The first person to react was Xiang Xuehai.

As soon as the Spanish fleet turned collectively, the lookouts on the windward fleet's warships noticed at the same time that their flagship Wanren had hoisted a string of signal flags.

The lookouts quickly read out the flag signals:

"Each warship chooses an opponent and fights to the death!"

The battleship captains immediately selected the largest target from the approaching enemy ships, and then quickly ordered people to hoist the signal flag.

For example, if the Yitian hoisted the signal '2', it meant that their target was the second Spanish galleon from the front. When other warships saw this, they would choose other warships as their targets.

After the battleships were picked, the cruisers took over. After the cruisers were picked, the destroyers took over. After the destroyers were picked, the frigates took over... The mission of the windward fleet was to entangle as many enemy ships as possible and create conditions for the assault fleet and the reserve fleet behind them to defeat the fewer with more troops!

After locking onto their respective opponents, the battle lines of the windward fleet spread out. When each warship reached the windward side of its chosen target, it began to turn northwest, moving in the same direction as the enemy ships, looking as if it was trying to escape.

Most of the Spaniards believed that the Ming people really did not dare to engage them, and their morale was boosted. They lowered some of the sails that had been folded to avoid the rain of rockets and approached the Ming ships at full speed.

There were also a few calm Spanish commanders who discovered that the Ming people were actually reefing their sails and slowing down, and were waiting for them to rush over.

Could it be that they are not afraid of close combat, but are waiting for the moment of close combat? Shouldn't they charge forward? What does it mean to point their most vulnerable buttocks at us?

But there was no time to think about it. Since the battle drums had been sounded, they had no choice but to pursue the Ming ship to the end! At the same time, the Spanish also used the bow guns to shoot at the most vulnerable stern of the Ming ship. Amid the rumbling of the guns, most of the shells whizzed and landed on the sea near the Ming ship, stirring up water columns.

At about 3 pm, the two fleets were 200 meters apart. At this distance, the Spanish could basically guarantee a hit rate.

They clearly saw several shells hit the stern of the Ming ship. But instead of penetrating the hull as expected, the Ming ship's big butt bounced the shells away with a clang of metal collision...

What the hell, were the Ming people sailing an iron ship? Impossible, how could that thing float?

~~

Thanks to the late arrival of the Spaniards, the ships participating in the combined fleet, in addition to the battleships and cruisers with full-face armor, also had partial armor added to the destroyers and frigates at vulnerable parts such as the stern and waterline.

If they came right after the typhoon season, at least destroyers and frigates would not have been treated this way. As a result, this delay gave Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant time to produce more steel plates. Then Chen Huaixiu's fleet braved the danger of the typhoon to deliver them, and the workers at the Luzon Shipyard worked overtime to complete the unplanned transformation of these small and medium-sized warships.

The thick wooden hull is wrapped with a layer of steel armor. It would be strange if the spherical shells could penetrate the defense with their armor-piercing ability.

The windward fleet continued to fire Oda City rockets at the enemy ships. As the distance between the two sides continued to close, the rocket's hit rate increased significantly. Amid the whistling sound, the sails of the Spanish warships were torn and set on fire, and the speed dropped again and again.

Fortunately, the sails of the Spanish galleon were large and numerous enough, so it did not stop immediately.

Moreover, the Ming warships even dropped their sails...

A quarter of an hour later, the bow of the Spanish thousand-ton warship "San Marco", which was in the front, finally passed the stern of the Coast Guard 08 ship Moye.

The moment the two sides crossed, the broadside guns fired at the same time.

The Spanish heavy artillery was not bad at all, but they lacked long-range firepower, so they were happy to use close-range artillery to wipe out the enemy's defenses first, and then send infantry on board to engage in hand-to-hand combat.

The Coast Guard Fleet's long-range artillery is world-class, but today's mission is to annihilate the enemy! Long-range artillery fire can do no substantial damage to the half-meter-thick century-old oak hull.

Both sides simultaneously began heavy artillery bombardment with bayonets on their cannons at a distance of 100 meters!

The infantry and marines on both sides also fired at each other with rifles and swivel guns. Although the sound was not as impressive as the heavy artillery, the damage caused was no less.

In an instant, white smoke rose into the sky, wood chips flew everywhere, and the roar, crash, screams, and the crackling sound of collapsed masts intertwined together, forming a death symphony of blood and fire!

Soon, the Spanish warships behind also caught up, and like the San Marco and Moye, they fought a decisive battle with guns and cannons with the nearest enemy ships!

The warships of both sides were intertwined, most of them were 100 to 200 meters apart. Some were so close that they were almost touching each other, and they opened fire at full power at a distance where you could clearly see how many pockmarks there were on each other's faces.

From the lower gun deck to the open-air gun platforms on the weather deck, both ships continuously spewed flames and fired heavy shells at the enemy.

From the rifle squad on the forecastle platform to the sniper on the mast, in this dangerous environment filled with smoke, whistling shells, and flying wood chips, they bravely aimed at all human-shaped objects on the enemy ship, and kept firing, reloading, and firing again! Until they were killed by bullets or blown to pieces by shells.

~~

However, after a brief exchange of explosions, the Spanish cannons went silent...

Because the reloading speed of the Spanish warships' artillery was too slow - after firing, it took an average of ten minutes, and at the fastest seven or eight minutes, to fire the next shot!

This was mainly because their guns were firmly fixed to the bulkhead with iron chains, so there was no need to worry about the gun recoil injuring anyone when firing. But when loading, the iron chains had to be removed first, and then the gunners would drag the heavy gun carriage backwards so that the muzzle sticking out of the cabin could be moved back to a position where it could be loaded.

After reloading, the gun must be pushed back to the firing position and then secured with an iron chain before the next shot can be fired...

This was the result of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, who, in view of the increasing importance of artillery in naval warfare, actively learned from the Portuguese, improved artillery technology, and strengthened gunner training. At the time of the Battle of Lepanto, it took the Spaniards a quarter of an hour to fire a shot.

In this era, firing a cannon every five minutes is already pretty good. However, their opponent is Zhao Hao's Coast Guard Fleet.

The training of coast guard officers and soldiers is more professional, with training time several times that of their opponents, and their artillery technology is also more advanced - in addition to fixed artillery shells and flintlock cannons, the Coast Guard General Armament Department has also developed a set of composite pulley devices in recent years.

This pulley is equipped with a spring-loaded plumb bob device that reduces the recoil of the gun and allows it to be fixed in the loading position after firing.

It can also expand the firing angle of the artillery and allow the artillery to move horizontally forty-five degrees to the left and right, so now the coast guard's artillery can move up and down, left and right.

Therefore, the current standard for the acceptable loading speed of the Coast Guard gun batteries is one round every two minutes, and the excellent standard is one round every one and a half minutes.

However, steel cannons are still in the stage of small-scale equipment, and the coast guard still uses a large number of bronze cannons. In order to prevent the barrel from overheating and deformation, they can only slow down the firing rate to one shot every two minutes.

But there is no limit on the firing rate in the first ten minutes of the war!

So when both sides completed the first round of shelling, the smoke had just been blown away by the north wind, and countless tongues of fire once again spewed out from the side of the coast guard warship.

At this time, the Spanish had just untied the chains and were preparing to drag the artillery back...

The shells whistled through the bulkhead of the Spanish galleon and flew around like marbles in the cabin. The powerful force could bend the barrel of a cannon and break the base of a mast thicker than a man's waist, not to mention the flesh and blood.

This is why after testing the conical shells, the Coast Guard decisively returned to using spherical shells. The penetrating power of the conical shells is certainly stronger than the latter, but the actual lethality is far behind. It will have to wait until the era of explosive bombs to replace spherical shells.

Within ten minutes, the Zhanlu fired at least fifty shells into the lower gun deck of the Mass, and the entire through deck became a meat grinder with limbs and bodies flying everywhere and brains and internal organs splattered everywhere.

After the last shell stopped bouncing, there was no one standing on the entire deck.

The survivors huddled in the corner, trembling and completely collapsed...

The situation on the upper deck of the Missal was not much better. Two of the three masts were broken, leaving only the lone main mast. The sails and rigging were also torn to pieces...

The weather deck was littered with oak fragments, and the lifeboats, barrels, forecastle, poop, gun carriages, everything that had been on the main deck was broken into pieces and strips. The secondary damage caused by the debris was even greater than the direct damage caused by the shelling.

All the gun positions were destroyed, and the deck was littered with dead soldiers. This was also the work of the Hongxi cannon. The firing rate of this short heavy cannon was faster than that of the Hongwu cannon and the Yongle cannon. The grapeshot and buckshot it fired wiped out the Spanish infantry who were gathering on the deck and preparing to board...

~~

During these short ten minutes, not only did the Missa suffer purgatory, but almost all the Spanish warships that were caught one-on-one by the windward fleet suffered heavy losses.

The difference in the extent of damage was limited to the distance between the two sides and the model of the Coast Guard warship.

The four armored battleships were facing four thousand-ton warships, namely, the "San Marco", the "Glory of the King", the "Missa" and the "Santa Maria".

The San Marco lost a mast, half of its guns and a third of its crew and soldiers.

The King's Glory suffered the worst, losing all its masts, 70% of its artillery and half of its crew and soldiers.

Because the Santa Maria was the farthest from the Yitian, more than 300 meters away, the Yitian's Hongxi cannon did not fire, and the damage caused by the Hongwu cannon and the Yongle cannon was limited - the three masts of the Santa Maria were intact, and only 20% of the cannons and soldiers were lost. But it still looked terrifying -

The deck was littered with broken gun mounts, collapsed spars, and most of the rigging was broken. Flying cables and flying wood chips caused a lot of secondary damage. Brains and blood were smeared all over the deck, and soldiers screamed with blood and flesh everywhere, with wood chips all over their bodies. It was more like hell than the Mass that was wiped out.

ps. Keep writing.