"Left rudder five."
"Five degrees left."
"Boom boom boom..."
"What is this sound? Who is dropping a real bomb?"
When the bomb discarded by the airship Xixiang was riding in hit the sea and exploded, Zhuge Weidao was practicing ship maneuvering under the guidance of Wang Wen... He was a little expert in ship maneuvering at the Naval Academy, both theoretically and In practice, you always get first place with your eyes closed. Now I don’t know how to fix it, so I have to learn it from scratch!
This top student from the Maritime School and Maritime University and the commander of the cruiser squadron actually forgot how to sail a ship. This is really no one else!
Fortunately, Wang Wen is still very reliable. He taught Zhuge Weidao how to sail the ship step by step. When he first started teaching, he was very considerate and kicked out all the officers and soldiers on the bridge... using a boat with a displacement of more than 5,000 After practicing on a cruiser worth 2 million silver dollars for half a month (this is equivalent to a driving learner getting started directly on the 99A), the extremely talented Zhuge Weidao was finally able to drive a cruiser proficiently.
After mastering it, Military Advisor Zhuge started to have fun and began to practice S-shaped evasive navigation on the sea. While he was practicing, an airship of unknown origin dropped a bomb 20,000 meters in front of his Lushun! The sound of the explosion frightened Zhuge Weidao, who was concentrating on sailing the boat. His hands shook and he almost turned the boat off. Wang Wen, who was tutoring him on the side, thought it was Zhuge Weidao who accidentally drove the boat into the training sea area of the airship base, and immediately scolded him - why did he drop a real bomb? You should throw away training bombs during training!
Fortunately, all the bridge staff had returned to work, so a communications officer immediately put down the phone and shouted loudly: "Sir, enemy attack! It's not training! It's him..."
Before he finished speaking, Zhuge Weidao, who was at the helm, rolled his eyes, "What are you talking about? What's going on?"
"Sir, Airship No. 208 reported that at least 10 unidentified airships occurred southeast of Jueying Island!"
Japanese pirate airship?
Is this...Pearl Harbor?
Just as Zhuge Weidao thought of this, the call from the observation post came, and a staff officer picked up the phone earphone and shouted: "Sir, the observation post discovered that there are unidentified airships in the southeast sky, more than 15 in number, and a distance of 20,000 meters!"
Has it increased to 15 airships? Zhuge Weidao took a breath and felt like calling the helmsman to come over and take over the rudder. He returned to the command position, then raised his telescope and started looking for the airship in the sky.
It didn’t take much effort, and he found it as soon as I looked for it. He saw a dozen or twenty white airships lined up in a column in the blue sky with white clouds, one after another flying towards him. Probably because the observers of the Ming Navy were not used to searching for targets in the sky, or maybe because the white airship matched well with the white clouds in the sky, they had not discovered it until now.
It seems that I need to practice more on air defense!
Thinking of this, Zhuge Weidao put down his telescope and ordered to Wang Wen beside him: "This should be the Japanese pirate's airship. It flies quite high. What do you think is the best way to hit it?"
Wang Wen thought for a while and said: "We can't hit now. We have to get closer to 5,000 meters and then use the broadside to attack the enemy, focusing on 10 155mm cannons. At a distance of 3,000 meters, we can use 50mm rapid-fire cannons... .Within 2,000 meters, you can only use anti-aircraft guns."
"Okay! That's it! Now sound the battle alarm and approach the enemy airship at a speed of 16 knots!"
"Yes, sir!"
...
When Zhuge Weidao was preparing to use cannons and guns to attack the airship, the first aerial combat in history had already begun. Although this is a fight between two airships, not two planes. However, the fighting method is somewhat similar to the fighting between airplanes. The starting point is to grab the commanding heights - later aircraft also played this way, but the aircraft usually grabs the commanding heights to dive from above, while the airship grabs the commanding heights to occupy a favorable shooting position. Because the cabin of the airship is hung below the air cabin, the machine gun mounted in the cabin cannot shoot upward... It is also inconvenient to throw throwing knives upward from the cabin!
If you can grab a high point and then fight from a high position, it will be easier whether you shoot, throw a knife or hit.
Therefore, at this time, in the sky south of Jueying Island, there was a fighting scene of two airships one or two kilometers apart, "raising high" together!
Hydrogen gas spurted out from the cylinder and poured into the air bags like crazy, quickly filling up all the small air bags in the huge air chamber. When the hydrogen gas fills the airbag, the air in the airship's air chamber is quickly forced out, and the airship quickly floats up. Soon, both airships had risen to an altitude of three to four thousand meters.
The air at high altitude is thin and the temperature is low. The sealing of the cabin is not very good, and it soon becomes as cold as an ice cellar. Guan Tianpei's side was fine. They had gone on a mission to Afghanistan, and it was still winter, so they had already prepared fur clothes in the airship, and each of them put on one. There was also an oxygen bottle in the cabin. After opening it, breathing would be easy. It's not difficult anymore.
"First Evolution"
But it was miserable over there in Xixiang, a group of Kyushu samurai who couldn't bear the cold, and they didn't know how to put an oxygen bottle in the airship. So after flying to an altitude of 4,000 meters, the three samurai, Saigo, Yamamoto, and Togo, were all shivering from the cold and couldn't breathe.
"Baga..." Xixiang was so cold that he was so cold that he clutched his ribs and looked at the flying dragon three-type ship that was still rising with fire, "Yamamoto, this won't work. , think of a way quickly!”
"Then lower the altitude!" Yamamoto said.
"Descending?" Saigo asked, "Won't that Ming airship fly over us?"
"No..." Yamamoto said, "We can fly at full speed while descending, and we can also use the wind to accelerate!"
"Yao Xi!" Xixiang nodded, "Then descend immediately!"
"Hayin!"
Xixiang gave an order, and the airship he was riding quickly changed from ascending to descending, and at the same time, it was accelerating away from the airship Guan Tianpei was riding. Guan Tianpei, who was still proud of the good high-altitude performance of his airship, suddenly discovered that the Japanese small airship had "fallen" and immediately shouted: "The Japanese airship has fallen!"
Ling Zongjun also noticed it, but he knew that he was trying to run away, so he shouted loudly: "Sir Guan, the Japanese pirate airship is not falling, but trying to run away!"
"You want to run?" Guan Tianpei took one look and immediately ordered, "Chase! Hurry up and chase!"
Ling Zongjun said loudly: "Sit tight, let's descend immediately..."
As he shouted, the air pump of the Feilong No. 3 boat began to run at full speed, and the hydrogen in the airbag was pumped back into the cylinder. As soon as the hydrogen in the airship's airbag was removed, air poured into the air cabin, and the airship began to land at a speed visible to the naked eye. At the same time, the four engines of the airship also turned at full speed, driving the airship and tightly gripping the Armstrong II airship.
"Boom boom boom..."
While the "fight" in the air was going on, the sea-air battle also kicked off. The first to fire was the Lushun ship commanded by Zhuge Weidao. The 10 155mm naval guns roared and fired 10 shells into the air. Japanese airship.
The result was as expected, everything was empty!
These days' 155mm naval guns will miss nine times out of ten when hitting a battleship at a distance of three to four thousand meters. Now it's strange to be able to hit an airship at a distance of four to five thousand meters.
The Lushun's targeted bombardment obviously stimulated the Japanese airships in the sky. They did not go to bomb the warships parked in the port, but rushed to the Lushun - probably because they wanted to sink the Ming Dynasty that dared to fire at them first. Navy cruiser, right?
"Boom boom boom..."
Another round of shooting, this time from the 155mm cannon and the 50mm cannon, but still no focus.
However, Zhuge Weidao was not panicked at all. It didn't matter if the cannon missed, why didn't he still have to raise his gun?
Carrying a gun is a powerful weapon in air defense warfare!
Thinking of this, Zhuge Weidao ordered: "The Lushun stopped advancing, all 155mm artillery stopped firing, and the anchor was lowered at the same time."
He had to keep the Port Arthur as stable as possible without letting the smoke obscure the shooter's view.
After a while, on the starboard deck of the Port Arthur, 30 13mm caliber guns were loaded and placed on the shelves. The thick muzzles were all aimed at the airship more than two thousand meters away in the air.
