A week later, in the early morning of June 22, the 21st Task Force left the anchorage of Liuhuangdao under the leadership of the "Pu".

Almost at the same time, the 22nd Task Force headed by the "Fujian" set sail from the anchorage of Huangdao in Beiliu.

The commander of the 22nd Task Force is Wei Jun, who was promoted after the Chinese New Year and is now a commodore of the Navy, but for the time being he is only the interim commander of the task force.

Prior to this, the Guards participated in the battle against the city of Lion Springs and also led the fleet to receive the "Prime Minister".

Although Li Mingbo is older and more suitable to serve as the commander of the 22nd Task Force, when the Navy Command made arrangements, he politely refused, saying that he was not a leader who was good at decision-making, and was more suitable to be a staff officer, and actually wanted to continue to partner with Bai Zhizhan.

As for Li Jie, his place is in the landing fleet.

Of course, Bai Zhizhan is now the acting commander of the Second Fleet, and Li Mingbo is the chief of staff of the fleet.

A few days ago, Li Mingbo took a transit flight back to the empire to attend the ceremony of awarding the title of major general.

Although it is different from the past, it is not the first assistant of the empire, but the commander-in-chief of the navy for the new generals, after all, there are too many new generals, and the first assistant is too busy, but he can be promoted to rear admiral, which shows that Li Mingbo's contribution to the imperial navy has been recognized by the imperial authorities, and it also means that the future career will be smoother, after all, more than eighty percent of the brigadier generals cannot get the opportunity to be promoted to rear admiral.

In the Imperial Navy, Commodore was more like an honorary military rank.

Even in peacetime, as long as you can work until you retire, you can get this symbolic honor when you return to your hometown.

The point is that the allowance of a brigadier general is not much higher than that of a colonel.

Of course, this also means that only those who have real skills, or who have really made significant contributions to the Imperial Navy, have the opportunity to be promoted to rear admiral.

Not to mention anything else, neither Wei Jun nor Li Jie was promoted, and they are still brigadier generals.

The choice to leave the anchorage in the early hours of the morning was said to be for confidentiality reasons, but more out of habit.

The anchorage was in the deep-water area northwest of Liuhuang Island, and soon after anchoring, the "Pu" entered the deep-water channel and then began to accelerate.

When Li Mingbo came out, Bai Zhizhan was looking at the "Lu" in the rear.

"I just received the news, and the guards have also anchored."

Bai Zhizhan only nodded and did not answer.

Everything went according to plan, nothing to worry about.

"The supper is ready, there are dumplings, do you want to send someone to send them?"

"There's no need, you go first, I'll come later."

"Okay, I'll go to the restaurant first."

Waiting for Li Mingbo to leave, Bai Zhizhan looked at the rear again.

In the rear, in addition to the "Lu", there was a brand new battleship.

Strictly speaking, it was not a battleship.

The lead ship of the first full-time flagship of the Imperial Navy: "Qinling".

Long before the outbreak of the Great War, the Imperial Navy, based on the problems reflected in the fleet exercises, decided to build a type of warship dedicated to command, that is, a full-time flagship. It's a pity that, due to financial constraints, designing and building a flagship has always been just a good wish.

It was not until the outbreak of the Great War that the flagship project was officially launched.

After several naval battles with the Sasashi Navy in the early stages of the war, the Imperial Navy realized the value of the flagship and increased its importance.

The main thing is that the space on the aircraft carriers of the fleet is too cramped.

With the fleet aircraft carrier as the flagship, the number of officers and men in the fleet headquarters must be controlled to less than 40 people, so that many posts cannot reach the regular number of personnel. For example, in the communications department, because one-third of the staffing is missing, it can only work in two shifts, and in high-intensity battles, officers and men are often overwhelmed.

If the battleship served as the flagship, the personnel of the fleet command could be increased to 70 people.

At the "Longjiang" level, it can even be expanded to 100 people.

In contrast, naval warfare with fleet aircraft carriers as the core requires higher requirements for the fleet command and much more information that needs to be processed in a timely manner.

Although this problem has been somewhat alleviated on large aircraft carriers, the fleet command can be expanded to 60 men, it is still inferior to the battleship, and 60 officers and men is still too small for the heavy tasks undertaken, and it is not possible to guarantee that all officers and men are in ideal condition.

With flagships, this problem does not exist.

Of course, in addition to the problem of insufficient personnel, there is also the problem of hardware facilities when large warships such as fleet aircraft carriers and battleships act as flagships.

The most prominent is the communications equipment used to command operations.

Even in wartime, communications equipment was very expensive.

Obviously, it was impossible for the Imperial Navy to have all the large warships built to the standards of flagships, and often chose several of them to act as flagships. For example, in the first batch of four "provincial" ships, only the "Pu" and "Min" are the flagships, and the other two are not.

The resulting problem is that after the flagship has been badly damaged, the fleet command may be shut down.

In addition, even large warships, designed according to flagship standards, have a lot of flaws.

For example, on the "Pu", there are only 4 long-wave radios, which can cooperate with 4 friendly forces at most, which is definitely not enough in high-intensity battles.

More importantly, after several battles, the signal characteristics of the long-wave radio station "Pu" will be mastered by the enemy.

After that, whenever the radio waves emitted by the enemy are intercepted, the enemy will be able to determine its location and deduce the whereabouts of the task force to which it is located.

Obviously, it is obviously impossible to frequently replace a long-wave radio station for a large aircraft carrier.

If nothing else, it takes a lot of time just to get back to Hong Kong.

With flagships, this problem does not exist.

This, of course, was also the main requirement of the Imperial Navy for a full-time flagship.

To put it simply, it can carry a fleet headquarters with sufficient personnel and sufficient communication equipment, so that it can command fleet operations more effectively.

As the scale of the war grew, so did the requirements for the flagship.

The main thing is that it must not only be able to command the fleet in combat, but also have the ability to command combat operations at the campaign level, that is, be able to command the landing fleet, transport fleet, and landing force in combat, and even have the ability to command across services and become a maritime mobile command.

Obviously, these requirements are not low at all.

This leads to a very serious problem.

Budget overrun!

If anything, the problem lies with the Imperial Navy.

When making the planning, to be precise, when doing the cost accounting, the auditors of the Imperial Navy seriously underestimated the manufacturing cost of electronic equipment, and also underestimated the use of radio, radio listening equipment, radar and other equipment by the flagship, with the result that the accounting cost was much lower than the cost.

From another point of view, it was actually the Navy that set the tactical indicators of the flagship too high.

In the beginning, the Imperial Navy always wanted to control the cost of full-time flagships to the level of heavy cruisers, and in the future, provide one for each task force, so as to relieve the fleet carriers and fast battleships from the tedious command work, and provide a better working environment for the fleet headquarters.

Obviously, this is nothing short of whimsical.

The reason is the same, the large number of communication equipment, so that the cost of a full-time flagship remains high, and it is simply impossible to control it at the level of a heavy cruiser.

This also directly led to the fact that the first full-time flagship of the Imperial Navy almost had a difficult birth in the design stage!