For this reason, the navy has also spent a lot of money in the past two years to fund relevant domestic enterprises to develop rifled artillery and more advanced shells, but it is impossible to get any results at this time.

So today, in the Battle of Malacca, the tactics used by the Tang Navy are actually not much different from those during the Unification War!

I saw that the six battleships of the 2nd Mobile Squadron raised their sails and rushed into the harbor, and used the steam engine to choose a favorable course, but did not need to rely heavily on the direction of the wind to sail like the previous pure sail warships.

The six battleships of the Second Mobile Detachment, one in front of the other and one in the rear, formed two small detachments in a group of three warships, separated by about 100 meters in front and behind, and sailed towards the harbor in turn.

When the leading cruiser approached the intended target in the harbor about 500 meters, it was the first to open fire, using the unique weapon grenade of the Tang Navy!

The grenades flew out of the breeches of a nine-, fourteen-, or even eighteen-pound naval gun, and then crossed a distance of more than 500 meters and landed in the harbor.

Every time a shell landed on the Portuguese ship, it was capable of setting off a violent explosion, and these shells were not solid shells or anything like that, but grenades, and most of them were grenades of large-caliber naval guns, with a lot of charge.

Even though the power of the black powder explosion in this year is still relatively limited, it can't withstand the large shells and the large amount of charge, and the power of this explosion is still very considerable.

At this time, the Portuguese also began to return fire, but the first to return fire was not the fleet in the harbor, but the shore artillery on land.

On the shore, the Portuguese originally built a lot of batteries to defend the port, and after the war approached, they stepped up the construction of a lot of temporary batteries, so the number of these batteries is still quite a lot, and many of them are actually guns that the Portuguese removed from the fleet.

However, at this time, the 2nd Mobile Squadron was still far away from the port, and because of the firing range, only some of the guns on the batteries could shoot, adding up to more than 10 guns.

Listening to the sound of these counterattacking artillery, Chen Pengming knew that the smallest caliber of these shore anti-aircraft guns that were counterattacking was 14 catties, and even many of them were 24 catties of artillery.

After all, it is a shore defense artillery, and there is no need to consider issues such as weight like naval guns, so it is normal for the caliber to be large and powerful.

Speaking of these shore defense guns, many of them were originally large-caliber naval guns in the Portuguese fleet.

In the face of the Portuguese shore artillery counterattack, the 2nd Mobile Squadron only increased the power of the steam engine, increased the speed, and made a small evasion, but on the whole it still maintained the shelling of the harbor.

This artillery battle between the two sides lasted about fifteen minutes, and finally the second mobile detachment was ordered to retreat!

Admiral Chen Pengming asked the Second Mobile Squadron to temporarily retreat, not because the Second Mobile Squadron suffered any losses, in fact, although some of the shells were hit, they were only slightly damaged, and they were not in the way at all.

He chose to let the 2nd Mobile Squadron retreat because he didn't see the effect he wanted.

Although the Portuguese fleet in the harbor was shelled, and the warships fired back in the follow-up process, he did not see the Portuguese giving up the attempt to carry the fleet's guns to Malacca City from the high-powered telescope.

They seem to have completely abandoned the fleet, prepared to strengthen the defense of Malacca at all costs, and then retreated into the city of Malacca.

Although the artillery bombardment of the 2nd Mobile Detachment caused some losses to the Portuguese, it did not completely stop the Portuguese attempt.

At the same time, it was through this tentative artillery bombardment of the 2nd Mobile Detachment that he initially detected the port defense forces of the Portuguese!

They completely abandoned the use of the fleet to resist, and instead chose to carry the fleet's artillery onto land, partly to strengthen the defense of the city of Malacca, and on the other hand, to strengthen the strength of the port coastal defense batteries.

When the 2nd Mobile Squadron attacked just now, a large number of Portuguese ships on the opposite side basically did not carry out large-scale movements, only a few ships counterattacked, and most of the ships continued to anchor in the harbor or even anchored directly in the dock like dead fish.

The vast majority of the counterattacks of the 2nd Mobile Squadron were counterattacks by enemy shore defense batteries.

But this allowed Chen Pengming to find another opportunity!

Although the Portuguese moved the artillery onto land and used some of the naval guns as temporary coastal defense batteries, which could effectively increase the coastal defense force, the coastal defense batteries also had a fatal flaw, that is, they could not move!

And it is worth noting that the Malacca city defense is the Malacca city defense, and the shore defense battery is the shore defense battery.

The overall defense of the Portuguese in Malacca is based on the city of Malacca, which is a typical large fortress, although artillery can also be deployed on it, but it is worth noting that this Malacca fortress is not directly built on the seashore, but is still a few hundred meters away from the dock by the sea, although speaking of the salient on the side of the sea, there are also forts that can be used to shoot at the port.

However, the coastal defense fort in this fort naturally could not be the main force of the Portuguese coastal fort in Malacca, in fact, most of the shore fort guns were still built outside the Malacca fort, which belonged to the independent fortress battery.

After all, the port of Malacca is not a concave port, but a port lined up along the north shore of the waterway, because Malacca has developed commerce and trade in the past ten years, and the scope of this port is actually very large, with a range of several kilometers from east to west.

In this geographical environment, and considering the range of modern naval guns, it was impossible for the Portuguese to completely defend the port with one or two batteries, and they had to build more batteries to defend the port.

Of course, a better means is to directly use the fleet to block the waterway outside the port, and the width of this waterway is only about ten kilometers, as long as the fleet is strong, the blockade is a matter of minutes.

But unfortunately, the strength of the Portuguese fleet was much worse than that of the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Tang Navy, so that the Portuguese fleet did not have the courage to leave the cover of the shore defense batteries.

If they take the initiative to come out to fight, Admiral Chen Pengming will be even happier, and directly gather the main fleet to sink them, there are still so many things there now!

Therefore, the Portuguese gave up the fleet and moved many naval guns to land, which was equivalent to giving up the fleet's ability to mobile defense, and in the end they could only protect the port through numerous batteries.

And this choice in Chen Pengming's view, almost made a fatal mistake, although the northern waterway of Malacca is wide, but it is only a dozen kilometers wide, if the Portuguese fleet has maintained combat effectiveness, even if Chen Pengming dares to enter with the fleet, but it is unlikely to directly rush into the port and engage in a chaotic battle with the Portuguese fleet.

But now the Portuguese abandoned the fleet and opted for the fort defense.

This is also to give Chen Pengming a chance!

He planned to take advantage of the mobility of his fleet to gain absolute superiority over most of the Portuguese batteries, and then gradually clear the enemy's batteries, and finally reach the port to completely crush the Portuguese resistance.

After ordering the temporary withdrawal of the Second Mobile Detachment, he summoned his operational staff officers and asked them to quickly come up with an offensive plan.

Chen Pengming wanted to take this opportunity to crush the resistance of the Portuguese in the port in one fell swoop, so as to better support the follow-up siege operations of the landing force.

The operational staff officers subordinate to the Indian Ocean Fleet Command are basically the most outstanding staff officers drawn from various departments and fleets of the Datang Navy.

Both the Datang Army and the Datang Navy are accustomed to drawing elite forces from various units, especially core middle-level officers, to fight on the front line when war breaks out.

As for the Indian Ocean Fleet Staff Department, this institution is also full of elite officers drawn from all over the Navy by the Navy, and the twenty operational staff officers in it, the lowest rank is major, well, because the combat staff officers of the Indian Ocean Fleet Command Staff Department, as long as the Imperial Academy graduates, and the Imperial Academy students have just graduated, they are the rank of major, so you really can't find the captain-level graduates of the Imperial Academy.

Of course, Gao is only a colonel, because if you go up, you are a brigadier general, and the rank of brigadier general basically does not serve as an ordinary operational staff officer, and if you hold a staff position, you also serve as the deputy chief of staff or chief of staff in each fleet.

These more than 20 combat staff officers basically covered all directions, some were from navigation, some were from logistics, some were from artillery, and some were even from land warfare.

But no matter what their background, they are the best among their peers in their respective fields.

Take out any of them, they are all the sons of Tianjiao in the navy, the navy's key training talents, generals, and future commanders of the main fleet, otherwise, they would not have appeared in the Indian Ocean Fleet Staff as operational staff officers.

Whether it is the army or the navy, the operational staff post is the best springboard post within the military, and almost every general who was promoted after 15 years of Xuanping, regardless of the army, navy, or even the guards, has all served as operational staff officers.

If nothing else, in a few years, this group of operational staff officers serving in the command of the Indian Ocean Fleet at this time will appear as generals, and in a few or twenty years, there may be a few more admirals.

These elite mid-level naval officers quickly passed complex calculations and came up with a plan for a fleet attack.

Soon Chen Pengming ordered the fleet to attack!