De Knight was so startled by the power of the battery guns that he ordered his battleships to retreat and hide behind the numerous cruisers. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

"Reload incendiary bombs!" The officer on the battery shouted.

The front-loading rifled gun could not fire heated shells, so Wang Xinyu thought of another way to heat the solid shells, that is, to wrap a layer of copper skin around the head of the long solid shell, and fill the copper skin with a thin layer of red phosphorus. When the cannonball is fired, the expanding gunpowder produces a scorching gas, which drills through the gap behind the copper skin, igniting the red phosphorus and heating the cannonball, which has the same effect as heating a spherical cannonball.

Despite the fact that the "incendiary" shell is much more expensive than an ordinary solid shell, it is still much cheaper than a flowering shell.

"Fire!" The officer yelled.

The reloaded No. 3 gun let out a deafening roar, and the muzzle of the gun erupted a dazzling fire. The cannonball swept through the sky with a piercing whistling sound, flew a distance of more than two kilometers, and actually accurately hit a Dutchman fourth-class cruiser targeted by the gunners!

"The hit rate is too high!" The gunners cheered.

Eight heavy rifled guns have fired less than two rounds so far, firing twelve shells, two of which have already hit the Dutch battleship. At a distance of about three kilometers, twelve rounds and two hits, this accuracy is indeed too scary, if it is replaced by a sixty-four-pound smoothbore gun, although it can barely hit three kilometers, but the accuracy is almost zero.

The scorching solid cannonball hit the Dutch battleship, and the reddish cannonball, which spun at high speed, pierced through the plank like a reddish iron bar piercing into butter, and the spinning cannonball rolled up countless sawdust and broken planks, and at the same time ignited them, and the Dutch ship immediately burst into flames. The shells penetrated the upper deck, through the light gun deck, through the heavy gun deck, carrying a raging fire everywhere they went, and finally the shell penetrated the heavy gun deck, pierced through the back, and fell into the sea.

The destructive power of this rifled artillery shell was obviously a hundred times greater than that of a smoothbore artillery shell, and the Dutch battleship that was hit by the bullet immediately caught fire, and the flying splinters of wood in the cabin killed and injured many Dutch soldiers. Although the shell did not penetrate the bilge, it did damage the Dutch battleship, forcing it to flee the battlefield in disarray.

The recoil of such a heavy cannon is amazingly large, and after the cannonball is fired, the heavy cannon body will retreat.

In order to solve this problem, the heavy rifled battery gun designed by Wang Xinyu had a set of erection system, and the barrel was mounted on an iron frame with iron wheels, and there were rails under the iron wheels. The shells were fired, and the gun mounts retreated on the rails. But for such a heavy gun to be reset, it must rely on winches and animal power.

"Clean the chamber and reload the shells!" The officer inside the battery shouted.

The four gunners climbed to the muzzle, grabbed a huge mop, and reached into the muzzle to clear the battery. This mop is almost like a trunk with the thick mouth of a bowl, and it is originally a long log with a mop in front of it. Because the mop is too long and thick, one person can't hold it at all, and four people need to be hugged together to clean the gun chamber.

After cleaning the chamber, someone stuffed the divided medicine bag through the muzzle of the gun and compacted it with a piece of wood. The next step is to reload the shells.

The weight of the shell reached one hundred and ten pounds, and it took two people to pick it up. The soldier holding the cannonball lifted the cannonball high, reached the muzzle of the cannon, and pushed it hard, and then the four men held a piece of wood and pushed the cannonball to the end and compacted it. Then an iron awl is used to pierce the fire door, puncture the medicine bag, and finally insert the fuse into the fire door at the tail of the gun.

After reloading, the soldiers whipped the six donkeys and pulled the winch to reset the heavy artillery.

The steering of the heavy artillery was also made of animal power, and the gun carriage and rails were placed on a huge iron plate, and there were also iron wheels under the iron plate, which were placed on round rails, and the iron plates were connected by the iron cables of the winch. When it was time to turn, the soldiers whipped the ten donkeys behind the fort and asked them to pull the winch and turn the iron plate to achieve the steering effect of the muzzle.

Such a heavy artillery requires thirty-two gunners and sixteen donkeys to maneuver, and these forces do not include the convoys that supply ammunition to the heavy artillery. To transport the shells, more than a dozen mules and more than twenty ammunition men were also needed.

The rate of fire of heavy artillery is naturally very slow, and it takes about six or seven minutes to fire a shell. But the extremely long range and accuracy of this cannon shocked the Dutch unusually much.

"Boom" a flowering shell hit one of the 1,200-ton battleships of the Dutch.

This battleship was improved on the basis of the armed merchant ship Batavia. Originally, the Dutch did not plan to build a thousand-ton second-class battleship, but because of the arrival of Wang Xinyu, they attacked Batavia a few years ago, which made the Dutch feel the increased pressure from the sea, and they had to deal with the threat of the British while dealing with Asian trade. The Dutch had long heard that the Chinese had formed an alliance with the British, and in order to deal with an increasingly powerful opponent, the Dutch built a thousand-ton second-class ship.

However, this kind of second-class battleship was not a specially built second-class ship, not made of sturdy oak, but made of the most elm wood in Europe at that time, just as the Chinese merchant ships were made of fir wood.

Non-professional battleships are amateur level, this kind of giant ships of more than 1,000 tons looks extremely large, but their ability to resist attacks is not as good as that of professional battleships of 800 tons.

But the gunners saw that the ship was very large, and used flowering shells to attack!

The shells hit the Dutch battleship, and the high-speed spinning shells easily tore through the ship's planks and burrowed into the holds. The collision fuze installed on the head of the shell is the latest type of fuze of this era, and this fuse alone is worth nearly 100 taels of silver, and it took Song Yingxing's two sons five days to create such a fuse. The fuse is filled with state-of-the-art LEI mercury and explodes after a violent impact.

The "boom" thunder gong exploded, igniting the granular black [gunpowder] loaded into the shell, but this was originally a very ordinary gunpowder, and a little nitrate [acid] product was added. Because the nitrate [acid] was completely handmade, it was extremely expensive, and most of it was used in the mainland's war against the Manchus, and only a little was added to this shell.

But just these three percent additives can make the power of ordinary black [gun] powder much more magnified.

An earth-shattering explosion sounded, and a huge fireball rose from the cabin of the Dutch battleship that was hit, and the battleship immediately burst into flames, and the upper deck of the upper deck turned over like peeled bananas, and the planks flew into the air and shattered piece by piece, and the mast collapsed with a bang.

The cabin became a living hell, as the shells that exploded into the deck of the heavy guns created a powerful wave of air that swept over the Dutch gunners in the cabin.

With a loud heart-rending scream, the Dutch gunners flew sideways, and several cannons in the blast deck that were in the explosion range were also blown up, flying out of the cabin through the blasted gun doors and falling into the sea.

"It's horrible!" Seeing the battleship that had been hit by a single shell and burst into flames, the Dutch shouted in horror.

The opponent's artillery had an extremely high hit rate, which could reach about a tenth of the hit rate at a distance of three kilometers, and the shells were so powerful that the Dutch were terrified. Fortunately, there were not many such heavy guns in the Ming army's batteries, and the interval between firing was very long, and there were not many shells in an hour.

"We can't fight like this anymore! The enemy has long-range high-precision artillery! We must get close and bombard the enemy's batteries! De Knight suggested.

As long as the Dutch fleet approached, the Ming army's extremely accurate super heavy artillery could not sink a few Dutch ships because of its small number and slow rate of fire. And the Dutch fleet, with thousands of cannons, was able to destroy the Ming battery's batteries at close range.

According to de Knight's own thoughts, he believed that the Ming army's heavy artillery was so accurate because the shells were particularly heavy, and the weight of the shells was large, so it was not easy to deviate from the direction after being shot, and the accuracy was also high. But the shells are heavier, and the reloading speed is definitely slower.

But Trop didn't agree, but let the fleet retreat: "The Ming people must have more than these super cannons, they must have more ordinary cannons!" If our fleet approaches, I'm afraid it will fall within the range of the ordinary guns of the Ming people! Bombarding the fleet with the artillery battery is obviously a matter of great loss. ”

"What about the boat we landed?" De Knight asked.

"Let them test the firepower of the Ming people's short-range artillery! No, send the flag again and ask them to come back! Trop replied calmly.

Trop was right, the Ming army did have a lot of ordinary smoothbore guns, more than 200, and 60 of them were 32-pounder cannons. The number of ordinary smoothbore guns, which were much cheaper, was not high, but as soon as the Dutch fleet approached, a large number of smoothbore guns would bombard the Dutch fleet at close range, and the Dutch would suffer a big loss at that time.

The Dutch infantry approached the beach in small boats, and sure enough, before the Dutch had even landed on the shore, a large number of smoothbore guns on the shore batteries erupted in flames.

The shells continued to fall in the sea, raising columns of water that soared into the sky. Smoothbore guns fired at small boats at close range, and the accuracy was not too bad. Although it was loaded with ordinary solid shells, bombarding a boat could sink one with a single shot. The boat hit by the shell immediately flew sawdust, blood splattered on board, a large number of Dutch soldiers fell screaming, and the boat sank into the water.

"Retreat!" The Dutch fleet gave off a fireworks signal representing a retreat.

When the Dutch infantry saw the fireworks signal, they immediately rowed their boats to evacuate the coastline, avoiding the range of Ming artillery.

"It seems that it is impossible for us to land from the front, but the island of Singapore is so large, and it is impossible for the fortresses and forts of the Ming people to cover the entire island. We can land in a roundabout way from somewhere else. As long as they went ashore and attacked from behind, the Ming people's batteries would be useless. De Knight suggested.

"It's a good idea, they can't do it all. Only one thing, our men went ashore, and if we wanted to take the fort, I was afraid that they would be stopped by the castle. Trop Road.

De Knight pointed to the Singapore port area in front of him and said, "Dear old general, I have just observed the defense situation of the Ming people here, and several of their castles are arched guard forts, and the forts are protective shipyards and docks. However, there is no fort to protect the city, and there is no castle to defend it. As long as our men land and avoid their batteries and castle fire, they can completely fight into the city! As long as our people enter the city, their long-range artillery will not be able to fire at their own city, right? If we occupy the city, we will be able to force the fleet of the Ming people to find us for a decisive battle! ”

Trop nodded and said, "This method sounds good, but what about the army situation of the Ming people?" How many mobile units do they have on the shore? Our infantry went ashore, will they be attacked by their land? ”

"As for this, rest assured, the army of the Ming people is fighting against the Qing State. According to the information we received from the Qing people, the army of the Ming people was only seventy or eighty thousand, and of them 20,000 were protecting their emperor; There are also 10,000 people in Annam. The remaining 40,000 or 50,000 people were their main force, and they were fighting fiercely with the main force of the Qing State. De Knight replied.

"In that case, in the Nanyang area, there are not many army forces of the Ming people?" Trop asked.

"It is estimated that in the entire Nanyang, the Ming people do not have a formal army, they only have the navy and the Nanyang Company escort. The Nanyang Company's escort force numbered only seven or eight thousand people, and they had to protect at least four or five ports. No matter how strong they are in Singapore, it would be nice to have 4,000 company escorts! Can their company escort beat our army? With just five thousand regular infantry, we can easily defeat their convoy! De Knight laughs.

De Knight is worthy of a generation of famous generals, in real history, the second Anglo-Dutch war, he led the Dutch fleet to attack the British navy, but also burned London, captured the British second-class battleship.

Finding weaknesses to attack is what de Knight does best.

De Knight was keenly aware that Singapore's defenses seemed impregnable, but there were many blind spots, and the Dutch could infiltrate the city and cause trouble.

As long as the city was taken, the connection between the castle and the castle of the Ming army, and between the forts and the forts, was cut off by the Dutch army. And if the Ming army wants to get supplies from the outside world, it needs to get it from the sea. However, the sea was controlled by the Dutch fleet. The only way for the Ming army to break this stalemate was to send their own fleet to a decisive battle at sea with the Dutch.

Once the tactics of a roundabout attack had been devout, the Dutch army began to land northeast of Singapore.

This was originally a narrow strait, the water of the strait was not deep, and the Ming army also arranged barrages and hidden piles in it, and the large warships of the Dutch could not enter, so at the entrance of this strait, the Ming army did not have heavy batteries, only a few small batteries for simple defense.

The Dutch fleet took advantage of the proximity of the coastline at night to send small boats into the strait. (To be continued.) )