My Italian: Chapter 637 Sea Battle of Sirte Desperate Play

The latest website: The battle cruisers of the two sides directly decided the result, but the battleship battle on the other side was still inextricably tied.

The collision of steel behemoths and the roar of giant cannons, if viewed from the perspective of a bystander, this is definitely a man's romance. But from the perspective of the officers and soldiers involved in the war, then this is a life-and-death battle.

Since the Montagu was sunk, the two sides have continued to win. On the side of the Mediterranean Fleet, the St. Vincent, the Neptune, the Vanguard and the Centurion were damaged, and the other warships were wounded. It was quite tragic.

Of course, the Mediterranean Fleet is so miserable, and the United Fleet is not doing well. The Istvan and the Intrepid of the United Fleet were severely damaged, the Dante was damaged, and other ships were also more or less injured.

Isn't it amazing that until now, except for the unlucky Montague, there has not been a sunk battleship among the two battleships.

Compared with the battle between the battle cruisers next door, isn't it too friendly?

The truth is that this is not the case. In order to sink the warship of the other side, no one has been lenient. However, the battleship is different from the crispy battlecruiser, its thick armor is not so easy to penetrate.

Today's battleships have thousands of tons of armor, most of which are concentrated above the waterline. Although the current battleships are more than ten meters high, the exposed parts above the waterline are generally three or four meters, and they are basically covered with thick armor. armor.

Not to mention that in recent years, in order to enhance the defense of battleships, various concepts such as core cabin protection and composite armor have emerged one after another. Of course, there are also developments brought about by armor steel technology, making battleships thicker and thicker.

This is also one of the reasons why the displacement of battleships is getting bigger and bigger. Of course, in addition to armor, new technologies have also made the firepower and speed of battleships sufficiently improved. This has also led to the rapid increase of battleships from more than 10,000 tons over ten years The reason for the current more than 30,000 tons.

Among these new technologies, if you want to find a technology that is not developing fast enough, then armor-piercing projectiles are definitely one of them.

That's right, armor-piercing bullets. As a way to deal with artillery shells equipped with thick armor, armor-piercing projectiles have been born for a relatively short time. The concept of armor-piercing projectiles has only appeared since the appearance of ironclad ships in the 1960s.

Moreover, the early armor-piercing projectiles were only designed with sharp shells, and their armor-piercing effects were not ideal. Of course, the navies of various countries did not give up because of this, because there are more and more warships equipped with thick armor, and they are getting thicker, which makes the development of armor-piercing projectiles equally rapid. The pointed bullets became harder and sharper.

Of course, it is too difficult to think of a way on the shells. Because the armor will become thicker and stronger. Therefore, since the 1980s, people have also shared the attention of armor-piercing with propellants and artillery. In terms of propellant, the appearance of solid homogeneous particle propellant gives the shell a greater thrust. The development of smelting technology has made the barrel longer and bigger, which also allows the shells to obtain greater kinetic energy.

Although this technology has improved the armor-piercing ability of shells even more, the so-called Tao is one foot tall and the devil is one foot high, and the development of armor has become faster. With the emergence and maturity of the surface carburizing and hardening process, high-quality armor steels such as Harvey steel and Krupp steel have appeared one after another. And compared to the armor-piercing of shells, the armor has a greater advantage, that is, it is directly thickened.

At the same time, in order to prevent the increasingly expensive precious warships from being sunk, various protection concepts have emerged in an endless stream, such as key protection, armored boxes, and so on. Therefore, these comprehensive factors lead to the fact that it is easy to injure a warship now, but it is difficult to sink it.

Although the Italian Navy has currently used capped armor-piercing projectiles, its armor-piercing effect in actual combat is not particularly good due to the immature craftsmanship and technology. As for the British Navy, it is just an armor-piercing projectile with an extended warhead, and the armor-piercing effect is even more unbearable. (It is worth mentioning that the great development of armor was at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and the armor-piercing projectile was after the end of World War I. Of course, after this, the development of technology allowed the armor-piercing projectile to gradually surpass the armor until the emergence of missiles)

Therefore, the performance of the two navies in the naval battle is that the warships of both sides are heavily scarred, but they are still a little short of a fatal blow. After all, it is not easy at all to give the enemy a fatal blow by chance.

Of course, if the enemy does not have a reinforcement fleet, then the United Fleet will not be in a hurry, and they can deal with this situation slowly. Isn't it just that it can't be sunk for a long time? It doesn't matter if the damage has accumulated to a certain extent, it will definitely sink the opponent. This is just a matter of water grinding.

Unfortunately, they don't have enough time. Even so, Lefer, who is the commander of the joint fleet, is still unusually calm. How could it be possible to say that as the commander of the fleet, he was not in a hurry. But he didn't show this. Even though the communications staff kept reporting to him the approaching position of the British and French reinforcement fleet, he still kept his eyes on the battle situation at sea, because a plan was taking shape in his mind.

"Report, the airship has sent a telegram, the enemy reinforcement fleet is still forty-eight nautical miles away from us."

"Understood, let's go down."

At this moment, Leifer suddenly said, "It's almost there."

The staff officer was not given time to react, and he ordered immediately. "Now I order, the lightning strike formation is now attacking, targeting the enemy battleship formation. The cruise formation follows the lightning strike formation and attacks to block the enemy's interception formation. In addition, except for the Dante, other battleships follow the flagship to close the distance from the enemy ship , the target distance is seven kilometers."

Lefer's words caused a brief silence in the commander tower of the Cavour, and everyone looked at their commander in surprise.

Because this order means that the fleet will fight for life, which is not a good choice. If it is said that at a distance of 10,000 meters, the safety of the core cabin can be guaranteed in a battleship duel, then a distance of 7,000 meters will become very dangerous. Because this will increase the penetration of shells from both sides. In addition, the hit rate will also increase from the current 2-3% to more than 5%.

What is this if it's not fighting for your life?

Facing the sudden silence of the command tower, Lefer did not explain too much, but looked at the communications staff seriously and said. "Aren't my orders unclear?"

The communications staff officer who was taken aback hurriedly replied, "Follow your orders, Commander, I will deliver the order right away."

After the communications staff left, Lefer glanced at the people present and said a word. "We're running out of time."

Yes, they had little time left as the enemy reinforcement fleet was approaching.

Although this is a desperate style of play, Leifer doesn't really only know how to play desperately. He has already counted everything.

At this time, the artillery battle between the two sides has been going on for two hours. Although the other party has not been sunk, three of the enemy's ten battleships have been reduced (one sank and two were destroyed, and the damaged St. Vincent and Neptune have withdrawn from the battlefield. The same is true for the battleships that were destroyed by the United Fleet), and the number of enemy and enemy battleships has reached a ratio of 7:9.

In addition, in the two hours of artillery battle, all the ships were damaged, especially the battleship lacked adequate protection for the secondary guns, which caused a lot of damage.

On the side of the United Fleet alone~www.mtlnovel.com~, the losses of the secondary artillery of each ship generally reached half. I believe that the combined fleet with more elite officers and soldiers will definitely cause greater secondary artillery losses to the enemy.

Moreover, the Mediterranean Fleet launched a torpedo attack before, and its loss of small and medium warships was not small. According to the report of the airship, the small and medium-sized warships of the Mediterranean Fleet on the battlefield can only have half of the combined fleet.

There is no reason for Lefer not to fight a short and fast close-range combat. He has a huge advantage in the number of small and medium warships.

Leifer's order was quickly implemented, and groups of lightning strike formations with torpedo boats and destroyers as the main force launched lightning strike tactics to the distant Mediterranean Fleet under the cover of the cruiser formation. And what's more ruthless is that the battleship that had been keeping a distance before also began to accelerate towards it.

Next, let's see how Admiral Cardon will deal with the desperate play of the United Fleet.

Make up for yesterday's chapter, and there will be more tonight.

(end of this chapter)