1855 United States Tycoon

Seeing that the Goben began to speed up to escape, the Unyielding lost its bow, and its navigation ability was greatly affected and it was unable to pursue it. Major General Hood immediately ordered the battlecruiser Invincible to stop attacking the German battlecruiser Moch and instead pursued the Goben. At this time, the Invincible had already seized the chance of damage to the Moqi's steering gear and grabbed the T position. (That is to use the side of the ship to block in the direction of the opponent's bow. In this way, the enemy ship can only fire from the bow direction of the gun, and all the guns of the own warship can fire at the opponent. In this way, a single ship can almost get twice as much as the opponent's artillery. Fire superiority. If it is a fleet confrontation and seize the T head position, the advantage will be even greater.) And in the previous round of salvo, two more shells hit the Mochi, one of which was lost. A chimney of the Mochi also caused a fire, and another shell damaged the steering device of the A turret of the Mochi, making the A turret of the Mochi completely lose its combat effectiveness. It can be said that if the attack continues, the Mochi will soon lose its combat effectiveness.

But now in the eyes of Rear Admiral Hood, it is no longer possible for the Mochi to escape. It was only a matter of time before it was sunk. In contrast, chasing the Goben is more important. Therefore, he ordered the Indomitable, whose speed was greatly reduced, the cruiser Pitbull, which lost a turret, and the destroyer Hausen, which had just extinguished the fire, to stay and continue to attack the Mochi, which had lost its maneuverability and suffered severely damaged power. , And took other warships to chase the Goben.

Because of the loss of the C turret, the Goben’s current backward firepower is only one-half of the previous firepower, and during the flight, only two shells can be fired at a time. This kind of firepower density, coupled with the fact that the Goben has now accelerated to about 26 knots, and the hull is shaking so badly. At this time, the guns continue to fire, almost just scaring people.

However, the state of the Invincible who chased the past is not necessarily particularly good. In order to obtain high speed, the boiler of the Invincible has been operating at an overload. At a speed of 26 knots, the Invincible is also unstable, although the firepower density is higher than that of Goben. The number has doubled, but the hit rate is still ridiculously poor. Now the distance between the two warships is about 15,000 meters. At this distance, at a high speed of 26 knots, shooting a target at a distance of 15,000 meters, it is strange that the hit rate can be good. Therefore, the Invincible hit ten volleys in a row, and failed to obtain even one stride. The top speed of the Goben is slightly higher than that of the Invincible. At this time, this advantage is gradually shown. Now the distance between him and the Invincible is slowly increasing. If the situation continues, the Goben will escape. The chance of going out should not be small.

The Germans also had two cruisers. Not long ago, when the British cruisers launched an attack on the German battlecruisers, they also bravely stood up and launched an artillery battle with the British cruisers. Even when the Invincible began to chase the Goben, they tried to attack the Invincible to cover the Goben. However, there are more cruisers on the British side. Today, there are four cruisers and four destroyers next to the Invincible. Therefore, the heroic actions of the German cruisers have not yielded any results. Although the performance of single ships is considered, the German cruisers seem It is also a little better than the British cruiser, but such a little advantage cannot make up for the absolute disadvantage in quantity. Under the firing of four British cruisers, four destroyers, and the Invincible’s secondary guns, these two cruisers quickly turned into flaming torches on the surface of the sea.

However, Major General Hood was not reconciled to let Goben escape in this way. Although he had won by this time, the Germans lost two cruisers and one battlecruiser. Well, although the three ships have not sunk yet, But this is only a matter of time. Moreover, the Goben has also been severely damaged, and after losing the cruiser with it, I am afraid that it can only find a way to sneak back to the German port. Most of its fuel is not enough to support it to escape all the way back at high speed, so It will certainly use radio to communicate with the mainland many times, so that the British search fleet will probably be able to overtake it and destroy it.

However, watching the prey escape from his mouth, this is not the style of Major General Hood. Although he can't catch up, although the shooting rate of shelling is very low, as long as you are shooting, there is always a chance of hitting. Besides, God Bless the king, maybe you can hit one or two shots?

It seems that God is indeed blessing the United Kingdom. When the distance between the two sides has been extended to 18,000 meters, the Invincible actually scored a hit while sailing at high speed. At that time, the D turret of the Goben had just fired two shells. The fire of the fired shells had just been extinguished. The observation post discovered that a small spark exploded at a point to the left of its D turret. It was generated when the steel plate was penetrated, and then more flames emerged from that position. Obviously, the guy just now knocked out the German D turret.

This shell was not the deadliest yet. Another shell fell into the sea within three meters of the starboard side of the Goben's stern and exploded violently. Sometimes, for a warship, a near miss like this is more terrifying than a direct hit. This shell blew up one of the Goben’s propellers, causing it to lose half of its power and stretched away on the ship’s body. After a large opening, the sea water poured in quickly.

"Good job!" Major General Hood couldn't help but shouted, "The boys are so good!"

However, as the saying goes, happiness leads to sorrow. Just as Major General Hood shouted, the sound of heavy artillery shells was heard in the sky. The last two shells fired just before the German D turret was destroyed fell...

Later, Lieutenant Colonel Giggs, the commander of the cruiser Yorkshire, described that scene in own memoirs.

"At that time, our ship was the closest to the Invincible, and our distance was only about 600 meters. I saw a fireball suddenly rising from the A turret of the Invincible. Obviously, it was the result of the enemy’s armor-piercing projectile. I saw the place where the A turret was penetrated, and the muzzle of the cannon had long tongues of flames. At that time I thought:'Broken, this must be the fire. The shot. The medicine in the A turret was ignited. Now, the A turret is going to be completely finished. "But I didn't expect what happened at the time.

About ten seconds after that explosion, another violent explosion suddenly occurred on the Invincible, and the blast caused even our warship to shake. I saw that the entire Invincible was broken into two pieces at once, and then it sank quickly. It only took a few minutes from the explosion to the complete sinking. Although I gave a big rescue order, but... the ship sank too fast, and there was not even one survivor on the entire warship..."

According to this description, later generations inferred that this was probably because the officers and soldiers of A turret did not close the passage from the A turret to the main ammunition depot in order to speed up the firing speed, and illegally stored more shots in the turret. Medicine pack. So when the German shells hit the A turret, it detonated the shots in the turret, and then the flames flooded into the main ammunition depot along the open channel to the main ammunition depot, and caused the main ammunition. The demise of the library.

After the sinking of the Invincible, the "Purple Shirt" cruiser raised the command flag, and the captain, Lieutenant Colonel Egil, gave the order to sink the German warship at all costs. After losing the battlecruiser Invincible as the main force and Major General Hood, the commander of the fleet, British cruisers and destroyers continued to attack Goben.

If it were normal, the battlecruiser Goben would not be afraid of these little things. The battlecruiser is best at bullying these little things. And even if there are too many small things, the speed of the Goben can ensure that he can retreat all over. However, the current situation of the Goben is not ideal. His C turret and D turret were completely destroyed, which not only caused him to lose nearly half of his firepower, but also caused a huge firepower dead angle on this warship. If the enemy attacked from these directions, he could only rely on limited secondary artillery to protect himself.

At the same time, the near-missing bullet caused it to lose nearly half of its power, and it also caused a lot of water to enter. This also made it impossible for him to rely on his own speed to escape the enemy's pursuit. Soon the British cruiser followed.

Since it was no longer able to escape, the Goben began to turn, hoping to bombard those cruisers with the main artillery located at the bow, but the steering performance of this battlecruiser was originally not good. This is even more so after a lot of water. In contrast, smaller British cruisers and destroyers are naturally more flexible, so they quickly reached the dead spot of Goben’s main gun. The cruiser first stepped forward and fired at the German secondary guns.

Another advantage of the battlecruiser is that it is larger and therefore more stable as a shooting platform. When using secondary guns and British cruisers to shoot at each other, their shooting accuracy will be higher. Soon, the Zishan was hit with several shells, the A turret was destroyed, the warship caught fire, and Captain Egil was seriously injured. But the cruiser did not withdraw from the battle, but continued to approach a closer position, firing at the Germans, while also attracting firepower to provide cover for the battles of other friendly ships.

The Yorkshire, which was next to the Zishan, also poured all its firepower on the German guns. Soon, a complete blind spot of firepower was shot out. Of course, during this period, Zishan took a few more shots, the C turret also flew into the sky, and the hull was flooded so much that it tilted ten degrees to the port side. But his mission was completed, and the destroyers launched the final assault. They came in from the blind spot of the Goben firepower and launched a large number of torpedoes at very close range. The inconvenient Goben was hit by seven or eight torpedoes in a row. Even thick-skinned battleships cannot withstand such a blow. A few minutes later, the Germans gave the order to abandon the ship, and half an hour later, the battlecruiser Goeben sank. Just two minutes after the sinking of the battlecruiser, the oil depot of the Zishan cruiser exploded, and the acting captain immediately issued the order to abandon the ship.

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