The Rise of the Empire

"Target found! Two battleships! It should be a battleship! God, if this is not a British ship, it would be terrible!" When the two sides were close to 16 kilometers. The Japanese finally discovered two German warships attached to the coastline! Although the rangefinder can clearly observe the appearance of the two battleships, it is still somewhat difficult to see the opponent clearly through Kato Yusaburo's telescope.

As an officer, the worst situation is when the two sides fight against each other without knowing the identity of the opponent! There was no way, the rangefinder could only see the shadow of a ship. The details are not clear at all. Historically, in World War II, the Germans could regard the battlecruiser Renown as Nelson, and the British could regard Prince Eugen as Bismarck. This shows that seeing may not necessarily be believed.

And these misjudgments did have a certain impact. The former directly scared away two German battleships, while the latter caused the firepower to be concentrated on the wrong target due to a misjudgment of the ship type, allowing Bismarck to do it without interference. Drop the hood!

"It would be terrible if it were a dreadnought!" Kato Yusaburo's heart thumped, and he could feel a drop of cold sweat falling from his head down his neck. The difference between the dreadnought and the pre-dreadnought is not in the amount of projection. If it is compared with the weight of the cannonballs, the battleship Satsuma is not necessarily worse than the Dreadnought. The projection capacity of the 4 12-inch guns and 6 10-inch guns is the same as that of the 8 12-inch guns of the Dreadnought. Is it really worse than an inch gun? not necessarily!

The real difference lies in the unified caliber and ballistic performance of the main gun, coupled with the ultra-long-range combat capability brought by the advanced fire control system. Of course, historically, this was not expected at the beginning of the design of the Dreadnought. The initial fire control It couldn't keep up, so the long-distance combat advantage of the dreadnought was not used. But now, with the emergence of super fearless ships, navies from all over the world naturally understand this truth.

The key to long-range fire control is continuous tracking and correction. If there are more artillery pieces, semi-volley fire can be used to quickly calibrate the target at a rate of 20 seconds. Generally speaking, three shots per round is the minimum. Then correct the shooting elements by correcting the impact point. But the problem with the Dreadnought is that it only has 4 main guns. Although the 4 guns can be corrected when firing, the accuracy will be slower because the interval is too large, which will reduce the correction efficiency.

Although the current fire control allows the former dreadnought to still be effective at a distance of about 10 kilometers, it is still far behind the effective range of the dreadnought, which is more than 15 kilometers! Don't feel too bad if the other party can hit you but you can't fight back!

Soon, the shells fired from a distance proved how correct Kato Yusaburo's guess was! Accompanied by a huge explosion, four water columns nearly a hundred meters high rose on the non-combatant side of the battleship Satsuma! Almost half of the Japanese naval officers and soldiers can see the wall of water less than 300 meters away from their own hull! In an instant, the tension and excitement of the battle filled Kato Yusaburo's body!

"The distance is fifteen kilometers, we have no chance of hitting it!" Soon the rangefinder reported a number that made him feel desperate. It was too far. Although it was within the theoretical range of the 10-inch artillery, the backward fire control was still These large numbers of secondary main guns are powerless.

"Release the smoke, let's get closer. It may be a dreadnought, but their machinery must have been severely damaged when they came here from the North Sea, and they won't be fast. Close the distance to 10 kilometers!" Kato Yusaburo ordered.

"After approaching the target, let the Aki join us in concentrating firepower on attacking the opponent's flagship!" After a moment, Kato Yusaburo added another order,

To put it bluntly, the output of the pre-dreadnought is basically to slap the face hard after getting close. And according to his experience, as a battleship, it is relatively strong. At least the 14-inch gun of the Kongo class cannot deal with the Satsuma's 10-inch main armor belt 10 kilometers away, so he thought he could withstand it. In this case, concentrating firepower to kill the enemy is also a good choice?

The two Japanese warships rushed forward at full power, and the boilers and steam turbines of the two warships only had a small output. In addition, they were both old ships that participated in the Russo-Japanese War. At this time, what do you think? At what speed? Section 17 is as high as the sky! The billowing black smoke came out of the chimney, but the speed could not increase. In Su Xiong's eyes, these figures hidden in the smoke were as slow as a snail!

The smoke can did play some role, at least the Scharnhorst's bombardment was not very accurate. Later, Su Xiong asked the fleet to keep its distance and slow down the bombardment. But what surprised Su Xiong was that the shelling of the Gneisenau behind was still going on.

"Can this hit the target?" Su Xiong sent a semaphore message to the Gneisenau in confusion.

"Our Seagull seaplane is larger and can carry three people on it. One person controls the radio, and the other person is responsible for observing the impact point of the artillery shells." The Gneisenau's answer made Su Xiong's eyes light up. It turned out to be like this! It's easy for smoke to block the horizontal view, but if you change the angle, it's unblockable! This is a good idea, Su Xiong nodded subconsciously.

However, although the observers on the Seagull can see the battleship Aki and the impact point of the bomb, how to describe this is very problematic. Although a window has been opened for aviation calibration, it is obviously still a certain distance from Dacheng. , seagulls kept circling in the sky, flying over huge battleships from time to time, and then reported the observed impact points, but in the end the effect was very limited...

The German fleet was heading upwind. When the Japanese fleet rushed over, the sea breeze would naturally disperse a large amount of smoke. And because of this headwind move, the Japanese smoke did not achieve the expected effect. Well, let's be clear. When the Japanese's smoke canisters were used up, the distance between them and the German warships was still about 14 kilometers! This is even if the opponent doesn't have the ability to speed up!

And when the smoke cleared, the two German fast battleships could finally show off their power! The officers and soldiers on the two German battleships were all drawn from the Helgoland-class battleships. They had been thinking about fighting this class of battleships for several years, and it was not an exaggeration to say that they were familiar with it. Although they are technically behind the Bavaria-class battleships, the Bavaria-class battleships have not been in service for long. In terms of actual combat level, from the perspective of gunnery alone, these veterans from the Helgoland-class battleships are definitely the best. ! Su Xiong's men compete for the Emperor's Award, the highest award for gunnery in the German Navy, every year!

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