Chapter 276: , Crossfire

The speed of "Free Trade" was originally lower than that of "Constitution." A turn was taken actively, which further reduced the speed. The "Constitution" skillfully cut a radius, then smoothly cut into the "Free Trade" direction at six o'clock, and then directly chased it.
Soon the distance between the two sides narrowed to within the range of the cannonball. The Americans first used the bow gun to shoot at the "Free Trade" with chain bullets in an attempt to destroy her sails.
When Zola saw the American ship cut into his six o'clock direction, he knew that the battle was inevitable. He first ordered the non-combatants to leave the deck immediately. Then a group of sailors dragged off Victor, who wanted to watch the excitement.
Then the "Free Trade Number" began to turn again. "Free Trade", like other warships of this era, did not have artillery installed at the rear. Therefore, the "Free Trade" has to interfere with the opponent's shooting by turning, and let the opponent rush to the front, so as to form a situation of side shells.
Of course, the "Constitution" can also be kept in the six o'clock direction of the "Free Trade" by constantly turning. But this kind of constant turning will also interfere with their own shooting, making the shooting efficiency drastically reduced. If this situation is maintained, this battle will not end in one day.
The "Free Trade" is a steam ship, and his steam engine is burning and pressurizing. Although this process is slow, it is not so slow. Once the "Free Trade" steam engine starts to operate, the entire battle may be completely reversed.
The "Constitution" is now faster than the "Free Trade". So, for her, the best thing to do is to catch up and grab the t position while she still has an advantage in speed. "Free Trade" has carried out several rounds of strikes. Before the "Free Trade" steam engine advantage can be used, defeat her.
At the beginning, "Equality" used the tactic of grabbing t from the tail of the enemy ship in the battle with the British steamship. Because the stern of the enemy ship has no cannon. But "Equality" was able to play this way in that battle, a prerequisite was that the speed gap between the two sides was very large.
Because if the speed difference between the two sides is not very large, grab this position, it is easy to give up the position of the head to others. The speed gap between the "Constitution" and the "Free Trade" is not so big yet, so the "Constitution" can only try to cross its route from the front of the "Free Trade" to form a head.
As a "super cruiser", the "Constitution" has 23 cannons on one side, including ten 12-pounders on the upper deck and 13 24-pounders on the bottom deck. With such fierce firepower, if there is a volley from the t-head position, Captain Hull feels that it will definitely cause a heavy blow to the opponent.
The "Constitution" chased from the starboard side of the "Free Trade", trying to surpass it by a distance of about 100 meters on the starboard side of the "Free Trade", and then suddenly turned left and cut into the "Free Trade" route. A port side salvo gave the French a hard blow.
Of course, passing a hundred meters from the starboard side of the "Free Trade" is a slightly risky maneuver. At a distance of one hundred meters, the enemy ship is entirely possible to fire at the "Constitution" with a side cannon. But this is also one of Captain Hull’s goals. There are wind and waves on the sea, and ships are shaking, so artillery is shaking. During naval battles, the random flying of artillery shells is basically a characteristic of this era. If the distance exceeds seventy or eighty meters, the hit rate of the shells will be touchingly low. In many cases, the artillery battle between the two warships will knock down twenty or thirty meters from a distance of two to three hundred meters. After the close-face shelling, battles on the ship often occurred.
If the French fired a salvo of guns at a distance of 100 meters, some shells might hit the "Constitution", but Captain Hull felt that his warship should be able to withstand the enemy's fire at this distance.
Although the "Constitution" is more "frigate", its defense level is completely battleship level. In the original history, in the subsequent Second American-British War, in a one-on-two battle with British frigates, the "Constitution" was shot more than 100 rounds, but none of the shells penetrated. The ship board of the USS Constitution.
In addition, there are fewer gun positions on the steamship, so their salvo can cause less threat. If the French fired at a distance of 100 meters, Hull felt that the damage they could cause to the USS Constitution should be very limited. The loading of the artillery is very slow. If the Frenchman's volley of this round fails to achieve much effect, it means that he is equivalent to losing his arms for a long time. At this time, the "Constitution" can turn the rudder directly, stick it up, stick to the face at a very close distance and give the French a round of volleys, making them cry and cry.
The "Constitution" appeared at a distance of more than 100 meters to starboard. All the artillery doors on the starboard side of the "Free Trade" have been opened, and all nine cannons are ready to be launched.
The muzzle velocity of the shells fired by the "Free Trade" steel rifled gun is much higher than that of the ordinary cannon, its effective range is longer, and it is less affected by the swing. In addition, the "Free Trade" itself is large enough, and in order to maximize the range and reduce the swing, the "Free Trade" is equipped with a larger fin. This allows the "Free Trade" to swing smaller than the equivalent ship, and the swing cycle is longer. These measures have made the "Free Trade" long-range shooting accuracy significantly better than other warships of this era.
Of course, any measure will not only have advantages without side effects. The larger damping fin makes the steering ability of the "Free Trade" relatively poor. In the state of relying on steam power to sail, because of the power advantages brought by the steam engine and the propeller, the weakness of this steering is not obvious. (The ability to sail without relying on the wind direction allows her to naturally have the flexibility that a sailing boat cannot match). When turning off the steam engine and relying solely on sails, the steering of the "Free Trade" was indeed a bit slow. This is a big reason why the "Constitution" can occupy the dominant position it thinks so quickly.
The firing order was given, and the nine cannons on the starboard side fired one after another.
Although the gunners on the "Free Trade" are not yet fully familiar with the brand new cannon in their hands. But these gunners are actually experienced old gunners. The so-called not fully familiar with the cannon in their hands means that they have not been able to fully utilize the performance of this new cannon. For example, according to the original setting, the gun in their hands should have a fairly high hit rate at a distance of 400 meters under normal sea conditions. But the gunners cannot do this yet.
However, at a distance of 100 meters, they can still guarantee a very high hit rate.
In the first round of the salvo, nine shells hit seven.
Captain Hull was actually very relieved when he saw the "Free Trade" open its gun. He knew that due to various reasons, the number of cannons that can be equipped on a steam battleship would be a lot less, but for such a large ship, there were only nine cannons on one side. This number was really too small to exceed Hull's expectations.
"I knew it, what else would you grab, just stick it up and do it?" Captain Hull even had such thoughts in his mind.
But there was a flash of fire, and Hull felt a shock under his feet.
"These guys are really accurate! They seem to be underestimated."
With this shot, several other cannons on the "Free Trade" were fired one after another, and the deck under Hull's feet was constantly shaking.
"Their hit rate is quite high!" Hull thought, and at the same time yelled to the following: "Report a loss!"
Hull thought he would hear this reply: "It's okay! No breakdown!"
However, there was no immediate response from below. After a while, there was a voice: "The ship's plank was penetrated, and the casualties were high..."
The armor-piercing projectile fired from the 110mm rifled gun on the "Free Trade" easily penetrated the 70-centimeter-thick oak board of the "Constitution", and in the process, it transferred huge energy to Oak boat board. After the cannonball passed through the oak ship board, the oak ship board exploded inside the gun bay, and the wooden slats and debris flew around like a knife into the body of the next gunner...
Some shells that had penetrated the thick ship board hit the ship board on the other side almost without slowing down, and then made a hole in the ship board over there and flew out.
Another cannonball ~EbookFREE.me~ lost its stability after passing through the ship's plank, and slammed it on the opposite ship's plank, then broke into several pieces and bounced back, knocking down several people.
But the deadliest thing was still such a shell. After it penetrated the ship's plate, it directly hit a 24-pound bronze cannon placed on the other side of the ship's plate.
The shells smashed into pieces on the bronze cannon, and the scattered fragments killed many gunners around. The bronze cannon itself jumped up by the bombardment and broke the iron chain that fixed it. The broken iron chain swept across like a whip, drawing a gunner who could not be avoided into two sections. .
The bronze cannon that jumped up hit another bronze cannon, knocking it to the ground, and crushing two more gunners.
After a round of shelling, there was a mess in the lower gun bay of the USS Constitution, as if a tornado had just raged here.
After understanding the loss in general, Captain Hull realized that he still underestimated the French, their shooting accuracy, and the power of their cannons far exceeded his expectations. But he still issued the order very decisively:
"Zuo Ruoman! Stick it up and flatten them against their faces!"