afterglow

Chapter 384 Chapter [-]: Fighting a tough war; Chenghua-class spy battleship
Since the discovery of a large iron mine in Western Australia five years ago, deeply shocked people have turned their attention to the barren and desolate Western Australia.

Geologists and mining company exploration teams came in an endless stream. People were shocked that the rich iron ore here was of really good quality, with an average iron content of 60%, and could be smelted directly without treatment.

For comparison, although China's iron ore resources are large in total, their quality is poor. A considerable part of them are poor iron ores, with an average iron content of only 15% and no more than 35%.

"The peace price offered by the British is Burma, and Usizang...that corner of the southern foothills."

With that said, Zhu Lingjing stood up slowly, walked slowly to the side of her seat, bent down and changed a record on the gramophone.

Zhou Changfeng couldn't help but frown when he heard this, "The more oil, the better. Ren'anqiang Oilfield is almost within easy reach, and Myanmar's tungsten mines are very important to Europeans. It would be a pity to give up on Myanmar."

He then added: "As for Usizang, I think it goes without saying. Although southern Tibet is just a corner of the country, it is south of the foothills of the Himalayas. With it, we will have the strategic initiative."

There was a hint of disdain in Zhu Lingjing's eyes. She said "hmm" and said, "The British lack sincerity after all. Besides, Annan has contributed a lot and is very dedicated. He should indeed give some things away, so as to set an example for all the vassals."

Zhou Changfeng shrugged, "But they must also have concerns, worried that we are wolves that cannot be fed enough."

"Let them be suspicious and wait and see for the time being." Zhu Lingjing replied calmly: "They are in a hurry, Ming Dynasty is not in a hurry."

"really."

"In the past two days, some people from the Sun Moon Society and the Pioneer Rapid Advancement Association in the Consultative Council have claimed that our country is in an invincible position. Even if it does not compete for Hawaii, relying on Japan and many islands and reefs in the Pacific, it is far enough to keep the enemy at bay. .”

"Uh..." Zhou Changfeng hesitated for a while before he said: "To be honest, this argument...can't be wrong, but it is definitely a bad move. It's stupid, rigid, and too passive."

Tarawa Atoll, Saipan, Iwo Jima... there are more than a dozen or dozens of islands and reefs, large and small. Troops are stationed on every important island and reef, and supplies are hoarded for three to five years.

Then just wait for the Americans to slowly nibble on them. Even if they can skip most of them with island hopping tactics, they will still have to nibble on a few.

The disadvantage of this strategy is that it is too passive and passive. If the enemy is carefully prepared and then attacks with more and less, one's own army will easily be destroyed.

However, the Ming Navy could theoretically be willing to use the islands and reefs as bait during this period and take the opportunity to engage in a large-scale sea and air encirclement and annihilation battle.

A large body can indeed be much more calm. Even if Zhou thinks that such a strategy is stupid, akin to forming a stronghold and fighting a stupid war, he has to admit that it is indeed effective.

The first is military strength. The Ming Dynasty is different from Japan. The Ming Dynasty’s military strength is enough to deploy sufficient defense forces on most islands and reefs, and there is no situation where the military strength is stretched.

Next is supplies. The Ming Dynasty has tens of millions of tons of merchant ships and a good anti-submarine escort force. The main force of the navy is intact and can transport and hoard enough supplies to the garrisoned islands and reefs. There is no shortage of supplies like Japan.

Next comes the weapons. The Ming Army's light weapons and heavy weapons are not comparable to Japan's.There are a considerable number of automatic weapons for close combat, and there are anti-tank guns capable of destroying medium tanks in long-range combat.

Taking the three together, even if the American troops fought hard, they would have to pay much heavier losses on the islands and reefs guarded by the Ming army.

Historically, the U.S. military relied heavily on tanks in the battle to seize the island, but the Japanese army was unable to effectively deal with the Sherman; at the same time, the U.S. infantry was able to take advantage of sufficient automatic weapons in close combat.

These two points no longer existed when fighting the Ming army, so Zhou Changfeng firmly believed that there was no better way to attack in this era, and he could only use human lives to pile it up bit by bit.

You can even foresee the future scenario - every foot of advancement will cost you blood!
After talking for a while, Zhu Lingjing suddenly asked a somewhat shocking question.

"If after capturing Hawaii, is it possible to land in cities on the West Coast of the United States?"

"..." Zhou Changfeng replied rather speechlessly: "Your Majesty, traveling across the ocean to attack someone's homeland is... unrealistic."

"It's not about attacking the city. I want to know if we can destroy the shipyards in the cities on its west coast."

"Yes, the distance from Hawaii to the west coast of the United States is less than [-] miles. Relying on aircraft carrier-based aircraft, we can completely attack Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco."

Zhu Lingjing said thoughtfully, "Oh," "It's a pity that the industry on the West Bank cannot compare with that on the East Bank."

"Yes, the major shipyards in the United States are all on the east coast. Attacking the west coast is useless. It will also greatly aggravate the hostility of the people on the other side." Zhou Changfeng said seriously.

Relatively speaking, the more practical significance is to raid the Panama Canal. Once the locks are destroyed, the American fleet in the Atlantic will have to go around South America through Cape Horn to reach the Pacific Ocean, which will consume a lot of extra time.

However, capturing Panama was even more difficult than capturing Pearl Harbor. The voyage to Central America was too far, and there were tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed there.

Crossing the ocean and working on an expedition, if you are not careful, your entire army will be destroyed.

Zhu Lingjing thought for a while and seemed to have given up some ideas, "Let's step up and perfect the strategy against Pearl Harbor. The situation may change at any time."

She prefers to take the initiative in the war into her own hands. Even if Ming has the confidence to build a stronghold and fight a war, she is still somewhat resistant to passive defense.

Zhou Changfeng bowed his hand, "It will take about half a month to complete the initial process, and then wait for the latest intelligence from the agents and informants in Hawaii before making revisions."

"Okay." Zhu Lingjing turned her head and glanced out the window, and then asked in a more casual tone: "Are you having a good time these days? It's like the moon is surrounded by stars."

Facing her half-smiling look, Zhou Changfeng looked helpless, "No, no, I'm almost bored to death if I'm either complimenting or giving gifts all day long."

When power reaches a certain level, it is extremely difficult to be clean and honest, because there is an endless stream of people trying to please you, trying their best to please you.

It was better in the past, but being promoted to brigadier general seemed to be a watershed. Since then, he has been constantly being shown favor wherever he goes.

What left him speechless was that the day before yesterday, he saw a lantern-style desk lamp when he was in the staff office, and casually said, "This lamp is very beautiful." As a result, someone sent a brand new, identical desk lamp to him the next day. Arrive at the door of his house.

Xia Xiaoshi also complained that she had received too many invitations in recent days. There were endless lunches and dinners, and she had no time to spare.

"Just last night, Uber asked me to take care of his young son. Oh, it's difficult. I'm still thinking about finding a better part-time job."

"His family is mainly engaged in mining, so he reacts quickly and comes as soon as he smells it." Zhu Lingjing said calmly.

"Maybe I want to develop in multiple directions..."

In the late last century, Ming Dynasty nobles began to transform one after another, and now it has been finalized.Of these military aristocrats whose ancestors were knighted for their military exploits and retired from the country, only a few of them still adhere to the line of being a military family, and the rest are mainly engaged in other industries.

In other industries, you can make a lot of money, and it’s not shabby to make money!
In the first generation, Shang Youbo was just a mine supervisor in Ganzhou Prefecture. In the end, he was awarded the title of earl for his military merits in successive battles.

The funny result is that more than 200 years have passed, and his descendants have returned to their ancestors' old business. Today, most of the Jiangxi tungsten mines are owned by the Shangyoubo Mansion, and they can make a lot of money while lying down.

However, in this generation, Uncle You seemed to want to get involved in other areas, so he found someone Zhou, hoping to let his youngest son follow him and work in peace and quiet.

Although this younger son successfully graduated from Chengdu martial arts school, it is still unclear whether there is any water in it, so Zhou is now in a bit of a dilemma.

Why is it so difficult to have good connections and easily navigate the relationship field?He felt that this might also depend on talent and childhood upbringing. It would be impossible if he didn't have a little tact.

Seeing that he was depressed, Zhu Lingjing felt that she was in a good mood and said casually: "Your father-in-law is a smart man who can take care of himself. If you find it difficult to deal with anything, you can always ask for advice."

"Well, thank you for your suggestion, Your Majesty."

In the eyes of the powerful, Zhu Lizhuo is a living example.

As a collateral clan member who was about to leave the fifth server, he followed someone from Zhou to conquer the east and south. He also accumulated a good resume and military exploits. Not only did he gain a future for himself, but he also earned enough face for his family.

Look, this is how one person attains enlightenment, chickens and dogs ascend to heaven, and you will benefit a lot from following the right person.

As a result, many people have started to think about it.

After leaving the Qianqing Gate and arriving at the daily office duty room, Luo Fu, who was drinking wolfberry, complained as soon as he saw Zhou Changfeng: "The navy guys are still arguing. The capital ship construction project has been postponed for five days. What's the matter?" It’s not finalized.”

In order to cope with the construction projects determined by Ming Dynasty in the "Draft Draft for the Expansion and Construction of Naval Ships for War Preparation", the United States also passed the third Vinson Act and is starting to build a series of large and small warships.

Now that the war has begun and the status of aviation has increased sharply, the Ming Navy has begun to prepare for a new round of shipbuilding plans.

According to the "Measures for the Wartime Expansion of Naval Ships" reported by the Ministry of War and the Naval Department, the Ming Navy plans to transform the No. [-] and No. [-] Yongle-class ships into large armored aircraft carriers.

The No. 42 ship was built by Tianjin Naval Shipyard, and the progress is 37%; the No. [-] ship was built by Jinzhou Naval Shipyard, and the current progress is [-]%.

然后还要开工建造2艘二万五千吨级的标准装甲航母、3艘特务战列舰、8艘防空轻型巡洋舰、26艘驱逐舰、2艘布雷舰、5艘扫雷舰、30艘猎潜舰、42艘护卫舰、6艘登陆舰，以及小型舰艇若干。

In addition, the Navy is still debating whether to develop and build the next generation of battleships. This is why the construction project has not yet been finalized.

"The Americans have roughly guessed that they will definitely rush to build a new first-class battleship, so those who support it believe that the Ming Dynasty must also make long-term preparations." Luo Fu said, staring at the wolfberries floating in the water glass.

"Our country's shipbuilding capabilities cannot match theirs, so we cannot engage in this kind of competition, which is a waste of production capacity." Zhou Changfeng shook his head.

Based on bits and pieces of intelligence, the Americans were surprised to find that Akito had built kite-flying rogue battleships like the Yongle class. This made the six Iowa-class ships under construction suddenly become outdated things before they were put into service.

As a result, the U.S. Navy held several emergency discussion meetings and planned to start the design and construction of the next level of battleships in advance.

The USS Iowa and USS New Jersey, which were under construction, had the fastest progress and were retained for continued construction. The construction of the remaining four Iowa-class ships was suspended.

The next level of battleships should remove the restrictions on the width of the Panama Canal locks, allowing more freedom in design.

At the same time, new large locks were built in the Panama Canal for use by naval battleships.

Zhou Changfeng was flipping through the construction draft and saw one page that read "Three small special mission battleships of [-] tons are planned to be built."

He couldn't help but raise his head in confusion and asked: "By the way, what is this spy battleship?"

Luo Fu, who was unsealing a new box of ink pads, casually replied: "Oh, the navy has been tinkering with all these weird things, patching them together here and there. I really don't know where they got all these fantastic ideas."

As we all know, although the Ming Dynasty Navy has two excellent battlecruisers, it seriously lacks heavy cruisers.

This makes the Ming Navy's decisive battle fleet have a relatively low fault tolerance rate when engaging in vanguard battles with the US fleet - the former only has six heavy cruisers. Taking into account routine maintenance, battle damage repairs, and voyages to and from the ship, it is likely that there will be only six ships in a certain period of time. Three heavy cruisers are at your disposal.

Originally, the Ming Navy was planning to build four more heavy cruisers, but Dong Zhengfang, the famous Ming warship designer in charge of the design, came up with a strange idea.

Under the premise that the tonnage is not much different, no matter how the heavy cruiser is designed, it will not be able to gain significant advantages, and the cost-efficiency ratio is really too low.

So he designed a draft of a cheap, small, high-speed battleship, which really impressed the navy bosses.

This class of battleships is temporarily named the Chenghua class. It has a long forecastle ship shape, a bulbous bow, a square stern, and a standard displacement of 2.45 tons.

The power configuration of the Chenghua class is twelve high-pressure boilers, four steam turbines, and four-shaft propulsion. The normal output power is 12 horsepower and the maximum speed is 30 knots.

This power system is copied from the Wuyishan-class heavy cruiser and can be built directly, eliminating the cost of redesign.

The main gun is a Type 320 ten-inch (46mm) triple mount, 2 times the caliber, all front-mounted, and there are only [-] main turrets in total.

Due to the naval treaty, the Yongyuan-class battlecruisers No. [-] and No. [-] were converted into Taiweiyuan-class aircraft carriers. As a result, six triple-mounted main turrets were left free and have been gathering dust in the warehouse to this day.

They will be used in the Chenghua class, and three ships are planned to be built, with exactly two seats installed on each ship.

It also carries a large number of anti-aircraft weapons and 3 seaplanes.

Its protective performance is in line with the design positioning. The thickness of the main armor belt on the side is only 256mm, with an inclination of 12°; the turret is naturally an old turret from that year, with a front face of 288mm; the horizontal armor of the deck is designed to withstand 1000-pound armor-piercing aerial bombs and eight-inch The artillery shell is designed to be 128mm.

It can be seen that this is a unique warship used to suppress heavy cruisers of the US military and undertake fleet air defense. It is also very suitable for doing miscellaneous tasks. Many of its parts directly adopt the most mature designs to shorten the construction time as much as possible.

More importantly, it does not occupy the slipway required for a capital ship and can be built with only 180m of slipway.

(End of this chapter)