The "Dengzhou" began to accelerate, but not at full speed, but with the main sail fully hoisted. Their current task is to maintain a distance from the "Light Cavalry" in front. They can neither follow too close to be discovered by the Spanish, nor stay too far away to avoid being accidentally lost. The situation at sea has changed too much. If it is too far, if the Spaniards suddenly deviate from the channel and the "Light Cavalry" is eager to keep up and yaws and accelerates, then the "Dengzhou" may lose its target.
But when the flag signal of the "Left-wing Light Cavalry" came, Takagi San changed his planned plan after thinking for a while, and did not adopt Luo Yuan's suggestion.
He solemnly ordered: "Send a signal to the 'Left-wing Hussars': Our ship will notify the rest of my fleet to join your ship and jointly pursue the Spanish fleet. Your ship will not be allowed to challenge alone again. In addition, your ship is required to do a good job immediately." In preparation for battle, we are expected to use battle line tactics to launch a battle line artillery attack against the Spanish fleet. This order."
Then he turned to another flag bearer on the stern and said: "You are going to inform the rear fleet that the war situation has changed. Our formation is no longer able to complete the task of luring the enemy fleet without contact. As the temporary commander of the formation, I have decided. The formation will launch a battle line bombardment of the Spanish fleet in the hope of holding back the enemy fleet during the battle and creating conditions for the grand fleet to encircle it. This report."
These two orders were undoubtedly a warning of battle, and the entire "Dengzhou" immediately became excited. Just like the previous battle preparations on the "Left-wing Light Cavalry", the "Dengzhou" also quickly took action, following the orders of the two ocean fleets. Pre-war preparations are strictly implemented in the tactical drills.
After the "Left Wing Light Cavalry" in front received the answer and order from the "Dengzhou", Luo Yuan could not help but feel a warmth in his heart.
Although Gao Musan's orders were strict, with words such as "not allowed" and "required", Luo Yuan knew that beneath these commanding words was brother Musan's love and affection for him.
Although the "Light Cavalry" is a warship built entirely in accordance with warship specifications, it has strong and tight ribs. The hull, especially the deck and other key parts, are made of the best long-lasting teak wood everywhere. Looks solid enough.
However, the "Left Cavalry" was not a main battleship after all - according to the highly pragmatic plan, only the battleships that could participate in the battle line bombardment decisive battle were considered main battleships.
The "Light Cavalry" is a reconnaissance ship, and its purpose of construction is not to participate in the decisive battle of line artillery. Its ultra-high mast, clipper bow, bilge propeller and other novel designs are all aimed at "high speed", and these construction methods result in that its gun load is definitely lower than other warships of the same tonnage.
In addition, the artillery factory was obviously unwilling to equip only two warships with different specifications of shells. Therefore, the pure combat capability of the "Left Cavalry" has always been regarded as the last among pure warships in the two ocean fleets.
According to the principle provisions of the two-ocean fleets, the "Ranger" class is generally not responsible for battle line artillery combat missions. It will only be used in "extreme circumstances such as our serious lack of artillery power during a battle line decisive battle." Considered as "a force that can be considered for participation in the war."
Now Luo Yuan's decision is almost like feeding a tiger with his own body to a certain extent. How can Takagi San, who is as close to him as a brother, sit back and watch? What's more, Takagi San also has his own latest judgment on the overall situation.
Luo Yuan told him that the Spanish fleet commander was very cautious and therefore refused to take the bait. This sentence cannot be read alone, it must be expanded and thought about: the other party is cautious, what is it that is cautious? Naturally, the other party believed that there was a large fleet behind the "Light Cavalry", and this large fleet must be capable of defeating or even annihilating its large treasure ship fleet, so he was not willing to pursue it easily, so he was not fooled.
How to turn the situation around in this situation and create opportunities for the real fleet? In the final analysis, the Spaniards still had to be restrained so that they could not continue to drive to Manila at full speed. At this time, the large fleet was still a little far away. Takagi San estimated that it would take at least two hours for the large fleet to catch up.
Then, how to hold the Spaniards back for two hours became what Takagizo must consider and complete. Thinking in reverse at this time: The other party thinks that the large fleet behind the "Left Wing Hussars" can easily defeat them, so Takagi San will just pull out all the enemy formations and show them to the Spaniards - we only have four ships, among which There are two non-main warships. Do you dare to fight them?
Takagizo believes that in this case, the opposing commander should be able to remove his psychological burden and come to fight the "enemy ship" to the death.
The only pity of doing this is that Takagi San didn't want any losses to the enemy formation. Because Gao Pragmatic has always been an "institutionalist", his two ocean fleets have very detailed standards for the recognition of combat merits. Among the highest-level merits that can be obtained when performing the task of luring the enemy, there are requirements for one's own battle losses.
In other words, as long as Takagizo's enemy-baiting formation suffers battle losses, then at least the "highest level of combat merit" will be said goodbye to him. The combat merits that can be obtained can only be moved down one level, and then the merits will be discussed in detail by comparing them one by one.
Water flows to lower place, man goes to higher position. Of course Takagi Sanichi was aiming for the highest level of military success at the beginning, but the reality was not as satisfactory as he expected, and now he had to settle for the second best. If you can't even complete the mission, the so-called "highest level of military exploits" will be even more of a pipe dream.
The Spanish treasure fleet ran diagonally all the way, because the "Light Cavalry" behind them would adjust according to their course, forcing them to constantly adjust their course, which greatly slowed down the speed of the fleet. Not long after, the large treasure fleet discovered anomalies in the rear.
"There are four ships in total, two of which are warships no smaller than ours." Captain Echevari said solemnly: "It may be difficult to deal with, but I think the advantage is still on our side."
Commander Silva nodded and said: "I'm very happy, Captain Echevari, that we have reached the same view."
"I'm very happy too, Your Excellency, Commander." Echevarri continued: "Then, Your Excellency, what are you going to do now? Are you going to continue to Manila to avoid damage, or are you going to defend the dignity of the Kingdom of Castile's navy? Fight with them?"
Commander Silva took a deep breath, raised his chin slightly, and proudly said with the proud attitude of a standard Castilian noble: "On the ocean of this world, only the Kingdom of Castile can make rules."
He paused slightly and said coldly: "Now, in the name of the commander, I give an order: the entire fleet turns around, hangs all sails, and raises the St. Andre's Cross flag! Gentlemen..." Silva's voice suddenly changed. Get excited and shout: "Castile is watching us!"
The flag of Saint Andre is the naval flag of the Kingdom of Castile. It is a diagonal cross with red wattle on a white background, derived from the cross of Burgundy.
The title of Charles the Bold, the earlier Duke of Burgundy, was passed to his daughter, Duchess Marie, after the Skull Splitting Incident. The Duchess first married Maximilian, the future Holy Roman Emperor (but the title did not belong to her husband). After her death, her title was passed to her son - her son's son was later Charles V.
Because Charles V's father was still alive at the beginning, his main title for a long time was Duke of Burgundy. In terms of chronological order, Charles V was first the Duke of Burgundy, then the King of Spain (actually specifically the King of Castile, the King of Aragon, the King of Naples, etc.), and then the God of God. Emperor Luo.
And because Charles V himself was born in Ghent (located in the Netherlands) and grew up in the Netherlands, he had the deepest feelings for the Netherlands, so he brought the Burgundy symbol "Burgundy Cross Flag" with him Spanish and widely used. In later generations, the red wattle cross flag of Saint Andre was rarely seen in Burgundy, but it was very common in Spain for this reason.
[Note: In fact, the two are slightly different in the form of wattle, one is a symmetrical arrow type, and the other is an asymmetrical wattle type, but they are still very similar. ]
The Castilian Navy has always flown this flag, but "raising it" means starting a battle, which is the same as the British Navy later flying the "Z" flag when starting a battle.
The six large Galen ships of the Spanish fleet began to turn quickly, but just like the battle between the Armada and the English Navy, the Spanish fleet at this time relied on the advantage of the wind direction and did not intend to face Beijing's luring enemy formation sideways. They were facing the enemy head-on, charging directly towards them with full sail and smooth wind.
There is no doubt that the Spaniards still choose to join the gang war in which they believe that no one is worthy.
The enemy formation that had been gathered to lure the enemy had basically completed its turn after the "Dengzhou" raised the command flag. Although it did not remain in a perfect T-shaped battle line, it basically achieved this.
Although there is no standard flag command, the Spanish fleet still generally assumes the appearance of a forward array in accordance with naval tradition. The flagship "San Antonio" took the lead and headed straight for the enemy formation as the arrowhead of the formation.
In terms of luring enemy formations, the flagship "Dengzhou" successively issued two flags: follow our ship's maneuvers; allow each ship to start calibrating firing and control the timing of salvo fire by itself.
"Follow our ship to maneuver" is because Takagizo has a deep understanding of his own ship "Tengshu" and is confident to lead the maneuver to maintain a distance from the Spanish fleet, keeping his own ship in a T-shaped position for a long time, which is convenient Bombardment of the battle line.
There is no way to "allow each ship to start calibrating firing and control the timing of salvo firing by itself". There was no fire control system in this era, and there were no radios for real-time communication. It was impossible for Takagi San to know when each ship was ready to load, when it was a good time to launch a salvo, and so on. Therefore, it was impossible to ask the entire fleet to conduct simultaneous bombardment, and could only allow each ship to perform freely.
Although Jinghua has conducted less live-fire training than before due to financial constraints in the past year or two, it still maintains at least four live-fire trainings a year. Three of them were regular training with two bases, and one was intensity training with four bases.
The word "base" may be a characteristic word used by Jinghua at present, but in later generations it was a common word in military terms. But it's common, and many people don't actually understand what this word means, let alone what the so-called "a base number" is.
Essentially, ammunition base is a unit of calculation for ammunition supply, while base quantity is a base quantity or weight of materials specified for a single item of equipment. The standards are usually uniformly stipulated by the highest leadership of the military based on the country's industrial production level, troop carrying capacity, weapons' tactical and technical performance and general consumption patterns.
If we explain the situation in later generations, for example: the ammunition base quantity of a 7.62 mm semi-automatic rifle is 200 rounds, a submachine gun 300 rounds, an 82 mortar 120 rounds, a Jiefang CA10 transport vehicle one The base amount of oil is 161 kilograms, and the base amount of wartime medicine for 100 people is 9 kilograms...and so on.
This is the so-called "one unit of calculation", which is also a base number of ammunition for guns.
In this era, Gao Pragmatic may be the first person to introduce the concept of "cardinality". Of course there are reasons. The main reason is that stipulating the base number of ammunition can bring great convenience to command and support.
It not only facilitates superiors to issue orders, instructions and other writings, but also facilitates ordnance departments at all levels to calculate the quantity of ammunition and report the level of ammunition support to superiors. Using ammunition base numbers can not only simplify and standardize complex numbers, but also facilitate calculation, supply, memory and confidentiality.
Since the establishment of Jinghua's armed servant system, Gao Jia Ding has been required to learn to master Arabic numerals. Gao Pragmatic even introduced decimal points, so it is convenient to use the word base to handle logistics work (after all, Jinghua's major advantage is the logistics system).
Suppose there is a military order that says "carry 3.5 ammunition bases." Even if this order is discovered by the enemy during the ordering process, the enemy will not know what it means - Europeans may know 3.5, but most of them do not know Chinese characters , and they don’t know what a base number is; not to mention the enemies around the Ming Dynasty. They may know Chinese characters, but they don’t know 3.5, and they also don’t know what a base number is.
The base number of artillery shells of the Beijing-China Liangyang Fleet was 10 rounds. This standard would be too small for later generations, but in this era, this base number is not too small.
The base number of artillery ammunition in later generations of the Red Dynasty was the standard amount of artillery that performed one mission, and the calculation unit for artillery ammunition consumption was called "gun standard." The number of rounds of ammunition for a gun standard of barrel artillery is one-tenth of the base number of ammunition; the number of rounds of ammunition corresponding to a gun standard of a rocket launcher is one-fifth of the base number of ammunition.
Generally speaking, the base number of ammunition for a 122mm howitzer is 80 rounds, so a rapid fire of 8 rounds for a 122mm howitzer is a standard gun.
When Gao pragmatic was at the county party committee, he accompanied the leaders to inspect the county's reserve training, so he understood this system. However, the situation in later generations is different from today. How can there be any "rapid shooting" now?
After working hard to improve various artillery technologies, optimize loading procedures, and undergo rigorous loading training, Jinghua's artillery fire rate is just faster than other artillery of the same period (mainly referring to European armies, of course). There is no such thing as rapidity. It is a little stronger than a snail. It is already an amazing achievement to be able to evolve to turtle speed.
It is precisely because the rate of fire is too slow and the transportation capacity of this era is too poor that the base number of Jinghua's artillery shells is much smaller than that of later generations. Naturally, there is no such thing as "artillery standards."
To put it bluntly, it will take a long time to fire a basic number of shells in actual combat. A few years ago, when there were a lot of pirates along the coast, Jinghua wiped out a group of pirates, and most of the participating ships couldn't even fire a single base number of shells.
However, this time they were not fighting pirates, but the current "World's No. 1 Navy", so Takagi San was still very cautious. Under his command, Takagi San prepared the base number of artillery shells as high as six to lure the enemy formation. The six base numbers of ammunition are divided into three batches, and each two base numbers are one batch, and are transported to the artillery position first. The next two bases will be on standby in the ammunition bay, and the sailor responsible for handling will be on standby directly in the ammunition bay.
A "bang" sounded on the sea.
The "Light Cavalry" was the first to prepare for the battle, and the long and heavy cannon it was equipped with used the lightest shells. It had the longest range and fired the first shot after officially engaging the enemy in this battle.
Takagi San glanced at it, then turned his attention to the Spanish fleet, and said softly: "The master said that the Spanish navy claims to be invincible, so its fleet even dares to call itself the 'Invincible Fleet'. Humph, I want to take a look today. What is the quality of this world’s number one!”
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