The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 919 The East Wind Arrives, Bullets Rain Down, Iron Ships Shatter

Boom! Boom boom boom——!!!
The roar of the eight main guns shattered the silence of the night. Muzzle flashes, like the gates of hell, burst open at the bow and stern turrets of the "Sea Dragon II" battleship, illuminating the rolling waves and steel deck with intense orange-red flames. The massive muzzle storms whipped up violent gusts of air, carrying scorching smoke and seawater, which pounded against the superstructure. Hot shell casings, trailing white smoke, clanged and clattered as they exited the breech and fell into the water-cooled jackets, hissing with steam.

Eight crimson meteors ripped through the night sky, whistling as they hurtled towards the Trafalgar, 5500 meters away. Their trajectories drew brief, dazzling arcs across the night sky—a harbinger of death.

"Bullet observation!" On the artillery observation post in the command tower, the gunner of the "Jiangsu" stared intently through the binoculars, his fingers gripping the stopwatch tightly.

boom! boom! boom! boom!
Four massive water columns exploded around the USS Trafalgar—less than 200 meters to the port fore-southeast of the bow, more than 200 meters to the starboard rear of the stern, and 300 meters to the port and starboard sides, respectively, creating towering water curtains.

"Cut! We cut in half in the first half salvo!" The gunner's voice trembled with excitement.

This means that the next round, or the round after that, will most likely be a cross shot, and then—an effective shot!

At that moment, Zhang Baocai, the admiral of the entire Pacific Fleet, secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

Inside the command tower of the flagship USS Trafalgar, the piercing alarms, the panicked and chaotic reports from various ships over the loudspeakers, and the whistling of shells piercing the air mingled together, almost rendering Vice Admiral George Trein and Rear Admiral Arthur Bathurst incapable of thinking.

"Evade! Emergency evasion! Hard to port!" When Vice Admiral Trein saw a flash of gunfire five or six kilometers away, fear instantly filled his mind. He even forgot the Royal Navy's command order, bypassed the captain of the Trafalgar, and shouted at the top of his lungs to give the helmsman of the 13500-ton battleship a command, trying to get the cumbersome battleship to turn and evade quickly.

Captain Edward Fitzroy Hornby, captain of HMS Trafalgar and a member of a prominent British naval family, couldn't help but curse inwardly at his superior's performance—this was utter nonsense! The enemy had only launched their first attack, and he was already busy dodging, swaying back and forth like that. How were the Trafalgar's gunnery crew supposed to find the range or calculate the trajectory?

"Observe the impact!"

Rear Admiral Bathurst's voice, distorted with fear, suddenly yanked Colonel Hornby out of his reverie. Before Rear Admiral Bathurst could finish speaking, a massive column of water shot into the sky less than two hundred meters to the left of the Trafalgar's bow, followed immediately by an even larger column more than two hundred meters to the right of the stern! Then, a third and a fourth column of water rose in succession, two to three hundred meters to the left and right of the Trafalgar!

"A crossfire! My God, a crossfire!" an observer screamed in despair. Just the first half-salvo! It was incredibly accurate; there must be magic!

"Ballistician! Where are our guns? Why aren't we firing back!" Trein roared into the ship's intercom.

"Reporting, General! The rangefinder... the rangefinder cannot lock onto the target! The enemy ship's muzzle flash went out immediately after it went off. We... we cannot detect a stable light source! We can only roughly return fire based on the trajectory!" The gunnery officer of the Trafalgar's voice was filled with helplessness and fear.

Without efficient optical rangefinders and "cat-eye observers" to capture targets in the dark, and without "English town exam-takers rapidly calculating trajectories," the British fleet's proud line gunnery was as clumsy as a blind man in the face of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's "exam-takers" and "cat-eye soldiers"!
"Quickly! Send the signal! Order the 'Indomitable' and 'Revenge' to move closer to me! Form a battle line! Order the 'Rafale-class' to engage those damned armored cruisers at full strength! Don't let them take advantage of the chaos to harvest our auxiliary ships!"

Trying to reorganize the fleet, Trein attempted to do so. However, with no radio communications and the chaos of the sudden battle, light signals were obscured by the thick smoke, and the exchange of orders between ships became slow and rife with misinterpretations.

While the battleship formation was engaged in fierce combat, the armored cruiser squadron led by Luo Xinhua—the "Jinghai," "Donghai," "Nanhai," and "Beihai"—like a group of sharks that had smelled blood, all turned on their high-pressure ventilation, and the steam engines roared deafeningly, suddenly increasing their speed to the limit of over 24 knots!
Taking advantage of the light that illuminated the sea when the "Sea Dragon II" opened fire, they precisely cut into the flank of the chaotic British escort formation and began slaughtering British light ships, supply ships, colliers, and ammunition ships.
"All 150mm secondary guns of the entire formation are to fire freely!" Luo Xinhua calmly ordered.

Bang bang bang——!!!
The secondary guns of the four armored cruisers and the 150mm guns of the three escorting Yiwu-class cruisers opened fire simultaneously. A dense hail of bullets, like scorching steel whips, lashed the British light cruisers and destroyers that were attempting to intercept them. The thin hulls were instantly torn apart, flames shot into the sky, and explosions rang out one after another.

One of the British destroyers attempted to launch a torpedo, but just as the torpedo tube turned, it was hit directly by a precise 150mm shell from the Donghai, causing a secondary explosion that turned it into a huge fireball and sank to the bottom of the sea.

However, the 150mm shells fired by the British light cruisers could not penetrate the steel armor of the "Jinghai-class" at all—it was an armored cruiser with a standard displacement of 12000 tons!

After breaking through the blockade of British light cruisers and destroyers, Luo Xinhua's "armored patrol detachment" arrived at the chaotic British transport ship fleet—all "big meat" (meaning easy targets)!

"Order them to sink them all!" A cold smile crept across Luo Xinhua's lips. Inside the bridge of the gunnery ship "Jiangsu," the young lieutenant loudly gave the order:
"Target A, bearing corrected 0.5 degrees to the right, distance reduced by 200—half salvo! Fire!"

boom! boom! boom! boom!
The four main guns of the "Jiangsu" roared again, and four shells whistled out.

The observer stared intently at the telescope: "200 for close-range shots, 150 for long-range shots! The clamping force is narrowing!"

Four jets of water erupted 180 meters to starboard at the bow and 160 meters to port at the stern of the USS Trafalgar, the impact points tightening diagonally, like a noose around the neck of its prey.

The Trafalgar finally fired its first test shot, but in the chaos, only three main guns fired, and the shells landed haphazardly. The closest shot missed by 800 meters and didn't even touch the wake of the Taiping cruiser.

Inside the gunnery bridge of the "Jiangsu" warship, the young "exam-taking officer," the young gunnery officer Chen Shusheng, picked up the loudspeaker again and roared: "Reducing the distance by another 100, bearing 0.2 to the right—half salvo! Fire!"

boom! boom! boom! boom!
Observer Wang Tiezhu pressed his bloodshot eyes against the eyepiece of the Zeiss telescope, his gaze unwavering. He held a stopwatch in his left hand, while his right hand rapidly recorded the shell's trajectory data. The shell's flight seemed to stretch out, each second feeling like an eternity.

Suddenly, four jets of water exploded around the HMS Trafalgar, this time forming a perfect straddle: the first jet exploded 50 meters to starboard from the bow, creating a water curtain tens of meters high, the shockwave even shattering the anchor chain locker at the bow of the Trafalgar; the second jet grazed the bridge, almost delivering a fatal blow to the officers of the Royal Navy inside! The third and fourth jets exploded simultaneously 100 meters to the left and right of the stern, forming a perfect fork.

"Strapezoidal formation!" Wang Tiezhu's voice trembled with excitement as he grabbed the communicator and roared.

"Immediately switch to effective firing! Repeat, immediately switch to effective firing!" Inside the gunnery bridge, Chen Shusheng picked up the loudspeaker and almost shouted himself hoarse!
The barrels of all eight main cannons rose simultaneously, and the sound of the breechblocks closing was like the whetstone of death.

Boom boom boom boom——! ! !
In the blink of an eye, the Jiangsu's eight 240mm main guns fired four rounds of effective fire, and achieved two hits in the fourth round.

In the fourth round, the impact points of the Jiangsu's 240mm shells tore the sea into three sections: two near-range shells exploded 50 meters from the bow of the Trafalgar, four long-range shells grazed the stern mast, and the remaining two—

Boom! Boom!
Amidst the deafening roar of steel tearing apart, two pillars of fire erupted from the midsection of the USS Trafalgar! The first shell pierced the starboard secondary gun duct, detonating the ammunition magazine, and flames instantly engulfed half of the side; the second shell sheared off the base of the forward funnel, and fragments swept across the bridge, slicing off half of an observer's head!
"Hit! Two hits!" The shouts of the Taiping Army observers mingled with the screams of the British ship's damage control team.

"Fire freely and rapidly! Sink them!"

The orders from the gunnery bridge came simultaneously from the loudspeakers inside all four gun turrets of the "Jiangsu"!

Boom boom boom boom——!
The 16000-ton standard displacement battleship instantly transformed into a volcano spewing flames, engulfing the Trafalgar in a rain of steel every few tens of seconds with a full salvo.

The sixth round of fire crippled the B turret, overturned its base, and twisted the gun barrel as it plunged into the sea!

After the seventh round of fire, the bridge was blown off, and the fire spread to the engine room, causing steam pipes to burst and white smoke to gush out!
The eighth salvo hit the waterline armor directly, seawater rushed in, and the ship began to list.

The Trafalgar's desperate counterattack resulted in only one 254mm shell hitting the midships of the Jiangsu, but it was deflected by the sloped armor, leaving only a charred dent on the steel plate.

After the Jiangsu fired its ninth salvo and hit its target again, Captain Edward FitzRoy Hornby, a naval veteran and captain of the Trafalgar, had to advise Vice Admiral Ryent to change the flagship.

Because he knew that the 13500-ton Trafalgar was about to be destroyed.
But tonight, the disaster for the British Royal Navy has only just begun!
(End of this chapter)