The Japanese fleet was consumed by a singular obsession: kill the ironclads. On the bridge of his burning flagship, the Matsushima, Admiral Ito Sukeyuki watched the two Chinese battleships advance through the storm of shells his fleet was throwing at them. They were scarred, battered, and trailing thick plumes of black smoke, but they would not stop. It was infuriating. It defied the logic of modern naval warfare. Speed and rate-of-fire were supposed to be decisive, yet these two slow, ponderous beasts were absorbing everything the Japanese could throw at them and just kept coming.
"Their ironclads are burning!" Ito roared over the din of his own ship's guns. "They cannot sustain this punishment forever! Concentrate all fire on the Dingyuan! We can break her! We can break their center!"
The captains of the Japanese cruisers, obedient to their admiral's command and caught up in the fury of the battle, focused their attention and their guns almost exclusively on the two lead ships. They circled and maneuvered, pouring a relentless stream of fire onto the two titans, convinced that a victory over the Chinese flagships would shatter the enemy's morale and win them the day. In their target fixation, in their desperate need to destroy the anvil, they had forgotten about the hammer.
To the west, obscured by the thick, acrid smoke of the battle, the faster Qing cruisers had executed their orders perfectly. Led by the fiery and brilliant Captain Deng Shichang aboard the cruiser Zhiyuan, the squadron had used the chaos as a cloak. They had swung wide, their engines pushing them to their absolute limit, and were now perfectly positioned to fall upon the exposed rear of the Japanese battle line.
"Admiral!" a lookout on the Matsushima screamed, his voice raw with terror. He pointed frantically, not ahead, but to the starboard quarter. "To starboard! The Chinese cruisers! They are upon us!"
Admiral Ito spun around. His blood ran cold. Emerging from the swirling smoke like a pack of wolves, the Qing cruisers were charging directly at them. They were already in optimal firing range, their guns trained not on the heavily armored battleships, but on the vulnerable, thin-skinned ships at the end of the Japanese line. It was a perfectly executed flanking maneuver.
On the bridge of the Zhiyuan, Captain Deng's eyes gleamed with a fierce, predatory light. "We have them!" he shouted to his executive officer, his voice ringing with triumph. "The Emperor's plan was perfect! They have exposed their soft underbelly! They have shown us their weakness!" He raised his voice to a roar that carried across the deck. "All ships! Target their unarmored sections! Aim for their gun decks! Fire for effect! Send them to the Dragon King's palace!"
The Qing cruiser squadron opened fire as one. At such close range, their aim was devastating. This was not the long-range artillery duel of the battle's opening phase; this was a close-quarters knife fight. Their new, high-explosive steel shells—the product of the Emperor's intervention at the Tianjin Arsenal—slammed into the lightly armored Japanese cruisers. The effect was catastrophic.
The Japanese ships, designed for speed over protection, began to come apart. Aboard the cruiser Hiei, the crew had been bravely manning their guns, firing at the distant Dingyuan. They never saw the shells from the Jingyuan coming. One slammed into the main deck, tearing a huge hole and starting a massive, uncontrollable fire amidst the wooden planking. The captain screamed orders to turn away, to disengage, but the ship was too slow to react. Another shell struck below the waterline, and the Hiei began to list heavily to one side, clearly doomed.
On the Matsushima's bridge, the reports came in, each one a hammer blow to Admiral Ito's hopes.
"The Hiei is sinking, sir! She is out of the line!"
"The Akagi is on fire! Heavily damaged!"
"The cruiser Saikyo Maru has been struck in her steam-pipes! She is dead in the water!"
"Their shells… they are tearing us apart!"
The brave, highly disciplined Japanese crews could do nothing. They were caught in a fatal trap, their ships' primary design flaw being ruthlessly exploited. The open casemates that housed their vaunted rapid-fire guns, designed to save weight, became horrific death traps. Qing shells, exploding on impact, sent showers of white-hot shrapnel scything through the exposed gun crews, turning decks slick with blood. Ships that had been models of efficiency moments before were transformed into floating slaughterhouses.
The battle reached its terrible climax as the gunners on the Zhenyuan, the Dingyuan's sister ship, saw their opportunity. The Matsushima, in its maneuvering, had briefly exposed its port side to the Chinese battleship. The gunnery officer screamed his commands, the massive 12-inch guns swiveled, and a full broadside was fired at the Japanese flagship.
One of the thousand-pound shells was a direct hit. It smashed into the Matsushima's main deck, just forward of the rear turret. It did not penetrate the ship's main armor belt, but it didn't have to. Its fuse, perfectly designed, detonated the shell on impact, directly next to a large stockpile of ready ammunition for the ship's main gun—huge bags of volatile cordite propellant.
The resulting explosion was cataclysmic.
A massive, blinding flash of orange-white light engulfed the rear half of the Matsushima. The deck plating was peeled back like the lid of a tin can. The ship's massive main cannon was thrown into the air as if it were a child's toy. A wave of pure concussive force and searing heat blasted across the ship, killing hundreds of sailors instantly.
On the bridge, Admiral Ito was lifted from his feet and thrown against a steel bulkhead. He felt a searing pain in his side as his ribs cracked, the breath driven from his lungs. When his vision cleared, he saw that his bridge was a wreck. His flag captain lay dead a few feet away, his body horrifically burned. Most of his staff were gone. The rear of his ship was an inferno.
The Japanese flagship was crippled, burning, and out of the fight. The command structure of the Combined Fleet had been, in a single, fiery instant, decapitated. The hammer had fallen, and it had shattered the enemy's spine.