It was only on the afternoon of 10 December that Task Force 41 arrived at the port of Oban.

Neither aircraft carrier entered the port, and after putting down the traffic boat outside the port and sending Bai Zhizhan and others into the port, they turned back to the open sea.

According to the arrangement, the 41st Task Force will return to Naqiu Harbor and then go to Xuhai with the "Yokoe".

In the following months, Task Force 41's number one task was to train carrier-based pilots for the Imperial Navy, together with the Yokoe.

After the Spring Festival, four large aircraft carriers will join the battle sequence.

Although the officers and men supporting the aircraft carrier have already completed their training ahead of schedule by participating in the construction of the aircraft carrier, and there is no need to consider the issue of personnel rotation in wartime, the carrier-based aviation wing carried by the aircraft carrier has just been established, and hundreds of pilots have been added, and the training work is very heavy.

Besides, the "Yokoe" was often sent to make soy sauce, or to go back to the shipyard for repairs.

Less than two-thirds of the training missions planned to be completed within the year have been carried out so far, otherwise Task Force 41 would not have been sent to assist.

Fighting in the Sea of Fire?

Not then.

On 29 November, the First Fleet under Liu Xiangdong's command sent the army to Ludao in the Southern Pearl Kingdom. Because of the cover of the shore-based air force deployed on Ashishima and the army air force also put in more than 100 bombers, the landing operation went relatively smoothly.

Of course, 6 old battleships of the First Fleet also played a huge role.

These six battleships were all sunk in the port of Chengjiang, repaired not long ago, and then incorporated into the First Fleet.

Because the speed is too slow, it has little transformation value, so it is mainly used to perform ground support tasks.

Another four battleships, including two of the "Longxing" class, will be modernized and improved by the middle of next year.

It's just that the improvement of these old battleships is of little significance.

Even the "Longxing" class, after being modernized and improved, was mainly used to carry out ground fire support tasks in the later stage of the war.

It is better to transform an old battleship into a fast battleship than to build a fast battleship directly.

In just over ten days, the army captured the city of Marat.

The rapid progress had to do with the fact that the Nuland army had almost no resistance.

At that time, there were less than 5,000 Nuland soldiers left behind in Ludo, and most of them were civilians!

Where did the others go?

Before the outbreak of the war, the total strength of the Nuland army stationed in Nanzhu remained at about 50,000, and the headquarters of the Guia Army was in Marat.

The size of this garrison far exceeded the needs of colonial rule.

If anything, after the end of the last war, the Nuland Federation used Nanzhu as a bridgehead to contain the empire, and regarded it as an advance base in the Guia.

This is a bluff, though.

From Lofos downwards, the top brass of the Newland Federation all understood that when the war broke out again, even if 500,000 troops were invested, they would not be able to hold the Nanzhu Kingdom.

In fact, the withdrawal of Nuland's troops from Nanzhu has been going on for several months.

About 30,000 Nuland soldiers and tens of thousands of military dependents went to Austria, and the Nuland Federal Task Force Command in Austria was also formed there, which was later reorganized into the Guia Joint Command. The first commander was Mike, who had been promoted to general last month as commander-in-chief of the Guia Army.

More than 10,000 Nuland officers and soldiers went to Guandao and were integrated into the local defense force.

The point is that all the people who go to the island are elite marines.

In other words, the Nuland Navy will definitely hold the island.

In addition, about 3,000 Nuland officers and soldiers were sent to the Tuke Fortress, including an engineering unit, and a large amount of engineering equipment was delivered.

According to the judgment of the naval command, the Nuland Navy has already used the fortress of Tuk as a second line of defense.

If it is not able to hold Guan Island and fail to consume the strength and time of the Liang Xia Navy on Guan Island, the Nuland Navy will definitely hold on to the Tuke Fortress.

If anything, the strategic value of the Tuk fortress is greater.

If nothing else, the Imperial Navy has been working hard here for decades, and then the Narrow Navy has been engaged in it for twenty years, and this atoll with a large area has long been fully fortified. Because of the large number of underground fortifications built and the deployment of up to 100 shore guns that posed a lethal threat to the landing ships, it was extremely difficult to storm the Tuk fortress, and even if enough troops were invested, they could suffer huge losses.

There is sufficient information that the Nuland Federation is ready to fortify all the islands under its control, especially those in the southwestern and eastern seas.

That's right, it's fortification layer by layer.

The most direct evidence is that after entering the war, the Nuland Federation sent tens of thousands of engineers and hundreds of heavy engineering equipment to Austria, and is helping Austria build factories to produce cement and expand steel production capacity to reduce the burden of shipping from home.

Obviously, this is not just about building a defensive line in Austria.

Austria is a continent, with such a large area, that passive defense is completely pointless.

The Nuland Federation must defend the islands that must be passed to Austria!

If anything, it's a very clever strategy.

If you fight one island after another, the Imperial Navy will not be consumed, but will be exhausted!

The key point is that attacking the islands defended by the Nuland army will not only suffer huge casualties, but also consume a huge amount of war materials, especially fuel.

The "Yuejiang" sailed back and forth to the east of the island for one night, and it burned hundreds of tons of heavy oil!

The 41st Task Force will use up tens of thousands of tons of heavy oil in one sortie!

And combat aircraft, just more than a hundred tactical aircraft deployed on Atta Island, which burn 300 tons of aviation gasoline in one day of sortie!

In addition, to deliver supplies to the front, it is also necessary to burn oil.

If nothing else, in order to reduce its dependence on oil, the Empire has planned to equip freighters with coal-fired boilers, and the Empire has too much coal to run out of anyway.

Even the production of explosives requires oil!

Also in order to conserve oil, the imperial authorities were already considering whether to import coal chemical technology from the Empire, or even obtain fuel through coal.

However, with the relatively huge daily consumption, these measures are all a drop in the bucket.

If it continues to be consumed like this, can the oil reserves of the empire be used for a year and a half?

Maybe it won't last a year!

The purpose of the Nuland Navy was to deplete the Empire's strategic reserves and force the Imperial Navy to slow down its advance.

Finally there must be a stop.

As long as a strategic stalemate is formed, then it is useless no matter how many aircraft carriers the Reich Navy has.

Drag on for 2 to 3 years, and when the mobilization of the Nuland Federation is completed, and the warships that started construction after the mobilization are put into service one after another, the opportunity to turn defeat into victory will come.

From this point of view, it is actually understandable that the Nuland army took the initiative to abandon the Nanzhu Kingdom.

Nanzhu is too close to the mainland of the empire, and it is mainly a few large islands, mainly ground warfare, and it is difficult to play a role in draining the imperial navy.

In addition, the Nuland Federation had only just entered the war, and the mobilization had not been completed, and the troops were very valuable.

More than 40,000 Nuland officers and soldiers will soon be overwhelmed by 100,000 or even 200,000 soldiers of the Imperial Army on the battlefield of Nanzhu Kingdom.

It's just that on small battlefields like Tube Island and Tuke Fortress, it's completely different.

At least on a strategic level, the decision-makers in the Nuland Federation did not make low-level mistakes and knew exactly what to do.

This is also where Xue Yuanzheng is more afraid of Lofus.

An opponent who knows how to advance and retreat and knows how to make trade-offs is a truly powerful opponent.