In the Jiyin Waterway, in the waters near Shikoku Island, on the British cruiser HMS Leander, Captain James John Gordon Boehme of the Royal Navy was holding a telescope and nervously looking at the thick smoke rising from the sea in the distance!
When there is smoke on the sea, either a ship is burning or a ship is deliberately releasing smoke. When the four warships of the Ming Dynasty sailed from the waters near Danlu Island, they fired for a while... and ran away with a puff of smoke!
And Colonel Boehmer was determined to kill the British Royal Navy captain when he saw the enemy. Of course, he could not just watch the enemy sneak away from under his nose. So he immediately summoned a Buffalo-class destroyer and the Leander second-class cruiser he was riding on to form a small formation, and then pursued the enemy who escaped at a speed of 24-28 knots at a speed of up to 16 knots. Enemy ship.
Of course you can't catch up if you chase. Moreover, if he catches up with Colonel Boehme, he may not be able to defeat him, at least the two Port Arthurs. Although his Leander second-class cruiser also has a standard displacement of 4,300 tons and its protective capabilities are not weak, the Lushun-class cruiser is far behind in comparison. The gun barrels alone are incomparable! There are 16 155mm 40-caliber rapid-fire guns on a Lushun class, while the Leander only has two 7-inch 30-caliber main guns and two 6-inch 35-caliber guns. As for the secondary gun, the former is still a semi-rapid-fire cannon, and although the latter is a rapid-fire cannon, its range and rate of fire are still far inferior to the Ming Dynasty's 155mm 40-fold rapid-fire cannon.
So chasing but not catching up is indeed the best result. If you chase, it means that the Royal Navy of the British Empire has won the battle! Since neither engine can sink the warship, whoever escapes and who pursues will show who wins and who loses.
After the brave Colonel Boehmer led two British Royal Navy warships to chase the enemy for more than four hours, he could finally believe that he had won the pursuit!
The enemy's shadow is gone, and he is almost chasing out of Jiyin Waterway and into the Pacific Ocean... Even if he drives out the Ming Dynasty navy that invaded Japan, it is considered a victory, right?
Just when he was about to return triumphantly with relief, an unexpected change happened!
Suddenly there were several roars on the sea, and then thick smoke billowed, as if some kind of ship was burning?
How is this going?
This can't be a Royal Navy ship burning, can it? There could be no British warships in that direction... because he was the most violent when chasing the Ming warships that "fleeed". The other two secondary frigates pursued "cautiously" and their speed did not exceed 15 knots, but he ordered the Leander to pursue it at a speed of up to 16 knots (the fastest it can run is 20 knots)!
Since it wasn't a British Royal Navy ship that exploded, it was a Japanese ship or a Ming Empire ship that exploded...and most likely it was a Ming ship!
Because they run so fast, they must be running at full speed. In this case, the steam boiler can easily fry. In addition, they also took a lot of shells just now, and some of them must not have exploded. Maybe it accidentally exploded during cleaning and maintenance!
If such a good thing really happened, the credit must be attributed to Colonel Boehme... He was promoted to colonel during the Napoleonic War (1814), and it has been more than ten years now. Now, a brigadier general can't be promoted, and he'll be too old if he can't be promoted. Therefore, this opportunity to make meritorious deeds cannot be missed! He just needs to lead the formation and drive over, take a photo, and fire a few torpedoes, and the credit will be there!
Thinking of this, Boehmer took a deep breath and said to his left and right: "Left rudder 5 degrees, move toward the place where the black smoke comes out... Also, send a semaphore to the Hippo and ask them to prepare torpedoes!"
"Yes, sir!"
The two British warships, under the command of the brave Colonel Boehme, with the 800-ton destroyer Hippopotamus as the vanguard and the 4,300-ton cruiser HMS Lidian as the rear, cautiously moved toward the billowing black smoke, one behind the other. open to the sea.
"Sir, it's a destroyer... It seems to be a Xinchang-class destroyer. It seems to have been abandoned!"
Someone suddenly shouted in the bridge of the Lidian.
Böhmer tried hard to suppress his excitement and looked around with his binoculars - he didn't see any ships of the Ming Navy around him. The waters in this area are already close to Cape Muroto on Shikoku Island. The Ming Dynasty destroyer is parked less than 3 nautical miles away from the east coast of Cape Muroto, motionless. And on the nearby Muroto Cape Beach, there are two wooden boats that look like lifeboats.
Obviously, something happened to this destroyer and it was abandoned by the Ming Navy officers and soldiers!
Well, it should be like this, otherwise what is this ship doing? Colonel Boehme really couldn't think of it.
"Sir, we can capture that ship!" The deputy commander of the Lidian had already made a suggestion at this time.
"Okay!" Boehme nodded and said with a smile: "We can capture it... This is the real strength of the Royal Navy! Send a semaphore to the Hippo and order the Hippo to try to send people to board the ship and capture Daming. The Navy’s destroyer must have a lot of military secrets on it!”
"Yes, sir!"
...
"Didi, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep."
With the beeping sound of the telegram, the specific positions of the two British warships were transmitted by radio waves to the Port Arthur and Vladivostok on the other side of Cape Muroto.
Cape Muroto is actually a rather long and slender peninsula with low hills and the sea on both sides. On one side is Jiyin Waterway and on the other side is Tuzuo Bay.
Because there are mountains blocking the way, the ships on both sides cannot see each other... If there were no radio waves, it would be impossible for the Lushun and Vladivostok, which are currently located in Tuzuo Bay, to know about the Lidean and Hippo. Specific locations, let alone bombarding them.
But now, the radio on the Xinchang, which is "playing dead", can tell the two cruisers at the other end the positions of the Lidian and Hippo through the radio, thus acting as the eyes of the two cruisers.
The 155mm cannons on the Lushun and Vladivostok are also quite powerful - they are 40-fold rapid-fire cannons with a range of up to 12 kilometers. They can hit the other side from Cape Muroto (a distance of five kilometers to six kilometers)!
Of course, in actual naval battles, this range is of little significance, because of the problems of ship shaking and sighting level. The effective range of the Ming Dynasty's 155 mm 40 times caliber naval gun is within 4,000 meters... Unless the problems of sighting and excessive hull shaking can be solved, this 155mm gun can hit farther targets.
Now, the problem of sighting and aiming has been solved through the "pretending to be dead" Xinchang and the radio station. The problem of hull shaking was partially solved by using lower anchors to fix the hull.
So the 20 155mm cannons on the Lushun and Vladivostok (the most in one direction) are ready! Moreover, these 20 cannons can also fire a real concentrated fire - 20 cannons bombard the same target according to the instructions of the Xinchang!
"Sir, two British ships have been fooled, one is a Leander-class cruiser and the other is a Buffalo-class destroyer!"
On the bridge of the Lushun, Officer Tongxun put down his phone headset and loudly reported to Zhuge Weidao.
Zhuge Weidao nodded, thinking: "That Li Chenghui who seems a bit slow turns out to be quite good at fighting. He can think of such damaging moves..."
Thinking of this, he asked again: "Do you have Zhuyuan?"
"Yes."
Zhuge Weidao nodded and said: "Okay! Fire cannons across the mountain... Now it's time to show the true strength of our Ming Navy!"
...
"Boom boom boom..."
Just when Colonel Boehmer was happily waiting to capture a Ming destroyer, a wave of 155mm artillery shells fell without warning! And it landed directly near the cruiser Leander! One of the most recent shells even landed thirty or forty meters away from the port side of the Leander. Water columns of more than ten meters rose into the air, and huge waves even hit the deck of the Leander.
This could be considered a near miss, but it frightened everyone on the bridge of Böhme and the Leander!
Where are you having sex here? How come it's so accurate?
There were no enemy ships nearby, just a destroyer of the Ming Navy... That destroyer did not fire its guns, and it was impossible to have such firepower!
Could it be the Japanese cannon mounted on Mount Muroto?
The Japanese have betrayed the British Empire and become dogs of the Ming Dynasty?
Boehme still doesn't understand what happened? The second and third waves of artillery shells have already fallen, and they were more accurate than the last time. The second wave of artillery fire hit a straddle. Twenty shells landed on the front, rear, left, and right of Li De'anhao, and one more It even landed twenty meters away from the Lidian...
The first wave was close, the second wave was straddled, and the third wave... Now all the officers on the bridge of the Lidian had the thought that the end was coming.
Boehmer opened his mouth and wanted to give the order to turn the rudder and evacuate. Suddenly someone shouted in his ear: "Airships... there are airships in the sky! It's the airships that are firing!"
What? The airship is firing?
