong side.Or it is just like the Anglo-Spanish war, playing tricks.

Because the range of naval guns in this era is too short, the aim of smoothbore guns is rubbish, and the waves are bumpy, so it is absolutely impossible to bombard them at a distance of one or two miles. In many cases, the distance between guns is only two or three hundred step even closer.

It's so close, how can we pull the battle line?Of course, you have to fight one-on-one, and fight each other individually.

However, just before the battle between the two sides, Zheng Chenggong turned his fleet ahead of time and scattered the twenty or so gunboats to the left and right wings, as if planning to outflank Zheng Gen.Only the fifty or sixty Dafu boats and Daguang boats were left in the Chinese army, and they slowed down to block the front path.

"Zheng Chenggong is very confident in his escort gunboats. Only relying on the 24 gunboats in the lead, he dares to attack my main force? So leave the other heavy troop carriers in the middle but slow down? Isn't he afraid that these 24 gunboats will be destroyed by me one by one?"

A moment of disbelief flashed in Zheng Gen's heart. Of course, he saw the characteristics of Zheng Chenggong's tactic, that is, the heavy ship with few guns was not easy to be entangled, and he could use the advantage of outflanking the Vietnamese navy to bite the Vietnamese navy.

But the disadvantage of this tactic is also obvious, that is, the troops will be dispersed, and it is impossible to concentrate superior forces to enter the battlefield at the same time, which has become a refueling tactic.When the 24 gunboats surrounded by two wings fought, the huge Chinese army could not help at all.

Zheng Gen couldn't help feeling hot in his heart, and immediately raised the flag to ask his own fleet to ignore the formation, and hurriedly approach Zheng Chenggong's gunboat fleet as quickly as possible, trying to use the time difference to annihilate Zheng Chenggong's fleet first.

So all the Vietnamese warships were full of sails, and with full paddle power, all the bows rushed towards the enemy.Some of the light boats that had been specially deployed before the war were even ready to ignite and wanted to rush up to attack and burn the enemy.

As the two sides approached, Zheng Chenggong, who took the lead in the ship, would of course not be polite.After all, there were so many small boats on the opposite side, and it was quite troublesome to get close to them, so they started firing almost a mile away, and the first round was really not very accurate, and there was no hit rate.

Seeing this, Zheng Gen felt relieved, and thought to himself that the accuracy of the Ming army's artillery was not as good as expected, and he wasted a round of firing opportunities. He estimated that when he finished loading and could fire again, his vanguard boat would be able to get closer to seven times more. Eighty steps.

However, to his surprise, the reloading speed of the Ming army was much faster than he had imagined.

As Zheng Chenggong turned the fleet to a direction parallel to the Vietnamese navy's assault fleet, the relative speed of the two sides was not so fast. The Vietnamese vanguard warships approached about fifty steps, and the Ming army's warships were reloaded.Moreover, the firepower density of the firing this time has also been significantly increased.

It was only then that Zheng Gen noticed that during the first round of test firing just now, the Ming warship didn't even use the heavy artillery on the lower deck, but only used the light artillery on the upper deck.And even in this second round of firing, it still only used the upper and middle layers of artillery, and the bottom one was always holding back its big move.

This shocked him deeply, because he found that the tonnage of the artillery on the middle gun deck of the Ming army battleship was almost as heavy as the heavy guns on the lower deck of the Manila-type three-layer gun-deck Galen battleship he had in hand.

Even the firepower will be stronger, at least by listening to the sound and seeing the fire.

You know, in the period of sail warships, in order to stabilize the center of gravity of the warship and prevent it from rolling and capsizing, the heavier cannons were installed on the lower deck, and the lighter cannons were installed on the upper deck.Otherwise, if it is reversed, it will be top-heavy and very unstable.It is also the restriction of the center of gravity that limits the scale of the heavy artillery on the battleship. After all, only a few can be placed on the bottom floor.

Traditional Galen warships, because of their tall poop and higher cargo warehouses, had a higher center of gravity, so many of the final cannons of that era were only 32-pound guns, and very few super-heavy Galen warships had only 42-pound guns.

However, the Dutch would definitely not sell ships with 42-pound guns to the Vietnamese.The heavy cover of the foreign trade version is up to a 32-pound gun.

In contrast, after the later generations entered the 18th century, the heaviest guns on the lower deck of sailing battleships could reach 68 pounds, which was more than half of the weight of the heaviest guns. This was due to the cancellation of the poop and the drop in the center of gravity of the entire ship. , the swing is also reduced, so after the tonnage of the bottom gun is increased, it will not swing into the water.

As for the sailing battleships of Ming Dynasty today, great efforts have been made in watertight compartments and waterproof gun doors, which can ensure that after the gun doors are closed in stormy weather, even if the closed gun windows of the lower gun deck are immersed in seawater, there will be no leakage.In this way, Daming gained a greater advantage in terms of the weight of a single cannon.

In naval battles, the larger the caliber of a single gun, the stronger the penetration!In order to completely penetrate the opponent's thick armor and beat it out into the water!Otherwise, the superstructure will be smashed to pieces only by flicking and scraping. As long as the ammunition depot is not killed, it will not be able to sink.

……

As the fleets of both sides entered the full-fire range of two or three hundred steps, the warships of the Ming army finally replaced them with incendiary bombs and grape bombs. Then the Vietnamese arson boat couldn't get close at all.

Zheng Chenggong was always calm, and he would never wastefully shoot salvos when facing enemy boats, lest the firepower overflow.As for those boats filled with arson fuel, as long as they were slightly opened two holes or hit by incendiary bombs, they would be killed almost immediately.

Zheng Chenggong also made the relatively clumsy sailing battleship pull back appropriately to keep a distance, and let the more flexible and faster sailing frigate stand in front.

The speed of the sail frigates of the Ming army was not slower than that of the arsonist boats, and the drag knives could knock out the arsonist boats one by one. sinking slowly.

Zheng Gen gritted his teeth, but there was nothing he could do.He knew that he could no longer be kited by the enemy. Since the effect of the fire attack was not obvious and the enemy was too flexible to hit him, he could only count on the main fleet to hit him head-on.

Fortunately, the little time gained by the arson fleet also fully forced Zheng Chenggong to move, allowing the relatively clumsy and heavy Vietnamese main gunboat to approach the engagement distance.

It was also at this moment that the warships of the Ming army began to fully fire, and the battleships no longer hid behind the frigates, but turned around and headed to the front line under the command of the semaphore in a disciplined and uniform manner.

Moreover, Zheng Chenggong's scheduling was very appropriate. He did not blindly demand that all Ming warships seize the T-shaped horizontal battle, but made adjustments according to the density of the opposing fleet's formation.

If the formation on the opposite side is dense, there is no interspersed space between the battleships, and the threat of small boats setting fire to ships is too great, Zheng Chenggong will let the battleships maintain the line of battle.

And if the formation of the Vietnamese navy is relatively sparse in certain positions on the battlefield, or if the arson boats and other small ships have suffered heavy losses before, resulting in the main battleship of the Vietnamese army alone, then Zheng Chenggong will not be polite, and he will directly command the battleships of Ming Dynasty directly The punch is pierced between the Vietnamese army, and the center is blooming, giving full play to all the firepower on both sides, which doubles the firepower density at once.

After all, the biggest waste of battle line play is that only one side of the broadside will meet the enemy, and the cannons on the other side will be idle.If you rush in directly, there are enemies on the left and right sides, then you can fire at the same time, and the center will bloom.

It’s just that such a style of play requires very strong courage and judgment. Around the 1810s, Nelson dared to do this during the Trafalgar naval battle. Later, until the 1870s, the Austro-Hungarians in the Lisa naval battle also dared to attack Italy like this .Later, this punching tactic was completely eliminated from the stage of history with the epoch-making progress of artillery technology, effective range and accuracy greatly improved.

But now, whether it is battle formation or punching to tear apart the enemy's formation, there is no absolute distinction between good and bad, it all depends on the general's ability to perform on the spot.

"Boom boom boom——" With the battleship and the heavy Galen gunboat, the nearly 70 Ming Jin solid heavy bomb finally roared towards the Vietnamese warship with a loud noise that the Vietnamese of this era had never heard.

It was not until the moment when the shells roared that Zheng Gen really knew how heavy the heaviest cannon on Daming's heavy artillery warships was now - fully twice as heavy as the heaviest cannon on the Vietnamese Galen warships.In terms of caliber, it is at least [-]% thicker.

The artillery shells of the Ming army are generally equipped with a shell holder. It is estimated that this kind of heavy shell was not used at all when fighting in Burma before, and it was just prepared for naval battles.

A 70-pound solid iron ball hit the Galen battleship at close range, so it was completely unbearable. The Dutch original goods bought by the Vietnamese with a lot of money were still pierced through several layers of thick oak armor, and the wood was broken in the cabin. Flying horizontally, killing and wounding countless sailors and artillery.

Some of them had an excessively large depression angle, or hit the lower surface of the main deck after penetrating the side wall, rebounded and ricocheted, and some even shot through the armor below the waterline of the South Battleship, causing large holes to burst out and flood water.

It's a pity that at this point, no one can turn back. Zheng Gen just shouted hoarsely, and even asked people to play semaphore, asking his subordinates and friendly troops to hold on:
"Hold on, don't be afraid! Continue to confront Zheng Chenggong! The Ming army returned from a long voyage, and there must not be much ammunition! They won't last long!

Zheng Chenggong sailed [-] miles to Burma, and returned [-] miles to come back here. Can we even defeat Zheng Chenggong who is exhausted and short of ammunition after sailing [-] miles?do not be afraid!
Look, Zheng Chenggong is a lunatic, he himself dared to drive his flagship into the center of our gunboat group, and give me all my strength to siege him!Zheng Chenggong must be sunk! "

(End of this chapter)