The sun had not yet risen above the sea level, and the morning light on the horizon stained the sea red, but the sea fifty nautical miles from the mouth of the Mekong was still gray, but by this time the German fleet had already begun to get busy.

Standing on the Scharnhorst's ear bridge, Spee was in good spirits, and he couldn't tell that the 53-year-old lieutenant general had only slept for four hours, and was here before dawn waiting for a naval battle that might break out today.

The deck in the middle of the Scharnhorst's hull has begun to get busy, the canvas covering a Seagull two-seater water reconnaissance plane parked between the two chimneys has been uncovered, several mechanics are opening the folding wings, the hangar hatch on the right side of the forward chimney has been opened, and the second reconnaissance plane inside has also untied the fixed steel cable, ready to leave the warehouse. The four pilots gathered together in the hangar, laying the charts on the plane's pontoons to discuss today's flight mission. Not far away, the Fort Col had already flown its first reconnaissance plane, and the light seagull wapped its wings in the air before disappearing into the brightening sky.

Watching this scene, Spee slightly hooked the corners of his mouth, once upon a time, how could he have thought that those small wooden shelves had become an indispensable means of maritime reconnaissance? And how could those small, simple-looking wooden shelves evolve into the beautiful ones that look like they do now?

The Seagull two-seater water reconnaissance aircraft was the second type of reconnaissance aircraft equipped by the German Navy after the Kingfisher, and the installation of a more powerful 270-horsepower engine made the Seagull a full circle larger than its predecessor, the Kingfisher. Steel tube frame, semi-monocoque body. The aluminum alloy skin that covers the entire front half of the fuselage smooths the lines of the fuselage, but the rear half of the fuselage and the wings that can be folded back are still covered with lacquered cloth.

Although it is much larger and heavier than the kingfisher, it has a smooth shape. With strong power, the Seagull's flight speed has been increased to 170 km/h, the larger fuselage accommodates larger fuel tanks, the Seagull's maximum range has also been increased to 520 km, and the most important thing is that the effective communication distance of the airborne radio installed on the Seagull is up to 200 km, which has truly become the eye of the fleet.

In order to improve the reconnaissance capabilities of the fleet, the Scharnhorst-class, which was supposed to be able to park only one Seagull in a small hangar on either side of the front chimney, before departing from the Philippines. Spee simply took one more plane with him by means of deck mooring, so that there were 8 reconnaissance planes in the fleet at this time

These 8 reconnaissance planes will be an advantage that will help them gain intelligence. This is also the key factor that determines whether he can escape from the pursuit of the British. For this reason, four of the five seagulls planned to be released in the fleet this time were used to scout the sea areas where the British Royal Navy might appear. The route of the French from Cam Ranh Bay to the sea area where the incident occurred was basically fixed, so it was enough to confirm whether the French had arrived or not.

Watching the seagulls being released one after another, the corners of Spee's mouth curled slightly. I'm really on an adventure. But so far, everything is developing according to the script that I have written, and as long as everything goes well, then today I will win the first real naval battle of my military career, and I will win!

An hour later, the Scharnhorst received a coded Morse code telegram from a reconnaissance plane, which swept away the last of Spee's worries - what if the French Far East Fleet did not take the bait?

"The French fleet, west of Fugui Island. 75 nautical miles away! The French have taken the stage, it's time for us to play! Notify the fleet to enter the second level of combat readiness! Left rudder 30. Speed 20 knots! Spee was a little excited, and the voice of the order was a few degrees higher than usual. The characters have appeared, and the big drama can begin!

All the officers and men in the bridge were also excited, hiding in the east for so long, so that at this moment, the glory of being able to severely damage and even sink the capital ship of the French Far East Fleet in one fell swoop would sweep away the previous depression and grievance.

On the main mast of the Scharnhorst, the Bannerman waved the signal flag, which hunted in the wind. As the radio sounded to announce the second level of combat readiness of the whole ship, the three battleships immediately became busy, and the sailors rushed out of the cabin, ran on the deck in a fast and orderly manner, and then rushed into the battle position and waited. The fleet, which was moving at an economic speed of 12 knots, began to slowly accelerate, with the Scharnhorst at the head, Gneisenau in the center, and the Coleburg behind, and the three ships along the coastline in the direction of the French Far East Fleet.

At 9:40, 10 nautical miles off Fugui Island, Spee finally saw a column of smoke rising from the sea level!

"Pull the alarm, first-level combat readiness! Speed 25 knots! "The French have already appeared, the British don't know when they will come, and they don't have time to grind against the French! Spee was going to go into a melee fight with France from the start!

Loud sirens rang out in the fleet, and plumes of smoke began to rise from both chimneys, as if spraying soot from the rear chimney of the kerosene boiler in the rear boiler compartment. The boiler room in the rear is incredibly hot, the boiler soldiers continue to shovel coal into the burning furnace, the fuel nozzles in the boiler continue to spray the heavy oil to the coal, and the boiling heat wave from the constantly opening furnace door turns the boiler room into an oven. The boiler soldiers were all black and sweaty, and sweat slid down their foreheads, leaving furrows on their soot-covered faces.

The thick muzzle was slowly raised, the barrel was slowly raised to the loading angle, in the turret, the linkage fire door was opened, and the 215 kg 240 mm hard cap armor-piercing projectile passed through the long shaft through the ammunition channel, and was lifted up from the deepest protected hull of the ship, and the erected bullet plate was slowly put down, and then the hinged bomb lever slowly pushed the shell into the gun chamber, and then the two silk propellant packs were also pushed into the gun chamber, and the bolt hand forcefully closed the heavy partition threaded gun bolt.

The fire controller at the top of the battleship, operating a stereo rangefinder produced by Zeiss, was also aimed at the place where the smoke column rose at sea level, waiting for the moment when the French warship jumped out of the sea.

The French have apparently also spotted the smoke column below sea level, although it is unclear whether the smoke column is the target they are searching for. But the French, like the Germans, were equally ready for battle, and the battle was imminent!

10:20 a.m. The shadows on both sides jumped out of the sea completely, and the French were horrified to find that what appeared in front of them was not a combination of a Ron class and a Dresden class, but two Scharnhorst-class and a Kolburg-class, an opponent that they could not fight against at all!

"The French are turning! They want to run! Captain Schultz looked at the change in the direction of the column of smoke above the French fleet in the telescope, and immediately judged the movement of the French.

"Telecommunications room report, radio signal detected nearby!"

"The French must be calling the British that there is a British fleet nearby! They want to drag on time! Spee was shocked, although he expected that the French would not be foolish enough to rush out on their own without contacting the British. But this unknown direction, unknown strength of the British fleet is always a hidden danger that threatens itself.

"Left rudder 30! Maximum speed! Finish off the French in 2 hours! Let's rush over! ”

In the distance, the French fleet, which had been in front of the German fleet on the left and was moving diagonally to this side, was making a sharp turn on the right side. Trying to turn the left of the German fleet course to distance themselves, Spee could not let them do what they wanted.

With Spee's order, the Scharnhorst, which was already sailing at high speed at 25 knots, picked up speed again, and was able to maintain a speed of 26.2 knots for 30 minutes with an overload output of more than 56,000 horsepower. Spee wanted to shorten the distance between him and the French in the shortest possible time.

The state of the French battleships was clearly not very good. Although the two armored cruisers were built only five years earlier than the Scharnhorst class, in this era of rapid technological advancement, the difference of five years is already very different, and after serving in the Far East for so many years, and without comprehensive repairs, the maximum speed at this time is only 19 knots, and the French at this time are not sailing at maximum speed, and it will take some time to increase the speed.

The speed difference of more than 10 knots made the French watch in despair as the German battleships got closer and closer. When the Germans brought the distance closer to a distance of 12000 yards. The French opened fire at the limit of their own guns!

The 194mm guns on the Marseillaise and the Sully let out a roar, accompanied by the burst of four flames. Four 86-kilogram shells streaked through 12,000 yards of space, blasting four columns of water in front of the German fleet.

"Your Excellency, do you want to shoot back?" Schultz asked.

Unlike the French guns, which had a measly 12-degree elevation angle, the Skoda 240mm guns, with a 30-degree elevation angle, could easily send shells to a distance of 20,000 yards, and could even compete with the 12-inch battleship guns with smaller elevation angles in range. Now the fire control room of the Scharnhorst has already calculated the firing elements, and just wait for the order to return the color to the French.

"No, it's too far away." Spee shook her head. Now it's a pursuit battle, and neither you nor the follow-up ships have a good shooting angle, and at such a speed, the shells don't have much accuracy, so instead of wasting shells, it's better to catch up and find a good angle and then solve the opponent in a short time. And Spee was not worried about what damage the French could do to the Scharnhorst, and the Scharnhorst's protection was not enough to fear the French fleet with only 4 194mm naval guns!

The distance was getting closer, the French shells were getting more and more accurate, and then even the 164-mm naval guns joined the chorus of naval guns, but Spee still did not give the order to return fire, and the German fleet braved the French artillery fire, passed through the constantly bombing water column, and rushed with its head down.

"Boom!" A black-red fireball erupted from the middle of the Scharnhorst's hull. "Hit!" The French cheered as they looked at the Scharnhorst, which had been shot, and the sight of the Germans rushing towards them without saying a word had really put too much pressure on them, and now that they had finally hit the other side, the sight of the Germans being shot made them relax their nervousness slightly.

"How's the damage?" Spee, who was steadying in the shaking, shouted.

"Report a shot under the No. 2 secondary gun in the starboard center! Shells hit the main armor belt! No breakdown! Several gunners in the No. 2 secondary gun on the right were injured! Everything else works fine! Spee breathed a sigh of relief at the news coming back from the microphone, and he was nervous about the decision to lunge with his head down and not to fire back, but the Scharnhorst's protection was tested in actual combat!

The French 164-mm naval guns, which were still using soft-cap armor-piercing shells with performance junk, had no way to do anything with the Scharnhorst's 180-mm Krupp carburized hardened armor. Aside from an unsightly scorched mark and a slight dent in the hull, everything was fine with the Scharnhorst, even the wounded gunners were too close to the location of the shot. Injuries sustained by falling on the deck during the shock.

Before the French could get excited for a minute, the smoke cleared, and the armored cruiser led by the Germans continued to rush as if nothing happened, and the charred black on the outside of the hull made the battleship look even more hideous.

At 11:25 a.m., the distance between the two sides was reduced to 6,000 yards.

"Slow down! Speed 18 knots! ”

The Germans, who had been holding back for a long time, finally began to vent the anger that had been suppressed in their hearts! The huge turret was already pointing to starboard, and the eight guns that were pointing to the side and sticking out of the ship were like the fangs of the Scharnhorst. The barrel was still swaying slightly up and down, and the gunners were fine-tuning the data from the fire control room.

"Half-cannon salvo!" With Spee's order. The left barrels of the four turrets on the Scharnhorst roared at the same time, and orange fireballs burst out, enveloping the front and rear turret clusters. Before the smoke cleared, the barrel on the right side once again burst out with a deafening roar!

The Germans, who used the ladder rangefinder method, were still cautiously firing half-gun salvos, calculating the opponent's distance through the rangefinder and then adding a certain distance to this reading. The first round and a half salvo were conducted. Then subtract some distance from the reading and launch a second round and a half salvo, and finally calculate the average according to the impact point of the two salvos, and then carry out two and a half rounds of salvo after correcting the data on the basis of the average value, and repeat until the average value completely coincides with the actual position of the enemy ship.

However, at a distance of 6,000 yards, there was no need for this, and only after the 7th round and a half of salvos, the Gneisenau in the rear opened the score, and the shells fired from the No. 2 turret hit the side of the hull in the middle of the chimneys of the 2nd and 3rd chimneys in the middle of the Suley's hull!

The 170 mm Harvey steel armor can't stop the famous Skoda armor - a hard cap armor-piercing bullet with a muzzle velocity of 800 m/s and a weight of 215 kg! The shell penetrated the depths of the Suley's hull without hindrance. Along the way, they drove a passage through the French warship and smashed into the boiler room.

70 kg of high explosives exploded in the boiler compartment. The Suley's hull shook, and the violent explosion blew the four boilers in the boiler room into scrap metal, and the smoke from the burning coal burning mixed with the hot steam gushed out from the breach, turning the area around the cabins along the road into a hot hell and spewing out of the outside of the ship, as if the Sully had installed a chimney on the side of the ship.

The Sully, which had lost 4 boilers and was also affected by the nearby power compartment, was suddenly paralyzed on the sea, and if it was repaired properly, it might be able to restore a certain speed, but the Germans would not give her this chance.

Faced with the Sully, which had its speed plummeting, the Gneisenau began to fire at this fixed target, and the fire controller did not care about the salvo of the whole ship, and fired freely after the turrets were loaded. And at a distance of less than 6,000 yards, the elevation angle of the ship's guns was basically a loading angle, and the loaders in the main turret of the Gneisenau went crazy and kept stuffing shells and rounds into the barrel. Shoot. medicine, and then fire directly without adjusting the elevation angle.

In this general frenzy, the gunners of the Gneisenau even fired a theoretical rate of fire of 24 seconds at one point, and 200 shells were poured out in just 15 minutes. And the gunners of the 4 150mm secondary guns on the side of the side fired more shells than the main gun with only half the barrel of the main gun! Under this stormy, head-splitting shelling, the Sully was defenseless, and after being hit by more than 40 rounds of 240mm shells and more than 60 rounds of 150mm shells, the Sully was in disarray, the entire superstructure was almost flattened, the deck was completely covered in smoke, and the burning red flames could be seen through the portholes on the side of the hull. The waterline of several shells was hit, and the sea water poured into the huge breach, and because of the terrifying penetrating power of the German shells, the sea water poured into the depths of the hull along the channel opened by the shells, and the damage was useless.

At 11:45 a.m., the Sully began to tilt and it took only 15 minutes for the Gneisenau to take out her opponent after entering the field.

However, the Scharnhorst's luck was a little worse at this time, and at 11:37, the French hit the Scharnhorst with a stroke of genius. A 194-mm shell hit the left side of the front of the main turret No. 1 of the Scharnhorst. The 180 mm frontal armor of the main turret with an arc and inclination angle deflected the shell, but the shock caused the pitching mechanisms of the two main guns in the No. 1 main turret to jam and injure the two gunners in the turret. The remaining gunners were in a state of bewilderment in a strong shock.

Thankfully, the damage to the gun could have been repaired, except for a deep scratch on the front of the No. 1 turret, but now only six of the Scharnhorst's main guns were working.

With a third of its firepower, the Scharnhorst not only lost firepower, but also seemed to have had some other bad luck, although it still hit more than 20 shells from the Marseillaise, crippling the opponent. But not a single shell caused fatal damage, and although the smoke was billowing out, the rear main turret and the two single-mounted secondary turrets on the sides had been knocked out. However, the Marseillaise did not reduce its speed, and still returned fire with the remaining forward main turret and two 164-mm secondary guns.

Especially since Gneisenau had already dealt with the Sully, which embarrassed Captain Schulz. When Captain Melkel of the Gneisenau asked if he would like to help the Scharnhorst out of this little trouble himself, Schultz angrily said that he could handle it. Let Gneisenau go and help the Coleburg, which is now 1-2.

Just when Captain Schultz was about to lose face. The Scharnhorst's gunners finally landed a shot worthy of their 1909 Royal Navy gunnery competition.

Four of the six shells smashed the Marseillaise, three of the four shells fired by the rear turret group hit the lower turret of the secondary gun in the middle of the hull of the Marseillaise, and two of them smashed into the ammunition magazine of the Marseillaise's side auxiliary guns. Suddenly, there was a violent explosion in the middle of the Marseillaise number. The entire hull bulged upwards in the explosion, and the sound of steel twisting and tearing was tooth-aching.

Pillars of fire erupted from the ship's torn deck and soared into the sky, rising to a height of 60 meters with flying debris. The bulging ship slammed back into the water, and the powerful impact completely tore the Marseillaise in two. The stern of the ship floated on the surface of the sea and tilted gently, while the bow of the ship was already raised high, sinking as quickly as if it were stuck in the water. Soon, the Marseillaise completely disappeared from the sea.

12:10. Only 50 minutes had elapsed between the first shot fired by the Germans and the complete sinking of the two armored cruisers at the heart of the French Far East Fleet.

At this time, the Fort Col was engaged in a good battle with two Friant-class protective cruisers, with four main guns in the front against the Friant, and two main guns in the rear against the Robert.

The 164 mm guns on the French protective cruisers were not enough to match the Germans in terms of rate of fire, power, and gunners, and the four main guns in the front of the Fort Col had the upper hand in a duel with the five guns on the side of the Friant.

The Friant hit 4 shells of the Fort Col, and one shell hit the broadside armor belt, although it did not penetrate, but caused the rivet to break, and the deformed and dented armor plate caused the riveting joint to crack, causing slight water ingress and little damage. Three more shells hit the deck, causing a fire, but all have been extinguished.

But the Fort Collient itself was struggling to support in the rain of bullets in Fort Cole, because the tonnage was less than 4,000 tons and the length was less than 100 meters, it was still a little difficult to hit such a small target, and the Fort Col's dispersion of firepower caused difficulties in fire control, so at this time the Fort Col only hit the Flient less than 20 shells, but as a protective cruiser, such damage had already made the Flient almost unable to hold on.

Gneisenau's joining the battle group became the last straw that crushed the Fliant, the main gun of the Gneisenau had not yet fired, and the 4 150mm secondary guns that had joined in had already been aimed at the Fliant, and when the main gun of the Gneisenau fired the first round and a half salvo, it had been found that the Flionte began to tilt badly, in order to save shells, the captain of the Gneisenau, Colonel Melkel, quickly ordered the main gun to stop firing.

The Robat was frightened by the time the Marseillaise was blown in two, and when the Gneisenau and Colburg began to flank the Friant, the Robat broke away from the array and fled.

Spee stopped the Coleburg, which was trying to speed up, and ordered the fleet to turn away. His judgment was correct, and 15 minutes later, Spee received a report from a reconnaissance plane that four British armored cruisers were approaching.

One hour later, Vice Admiral Phillips, who had arrived with four Devon-class armored cruisers to support, arrived and was stunned by the sight in front of him.

The bottom of a medium-sized ship on the sea was still exposed on the water, broken wooden planks, floating barrels, and scattered fragments were floating and sinking on the sea, and more than 100 French sailors were scattered on the sea and struggling to swim towards them.

The French Far Eastern Fleet was attacked, and it was a crushing defeat! Lieutenant General Phillips, who saw this, immediately understood what was happening.

"Save people with all your might! I'm going to figure out where the Germans went! (To be continued.) )

PS: There was an error in the description of the performance of the ships of the French Far East Fleet in the previous chapter, which has now been revised