afterglow

Chapter 550 Qiongzhou Joint Training Camp; I don’t even want to lose face!

Zhou Changfeng burst into laughter and said: "Learning to land is of no use. The north and south seas are not in your hands. No matter how complete the preparations are, it is useless without sea control."

"Hey, Zhou Daizhao, don't think so." Zhang Xi just waved his hands when he heard this, and replied calmly: "At times like this, we should be smarter. According to business thinking, we will give people whatever they want, no matter what they do. very!"

An air force commodore who came to the Ministry of War on business stopped by. He interjected with great interest: "Also, everything will be done if it is forewarned, and if it is not forewarned, it will be ruined. Maybe the Germans are making long-term plans, or they may want to take a big gamble. Cross the English Channel."

Both the North Sea and the Mediterranean were under the control of the anti-German alliance. There was the British Royal Navy in the north and the Italian Royal Navy in the south. The German Society looked down upon the Eurasian continent and had no use for its millions of troops.

The Anti-German Alliance is a term that has only recently become known to the world. In fact, it was established two months ago.

On September 9 last year, Britain, France (the Third Republic), and Italy signed the "British-French-Italian Mediterranean Agreement", forming the prototype of a military alliance.

On July 7 this year, the diplomatic attaches of the three countries gathered in the North African port city of Tunis and signed a new military alliance treaty, aiming to jointly fight against the terrifying German Society and the countries on the same front with it.

In this way, today, more than a hundred years after the establishment of seven anti-French alliances on January 23... a total of seven times, the drama of European countries having to join hands to fight against the enemy has been staged again, but this time the protagonist has become the German Society.

Zhou Changfeng was quite confused at first as to why he deliberately targeted Deshe? Military alliances at the same time in history were not like this.

When it comes to specific battle tactics, the level of officials in the Ministry of War is naturally not as good as that of the Governor's Mansion. What you say to me now can only be regarded as casual chatting.

Zhou Changfeng stared sharply at the Apennine Peninsula on the European map. "Germany now has completely legitimate reasons. It has been preparing for the battle for several months, so it should take action."

Responsible for defending the narrow corridor area in the northeast is the Venice Army (Second Army), which has 2 infantry divisions and 13 armored division, with a total strength of 1.

Their dilemma can be seen from the deployment of the Italian army.

But is it really possible to withstand the raging red tide in this vast, only plain in southern Europe?

The Venetian Army was originally planned to be the main force in the invasion of Yugoslavia, but the Italian upper echelons were slow to make up their minds - Commander Benito was worried that this would prompt Yugoslavia to turn to the German Society.

It is a certainty that the German Society intends to attack Italy. Everyone believes that Italy, with its worrying combat effectiveness, is the weakest link in the anti-German alliance.

"The current encirclement and suppression campaign is quite scary. Are (the Germans) planning to take the initiative so early?" someone said.

"The main axis of attack on the western front is directed towards Milan, and on the eastern front is Venice. With aircraft and artillery clearing the way, the Italian army is expected to retreat south of the Po River within eight to ten days."

From a strategic point of view, the semi-encirclement situation in three directions: Britain to the northwest, Portugal to the southwest, and Italy to the southeast, seems to have suppressed the German Society.

The main force responsible for protecting the northern industrial zone is the Po River Army (3rd Army), which has 16 infantry divisions and 5 armored divisions with a total strength of 31. It can be said that it is a heavy force group that gathers the elite of the Italian army.

Although many generals and politicians held a pessimistic attitude, fleeing without a fight and abandoning the Milan Plain could not be justified in terms of public opinion. Therefore, the Italian army still deployed a heavy force group in an attempt to rely on the natural dangers of the Po River and the fortified areas along the line to resist for a period of time. time.

For the Italian elite, nothing could be more frightening than now.

The dilemma makes the Italians very helpless - if they defend, they cannot defend; if they do not defend, they will lose most of their industry and tax revenue.

"indeed."

Italy's economic and industrial essence is concentrated in the Milan Plain in the north. The long-standing Po River flows from west to east, and major cities such as Turin, Milan, and Venice are all on this line.

Zhang Xi chuckled and said disdainfully: "We have strong soldiers and horses, a large population, and abundant national strength. As long as we fight steadily, it will be easy to break the situation."

From the layout of the Florence defense line along the Apennine Mountains, it can be seen that the Italians themselves have no confidence.

"Once the war starts, the Po River defense line will not last for half a month." The air force commodore said in an unquestionable tone.

He speculated that this may be because the United States has not yet become involved.

However, the Germans seemed unfazed, and instead had plans to attack left and right - while continuing to attack Portugal, they would also launch an offensive against Italy.

If the Milan Plain is lost, the main force of the Italian army will retreat to the Apennine Mountains and rely on the solid Florence defense line to resist the rolling German army.

Here, the Italian army deployed the Florence Group Army (4th Army), which has 12 infantry divisions and 5 mountain divisions, with a total strength of 26 people.

At the same time, in accordance with the terms of the previous "British-French-Italian Mediterranean Agreement", the French Third Republic's government-in-exile also sent 3 colonial infantry divisions and 1 light cavalry division to assist in defense, with a total strength of 5 people.

The General Staff Office of the Metropolitan Government has organized many drills this year, and the more optimistic result is that the Italian army will block the Po River defense line in the Milan Plain, delaying the German and Hungarian armies for half a month, and then be able to retreat calmly and completely.

Correspondingly, there were also relatively bad results. The Italian army quickly lost air superiority, and the logistics hubs and command posts at all levels were bombed to pieces by air strikes. The Po River Army and the Venice Army suffered heavy losses, and hundreds of thousands of people were wiped out.

After finishing the chat, Zhou Changfeng casually browsed through the in-demand technical projects summarized by the Ministry of War.

Basically, they are things such as high-precision stamping technology, large-thickness armor plate welding, high-power magnetrons, and hydraulic torque converters. They are technologies that are currently lacking or insufficient in the Ming Dynasty's industrial sector.

The shortcomings of late-developing industrial countries in many aspects are easily overlooked. Although most things can be produced by themselves, the efficiency is not high and the quality is not good.

For example, the PK/PKM general-purpose machine gun that was light and easy to use and designed in the 80s was an imitation of the Type general-purpose machine gun. However, the integrated stamping process used by PKM was unmatched by China at the time, so in the s During localization, it can only be temporarily changed to the traditional riveting process.

Now the situation faced by Ming Dynasty is similar - it has solved the problem of whether or not, and the next step is to solve the problem of good and bad.

According to the plan, the foreign mission and military inspection team will set off at the end of the month, and there is still plenty of time left.

Zhou Changfeng counted the days and decided to finalize the large-scale training center mentioned before before setting off.

"What position did you choose?" he asked.

Zhang Xi pondered and said: "You can go to Qiongya or Xinhui County, there is nothing better."

Xinhui County is located near Xinhui District of Jiangmen City in later generations, with mountains and lush forests.

The location of the training center must meet two requirements. First, it must be suitable for the overseas combat environment, and second, it must be adjacent to a port to facilitate the loading and shipping of troops. Combining his own experience, Zhou Changfeng said without hesitation: "Xinhui is definitely not as good as Qiongya. There are many jungles on Qiongya Island, and the natural environment is more appropriate. It is also relatively independent. There is no need to worry about disturbing the people. It is convenient for large-scale drills and the transportation is accessible." Sanya or Qiongzhou.”

"The Army feels the same way." Zhang Xi nodded, "I guess they will send someone over to select a location in two days."

"Are there any troops there now?"

"Uh... In addition to the garrison troops, there are also the 107th Division and the 108th Division."

"Okay, I'll go in person."

Zhou Changfeng volunteered to preside over the construction of the training ground, so no one objected. Although this was not hard work, it was also not beneficial.

Zhou Changfeng was particularly concerned about the specific subjects in the training center. He had long disliked the establishment and training of the Ming Army.

On September 9, he flew to Sanya Naval Base on a Type 9B twin-engine torpedo bomber.

The southern part of Hainan Island has complex terrain, with many mountains, hundreds of high mountains and low ridges, and numerous rivers. It has a tropical maritime climate, which is quite suitable for actual combat needs.

After Zhou Changfeng arrived at the naval base, he rested for a while and then set off again. He boarded a slow bi-wing junior trainer aircraft and circled in the sky, marking a triangular area as a training ground.

The total area of ​​this area is close to 20,000 hectares, equivalent to one-fifth of Shanghai in later generations.

The troops are stationed in the north of Sanya. The Ministry of War officially named it the Qiongya Joint Training Camp. The highest officer is the admiral, whose full name is "Admiral/Qiongya/Troop Training Affairs/Chief Military Officer".

The engineering unit of the naval base and the engineering battalions of the two local infantry divisions immediately organized construction, and insufficient building materials were ordered from local enterprises in Guangzhou.

However, the funding allocated by the Ministry of War was withheld. So when a large amount of building materials arrived from Guangzhou, the balance of tens of thousands of yuan was still not settled. The three building materials companies received reminder telegrams every day, leaving Zhou Changfeng extremely speechless.

In these days, the Military System Bureau of the Ministry of War finally completed the revision of the infantry division's establishment and officially issued an order that all qualified units must immediately accept the reorganization.

The biggest change in the organization of the 40-year-old Infantry Division (South) compared to the 36-year-old Infantry Division (South) is the addition of heavy artillery units. The once smart independent field heavy artillery brigade was officially incorporated into the infantry division sequence instead of being prepared for war. Attached.

改动之一：师属山炮团原本是一个中山炮营（12门112㎜榴弹炮）和两个轻山炮营（2×12门80㎜榴弹炮），现在增加一个重山炮营（12门144㎜榴弹炮）。

改动之二：步兵团增添一个重山炮分队，下辖2门一九式144㎜榴弹炮、2辆履带式牵引车、3辆卡车，官兵共52人。

Change Three: The combat defense gun platoon of the infantry battalion was reorganized into a recoilless gun platoon, with four 4mm recoilless guns replacing six 80mm combat defense guns. Combat defense guns are not recycled, and each unit retains them for its own use depending on the situation.

Change 4: The number of infantry squads remains unchanged, and the grouping remains unchanged. It is still a seven-man rifle team and a four-man machine gun team. Originally, two people in the rifle team used automatic guns (Type 20 automatic guns or Type 39 submachine guns). Now there are three people.

The other changes were all within Zhou's expectation, but the operation of lowering the large-caliber howitzer to the infantry regiment surprised him.

It’s so outrageous! It's just nonsense. Regimental-level troops cannot guarantee the use of such division-level artillery.

But he soon realized that his imagination was still a little lacking - the Ming Army simply planned to use it for the infantry regiments to use for direct-aimed shooting, and hit more than 80 kilograms of artillery shells and 14 kilograms of explosives inside. There was no thought of indirect shooting on the enemy's face.

This... seems to be too extreme.

The Type 7917 heavy mountain gun is actually a domestically produced model of the Schneider Mle- howitzer. This artillery was originally designed by Schneider for the Tsarist Russian army. However, due to its excellent performance, it was also adopted by the French army. Later, the Ming army, the US military, and the Italian army , the Western Army, and the Finnish Army also thought it was excellent, and they all imitated it and put it into service.

The total combat weight of this artillery is only 3250kg, the shell weight is 43.5kg, and the barrel is only 15 times the diameter, but it can shoot a range of 11.3km - using the shortest barrel diameter among similar artillery, it achieved the longest range at the time. Quite amazing.

This is why so many great powers adopted it. After the outbreak of the war, the US military restarted the production line and continued to produce it on a large scale.

During the few days while waiting for the construction of the camp, Zhou Changfeng was not idle. He drafted a practical training charter that was condensed with the blood essence of tens of thousands of officers and soldiers since the war began.

In order to improve efficiency and deepen impressions, process-based military education videos are also used. This more intuitive and vivid way is very conducive to recruits learning technical and tactical knowledge.

The 107th Infantry Division and the 108th Infantry Division became the experimental subjects of this set of intensive training.

These two infantry divisions were only organized for a few months. They were originally planned to be deployed to Moresby to capture New Caledonia, but this plan was shelved and the two divisions were temporarily stranded in Qiongya. .

Zhou Changfeng decided to test the level of the two, so he ordered a small-scale exercise to be organized, but the scene turned out to be a mess!
The regiment staff were slow to formulate plans and quite inflexible...

The camouflage of the artillery position was very poor, and it looked like it had not been bombed...

An accident occurred when the communication unit was laying out telephone lines. The off-road vehicle fell into a mountain stream, killing two people and injuring two others...

The movement of the infantry unit from the attack starting position to the impact starting position was very slow, sometimes crowded and sometimes loose...

The reaction speed of the mortar was very slow, and the artillery performance almost failed...

The supply points set up by the logistics units were also poorly disguised, and the types of ammunition were missing. The soldiers who went to pick up the ammunition found that the supply points did not have mortar smoke grenades, so they had to go further to the rear...

Zhou Changfeng couldn't hold it back anymore and threw the telescope to the ground.

"Holy crap! You've been acting like this for two months? What the hell are you doing? The tactics are just rigid. You can't learn to adapt to changes without going into battle for two battles, but you can't do the regular subjects well. I can only say that you're not good at all. I didn’t do it seriously! I’m so embarrassed!”

Both divisions were half-assed and equally unsightly.

The training level of the standing army of the Ming Dynasty is good, but the troops formed during the war are really shocking-not as good as the Forbidden Army, which has always been jokingly called the watchdog of the capital.

Although the Third Brigade of the Imperial Guard had not been in combat for a long time and had no actual combat experience, their basic technical and tactical skills were still relatively solid.

More than a dozen officers from the two divisions felt extremely humiliated and disgraced. They all lowered their heads in shame.

Shen Xuesheng, the commander of the 108th Division, hesitated for two seconds and said loudly: "Please give Zhou Daizhao some advice!"

(End of this chapter)