Munitions Empire

As soon as he finished speaking, a naval officer hurried over, stood at attention, saluted, and reported: "Marshal! The southern artillery fleet has been attacked!"

"Submarine?" Bernard immediately guessed the enemy's method.

"Yes, submarine, fired several torpedoes... hit the broadside of a battleship, causing significant flooding." The officer nodded awkwardly.

"An hour ago, it evaded the search, that cunning fish!" Bernard muttered through gritted teeth. Earlier, the navy's radar detected the presence of a submarine, but unfortunately, the opponent was very cunning, using the sit-down method to evade the Tang Army's sonar search.

Their submarine captain was also skillful and daring, using the cover of night and familiarity with the terrain, managed to escape the pursuit of the Tang Army's anti-submarine forces in an outdated submarine.

This world is never short of smart people, and the navies of various countries are certainly not lacking in talent, evidently, this submarine captain belongs to the category of skillful and daring genius players.

Now, the opponent has turned around to bite the Tang Imperial Fleet, causing Bernard to feel a bit frustrated at having strength but unable to use it.

In the production phase, Chu Country's battleships did not consider the so-called submarine threat, so they have no torpedo defense design at all. In that era, the underwater part can even be said to be relatively safe.

So the trouble caused by this torpedo hit is quite exaggerated; the massive influx of water tilted the entire battleship to the side, even affecting artillery fire, forcing it to withdraw from combat immediately.

But before they could adjust formation and retreat from combat, the cruiser on the periphery, modified with radar, sent a warning: Dwarf Navy's numerous torpedo speedboats appeared further south on the sea.

The Tang Country Navy's fleet aircraft immediately deployed in emergency, began intercepting these speedboats, but unfortunately, nighttime interception is inherently ineffective, and the forward artillery support fleet lacks new interception methods.

The new rapid-fire cannons capable of striking targets over ten kilometers away were installed at the bows of the new destroyers, and these cruiser and battleships do not have similar weapons.

The many secondary guns they are equipped with, of various calibers, clearly lack the shooting accuracy and firing rate to intercept so many fast-moving targets.

But no matter what, regardless of whether the weapons at hand are suitable or not, when the enemy charges forward, you can only fight! Especially in the navy, because surrendering alone is useless.

As time ticked away, the warships of the Tang Country Navy started to turn the artillery originally pointing toward the land, and the warships began adjusting their course, raising their speed.

The firepower suppression from the opposite side paused, the entire fleet was regrouping, and they aimed their broadside at the direction of the incoming enemy speedboats.

"Boom! Boom!" Soon, the first 150mm caliber secondary gun fired, followed by the second one, with the sound of artillery rumbling, even smaller cannons roared angrily.

The entire fleet became more chaotic, the damaged battleship was hit by another torpedo during its turn, causing a violent explosion.

Right afterward, another cruiser was hit by a torpedo, and even with just starlight, one could see the towering water column splashed up by the warship's broadside.

After all, these outdated warships were not built for such a battlefield environment, even in the hands of the Great Tang Empire, it is impossible to ignore technological disparities and continue to exert non-existent combat power.

"Xishan No. 05 cruiser hit!" The commander of the division saw the warship ahead, not far from him, taking on water, and looked somewhat angrily at the officer beside him: "Where's the destroyer? What are they doing?"

"They are already desperately attacking those speedboats." The officer replied, looking at the warship on his side starting to tilt.

In the distance, the only two modern destroyers in this division were firing desperately, the fully automated cannons aimed at those targets completely invisible in the dark, as the sharp bows rose and fell through the waves due to high-speed navigation.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" Each time the cannon barrel spewed fire, it would extend and retract, as the barrel moved, the shell casement would open, and a shell casing emitting heat would clang onto the deck laid with fireproof blankets.

After colliding with an earlier dropped shell casing that hadn't fully cooled, this newly ejected shell casing would also stop moving, waiting for the arrival of the next shell casing like its predecessors piled together.

And on the distant sea surface, one water column after another rose up; the Dwarf's torpedo speedboats were weaving through these water columns generated by artillery shells.

Occasionally, a torpedo boat would be directly hit by a shell and immediately turn into a myriad of flying parts on the sea, while the remaining torpedo boats continued advancing, with the foam cut by the bow moisturized the Dwarf soldiers' uniforms on the speedboats.

On the ground, the Dwarves who reacted launched one illuminating shell after another; they knew there were countless silent demons in the night who could silently slaughter them all, so they tried hard to turn the surroundings into daylight.

With the cover of darkness lost, or rather, losing the advantage of being undiscovered by the enemy, the Tang Army's attack slowed down, and the role of the night vision device was suppressed by the illuminating shells.

The battlefield began to erupt with intense battle; tracer bullets flew between trenches back and forth. The Dwarf Troops utilized their familiar terrain to launch counterattacks repeatedly, while the steadfast Tang Army yielded not an inch, the two sides even engaged in bloody melee combat locally.

Soon, reinforcements from the Tang Army arrived, the appearance of the Type 96 main battle tank caused a significant shift in the balance of power on the battlefield.

With mobile and flexible heavy weaponry, the tide of victory began to tilt slightly towards the Tang Army's side. Unable to find heavy weaponry to provide support, unable to counter the Tang Army's Armored Brigade, the Dwarves had to abandon the counterattacks and started consolidating their positions.

However, because the sudden loss of the artillery fire barrier on the south side, knowing part of their coastal positions had been lost, the Dwarves also began to frantically organize counterattacks from the very side.

Along the trenches, the Dwarves started pressing toward No. 5 position like ants, but they soon discovered that their meticulously designed bunkers and trenches with broad firing fields and virtually no blind spots became obstacles in their advance.

Originally designed to trap the landing Tang Army, the defensive fortifications now became traps for slaughtering Dwarves. The Tang Empire Soldiers lying in wait only needed to fire easily from within the bunkers to harvest scores of Dwarf soldier's lives.

The battle started as bloody and harsh, no one retreated, everyone fought desperately. For a moment, in some trenches and near bunkers, the bodies piled up like mountains.