So both sides sent their gunboat formations into the Bay of Biscay. And to the surprise of both sides, the two fleets entered relatively close together. The Kutch fleet went first, and then Rear Admiral Paro's fleet. If they sail according to their predetermined track, it won't be long before they run into it.

"The firepower of our capital ships is strong enough, even if all three cruisers of the opposing side come, they are not our opponents, but we do not have enough destroyers, and the gap in torpedo weapons is even greater. OUR ORIGINAL PLAN WAS TO ENGAGE THE OTHER SIDE BY CARRIER-BASED AIRCRAFT, SO THEY WERE ALL PROJECT 1930 AIR DEFENSE DESTROYERS, AND THE TORPEDO ARMAMENT WAS ONLY ONE 5-PACK 533MM TORPEDO TUBE. This is very detrimental to the possibility of a night battle. Standing on the bridge of the battleship King, Rear Admiral Paro whispered to the staff officer next to him.

In addition to complaints about the performance of the battleships, Rear Admiral Paro believed that the number of destroyers given to him was somewhat less. Originally, he planned to ask for six, but Count Luknall considered that there might be submarines in the nearby waters, so he forcibly seized two destroyers from Rear Admiral Parro. This made Major General Paro very dissatisfied.

"Your Excellency, if we are going to engage in a night battle with the other side, who will be in charge of the lighting? Destroyer or King? The officer on the side asked in a low voice. According to the German Navy's previous combat principles, it should be a destroyer or a light cruiser to turn on the searchlight, don't look at the Germans are also equipped with radar, but they can only undertake a certain range of search tasks, the detection distance is closer than that of the British cargo, and the detection error is relatively large, whether it is a distance error or an angle error, it is very unsatisfactory, not to mention guiding the artillery to attack. So in the course of the artillery battle, there was no big difference between the artillery battle between the two sides and the 1st battle. It is more reliable to use searchlights and flares.

"The King provides the light source." After a moment of contemplation, Major General Paro gave an order that would be controversial in later generations. And it is precisely because of this order that a series of things have happened. However, when Rear Admiral Parro was questioned by the Admiralty later, his idea was not wrong, first of all, his destroyers were relatively small and fragile, and could easily be destroyed in battle. Secondly, the hardware performance of the King far exceeds that of the heavy cruisers of the Iranian fleet. According to the situation of the night battles between the two sides in the Italian War, even at close range, the 10-inch guns of the heavy cruisers could not do anything to the battleship. So Rear Admiral Paro let the battleship be MT. The idea of attracting the other side's firepower is really feasible. But what about it.

At the same time, the Kutch fleet, 25 nautical miles away from the German fleet, was also considering a possible night battle. Although Su Mo and the others did not know the specific composition of the German fleet, they knew that there must be battleships that could be called in the Mediterranean, and the German fleet would definitely bring battleships if it was dispatched, and if the other side wanted to meet this transport fleet. Then eighty percent will also send at least one battleship to suppress the formation. Even though these old battleships are outdated, they are still a tiger! His cruiser is at most a leopard, and it runs fast enough, but its ability to fight hard is too poor! However, Kutch's fleet was armed with a secret weapon, a torpedo that was very large in size and weight. It is said to be able to travel nearly 45 yards at speeds of more than 18,000 knots. And the charge is huge. According to the Huaxia officers, in the case of a night engagement, the lethality of these torpedoes was not inferior to the large-caliber naval guns of the battleships! And Kutch is still skeptical of this kind of thing.

Kutch's suspicions were justified, because as a cruiser commander, he had a very deep knowledge of the torpedo performance of his own country. He was well aware of the performance of several important torpedoes. FOR EXAMPLE, THE MMIX 21-INCH (533MM) TORPEDO USED IN BRITISH CRUISERS TODAY. ITS WEIGHT IS 1693 KG, AND THE WARHEAD IS FILLED WITH 330 KG OF TNT EXPLOSIVES. This torpedo has two modes, high-speed mode, which allows the torpedo to shoot 11,000 yards at 41 knots, or 15,000 yards at 35 knots. This torpedo is already quite good in the United States, Britain, France and other countries, both in terms of warhead weight, speed and range. HOWEVER, THE COMMANDER OF THE HUAXIA DESTROYER SAID THAT THEIR TORPEDOES COULD SHOOT 49 YARDS AT 18,000 KNOTS, ALTHOUGH THEIR TORPEDOES WERE LARGER IN CALIBER AND 24 INCHES (610 MM). But Kutch knew that the performance of a torpedo could not be improved by simply increasing its size.

Historically, with the exception of Japan, the torpedo fell into a difficult situation after it was developed to the time of the Navy Holiday. Whatever approach you take. The range and speed of the torpedo have not been greatly improved, and one of the most important problems is the power of the torpedo, the principle of the torpedo engine at that time was such that the compressed air in the compressed air chamber and the kerosene in the fuel chamber were injected into the combustion chamber together. It is then fully mixed and ignited to produce a high-temperature and high-pressure gas to propel the relevant machine to work. The temperature of this gas will reach about 1200 degrees Celsius before entering the engine room, so it needs to be cooled by seawater to reduce it to about 900 degrees Celsius before entering the main engine.

It is different from ordinary heat engines. Whether it is a tank or an aircraft engine, the oxidizer for their workmanship is obtained from the air. As long as the engine power is large enough and the air entering is enough for the machinery itself to withstand such energy, then the power can be increased. Even if there is sometimes a situation where the air intake is insufficient, it can also be solved by mechanical pressurization. But torpedoes are different, torpedoes are in water, and all oxidizers need to be carried by the torpedo. Torpedoes cannot obtain oxygen from the outside world, so this limits the power increase of the torpedo engine, and generally the heat engine only needs to prepare fuel, while the torpedo needs to prepare both fuel and oxidizer.

In order to improve the performance of the torpedo engine, under the condition of a certain mechanical level, the final focus is nothing more than two points, one is how to improve the performance of the fuel, and the other is how to improve the performance of the oxidizer, the former has little potential for improvement, because everyone used kerosene at that time. While the recipes may vary, the differences are not too large. As for the latter, it seems that there is less room for improvement, because no matter which one uses compressed air. The ratio of nitrogen to oxygen is 4 to 1.

Historically, the first to come up with the idea of oxidant improvement was the French, who were good at divergence. They think that since only oxygen in the compressed air is involved in the work of the torpedo, and the latter only accounts for about 20%, then why can't we replace all the compressed air with oxygen? The oxidant that used to be able to fit in 5 volumes can now be loaded in 1 volume. And it is more violent when pure oxygen is burned. In this way, the torpedo can be loaded with more fuel and warhead in the same volume. There will definitely be a qualitative improvement in torpedo performance. And there is an added benefit of using oxygen, which is that there will be almost no wake after the torpedo is fired. This is due to the fact that nitrogen in the air that cannot participate in the reaction is expelled and is difficult to dissolve in water. When oxygen and fuel are fully combusted, carbon dioxide is produced, a gas that dissolves easily in water and therefore does not produce wake. And historically, when this principle was proposed. The world's torpedo experts went crazy and began to develop this torpedo one after another.

And the end result? It can be described as the ideal is very plump and the reality is very skinny. One of the most important reasons why the great powers have fallen apart is that oxygen is too lively. Pure oxygen needs to be placed well, and when pure oxygen is burned, it is easy to convert the combustion in the direction of the explosion. This problem has never been resolved. And in the end, to the surprise of the West, the Japanese finally solved this big problem. As a traverser, especially a naval traverser, Xu Jie is quite clear about the principle of solving this problem.

First of all. Oxy-fuel combustion can be very violent, which poses a huge threat to the mine body and engine. But this problem is not unsolvable, and historically the Japanese have come up with two ways to solve the problem, first of all, in the starting stage after the launch of the torpedo, the oxidizer added to the torpedo combustion chamber is not pure oxygen but air, (there is an additional compressed air tank) so that the atomized kerosene and air react to generate power. Pure oxygen is then slowly added, and finally converted into pure oxygen combustion. At the same time, in order to reduce the temperature of the torpedo combustion chamber and engine, a large amount of cooling water is required, which is generally about 3.5 times that of a normal torpedo. This weight was too great and beyond what the torpedo could tolerate. So, the Japanese abandoned the layout of using cooling fresh water inside the torpedo, and instead installed a water pump that pumped cooling water directly from seawater. Of course, if you do so, you can lead to a potential threat. The salts in the seawater can crystallize, and there is a risk that the pump will be blocked, but it was later found that this situation is not fatal in the high temperature of 1200 degrees Celsius, so the results may have an impact in time. But in practice it does not hinder its use, and in this way, the oxygen torpedo theoretically solves the difficulties of pure oxygen combustion.

IN THE END, THE JAPANESE FINALLY CREATED A SUPER KILLER CALLED THE TYPE 93 610MM TORPEDO, AND THERE ARE TWO MAIN TYPES OF THIS TORPEDO IN MASS PRODUCTION. One is a Type 93-1 torpedo with a total length of 9 meters. WEIGHT 2700KG. 480KG of explosives were loaded in the thunder head. It has three sailing modes, which are 20 km at 50 knots, 32 km at 42 knots, and 40 km at 36 knots. The other is the Type 93-3 torpedo, which is also 9 meters long. BUT THE WEIGHT IS 2800KG. THE TOTAL WEIGHT OF THE EXPLOSIVES IN THE WARHEAD REACHED A TERRIFYING 780KG! There are also three modes of sailing, but due to the increase in the weight of the warhead, the corresponding range is reduced to 15 km, 25 km and 30 km, respectively. But even so, the range and speed performance of this torpedo is still far superior to similar weapons, not to mention this warhead with a charge of 780KG!

In the Japanese Navy's 1936 combat plan, the night lightning strike operation will be composed of the Navy's 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 8th teams, and the 2nd and 4th mine teams and the heavy lightning strike team. Among them, the 3rd Sentai is 4 improved Kongo-class battleships, the 4th Sentai is 4 Kaohsiung-class cruisers, the 5th Sentai is 4 Myo-class heavy cruisers, the 7th Sentai is 4 top-class cruisers, and the 8th Sentai is 2 Tone-class cruisers. The 2nd and 4th mine crews consisted of 32 destroyers under the leadership of 2 light cruisers.

The so-called heavy lightning strike team is composed of Kitakami and Ojing. Among them, the Oi can definitely be called the strongest lightning ship in history, this guy has installed as many as 10 4-pack Type 93 torpedo launchers on the ship, 5 on each side, and a salvo can shoot up to 20 93 torpedoes, this firepower can be called unprecedented! And the destroyers that make up the mine warfare team are equally powerful. There are usually 2 4-pack torpedo tubes, and cruisers also have 12 to 16 torpedo tubes, and if these fleets can fire a salvo, the scene of firing hundreds of ultra-long-range torpedoes at sea at the same time must be spectacular!

Of course, although this setting is very good, in fact, as a torpedo, although it has a strong theoretical range and is very fast, but historically, the effective range of this torpedo can reach 10,000 meters. So from this point of view, the Type 93-3 torpedo is more practical than the Type 93-1 torpedo, after all, the weight of the warhead is there. AS A TORPEDO CARRIER, IT IS GENERALLY GOOD FOR A DESTROYER TO BE EQUIPPED WITH 2 SEATS 4 UNITS WITH 610MM TORPEDOES. After all, the combat weight of a Type 92 4-pack torpedo in history is as high as 27 tons! Therefore, the lightning destroyers that Huaxia attached to this fleet were also 8 rounds of 4 torpedoes plus a reloading equipment. The number of torpedoes fired in one salvo by the entire fleet can reach 32 rounds! (Two of the destroyers had only 4 torpedo tubes.) ）

A lightning strike of this magnitude will not have much effect in good visibility, but it is possible that the two sides will be close to within 10 kilometers at night or in low visibility. At this time, once you can seize the opportunity, it is still possible to be small and big. Especially if neither side's radars are able to effectively control fire. In addition, the weather is not good, the seaplane cannot be retracted, and the situation of flying up and throwing flares can also be ignored. Therefore, if the two sides meet, the distance of the night battle is within 10KM, which is an opportunity that must be seized! Therefore, the Chinese officers who commanded the destroyer fleet hoped that Colonel Kuch would adopt his plan for a night lightning strike.

Thanks to the book friends zhouyu1976 and hukaikaka for their tips~~~, as well as the book friends heart dance flying 826, orphen, and alex-hu for their monthly pass support ~~~~. (To be continued.) )