Chapter 187 Self-sinking

"The trick of torpedo warfare is to get as close as possible to the enemy before it is discovered by the enemy! ...It is undeniable that on that night, the Chinese torpedo boat troops approached the other side as much as possible, and the torpedo boat that appeared in the most unlikely sea became the last straw to crush the joint fleet!"

All night long, the First Fleet of Zhenyang Fleet was on its way non-stop.

We must anniperize the combined fleet!

The day before yesterday, the telegram of 10:35 on the 20th changed everything.

"The torpedo boat attacked successfully at night!"

Seven and a half hours, the naval battle that lasted only seven and a half hours, changed the fate of a country. Since the arrival of the black ship and 50 years, I have exhausted my national expenses to build a navy, all of which has been changed in just seven and a half hours.

After the second torpedo attack last night, with the order of Chief Mito, the ships immediately began to withdraw from the battlefield with all their strength, and even the destroyers who were about to win began to retreat one after another. Only the torpedo boats tried to attack the remnants of the Second Fleet and sank the warships Fuyuan and Jiyuan successively. .

The combined fleet was defeated!

At this time, no one doubted, and now for Liu Guanxiong, the most important thing is to search for the remnants of the joint fleet, and must not let a Japanese warship escape back to Japan. That's why he changed the ambush to a chase.

"Release all the reconnaissance aircraft, be sure to search for the remnants of the joint fleet, and the three teams are ready to separate and intercept at any time!"

The order was spit out of Liu Guanxiong's mouth.

"Remember, our strategic goal is not to let an enemy ship escape back to Japan!"

Although he repeated this order, all his ships were operating with this principle. Even every sailor knows this policy. Even if all the officers on the ship are killed, the pilots and sailors on their ships will faithfully fulfill this goal.

Originally, it was quite difficult or even almost impossible to search for enemy ships in this vast sea area and completely destroy them. At least it is difficult to find the enemy.

A short distance of dozens of kilometers can sometimes make the two fleets pass by, but for the Zhenyang Fleet, it is very lucky to rise in the morning sun, and there is a red morning glow in the sky. Although there are still waves on the sea, there is almost no fog, and the field of vision is very wide.

More importantly, the water reconnaissance aircraft removed from the torpedo boats on the main ship of the First Fleet can be of great use in such weather.

When the sun rises again, the color of the sea becomes blue, and it is another sunny day.

The crane, which should have been used to lift the torpedo boat, lifted the plane with two floats under the wing to the sea. The waves hit the small plane. Who would have thought that this small thing could take off at sea.

After a roar of engines, six seaplanes took off. They will search the nearby sea to find the main force of the remnants of the combined fleet.

At the same time, on the looktowers of Jingyuan and Zhiyuan, observers kept searching for the sea with binoculars. This is the last battle!

"I can't see anything!"

Standing on the bridge, he searched Shen Shou-Koon with a telescope and said to himself.

At this time, Su Yueyang, who was standing behind him, said.

"Sir, now they will definitely not take a detour. Their warships have been traumatized. Of course, the most important thing is the fuel problem. Now for the combined fleet, it is to withdraw from the Luzon Strait into the Pacific Ocean before we cut off their retreat. The other routes are too far away!"

He is confident that he has calculated the number based on the trauma of the enemy ship. He assumed the possible route of several enemies. After careful calculation, he determined that he would definitely go to the Luzon Strait.

"Why don't they disperse!"

"How to allocate just a few coal-lifting ships? Now for them, the most important thing is that we escape far away before we arrive. Only in this way, there is no time to replenish fuel at all. As soon as they are dispersed, the joint fleet is equivalent to disarming themselves,..."

At this moment, a black spot in the air quickly flew towards the fleet. It was a seaplane. The small plane first circled in the air, and then climbed to the southwest. The signalman immediately recognized his action from the movement of the plane, which was a signal to find the direction of the enemy fleet.

A radio signal was immediately sent by Jingyuan.

"Your Majesty, the remnants of the joint fleet have been found!"

Sa Zhenbing, who was happy, walked into the officer's lounge with a telegram in his hand.

"Oh, I see!"

While drinking tea, Chen Moran, who didn't close his eyes for two days and nights, just answered. When the first good news came last night, he just expressed his congratulations as a symbolic surname. As for now, there is no need to show too much emotion now.

After all, the naval battle is not over yet, and now no one knows if there will be any variables.

"Your Majesty!"

"Go to the war room!"

Standing up, Chen Moran spat out a sentence indifferently, and then walked to the battle map room outside. At this time, Ye Zugui and others were looking at the chart there. The room was as silent as in the lobby of the bank, and everyone was busy doing what was on their hands. No one spoke loudly, and no one was talking about anything.

All people are exhausted. Maybe now they want to raise their legs and fall on the sofa to have a good sleep, but now they need to sit there and hold their pencils tightly, stand up their ears at the same time, and listen to the latest news from the wireless man. The last naval battle to decide the victory or defeat is about to begin.

The torpedo attack in the middle of the night a day ago made this naval battle like a white dream, but everyone seemed to be so indifferent. The more strange and quiet the atmosphere, the more it can show that in fact, it is still very unconfident about the future.

Their work has just begun. More than 11 warships of the powerful joint fleet in the naval battle were sunk. However, no one knows how many of the ships of the combined fleet have been sunk or completely destroyed. To be precise, I don't know how much strength of the combined fleet is left now. There are 32 ships in the combined fleet.

They have indeed lost the organization of the fleet and fallen into chaos now, but this is the most annoying place. Now they are scattered in the vast sea area of the South China Sea, and in order to achieve their goal, they must sink all of them one by one, which means that the navy must disperse and search for the enemy in the South China Sea! .

"Your Majesty, five minutes ago, the Zhenyang Fleet No. 03 water plane flew over the joint fleet again. It still kept the column sailing and reconfirmed the number of remnants of the joint fleet. Two of the four warships were seriously flooded, one of the four armored cruisers was seriously flooded, and the protection patrol Theyang yangship..."

"Thank God!"

I don't know who shouted. Thank God, it's really necessary. The training of the joint fleet is too well-trained. It is the well-trained in the past that they still maintain the formation even when they retreat! Instead of scattering and running away.

"Thank God!"

With a whisper on his lips, Chen Moran showed a smile at this time.

"What will happen if I lose the battle?"

When he saw the black spots hovering overhead again, Lieutenant Bai Genxiong couldn't help asking himself from the bottom of his heart that it was a plane, a Chinese plane. Although the plane could not sink the warship, it could inform the Chinese fleet of the position of the warship.

"Why can't you disperse and escape?"

Bai Gen Xiong San couldn't help but have a doubt in his heart, and at the same time, he turned his eyes to the joint fleet at this time.

Each warship has suffered different degrees of trauma. The waterline of the armored cruiser Iwate hit by a torpedo is even less than three meters from the sea, and the speed of the Zhoufang that was injured by the boiler over there is not much better than that of the Ipante. Yiqi and I'm afraid it is the most intact of the four surviving warships, but his tail turret The appearance of the twisted variant also reminds Bai Gen that its situation is not good.

"Maybe today is the end of the Combined Fleet!"

When this idea came to Bai Gen's heart, there was a sad cloud on the face of Major General Uemura, who was standing on the bridge of the flagship "Yiqi".

As the commander of the Third Force, he is now the commander of the whole fleet. When the torpedo attacked last night, the captain of his flagship had fallen, so he personally commanded the warship. When the Chinese torpedo boat fired a torpedo at him, he was also quite calm. He kept changing the rudder and rudder to dodge the torpedoes, and finally avoided the warship from being sunk by torpedoes.

The naval soldier, who had decisively stopped the retreat of the Russian fleet in the Battle of Tsuima, thus saving Dongxiang's command mistakes, realized that he was in a dilemma, which was also the most dangerous situation.

"It should be scattered to break through!"

Reason tells him that the scattered breakout now may be the best choice to maintain the remaining strength of the joint fleet, but if it is scattered now, it may lead to another result. The remnants of the joint fleet have been broken by the Chinese navy.

"To the distant ship!"

It is the existence of the Zhiyuan ship that makes Major General Kamimura and the staff finally give up their respective breakthroughs after some discussion. However, the fleet is scattered. In the face of the high-speed Zhiyuan ship, each scattered warship will be the target of the Chinese navy, and the middle [***] ship will be vast from the South China Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The sea is waiting for the isolated and under-fueled warships.

The dispersion of troops will eventually be defeated by each other. In the end, Major General Uemura made the same decisive choice as in the Battle of the Sea of Ma. The formation withdrew. This was a gamble to take the last bit of the joint fleet and gamble that it was impossible for the Zhenyang Fleet to find the joint fleet in the South China Sea.

But what about now?

After discovering the first plane three hours ago, Major General Uemura understood that the last moment had arrived.

"Discover the enemy ship!"

Finally, the news came from the lookout tower about the soot of their warship. Because Jingyuan and Zhiyuan use heavy oil and the smoke is large, the distance of discovery is longer. At the same time, the inspectors on Jingyuan also found the smoke of the joint fleet. Their use is high-quality British carbon smoke, but with more sophisticated telescopes, they are not lagging behind me.

In the eyes of the "Yiqi" watchmen, they found soot on the sea again, and then as the distance approached, the soot changed from one to several.

The first ship of the Zhenyang Fleet finally found the heavily damaged joint fleet at 10 a.m. on the 22nd.

"Yes, it's me"

Su Yueyang, standing in the command tower of the Jingyuan, said nonsense softly.

"They are all enemies..."

"The enemy who is about to be sunk!"

Su Yueyang muttered in his heart, and at this time, Liu Guanxiong, who stood in the conning tower and observed the sequence of the joint fleet with a telescope, ordered.

"Turn right on the side!"

When he saw from the telescope that the Zhenyang Fleet, more than 20 kilometers away, began to seize the T-shaped position, Uemura Yanzhicheng smiled bitterly and was full of despair for the battle. He looked around with a telescope. The number of warships of the First Fleet of the Zhenyang Fleet was not large, but it was enough to make anyone despair, not only because they were still unscathed.

"Jingyuan, Zhiyuan!"

When the Japanese naval soldiers on the remnants of the joint fleet identified Jingyuan and Zhiyuan, despair emerged in everyone's hearts at the same time. In the battle of the South China Sea, Jingyuan was engraved in their hearts like a devil.

At this time, nearly 10,000 Japanese naval officers and soldiers on the 20 warships and ships of the joint fleet, although their ships were more than the Zhenyang Fleet, at this time, in the face of the closer and closer Zhenyang Fleet, they gave birth to a kind of lamb waiting to be slaughtered.

"This battle... can't be fought!"

Renji Kawagishi, the captain of the armored cruiser, said softly, and he looked back at Kojiro Uchida. He nodded to the words and acquiesced to his point of view.

With Jingyuan and Zhiyuan here, there is nothing we can do about this war!

"The intelligence department killed everyone. Didn't they say that Jingyuan could not repair it?"

Although it was just a whisper, it still reached the ears of Uemura Hiroyuki. He frowned and wanted to scold his subordinates, but he opened his mouth but couldn't speak.

What will this battle look like?

Uemura Yanzhicheng knew the result, and the result was that the joint fleet would no longer exist. It was said that the navy, which had been built with 50 years of painstaking efforts, would be destroyed in one day, but most importantly, he looked at the officers beside him.

People!

Talents are the most valuable. The expansion of the warship has caused the navy to use the last manpower reserve. Without 20 years of these people, it is impossible for the navy to rebuild.

From the moment he found the plane, Uemura, who had already foreseen all this, did not show any excited attitude at all. It is meaningless to sacrifice 10,000 lives for this hopeless battle.

But... Hiko Zhicheng Uemura knew that neither the Japanese nor the navy could accept the surrender of the joint fleet like the Russians, let alone accept that the warship was captured by the Chinese, and the emperor's warship could never be captured, so after a long silence, he flattened He said quietly, "Sink yourself!"

After the decision was made in the conning tower, the decision was immediately notified to the ships.

"Sir, let's shoot the last shell!"

Two or three people in the command tower immediately shouted like this, while Uemura Yan Zhicheng shook his head and said with tears in his eyes.

"We don't have this time!"

Everyone knows that this is the truth. Jingyuan has approached a distance of 20,000 meters and can fire at any time.

"Don't waste any more time! Any resistance will only increase the results of the Chinese people. Everyone abandons the ship, whether soldiers or officers, must leave. As long as they live, in less than five years, a new joint fleet will reappear on the sea! If you die, there will be no Japanese navy in 20 years"

"Abandon the ship, everyone abandons the ship..."

With the order, the wooden sampan was constantly thrown into the sea. When the sailors and officers withdrew from the warship, they did not forget to bring a portrait of the emperor. For all this, the Zhenyang fleet 20,000 meters away was completely blind to it.

"Wait!"

From the telescope, Liu Guanxiong stared at the Japanese naval officers and soldiers who were withdrawing from the warships. He just cautiously did the fleet movement and tried not to rush into the enemy's range to avoid it. There was no need to take risks now. He said that his choice was far beyond his expectations.

"It's impossible for me to hand over the warship. If it's too tight, it will make them fight back!"

Shen Shou-Kon talked softly with Su Yueyang beside him. Now the atmosphere here is very relaxed, because victory is about to be reached.

"The most important thing is that those old warships are meaningless at all, but it's a pity for those armored cruisers!"

Su Yueyang sighed. After more than ten minutes, there were suddenly bursts of explosions in the distance. The explosion came from the inside of the warship. The unremoved sailors were ordered to sink the warship to prevent the warship from being captured by the Chinese navy.

"Order to fire at the target of the sea at will!"

"Your officer, they, they surrendered!"

"Execute the command!"

Liu Guanxiong repeated coldly.

"I didn't see the white flag!"

The shelling lasted for nearly 20 minutes. Twenty minutes later, there were still warships slowly sinking on the sea, and more were Japanese sailors swimming in the sea. At this time, the sea in the distance was dazzling red.

"Surrender, sir, they surrender!"

A staff officer shouted loudly, but Liu Guanxiong did not hear their conversation. He did not issue an order to "stop shooting", and the shelling was still going on.

"Your officer, the enemy has surrendered!"

Su Yueyang shouted.

However, Liu Guanxiong still held the telescope in his right hand and stood there with the hilt of the sword in his left hand.

Finally, he rushed away from everyone's obstruction and stood in front of the commander. Su Yueyang roared at Liu Guanxiong again with his eyes open angrily, "Sir, please stop shooting in the honor of the navy soldiers!"

At this time, his face was full of murderousness, and his eyes glared at the officer. He could not understand why the officer gave such an order after the other party abandoned the ship.

But Liu Guanxiong still didn't move at all. He responded with his strong Fujian accent as if refuting Su Yueyang, "If you really surrender..."

Hands towards the warships that are gradually disappearing into the sea. "They should hand over their warships, not sinking!"

(to be continued)