Battle of the Third Reich

Although Thonburi has an advantage in artillery caliber, it does not mean that this shallow water heavy gunship has the capability of long-range artillery warfare. Her 4.5-meter rangefinder is an obsolete product imitated by the British Navy in Japan. It is difficult to track and judge the remote high-speed moving target.

Although the Japanese-made 203-mm main gun has a range of 6 kilometers longer than the French 138-mm gun, under the current combat situation, the Siamese navy can't achieve the performance of this artillery.

Lieutenant Colonel Weifeng'an was full of blind confidence in his warship. In order to cover the lightning strike, the Thonburi carried out two single shellings with the front main gun at a limit distance of 20,000 meters from the enemy.

As a result, the captain was disappointed. The landing point was at least half a kilometer away from the target. Obviously there was a problem with the shooting azimuth in the aiming and ranging.

"The target suddenly accelerated and is recalculating." The gunner explained to the captain with a phone.

"Well, it's a cunning enemy." The captain nodded and accepted.

At this time, the two lightning strike ships have already mentioned the highest speed. Although the speed of this type of lightning strike ship can be as high as 32.5 knots when launching, but after long-term use, the machinery has inevitably experienced wear and tear, although it has been very careful Maintenance, but now the speed can only be maintained at about 30 knots.

For a warship with a full load of 400 tons, this is already a very high speed. In order to avoid the destroyer’s attack, the lightning striker also made two large-angle turns, and the waves splashed by the bow even hit both sides of the bridge. On the deck, the operators standing beside the single-shot torpedo tubes on both sides poured a cool heart from head to toe.

Of course, the French destroyers discovered the operation of the Siamese lightning striker. They did not take the slower [Thunburi] as the number one target from the beginning, and the captain Henry Torr of the [Mogador] was formed in command. Lieutenant Colonel Ti has planned in his heart long ago, and only needs to kill these two nasty lightning strike ships, and the rest is the fat in his mouth.

Their early luck was not good. Before receiving the command telegram, they only encountered a Siamese cargo ship, which was still an offshore freighter of less than 300 tons, which was filled with daily supplies to the island of Kran For the groceries, the French sailor collected a boat and found no valuable cargo. After catching all the crew members to the lifeboat, the merchant ship was sunk with a round of salvo.

Next, like a curse, they made a round of the sea and found no target to attack. They encountered either the Philippines or the Dutch East India ship, which made people feel that all Siamese cargo ships were from The sea disappeared in general.

If the Siamese naval formation was not heard from the headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Totti was considering whether to take a risk and rushed into the Bangkok Bay with his men.

Without the command of the captain, the four turrets of the destroyer have all started shooting at the Siamese lightning strike ship. In this game, they have long been tired of playing with the Italian navy in the Mediterranean Sea. The Italian torpedo boats perform much more cunningly than the two warships in front of them.

The French are very familiar with the performance parameters of Italian equipment. I know that the Italian 533 mm torpedo has a range of up to 12,000 kilometers, but if you want to get a hit rate, you can only use high-speed gear. The range will be shortened to three kilometers.

And this series of lightning strike ships must be close to within a kilometer for volley, before it can pose a little threat to the [Mogador] class above 35 knots.

Siamese lightning strike ships are brave, but they have not experienced a real naval battle and have no experience of using torpedo attacks in actual combat. The two lightning strike ships, following the method taught by the instructors who had been trained from Italy, braved the precise and violent artillery fire of the French destroyer, and firmly attacked the enemy.

[Mogador]’s twin main gun uses the latest automatic loader, because of design flaws, the failure rate has been very high. Historically because of the defeat of France, the French navy stopped improving her tests.

But now that everything has changed, the French navy has obtained sufficient usage data in the Mediterranean operations, replaced this set of bomb mechanisms with more powerful motors, and installed human-assisted equipment inside the turret, which has basically been solved. The problem of reloading that used to be a headache.

At this time, the four electric twin turrets were sprinkled with 138mm shells towards the Siamese lightning strike ship at a speed of one round every six seconds. If the eight artillery fired alternately, there would be no shooting gap.

The French sailors had rich actual combat experience. Three minutes after the shelling began, a shell projected from the [Mogador] No. 2 turret hit the bridge of the [Rayong] at a distance of six kilometers. Because it was a lightly armored target, the French chose a four-kilogram high-explosive grenades. The violent explosion completely destroyed the wooden bridge, and the storm and debris generated by the explosion instantly emptied the front deck.

[Rayong]’s power cabin did not know what happened to the bridge, so it still driven the lightning strike ship to sprint forward according to the navigation data given by the original bridge. At this time, only half of the steering room was left in the front deck building. The personnel inside had been torn to pieces, and the front deck was ignited. Then the gunners who ignited the 76mm main gun were stacked on the deck. The propellant cartridge on the top, coupled with the wind pressure generated during high-speed navigation, the flame began to spread quickly along the cabin towards the rear.

[Mogador] judged that this lightning strike ship had lost its combat capability, and then turned the muzzle to cooperate with [Volta] to dump firepower against [Songka].

The captain of Songkhla had just witnessed the tragedy that happened to [Rayong]. When the firepower of the French destroyer was concentrated on him, the captain of the navy was seriously shaken.

So under the command of the captain, the torpedo tubes on both sides of the [Rayong] bridge fired two torpedoes towards the French destroyer, and then quickly changed course to shoot the two twin launch tubes of the ship’s crotch, followed by this one. The lightning strike ship began to retreat in the direction of the Thonburi at the highest speed.

Because the attack was too hasty, the Songkhla did not set the torpedo angle of the torpedo. At the same time, because the effective attack distance has not been entered, this torpedo is destined to fail.

The French destroyer was not prepared to let go of this escaping enemy ship. The two warships were staggered left and right, and the four main guns at the front were used to tilt towards the [Songka] bomb.

[Songka] tried hard to maneuver left and right, trying to avoid the enemy’s shelling, but this action slowed her down. The original French destroyer was faster than her, and the distance between the two sides began to quickly narrow.

The lightning striker tried to return with two 76-mm single-barrel guns at the rear of her, trying to interfere with the French destroyer’s pursuit, but because the artillery was too tight, the bombardment was not only intermittent, but also the landing point was far off. target location.

At 4.37 pm, two 138-mm shells hit the hull of the ship [Songka] almost at the same time, and one of them destroyed the 76-mm gun position there and exploded. The radio room killed all the sailors on the nearby deck.

Another shell penetrated into the lower power cabin and exploded between two high-pressure steam boilers. Shock waves ripped the bilge deck, broken the keel of the minesweeper, and ripped the thin hull. The lightning striking ship was interrupted into two pieces by the violent sound of metal breaking, and the two sections of the hull leaned towards the middle and began to sink rapidly. The 400-ton lightning strike ship sank so fast that no one survived.

While the two lightning strike ships were fighting desperately with the French destroyers, the Thonburi was certainly not idle. It wasn't that she was willing to watch her colleagues die, it was because during this time, she encountered a more difficult opponent.

"Continue shooting! Don't stop!" Wei Fengan roared loudly.

"The former main gun is loading! Sir," the gunner answered.

"How was the artillery bombardment?" Wei Fengan just said here, a loud noise came from outside the armored control tower, and then the hull of Thonburi began to tilt to the left rapidly.

"Nearly missing bullet!" the chief mate reported loudly, at this time the sound of a heavy rain sounded outside the control tower, which was the sound of the water column caused by the bombardment splashing onto the deck.

"Order all units to report the loss!" Wei Fengan supported the pillar on the side of the command tower, stabilized his figure, and the hull was slowly returning to balance.

"There are some cracks in the side shell of the bottom cabin. The water intake is not very serious. The sailor is being blocked." A long sailor's voice came from the copper telephone tube.

"Very well, it's all yours. You must block all the cracks, the sailor is long." Wei Fengan ordered.

"Isn't the main gun loaded yet? How about the target situation!" The first officer turned his head and looked at the gunner.

"Loading is in progress. The vibrations in the front caused some mechanical failures and efforts are being made to eliminate them." Sweat flowed from the long face of the gun.

"I don't understand that the enemy is also a heavy gunboat, but the rate of fire is obviously much faster than ours." The gunner said.

"I've never seen this ship. When did the French equip the shallow-water heavy gunboat, we didn't know anything about it." The first officer's face was filled with dissatisfaction.

The officers in Thonburi certainly cannot find the answer in their memory, because the warship that is fighting with them is not part of the French navy. Until yesterday, the mast was still proud of the meter. The flag, even now, did not have time to cover up the erebus [Dark World] brass sign on the stern.

ps: Although it's a little late, it's still over.

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Thank you. (To be continued.)