Chapter 1675: Decisive Battle at Leyte Gulf, Turkey Hunting! (Two in One)

As Wang Rulong expected, the Spaniards were just late.

It was not known whether the wild vegetables and fruits dug in Guam were poisonous, or whether it was caused by eating too much rotten food, but in any case, a large-scale food poisoning broke out shortly after the Invincible Fleet left Guam.

Even a brave man can't stand the three-bubble disease, let alone the ocean-going crew who are in poor health. In the continuous spraying, a large number of sailors and soldiers became weak. If they encounter the fleet of Ming Dynasty, how can they fight? Just turn into a jet fighter and spray them to death?

The Marquis of Santa Cruz had no choice but to follow Julio's advice and ordered the ship to sail southwest to Palau, allowing his subordinates to recuperate on the island.

When they arrived in Palau, the Spaniards were pleasantly surprised to find that there were still many residents on the island, and that it was rich in resources, including bananas, coconuts, cassava, and many fish farms.

Why are you being polite? Let's just plunder! They vented their pent-up anger on the natives of Palau, and in the end, only a dozen of the more than 10,000 natives survived...

However, the Spaniards turned a disaster into a blessing. Not only did they recover their health, but they also got some supplies and their morale was greatly boosted.

The fleet then regrouped and continued on its way to the Philippines.

The whole process has delayed us until now...

They arrived 20 kilometers east of Leyte Gulf on the 21st of the winter month. There, the Marquis of Santa Cruz ordered the sails to be lowered and the speed to be reduced, and at the same time sent a speedboat to Suluan Island at the mouth of the bay to contact the Spaniards stationed there.

The reason why the Marquis was so cautious was that he found that the ocean current here was from east to west, and the northeast wind was prevalent at this time of year.

This means that once the fleet enters the Leyte Gulf, there is no turning back. They can only follow the wind direction and ocean currents to pass through this narrow sea as quickly as possible.

So he had to ensure safety before entering the Leyte Gulf.

~~

Governor Francis had been waiting for many days at the small outpost of Suluan Island.

Spain's control over the colonies was very strict. In order to prevent the governors from becoming too powerful, the king generally only appointed the sons of great nobles who were closely related to the royal family as governors of the colonies with great power. There were strict term limits and they would be recalled when their term expired.

Governor Francis was no exception. His roots were in Madrid, and he would return home when his term was up, so he had to please the emperor's favorite, the Marquis of Santa Cruz. He also couldn't offend the large number of nobles who came to show off their military merits.

Given the mess of preparations in Guam, Francis did not dare to make any more mistakes. After arranging everything, he personally went to this small island 600 miles away from Cebu to welcome the arrival of the Invincible Fleet.

In consideration of the sumptuous food and wine he brought as a comfort, the nobles on the San Felipe, who were wearing decorated cakes and tight pants and had not had a big meal for several months, did not make things too difficult for him.

They immediately started to feast in the luxuriously decorated restaurant with the accompaniment of the band.

The Marquis of Santa Cruz only had some chicken breast with caviar and then asked about the current situation in the Philippines.

Francis quickly put down his wine glass, wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, "The Ming fleet has been dispatched in full force and is attacking Brunei Bay. However, I have withdrawn the fleet in advance and ordered the garrison to stay put. Brunei City has sufficient manpower and supplies, and can definitely hold out for more than half a year."

"Are you sure that the Ming fleet is in Borneo?" Admiral Leon, the deputy commander of the Invincible Fleet and former commander of the Pacific Fleet, asked in a deep voice.

"One hundred percent sure." Governor Francis intended to show off his ability, and said confidently: "Although the Ming people do not allow Europeans to enter their territory, we still found ways to hire some spies and spare no effort to infiltrate and monitor them. It can be said that everything about them is under control!"

"Yeah." The Marquis nodded and wanted to praise him, but stopped when he thought of the bad things in Guam.

"Different channels have all received the same information. Just 20 days ago, the huge fleet of the Ming Empire had already sailed to Borneo. We just received an urgent report from the Brunei City garrison. Ten days ago, they had deployed troops in Brunei Bay and were preparing to attack the city."

The Governor took out a document requesting assistance and handed it to the Marquis.

The Marquis took it and looked at the time carefully, then stood up and walked to the map, gestured with his fingers, and asked after a moment of silence: "Is this the latest information?"

“Yes, because it takes 250 leagues by sea from Brunei to Suluan Island, and the fastest ship takes ten days,” Francis replied.

"It will take the sailing ship half a month to sail, and the wind is against us now." Admiral Leon also came over and said.

"Our return to Cebu will be smooth sailing and will take less than three days," Francis said.

"Well." Admiral Leon nodded and said, "Don't worry about that fleet."

The Marquis remained silent. He looked at the Leyte Gulf, Surigao Strait, and Bohol Sea, which had long been imprinted in his mind. He drew a line from Suluan Island to Cebu with his thick thumb and said, "It's very dangerous before entering the Bohol Sea."

As he spoke, the Marquis looked at Francis with a sharp gaze and asked word by word, "Can you ensure that there are no Ming fleets in Leyte Gulf and Surigao Strait?"

"Please rest assured, sir. The Ming Dynasty was a closed country in the past and had no navy at all. It was only in the past ten years that the navy was rebuilt in the form of a private company with royal authorization. The 140 warships in Brunei Bay are all they have. The rest are some vulnerable paddle boats, which are nothing to worry about." Francis answered confidently:

"But we did not let down our guard. The Philippine fleet has been fully deployed to block the Surigao Strait. Unless the Ming warships can grow wings and fly into the Leyte Gulf, the route from here to the Bohol Sea will be as safe as the tree-lined walkway of the Royal Palace in Madrid."

"Yes." The Marquis of Santa Cruz nodded. He thought about it again and again, and there was really nothing to worry about. Finally, he made up his mind and ordered in a deep voice:

"Pass the order down. When the sun rises tomorrow, we will weigh anchor and set sail into Leyte Gulf!"

"Yes, sir." Admiral Leon responded in a deep voice.

~~

The next morning, it was cloudy, with wind force 4 on the sea, wind direction northeast by east, and moderate waves.

After breakfast, the Spanish Armada began to weigh anchor and sail towards the Leyte Gulf.

The wind blew from the stern of the ship, and with the help of the wind, the warship moved quickly, and the huge bow cut through the sea like a giant axe. The waves rolled, white foam splashed, seagulls flew after the fleet, and the ink-lined mountains could be vaguely seen in the distance.

All is well and good, the end is in sight.

The Spanish officers and soldiers were in a very happy mood. They rushed to the deck, played Latin guitars, sang and danced in the pleasant sunshine. The captains were also in a good mood and ordered full sail and full speed, chasing each other, all wanting to get to Cebu as soon as possible to enjoy the good wine, food and beautiful women.

On the San Felipe, the Marquis of Santa Cruz frowned and said, "The formation is in disarray."

"The three-month voyage has come to an end. Let the boys indulge themselves for a while." Admiral Leon advised with a smile.

"Hmph." The Marquis snorted, picked up the monocular telescope that had circled the earth, and looked at the Leyte Gulf ahead.

From the Sanmiao Island in the north, there is a narrow crescent-shaped peninsula, which together with the Dinagat Island in the south, embraces the huge Leyte Gulf like a pair of arms.

The small island in the center of the arm is Suluan Island where the Spanish are stationed.

But the Marquis's sight passed Suluan Island and fell on the island about 20 to 30 kilometers behind it.

Through the telescope, we can clearly see that the cashew-shaped island is at least ten times the size of Suluan Island. Once it is blocked, the large area of ​​sea behind it becomes a blind spot.

"What island is that?" asked the Marquis in a deep voice.

"Homonhon Island." Francis said hurriedly, "When the great Magellan first arrived here, his first landing place was Suluan Island, and his second landing place was Homonhon Island. The island has dense rainforests and palm trees, as well as inexhaustible fresh water. It can be called a paradise on the sea. The only problem with this island is that it is too far inland, and the view will be blocked by the peninsula. Suluan Island is more suitable as an observation station."

The Marquis was about to say that troops should be stationed there, but then he remembered that this was the Philippines, where the manpower was short of manpower, and his idea was a bit unreasonable.

He couldn't help but laugh at himself, thinking that he was too cautious. It seemed that his nerves were too tense during the journey, and he really needed a rest.

At this moment, the sound of artillery fire was heard faintly ahead.

The Marquis and others' expressions changed and they listened attentively.

"It's the vanguard ship!" Admiral Leon said with a pale face, "Fired three times!"

According to the agreement, three cannon shots mean encountering the main force of the enemy!

The nobles immediately panicked and began to question Francis, "Didn't you say that the Philippine fleet has blocked the Surigao Strait? Will the next voyage be as safe as the boulevard of the Royal Palace in Madrid?"

Is the palace boulevard so dangerous?

"That's impossible, how could it be?" Francis was dumbfounded, totally confused. "Did the boat ahead make a mistake?"

"Do you know how much trouble it is to fire one cannon, sir?" The nobles' sharp tongues never spare anyone. "And they fired three cannons in a row!"

"Unless they are all as blind as you..."

"Be quiet!" Admiral Leon shouted, "Don't disturb the commander-in-chief's thinking!"

Everyone fell silent, but the Marquis of Santa Cruz smiled bitterly and said, "What else is there to think about? We can't retreat anymore, we can only face the enemy head-on!"

After saying that, the old man shook off his dejection and said with spirit: "Hurry up and raise the red triangle battle flag with a yellow background, and order the fleet to connect head and tail and advance in a column!"

Learning to use flag signals to convey orders is much easier than imitating a telescope. The Spanish have already learned this skill from the Coast Guard Fleet...

However, the formation of the Spanish fleet still had a strong Continental Army color, with a forward, a center, a rear guard, and left and right wings. They were arranged in formation and moved forward together, full of momentum and spectacular.

But it was too late to reorganize the scattered formation into a square to meet the enemy.

Moreover, the Marquis also knew that the traditional formation was only suitable for boarding battles and was not very conducive to the use of firepower.

He simply went with the flow and gave up the traditional formation, only requiring the warships to shorten the distance between each other as much as possible and rush forward at full speed in a single column.

~~

At around 10 a.m., the two fleets met in the sea southwest of Homonhong Island.

At this time, the Spanish Invincible Armada, in an extremely long column, sailed westward with full sails.

The three squadrons of the Coast Guard Combined Fleet sailed southwest with full sails in a three-bar parallel formation.

The two sides were at an angle of 15 degrees and engaged in a life-and-death race in the Leyte Gulf.

After chasing for a while, the three squadrons of the Combined Fleet distanced themselves from each other.

The windward fleet closest to the Invincible Fleet maintained full speed to engage the enemy and was less than two kilometers away from the enemy ships.

The assault fleet in the middle had a quarter of its sails not spread out and gradually fell behind the windward fleet.

One-third of the sails of the outermost reserve fleet were not yet deployed, and it fell behind the assault fleet.

It was clearer from the direction of San Felipe. The Marquis of Santa Cruz had already seen clearly that the Ming fleet had used this incredible method to transform from a dense formation when hiding into a long battle line.

He couldn't help but turn pale. Although this was just a harmless tactical maneuver, it reflected the superb tactical qualities of the opposing fleet commander and the crew's skilled ship handling skills.

"Is this really a navy that was established only ten years ago?" The Marquis asked incredulously, "Is there a navy in the world that is better trained than this?"

Before he finished speaking, a sharp whistling sound suddenly sounded in front of him. The Marquis hurriedly looked in the direction of the sound and saw countless rockets taking off into the sky.

"So far?" The Marquis gasped.

The first to open fire were the windward fleet led by Xiang Xuehai.

At 11 a.m., his flagship, the 05th ship, Wanren, was one kilometer away from the Invincible Fleet and had entered the effective range of the Third Generation Oda City rocket.

As the Marine officers blew the whistle to allow the launch, more than a hundred Marines who were standing on the bow, stern, and weather decks took up the launch tubes loaded with rockets.

Then he blew the match wrapped around his wrist and used it to light the rocket's fuse.

At the same time, the observers quickly calculated the launch parameters based on the observed distance, wind direction and wind speed.

"The target is at twelve o'clock, 980 meters away, two degrees up, and a quarter to the right!"

The long fuse was hissing with sparks, and the team members quickly used the aiming circle on the launch tube to lock the enemy ship, and then made corrections according to the parameters. This was many times more accurate than shooting based on feeling.

However, on this bumpy boat, at such a long distance, with such a precise spiral trajectory, even if the hit rate is increased several times, there are still more bullets falling into the sea than hitting the target.

Fortunately, this thing relies on quantity to create miracles, and it doesn’t really matter how accurate it is…

More than 200 Oda City rockets took off into the sky, dragging orange flames and flying towards the 800-ton galleon, the Trinity, which was the leader of the Invincible Fleet.

Immediately afterwards, the 06th ship Yitian, the 07th ship Zhanlu, the 08th ship Moye, and the cruisers behind it also launched rockets.

Suddenly, orange fireworks were flying all over the sky, pouring down on the vanguard of the Invincible Fleet.

The Spaniards, like their commander, were stunned by the magnificent display of fireworks, and it was not until the rockets whistled over their heads that they realized something was amiss.

Those rockets are designed to attack the sails! This is going to kill me...

In order to carry out ocean voyages, the Invincible Fleet installed side sails and various triangular sails in addition to the normal dozen or so sails, filling up all the masts and rigging.

From a distance, it looked like the whole building was drying sheets...

Moreover, their canvas had been exposed to the wind and sun for three months and was already brittle and full of patches. How could they withstand the intensive attack of these third-generation Oda rockets that were circling around?

Amid the whistling sound, the Trinity was hit by at least forty or fifty rockets. Amid the crackling sound of the sails breaking, half of the sails on the ship were torn off.

More than a dozen sails were set on fire, and the wind helped the fire, and the mast quickly turned into a burning tree branch. The speed of the Trinity was obviously decreasing...

Many rockets were bounced off the spider-web-like cables and masts and landed on the deck full of sailors and soldiers. They were still going strong and were rampaging through the crowd.

All those who were touched screamed and fell to the ground, some with broken arms or legs, some with broken ribs and skulls.

The Spaniards fled in panic, hiding in all directions, and the scene was extremely chaotic.

Only when the screaming stopped did they calm down a little, but then they were horrified to find that the tails of those motionless round-headed iron cylinders were still spitting fire...

There were as many fire sources spewing as many rockets fell on the ship.

This is a wooden boat...

"Don't just stand there, idiots! Put out the fire!" The captain of the Trinity came to his senses and jumped up and down and roared.

Before he finished speaking, there was a loud bang, and the 800-ton Santa Anna behind him exploded violently. In the sky-high flames, more than a dozen figures were thrown five or six meters high, and they disappeared in the sky.

Those were the gunners of the Santa Anna. For easy access, they piled the gunpowder barrels directly on the deck. As a result, the gunpowder barrels were ignited by rockets, and the explosion directly overturned the cannons, killing more than a dozen gunners and soldiers around them...

At this time, Lin Feng's assault fleet also entered the shooting range and also began to launch Oda City rockets to attack the middle section of the Spanish fleet.

Although Oda City's rockets have limited lethality and are limited to breaking sails and setting fires, these two skills were able to shine in the era of sailing wooden warships. They were typical examples of being born in the right era.

Especially in this battle aimed at annihilating the enemy, the Oda City rockets played an irreplaceable tactical role. Therefore, the theater prepared 200,000 Oda City rockets for this battle, which was definitely enough!

As the reserve fleet also began to launch rockets to attack the rear of the enemy fleet, the sky over Leyte Gulf was completely filled with flying rockets.

The combined fleet also stopped approaching for the time being. The three flagships hoisted signal flags at the same time, ordering the fleet to turn, keep parallel with the enemy ships, and continue to fire rockets from the upwind position, striving to destroy as many enemy ships as possible.

"This is all money..." On the Kaiyuan, Wang Rulong sighed and said, "It's damn good to have money."

"Yes, these rockets alone cost two million taels of silver." Mei Ling, the captain of the 01 ship, nodded and said, "You can't play the navy without money, and without a navy, you have no money..."

"So this is destined to be a winner-takes-all game, a game that dominates the ocean." Wang Rulong suddenly said with a bit of sadness: "I really want to play to the end..."

~~

The two fleets kept moving in parallel.

At around 2 p.m., the two sides had advanced ten kilometers from the location of the initial exchange of fire.

In another hundred kilometers, the Spanish fleet can sail out of this damn Leyte Gulf and Surigao Strait and into the vast Bohol Sea...

But the Marquis of Santa Cruz now doubts very much whether even one tenth of his fleet can escape into the Bohol Sea if things continue like this.

Because in the past three hours, the Ming fleet has fired nearly 100,000 rockets...

In fact, he was not unfamiliar with the Ming people's rockets, because he had studied the legendary "Flying Dutchman" and learned that in addition to their powerful artillery, they also liked to use a kind of rocket that was specifically designed to destroy the sails of a ship.

He even got a few shells of the first generation of Oda City rockets and ordered them to reload them for testing. However, the hit rate was so poor that there was even an accident where the rocket flew back after being fired.

And it was too expensive. Actually, the shell was easy to make, just cast and process the cast iron. The problem was that the amount of gunpowder was too much. A rocket needed at least 10 to 12 pounds of gunpowder. Given the high price of gunpowder in Europe, even the Genoese who had mines at home would never waste precious gunpowder on something that only hit the target once in a hundred shots.

So after weighing the pros and cons, he gave up the idea of ​​imitation.

Well, he admitted that it was because he had never seen the power of Oda City’s rockets before!

But even after seeing it, he didn't think it would be a decisive weapon.

He believed that this kind of weapon was expensive and relied on quantity to win. No matter how wealthy the Ming people were, they would have used up all their weapons after shooting for a while in the early stages of the war.

Who knew that the other party was actually a wealthy man with a mine at home! He shot for one hour after another, and it has been three hours, and there is no sign of stopping!

Moreover, the Ming people's tactics were very clear, which was to use intensive rocket fire to paralyze as many of their warships as possible.

Therefore, once a ship loses its mobility, even if it just slows down significantly, the rain of rockets pouring down on it will come to an abrupt halt.

Then, as if they had an endless supply of rockets, the Ming people went looking for other ships with intact sails to destroy them.

At present, all the warships were on the move, and the Marquis could not count the specific losses, but he saw at least more than 40 Spanish warships that had fallen behind along the way.

Some sails were shot into honeycombs, some masts and rigging became blazing trees, and even his San Felipe had one-third of its sails destroyed.

That’s one third of the motivation!

"We can't go on like this..." He regretted why he didn't resolutely meet the enemy from the beginning? I'm afraid that half of the warships have lost speed now?

"Switch to the red battle flag!" The Marquis gritted his teeth and ordered as he put on his armor with the help of his attendants: "All warships, get as close to the enemy as possible! Seek close-range artillery fire, and then engage in boarding battle!"

After seeing the flagship hoisting the red flag, the neighboring Spanish warships also hoisted the red flag, and thus the order of the "Father of Soldiers" was passed to the farthest warship.

The Spanish fleet no longer fled blindly. Instead, each warship began to turn with difficulty, preparing to actively approach the Ming fleet.

The three commanders of the combined fleet saw through the enemy's plot at the same time and knew that the first phase of the battle, which the young master named "Turkey Shooting", was over.

Now we will enter the brutal second stage - the war of annihilation!

(End of this chapter)