If the Battle of Manila in history is a lonely proof and cannot count, then the Battle of Santiago is enough to show how trash the quality of the Spanish Navy is! Let's see how the four main battleships of the Spanish fleet died!

The flagship Princess Maria Theresa was hit 2 by 12-inch guns, 3 by 8-inch guns, 4 by 6-inch and 5-inch guns, 1 by 4-inch guns, 1 by 57mm guns, the warship caught fire, and then ran aground. The damage situation was very average. After all, this is a warship of more than 6,000 tons, and if the damage is good, it will not be destroyed. However, this is already the best-performing warship in the Spanish fleet!

The Okendo was hit 4 rounds by 8-inch cannons, 4 rounds by 6-inch and 5-inch cannons, 1 round by 4-inch cannons, 53 rounds by 57mm cannons, and then these picy acid high-explosive bombs burned the warship. Although there is a problem of a small defense area, it is embarrassing to be burned to death by 57mm cannons. After all, the shells of the 57mm cannons weigh only 6 pounds!

The Biskaya performed even worse! A cruiser with a capacity of more than 6,000 tons was hit by 5 rounds by 8-inch guns, 5 rounds by 6-inch and 5-inch guns, 4 rounds by 4-inch guns, and 9 rounds by 57mm guns! Then the ship surrendered. TM surrendered like this!

Of course, the most unhealthy one was the Cologne. This ship was hit by 4 shots by 6-inch 5-inch cannons and 3 shots by 57mm cannons! Then the Spanish surrendered, please, you are Garibaldi! You were later born into a certain sacred object of the divine religion! In the end, it was not died in battle but surrender! This method of death was too frustrating, right? The will to resist was obviously not as good as the Qing army during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895!

Based on these hits, we can also see how poor the Americans are. In a battle where the opponent has no fighting spirit and his side has completely beaten the children, they actually made such a hit! This tm's trick, none of the 12 13-inch cannons on the three battleships hit! A total of 46 8-inch cannons hit 12 shots! The Americans won, not because they are so elite, but because their opponents are too weak!

In this battle, the performance of the Spanish also surprised Majifen. "They were firing fires at the sun! The shells fired from 2,500 meters away did not pose any threat to us. Except for the splashes of water from far or near reminding us that the other party was firing at us, we could hardly feel the pressure from our opponents!" Majifen described the Spanish artillery in this way after the war.

Of course, the Americans were not very smart at artillery. Apart from the extremely fast 57mm cannon, the Sheli fleet fired for a quarter of an hour and did not hit the opponent with a shell of more than 5 inches! At this time, the combat distance between the two sides had narrowed from 3,500 meters to 1,800 meters.

However, from a strategic perspective alone, the purpose of the Sheli fleet has been achieved, and they further delayed the pace of the Spanish fleet's retreat. With Dewey's acquiescence, the cruisers of the US fleet finally abandoned the slow-speed Iowa. The other five armored cruisers leaned forward at a speed of more than 20 knots. The battle line composed of five armored cruisers passed quickly from the tail of the Spanish fleet like a dragon. With the issuance of the fire order, the side string firepower of the cruisers burst out with frightening fire!

Dozens of medium-caliber artillery guns, nearly a hundred small-caliber artillery guns, projected several tons of ammunition in a very short time, and a fire wave formed by a shell directly submerged the two Spanish unprotected cruisers at the end. The explosion of the high-explosive bombs was almost made into a piece. The two warships were instantly covered by orange barrage, and balls of flames jumped and spread on the deck. The hull without any protection was torn to pieces by violent explosions. Most Spanish soldiers were beaten into a pool of flesh and blood by the tyrannical firepower before making any evasion. The two unprotected cruisers were sent to the bottom of the sea without even 5 minutes!

"This is really terrifying!" Sevilla never dreamed that she could encounter such a powerful fleet in the Far East. He even thought that even if she fought with the Royal Navy Far East Fleet, it would be so. The opponent's crazy firepower made him lose his room immediately. Then he issued an order that made future generations argue: "Diss the fleet and escape their lives!"

When this order was issued, the Spanish fleet, which was already on the verge of collapse, immediately became fragmented, and the only three remaining ships began to flee. The Americans reacted quickly enough, but made mistakes in their busy schedules. Brooklyn and New York immediately went to capture Princess Maria, which was closest to them, and Liurik and two other Russian armored cruisers to capture the Okendo. The strongest, fastest and best defense, Carlos V, was ignored! The closest warship to Spain was actually three protective cruisers commanded by Brigadier General Sheri! The remaining US and Russian warships were either busy with other things or were too far away!

"Let's catch the biggest one, it will be the most worthy target in this naval battle!" Sheli, who was on the battlefield for the first time, naturally would not miss an opportunity to beat the dog in the water. Three dome cruisers chased after it at the fastest speed, which made Majifen wipe her cold sweat and said to herself: "As long as the other party has a little fighting spirit and can still be considered as a good level, it will be a true counter-killing plot!"

However, Majifen obviously overestimated the combat effectiveness of the Spaniards, or the integrity. Princess Mary decisively announced her surrender after being intensively fired by high-explosion bombs for ten minutes, lowered the battle flag, and then rushed to the beach, and the personnel began to evacuate. The Okendo's performance was not very good. After being caught up, she struggled for more than half an hour and announced her surrender. The Spanish were not good, but she still remembered opening the Tonghai Valve and the armored cruiser finally sank to the bottom of the sea.

The only one who survived this naval battle was General Sevilla's flagship Carlos V! This armored cruiser ran for more than three hours in one go with the output of three American dome cruisers! When Sheli and others suddenly found that there was not enough ammunition, they were already more than 50 nautical miles away from the main battlefield! "Let this guy run away. The German ship is strong. We almost exhausted all the ammunition and couldn't even slow it down!" Looking at the Carlos V armored cruiser that was on fire on the deck in the distance, Sheli said angrily.

This battle, which was later called the Battle of Morro Bay, was the first naval battle that the American fleet had fought since the steam era entered, and it was also the first victory of the steam era. In this naval battle, the Americans easily crushed their opponents with absolute advantage. Spain lost 3 gunboats, 2 unprotected cruisers and 2 armored cruisers. The total tonnage was close to 20,000 tons, and the only one that escaped was General Sevilla's flagship.
Chapter completed!