Chapter 684 Closed 11

"Boom."

The roar of naval guns moving all day long. With the first round of volleys of 18 406mm naval guns, it began to echo in the South Pacific Ocean. Seymour, who could not avoid it, had to choose to fight.

But after only two rounds, he regretted it.

"General, yes, it's 16 inches!"

In the distance, the unique cannon flame stunned the lookout in the light cruiser bridge. Although this was the first time he saw the roar of the 16-inch super gun, it did not prevent him from distinguishing the opponent who had been close to 20,000 meters through various details.

16-inch naval gun!

Almost everyone was shocked. They finally knew why they lost two battleships and one cruiser in such a short time three nights ago.

"Leave, leave, here!"

In Seymour's panicked shouting, several columns of water rose from hundreds of meters in front of the North Dakota. The huge white column of water stared at everyone on the targeted North Dakota. They had never seen such a huge column of water.

Almost in an instant, the battle line that had just been lined up began to break, and the four battleships began to withdraw without even have time to say hello to their companions. As for the three cruisers, under the leadership of the Bristol, they turned the rudder to the north and took the lead in retreat with speed.

"Captain, they dispersed."

In fact, not to mention the staff, Zhou Cheng has also seen scattered opponents. This scene made him sigh slightly. The Australian Grand Fleet obviously has no desire to fight. This kind of battle is doomed to be boring, so he simply became a witness and let the gunner and the captain cooperate with each other.

"18,000 meters."

"Boom."

When the distance number was just reported, after five rounds of adjustment, Zhongmeng received the second major result in this naval battle, and the 1020 kg armor-piercing shell hit the bow of the North Dakota.

All the lookouts saw that the hit North Dakota seemed to have become a tool for the two giants to compete. First, it was pressed into the sea by the sky giant with a big hand, sank suddenly, and then it was raised by the sea fiercely, and finally there was a big explosion.

Although the explosion did not hurt the bow ammunition depot, it directly cut off the entire bow and detonated the torpedo cabin. By the end of the explosion, North Dakota was like a clown whose nose was cut off. Thousands of tons of seawater poured in from the wound in an instant, flooding the entire front deck area, and the rear of the ship was slightly tilted up, although The three double 305mm guns behind it are still shelling, but they are still lethal.

Since the first performance of the new Guam class was at night three days ago, everyone did not feel much about the power of the 406mm super gun, but this fierce shell really made people see its tyrannical power.

If North Dakota is nothing if it was just blown off, then Neptune's Simon is undoubtedly a terrible tyrant.

At 1:15, the battleship named after Xinhua Simon Province fired the 10th round of volley. By this time, the distance had been close to 17,000 meters, and Neptune was not in the intention to fight at all and was desperately preparing to leave.

Two one-ton armor-piercing bullets buried the battleship born in a fiscal deficit and became the only battleship.

The first armor-piercing shell hit the stern of the ship, passing through the 203mm main armor belt of the inclined waterline, and then destroying all the way and exploding into the fuel compartment. Although there is not much heavy oil left in the warship, because the oil tank is filled with this large amount of volatile oil and gas, wait until After the armor-piercing shell exploded, it immediately triggered a fire, and the back of the whole hull seemed to be shrouded in thick smoke.

The second one is really fatal. This armor-piercing shell hit the second chimney of the hull. Due to Neptune's unique design, the bow has only one turret, but the bow and the stern each have two, so after the shell was introduced into the chimney, it not only destroyed the two boiler compartments, but also made the Neptune descend to 8 knots. Because of the serious deconstruction damage and ignition, the captain of Neptune had to order the two turrets of the stern of the water injection ship to suppress the explosion, and painfully ordered the two ammunition depots in the middle of the water injection ship.

Four of the five turrets were lost at once, and the Neptune was basically scrapped, but the Simon had not stopped, or it should be said that the gunman did nothing on purpose, because after seeing the Neptune's serious injury and slowing down, the Simon had turned the rudder to chase the Prince George battleship, but the problem was that the pursuit route was just right. Bypassing Neptune, after seeing that the 1916,680-ton battleship had not yet sank, the gun commander fired seven rounds at it again.

Later, it was proved that the seven rounds of sea shots hit a total of 11 due to the continuous proximity. This kind of damage, not to mention the Neptune, even the Guam class can't afford it, so when the Simon finally bypassed it and saw the fleeing Prince George, the battleship was almost unrecognizable. Not only was the whole superstructure flattened, but also burned from beginning to end.

Surprisingly, the battleship was later burned at sea for a day and a night, and finally was even dragged back to Nouméa by the Xinhua destroyer. Later, it was learned that the British captain injected water into the five ammunition depots in time and closed all the sealed compartments, which created this miracle.

This kind of battlefield miracle does not have a copy of the surname. At least Prince George can't enjoy it. Less than 15 minutes after the Neptune was killed, the Prince George with a speed of only 16 knots was chased to 19,000 meters by the Simon.

In fact, the majestic-class battleship is very emotional for the Xinhua Navy, because Li Moqi's first generation of Arctic star battleships took it as a template. Although the majestic-class was launched later than the North Star, the two battleships actually have the same vein. Except for torpedoes, they are basically similar, and even their appearances are very similar.

So when the old gunners opened fire, they almost regarded the Prince George as the North Star, so that they missed three rounds of shots in a trance until the fourth round of shots.

But it was this opening that pushed the roar of the 406mm super gun to the most **. Although nine armor-piercing bullets hit only one, this one completely buried the Prince George because it hit the ammunition depot.

Not to mention 406mm, even the old-fashioned Prince George with the new 305mm naval gun can't be prevented. In addition, compartments and fire doors are generally not used on old battleships, so the shells easily penetrated into the front ammunition depot.

From the start, the front main gun of Prince George was only fighting for ten rounds now. There were still 180 shells left in the ammunition depot, and the propellant was mixed in it, so the violent explosion tore the 16,800-ton Prince George from the bridge position into two pieces and sank in 2 minutes. At the bottom of the sea, only 22 people escaped from the 610 people on the ship.

Just as Prince George sank, the sister ship Hannibal had also played the white flag. After stopping the resistance, the captain gave the order to abandon the sinking ship and led the sailors to surrender to the approaching Zhongmeng.

At 2 o'clock sharp, when 12 dragon teeth that came to help arrived, there were no battleships worth fighting for on the sea, and finally they had to fight for the fleeing cruisers.

In the other two battlefields less than 50 nautical miles apart, there was also a massacre, concentrating 90% of dragon teeth. Even some Hornet fighters temporarily hung bombs to help under the crazy attack, the remnants of the Australian Grand Fleet had no intention to resist at all.

Because there are not many battleships left, almost all the dragon wings hope to sink the battleship. In the end, the magnificent of the second ship of Bellerophon was even hit by seven dragon teeth in a row. Even if the 450mm torpedo charge was only 150 kilograms of TNT, so many torpedoes still sank the magnificent on the spot, and the 4 of its formation The majestic battleships also suffered a crazy attack, and two of them finally hung white flags and sank themselves.

The biggest gain in this naval battle was the battleship Reckless. As the Berelophon-class No. 3, it was leading the dispersed re-organized two majestic-class battleships, six cruisers, and seven auxiliary cruisers modified with merchant ships, in 52 Longyas, 12 Hornets, and 3 Yangtze River-class light cruisers. After roaring with two destroyers one after another, after resisting for only half an hour, the captain ordered a shallow reef 50 nautical miles away from the Three Kings Islands to strand and surrender.

No one knows what the temporary commander thought at that time. According to himself, the stranding of the beach was to save the sailors on the 16 warships from being buried in the sea, but the problem is that he almost gave 11 of the 16 warships to Xinhua in good condition, especially the battleship Reckless. The four Rainbow Goddess-class cruisers and the cruiser Sydney were not damaged at all. In the end, they were all pulled out of the reef area by Xinhua sailors after the tide at night, and were taken back to Guam ten days later. After some emergency repair, most of them were taken back to Xinhua and dismantled as scrap iron.

As for the seven lightly injured auxiliary cruisers, they were also brought back and sold to Xinhua domestic shippers after dismantling their weapons. The last two were even transferred to post-war North Korea and were used until 1955.

On July 15, at 5:00 p.m. Australian time, the Second Task Force sent back a telegram, attempting to transfer the main force of the Australian Grand Fleet to New Zealand. In the 8-day entanglement, a total of 16 battleships, 11 cruisers, 8 destroyers, 2 motherships, auxiliary cruisers and Nine supply ships, including Clarkston and Seymour, were killed, with 18,865 people in the fleet, 12,988 people rescued, and 3,422 escaped.

In the end, only five cruisers/auxiliary cruisers and six destroyers fled back to Sydney Harbour two days later and sank in Sydney Harbour after Xinhua finally began to land.

According to post-war statistics, the price paid by the Second Task Force in this naval battle was negligible. Only 23 aircraft were shot down, of which 7 pilots were killed, one was missing, the rest were rescued, and the warships were not lost.

When the remnants of the Australian Grand Fleet returned to Sydney two days later, the following Xinhua Third Task Force and three light carriers of the Second Task Force bombed Sydney together. In the five consecutive days of bombing, a total of more than 650 tons of bombs were dropped, including a fatal 210 tons of fire. Not only was half of Sydney burned, but Australia was officially declared to be the largest island in the world!

The south gate of the Pacific Ocean is completely closed to the outside world.

(to be continued)