As time ticked by, the war grew ever more intense. The smile had long vanished from Admiral Walckenheim's face, replaced by a heart full of worry.
The battle had begun at ten in the morning and continued until five in the afternoon. Growling stomachs were one thing; the key problem was that the enemy refused to retreat even unto death.
Due to inadequate training and a hit rate painful to behold, the Japanese kept closing the distance during the engagement, attempting to engage them in close-quarters combat.
After their warships suffered heavy damage, the Japanese's first reaction was not to withdraw from the battlefield. Instead, they accelerated, intending to "ram" their enemies and perish together.
The Japanese had gone mad, but the officers and men of the Spanish fleet were still normal people. Once their warships suffered heavy damage, they chose to withdraw at once.
Logically speaking, these heavily damaged warships no longer posed much of a threat, yet the Japanese still clamped down on them and refused to let go.
The capital ships had to fight their decisive battle and had no time to beat drowning dogs, but the sailing warships lingering in the rear to watch the show could.
The moment a Spanish warship withdrew from the battlefield, the Japanese fleet's cannon-fodder sailing ships would swarm forward. The guns of sailing warships were originally too weak to do much against ironclads, but damaged ironclads were another matter.
The Japanese were willing to pile up lives. By sacrificing several sailing warships, they could always take down one severely damaged ironclad.
Aside from these conventional attacks, the Japanese also had a kind of suicide attack vessel, packed full of explosives and detonated the instant it charged in. This forced them to divert firepower to deal with these small boats.
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