Empire Conquest
Chapter 368 - 364: A One-Sided Affair

Chapter 368: Chapter 364: A One-Sided Affair

Before dawn, focusing the firepower to strike enemy ships one and two was simply a matter of reducing the numerical gap.

After achieving his objective, Li Jie immediately made tactical adjustments.

In essence, he fully utilized the speed advantage to maintain the most favorable engagement distance, ensuring his own ship was always in the best position.

The key was the engagement distance.

In theory, as long as new-type heavy armor-piercing bullets were used, the "Xu Sea" class and "North River" class could penetrate the armor of Newland’s old battleships at all ranges of the main gun.

However, the old Newland battleships might not be able to do the same.

If using standard armor-piercing bullets, even with 16-inch naval guns, the engagement distance would need to be shortened to 14 kilometers to have a chance of penetrating the "Xu Sea" class’s main armor belt, or 17 kilometers to penetrate the "North River" class’s main armor belt. Even with heavy armor-piercing bullets, these distances would only increase to 19 kilometers and 21 kilometers respectively. As for the 14-inch naval guns, it might be necessary to close in to within 11 kilometers to hope to penetrate the "Xu Sea" class’s main armor belt. Simply put, across the entire range, even with heavy armor-piercing bullets, 14-inch naval guns couldn’t penetrate the "Xu Sea" class’s horizontal armor and main armor belt, and posed a very limited threat to the "North River" class.

Of course, all of this was just theoretical calculation.

In fact, these performance indicators were only made public after the war.

During the war, the power of battleship main gun armor-piercing bullets and armor protection were absolute naval secrets.

Not to mention public disclosure, even within the Navy, few were aware.

Since it was difficult to obtain accurate information on the core performance of the enemy’s main battle ships, the Great Powers were designing battleships in the dark, accurately speaking, based on their own artillery and ammunition technology to measure and determine the level of protection needed for battleships.

The Liangxia Empire had first-class artillery and ammunition technology, and as a result, they overestimated their opponents during the war.

The Newland Federation’s artillery and ammunition technology was also very advanced, comparable to that of the Liangxia Empire, so the two had many similarities in battleship protection design.

If anything, the Saiyi Navy, with its less advanced artillery and ammunition technology, consistently underestimated their opponents.

The most typical case was the "Saiyi" class super battleship, which the Saiyi Navy pinned their hopes on as a decisive weapon.

This type of super battleship, with a full-load displacement of nearly 70,000 tons and nine 460mm main guns, didn’t surpass the fast battleships built by the Liangxia Empire and Newland Federation during the same period in terms of firepower or protection despite the latter having a full-load displacement of less than 60,000 tons and a much faster speed.

Before the war, intelligence agencies provided relatively general data that suggested maintaining an engagement distance above 20 kilometers was safer.

And if one wished to be even safer, then it was best to extend to over 22 kilometers.

Once past 25 kilometers, it was absolutely safe.

But the problem was, beyond 25 kilometers, even with the assistance of gun-aiming radar, it was uncertain if one’s own ship’s gun accuracy could reach an acceptable level.

Interference from sea-surface reflected clutter meant that even in clear weather, the working distance of gun-aiming radar was around 25 kilometers.

Any further, and it became inaccurate.

During clear weather, keeping the engagement distance around 22 kilometers was the most prudent choice.

The following battle was conducted on this basic principle.

Almost the entire day, the four fast battleships of the 43.2 Special Mixed Fleet, under the command of Li Jie, maintained an engagement distance of about 22 kilometers from the four battleships of Newland’s 11th Special Mixed Fleet and, over nearly 8 hours of continuous fighting, sunk all four of the Newland battleships in succession.

Before 9 a.m., the gallant "Flame Sea" once again created a miracle by sending enemy ship number four, also known as the "New Mo," to the bottom of the sea with three consecutive almost impeccable salvos.

According to the combat record of the "Flame Sea," between the 31st and 33rd salvos, there were five direct hits observed by the lookout alone.

Because two hits were not observed, there were seven in total!

During the 33rd salvo, an armor-piercing bullet struck directly the gun mount of turret B on the New Mo, and upon entering the shell handling room, it drilled into the main gun ammunition storage.

It was this shell that doomed the New Mo.

After the massive explosion, of the nearly 2,000 officers and men aboard, only six survived.

These six were all in the lookout tower on the mainmast at the time of the explosion, and they were thrown from the lookout tower, which is how they miraculously survived.

The rest went down to the bottom of the sea with the New Mo.

About half an hour later, the North River alone sank the enemy’s fifth ship, the Miss.

There were doubts about this victory.

Given the circumstances at the time, it was very likely the Flame Sea that had sunk the Miss.

The reason being that before the explosion occurred in the high-altitude gun ammunition storage on the starboard side of the Miss, the third enemy ship ahead, the Sif, had released smoke in an attempt to adjust course under the cover of the smokescreen. As a result, the Flame Sea, which was assisting the Xu Sea, was unable to aim properly and had to switch targets, firing at the fifth enemy ship, the Miss, landing two full salvos within 5 minutes.

The first of these full salvos was actually for ranging.

By that time, the main guns of the Flame Sea had fired dozens of full salvos with full charges, wearing the barrels severely, requiring observation of impact points to calibrate the deviation.

Then, after the Flame Sea fired its second full salvo, the Miss capsized and sank due to the explosion in the high-altitude gun ammunition storage.

With an interval of about 5 minutes, no one believed it was the achievement of the Flame Sea.

However, approximately 30 seconds before the explosion on the Miss, the North River fired its 42nd full salvo.

That is to say, it was also impossible for the North River’s shells to have hit the Miss’s ammunition storage.

At a distance of more than 20 kilometers, a shell would take about 1 minute to fly.

Over this victory, Jin Hong later took the matter all the way up to Navy headquarters.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t produce any evidence that it was the Flame Sea that sank the Miss, so per the usual practice, which is the "combatant principle," the victory was credited to the North River.

Afterward, close to 12 o’clock, the enemy’s sixth ship, the Idaho, was sunk by the Nanjiang.

The battle continued until about 2:30 in the afternoon when the third enemy ship, the Sif, slowly sank into the sea under the fierce bombardment of the Xu Sea.

With that, all of the Newland’s 11th Special Mixed Fleet’s battleships had been sunk, except for the Mali, which had escaped before dawn.

The reason the battle dragged on for so long was actually simple.

Around 12 o’clock, all four fast battleships of the 43 Special Mixed Fleet had used up their heavy armor-piercing bullets and could only use the old-style armor-piercing bullets.

In fact, there weren’t many old-style armor-piercing bullets either.

For this reason, Li Jie had issued orders before 12 o’clock, before the sinking of the Idaho, to extend the interval between full salvos to 10 minutes.

This was also to ensure the naval gun barrels had ample time to cool down properly.

Compared to the ammunition, the battleship’s main gun barrels were much more valuable, had very short service lives, and were extremely difficult to replace.

After sinking the last battleship, it took about an hour for Newland cruisers and destroyers, which had rushed to the scene, to rescue the sailors who had fallen overboard.

It was for these reasons that the battle didn’t officially conclude until past 3:30 in the afternoon.

By that time, the 43.2 Subsquad had also arrived with a light cruiser near the Xu Sea, and Li Jie had this cruiser send out a telegram.

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