Early in the morning, looking northwest and east, on the battleship "Longxing".

Zhang Guozhu had been keeping watch in the bridge of the commander's ship all night, and nothing had happened except for the occasional message from the cruiser that had gone out on guard.

He is now the Interim Commander of the Fourth Fleet and also serves as the Commander of Task Force 42.

After Gui Boyong went to the Navy Command to serve as Chief of Staff of the Navy, Zhang Guozhu became the interim commander of the Home Fleet. When the fleet was restructured, he did not become the commander of the Guia Fleet, but took the initiative to ask Ying to go to the Fourth Fleet, thus becoming the first commander of the Fourth Fleet.

According to the new rules, the first half of the year is the internship period, and the word "temporary generation" will be removed after the expiration of the term.

It looks like it's down a level, but it's not.

The Guia Fleet nominally inherited the mantle of the Home Fleet, but in reality it had only an empty shelf and no real power to transfer command.

Under the new establishment system, the "Guia Fleet" and the "Fanyan Ocean Fleet" are both civilian organs under the Navy Command that are responsible for personnel management. To put it more thoroughly, it is similar to the personnel department of the Navy Command, but with a more resounding name.

Although the Fourth Fleet is only responsible for combat operations in the Guia Ocean, it has the real power to mobilize warships and command the fleet, and also directly participates in combat operations.

Crucially, the interim commander of the Second Fleet, which was in charge of the Guia Combat Operations, was Vice Admiral Guan Zhenping.

This person belongs to the Southern Fleet, and his qualifications and status are on a par with Zhang Guozhu.

In this way, Zhang Guozhu is even more needed to go to the Fourth Fleet.

In He Yongxing's words, there is no more suitable candidate than Zhang Guozhu.

Zhang Guozhu has nothing to say about this.

He can have today, all thanks to He Yongxing's promotion.

It's just that from his personal standpoint, Zhang Guozhu feels that Bai Zhizhan should be allowed to command the Fourth Fleet, after all, Bai Zhizhan's talent and ability are there.

To say, that is, the qualifications are a little worse.

Before becoming the commander of the fleet, Bai Zhizhan did not serve as the captain of the ship, but only served in the position of the chief supervisor of the "Longjiang" for a few months, and since then has been serving as a staff officer in the fleet command. According to the traditional view, a commander with a staff background is not suitable to command a fleet of operations.

Beginning with Chen Bingxun, all fleet commanders of the Imperial Navy have served as captains of capital ships.

When assigning the task force, Zhang Guozhu did not have the command of the 41st task force of the White War War.

Of course, he couldn't fight.

It was Liu Changxun who put Bai Zhizhan in command of the 41st Task Force, and according to the current establishment system, the Navy Command has the discretionary power to appoint and dismiss personnel.

For this reason, Zhang Guozhu came to the 42nd Task Force, with the "Longxing" as the flagship.

To say, "Longxing" has always been a symbol of the home fleet.

Since it was transferred from the Southern Fleet to the Home Fleet in the last year of the last war, the "Longxing" has been the flagship of the Home Fleet for decades since.

Zhang Guozhu is very familiar with this majestic battleship.

In fact, Zhang Guozhu is also very familiar with the other warships of the 42nd Task Force.

The greatest advantage of the new establishment system is that there is no interference between training operations and administrative management, and the fleet organization can be adjusted according to actual needs.

The four "Longxing" class ships are only one detachment of the 42nd task force, the 42.1st detachment. In addition, there was the 42.2 detachment consisting of four "Zizhou" classes, the 42.3 detachment consisting of four light cruisers, and the 42.4 and 42.5 detachments of four destroyers each.

In addition, four fleet tankers, numbered as the 42.6th detachment, remained at Liuhuangdao.

If necessary, detachments or warships can be drawn from other task forces, or even other fleets, to be incorporated into Task Force 42.

Now, Detachment 42.2 is about twenty kilometers ahead, and Detachment 42.4 is on guard to the east.

Yesterday evening, Detachments 42.3 and 42.5 had accelerated to the front to intercept the Nuland ships that were still heading west.

To be precise, to support the broken cruisers that were assigned to the Second Fleet.

According to the arrangement of the Navy Command, the Second Fleet mobilized more than 10 ship-breaking cruisers to form a blockade line 1,500 kilometers east of the Sagi mainland. It's just that compared to the more than 100 Newland freighters that are sailing westward, a dozen or so broken cruisers are definitely far from enough.

There was also intelligence that the Nuland fleet contained armed merchant ships.

To say that the broken cruiser and the armed merchant ship are actually a kind of ship.

Both are modified from merchant ships, although there are some differences, such as the speed of the broken cruiser and the firepower of the armed merchant ship, but they are basically the same.

In the setting of the North Sunset, the Royal Navy of Bran had already followed the example of the previous great war, arranging for armed merchant ships to escort the fleet.

Although it had some miraculous results in the beginning, the armed merchant ships of the Royal Navy of Bran were of little use after the submarine changed its tactics and no longer aimed at capturing freighters. By now, a number of armed merchant ships have been converted into seaplane carriers.

The Nuland Federation has also modified a number of merchant ships to carry and operate seaplanes for long-range anti-submarine search during escort operations.

Only now, these ships all fly the flag of the Kingdom of Bran.

Interestingly, the Manman Empire also painted a scoop according to the gourd.

Before the outbreak of the Great War, in addition to the Broken Friendship Fleet sent to the South and the Falling Ocean, the Empire also issued an order that all cargo ships that had not had time to return to the mainland should go to the ports of friendly countries for armed transformation, and leave the ports to carry out the task of breaking diplomatic relations after the outbreak of the Great War.

A total of 12 Homan freighters were refurbished.

Since then, these freighters have all become broken cruisers, and most of them have gone to Fanyan Ocean and Sunset Ocean.

At the beginning of the war, the performance of these broken cruisers can be described as "brave".

In the first month alone, more than 30 freighters of the Bran Kingdom were captured, and even a few faster ones were converted into broken cruisers.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and the Royal Navy of Bran soon dispatched light cruisers, and it only took two months to sink most of the broken cruisers. The remnants had to hide in Tibet, and several of them were disarmed under international law after entering the ports of neutral countries.

To this day, there are still operations on the ocean, and there are no more than five broken cruisers flying the flag of the Empire.

Because of the lack of supplies, they dare not rush to the ports of neutral countries, so the end of these armed merchant ships will definitely not be much better.

In the Guia, there are also armed merchant ships in action.

Last month, a Second Fleet shipwreck sank a Nuland suspected of being an armed merchant ship, capturing a crew member.

Although the interrogation has revealed that the crew members, including the captain of the ship who died in the battle, many of whom were retired members of the Nuland Navy, the freighter had been sunk and the rescued crew members were not active military personnel, so it could not be used as evidence of the Nuland Federation's violation of the principle of neutrality.

The Nuland Federation did not invest too many armed merchant ships in the Guia Ocean, but it was afraid of the fleet of the Imperial Navy.

Armed merchant ships and broken cruisers were vulnerable in front of battleships.

In fact, this is also the key to the 42nd Task Force sending out the two detachments.

If the Nuland Navy sent warships to escort the fleet, the broken cruisers responsible for intercepting it would definitely have to retreat, and the fleet would need to go up.

The first to rush up was indeed the battleship of the Nuland Navy! 8)