After eliminating their respective opponents, the Amsterdam and the Scharnhorst finally got together! Rear Admiral Spee, who had just been excited about sinking an enemy ship of about the same tonnage as himself, did not hesitate to command the Scharnhorst to fill the vacancy caused by the sinking of the Taipei, and pinched the most powerful warship in the Russian and Dutch navies! I have to say that Rear Admiral Spee at this time was a little hot-headed, although the Scharnhorst was powerful, and even hung the name of a pocket battle cruiser, but it was also a fast capital ship, and the gap between Scharnhorst and Amsterdam was still obvious.

Aside from the two less guns than the other party, the gap in protection is even greater, the 11-inch main assembly is 8 inches, the former is almost immune to the German 11-inch 45L main gun, and the latter can withstand the 262KG heavy bomb with an initial velocity of up to 850 meters at the middle distance! Overall, the Amsterdam's firepower with high-speed neutralization and high-velocity electric turret is not weaker than that of the Longxu battlecruiser, and stronger than the Ninghai-class quasi-dreadnought and the Scharnhorst!

At this time, under the command of Cheng Biguang, 3 Ninghai-class battleships and 3 fast battleships of the Russian and Dutch navies were firing fiercely. And there is no advantage in protecting the two Peter the Great-class fast battleships! In addition, the quality of the officers and men of the Chinese Navy is generally higher, so the two warships directly under Essen are extremely entangled!

Although the rate of fire of the Ninghai and Jinghai was slow, the accurate shooting grasped the initiative on the battlefield from the beginning, and the two battleships widened the distance between them and the opponent as much as possible. At a distance of 8 to 9 kilometers, the two Russian capital ships had only 12 main guns, and the hit rate was low. In addition, Cheng Biguang has enough confidence in the defense of the Ninghai. Therefore, Cheng Biguang gave up a simple one-on-one battle, but after breaking the balance, when one of the opponent's battleships avoided or the firepower was weakened, he concentrated his firepower to attack another battleship, and the salvos of Pinghai and Jinghai from time to time brought considerable pressure to the two Peter the Great-class battleships!

Five minutes after the start of the engagement, the Jinghai, which was in second place, was the first to give its opponent a heavy blow! A 12-inch shell landed accurately on the top of the Catherine's B turret, although it was said that the shell could not penetrate the turret's horizontal armor. But sadly, the Russians believed too much in the effect of hardened armor, so the armor on the top of the turret was also hardened armor. Instead of highly elastic homogeneous steel armor. IN ADDITION, THE THICKNESS OF THIS HORIZONTAL ARMOR IS NOT HIGH, ONLY 75MM THICK. However, the thickness of the hardened layer was sufficient, so the shell did not bounce off after hitting the turret horizontal armor, but hit the horizontal armor with sufficient hardness but insufficient toughness. A huge shock was transmitted to the lower part of the armor. This resulted in a large number of backplate and steel plate cracking! Although it was not possible to send shells into the turret. But the resulting debris still swept the entire gun crew indiscriminately!

"Suddenly I heard a dull crash, followed by a shrill tearing sound that resounded throughout the turret, which drowned out all the sounds, and the whole turret echoed with this heart-wrenching sound. Then splinters rained down from the top of the gun on the left, destroying everything they could touch, the electric lights for lighting, the hydraulic and reset equipment to control the pitch of the gun, and a living life! I subconsciously leaned towards the side of the main gun. The sound of shards pounding on the steel and the screams of their comrades were heard. It's like a shrapnel suddenly exploding above our heads, and we're defenseless and stuck in a cramped turret. I was lucky, but I was hit by a few rounds of shrapnel in the leg, and my artillery crew lost at least 70% of its personnel in this hit! Afterwards, the soldier said with trepidation.

The shells did not penetrate the turret, so from the outside, there was nothing wrong with the top of this turret except for a pit, although it had been killed in pieces, but at the beginning the Russians did not find that the turret had lost its effect, the servo of one of the guns was seriously damaged, while the other gun was basically fine, of course, the two gun crews inside were almost all buried! The first thing that found out that the Catherine was strange was actually the Jinghai that was fighting with it, and the Jinghai suddenly found that the three-headed dog that breathed fire on the opposite side suddenly became a two-headed dog!

Later, the Russians also found that the firepower seemed to be weakened, and the telephone inside the ship could not be reached, so they sent someone to check in desperation, only to find that the Russian gun crew in the B turret had been damaged, so they hurried to repair the damaged equipment while letting the spare gun crew enter the battle position. And just as the Russians were busy, another 12-inch shell hit the front of the C turret, which landed on the floor of the infirmary behind the deck of the big ship! The violent explosion instantly shredded the entire cabin, and the sheets, alcohol, bandages and other items inside were ignited, billowing black smoke gushed out from the large hole in the deck, and the third turret of the Catherine was instantly covered by thick smoke.

And that's not all, the fire spread along the corridor to other places, and even threatened the adjacent power supply room! Although the damage caused by these two shells is not irreparable, the damage caused by them will inevitably lead to serious consequences if they are not dealt with immediately, so the Catherine quickly signaled to Essen, asking if she could temporarily withdraw from the battle column to save herself, and Essen looked at the Ekaterina with thick smoke and called it a tangle. The Catherine now needs to save itself, but what if it's gone, what if it's left alone? One-on-two? It's obviously unrealistic. So Essen took a compromise, which was to stay in the battle line, but arrange for auxiliary warships to release smoke to cover the Catherine.

Several lightning strike ships carrying smoke canisters sailed towards the Catherine and pulled out a cigarette belt to provide cover for the damaged battleship. Look at the battleship looming behind the smoke. Cheng Biguang decisively gave up the attack on the Catherine, and immediately concentrated his firepower on Essen's flagship! A salvo of 12 12-inch large-caliber guns spewed tongues of fire at Peter the Great. The Russian battleships, which still had the upper hand in a dozen and one, could not fight at all in the case of two against one, and the dense barrage of two battleships alternately enveloped Peter the Great, and violent explosions sounded from this cutting-edge battleship from time to time!

Peter the Great is one of Russia's newest warships. The heavy 10-inch armor stubbornly resisted the blows of the 12-inch guns like a battering ram from 7,000 meters away! THE 380+ KG SHELL REPEATEDLY HIT THE SLENDER HULL OF THE PETER THE GREAT, ACCOMPANIED BY A PIERCING CRASH, A 12-INCH SHELL HIT THE FRONT OF THE PETER THE GREAT SERVO ALMOST AGAINST THE WATER, THIS SHELL KNOCKED ON THE JUNCTION OF THE MAIN ARMOR BELT AND THE TAIL ARMOR, THE MAIN ARMOR BOX WAS INTACT, BUT THE TAIL ARMOR BELT WAS TORN IN A LARGE PIECE, AND WHAT WAS EVEN MORE TRAGIC. The fragments after the explosion of this shell directly penetrated the empty mine protection compartment under the waterline of the hull, causing two separate silos to enter the water! Caused the battleship to have a tail roll.

Later, several shells from the Jinghai hit the rear of the hull, and the entire rear of the hull was taken care of by various caliber shells on the fighting side. The tail armor, which was not thick in the first place, was knocked to pieces, large pieces of armor peeled off from the hull, and even some of the main gun shells pierced through the dome armor and exploded near the transmission shaft and the steering gear! These repeated blows increased the draft of Peter the Great by at least 1.5 meters!

Just when the Pinghai and Jinghai were beating the Russian fleet. The two seven-level fast battleships are also repeating what the Pinghai and Jinghai have done. It has to be said that the Netherlands, the former maritime power, still has a very strong vitality, unlike the Russian navy, which has already lost serious blood twice. Although the Dutch navy has not experienced actual combat, because there are no losses, the professional quality of middle and low-ranking officers is still very high, although the Russians have fought battles, but most of the experienced ones have died on the battlefield. So in this naval battle, the level of performance of the Dutch at the tactical level is indeed relatively high.

Of course. Another reason is that the two seventh-level fast battleships are obviously stronger than the combination of one Ninghai and one Shannhorst! After the last naval battle, the Dutch found themselves in the face of an attack by an enemy ship with 8 12-inch guns. The seven provinces can support for a long time, and this time the opponent only has 6 12-inch guns and 6 11-inch guns, and the main armor up to 11 inches thick can completely resist the opponent's direct fire.

In the face of this situation, the Ninghai could say that it would be able to support it for a while and a half, and the Scharnhorst, which had just killed the Quartet, couldn't stand it in the first place. At a distance of 5,000 meters, a 262KG shell finally pierced through the 8-inch main equipment of the Scharnhorst. It then shot straight into the lower deck and exploded above the dome, creating a hurricane that swept through the flue and the adjacent power distribution room close to the explosion point, and the German naval officers and men in the vicinity were directly beaten into a puddle of shredded meat by the dense shrapnel and flames before they could react. A fire of modest scale was caused in the amidships of the hull.

At first, the German officers and soldiers quickly rallied to the fire point under the command of the officer to prepare to extinguish the fire, but then the dense 6-inch high-explosive and shrapnel turned any place that was not protected by armor into hell. "Walking in the dim corridor, I don't know when a cannonball from the side wall fell on you, accompanied by a loud bang and a huge fireball, the companion who was alive just now turned into ashes, only a few blackened hard hats or something else proved that these people still existed!" This is how a German second lieutenant described the aftermath of the war.

But at this moment, neither Liu Guanxiong nor Rear Admiral Spey has a trace of fear and avoidance, their own safety and the entire fleet and even the entire battle situation seem to be insignificant, under the command of Rear Admiral Spee, the Scharnhorst avoided counterattacks in the smoke screen and bullet rain, dexterously and the powerful Amsterdam fast battleship maneuvered, and as far as possible to play the advantage of fire control to counterattack, although the situation is ugly, but thanks to the thick dome armor, this last German armored cruiser will not collapse immediately!

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