.“ Outside the nickname, Germany declared war on Russia! The three German armies attacked South Russia, the European continent war is imminent, and who will compete with the Black Sea! Outside the nickname! ”

The little newspaper boy shouted so hard that with such eye-catching headlines, today's newspaper sells exceptionally well. For such a war that seemed to be far away from itself, most of the various strata in China had a lively mentality, and in their view, the Northern Expedition of the National Revolutionary Army was a war closer to their vital interests.

"Hey, get me one!" A young man in a white shirt took out a few copper plates from his pocket, "German eagle beats Russian bear, interesting thing, I don't know who can win!" ”

"Sir, give!" The little newspaper boy quickly handed the newspaper to the man, put away the copper plate, and said mischievously: "If you want to know what will happen next, please buy the next issue of the newspaper!" ”

The young man shook his head with a smile in his heart, hoping that the war would bring another period of relative prosperity to Asia, especially the Far East, where the European war tended to cause large numbers of investors to invest their money in more stable places.

At the beginning of the war, however, the Far East was not completely far from the battlefield, and at the beginning of the war, both Germany and Russia had considerable Pacific Fleets stationed in the Far East. As the main maritime forces of Germany and Russia in the Asia-Pacific region, the German Pacific Fleet stationed in Jiaozhou Bay and the Russian Pacific Fleet stationed in Vladivostok have become the vanguard of the confrontation between the two countries in this region.

The two German and Russian Pacific Fleets are separated only by the Yellow Sea, the Korean Peninsula and the Sea of Japan, a distance of 1,100 kilometers in a straight line, and only about 2,000 kilometers by sea. Whether the Russo-Japanese naval war will resume, or whether the Russians will rise up, or whether the Japanese navy will step in on the side, all kinds of speculation will be doubly interesting.

The Russo-Japanese Battle of Arthur 24 years ago left a very deep memory in the minds of the Russians, so as early as the day after the "Who is the murderer" incident, that is, the day before Germany declared war on Russia, the commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet, Alexander Murphy. Vice Admiral Garilov declared martial law at Vladivostok on the orders of St. Petersburg and sent a large number of patrol boats, destroyers, and submarines to guard the harbor.

On the day that Germany declared war on Russia, the entire Vladivostok and the Russian Pacific Fleet entered a state of imminent war, and both the crew and the garrison were all stationed at their respective posts.

After Germany declared war on Russia, it immediately declared the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, and the waters near Vladivostok as areas of engagement, and warned the merchant ships of neutral countries not to approach these waters during the war. Originally, Germany also wanted to include the Sea of Japan in the war zone, but the Japanese government flatly refused on the grounds that the Sea of Japan was related to the survival of a large number of fishermen and trading companies, and only allowed German ships to operate in this area and engage the Russian fleet on the premise of not harming Japanese ships as much as possible.

In fact. June 4 did not become the day of the duel for the German-Russian Pacific Fleet. On the day, by the veteran Maximilian. Feng. The eight capital ships of the German Pacific Fleet commanded by Spee went out to sea and circled, and the last one returned to Jiaozhou Bay without a bad result, which made the Russians who had learned the information a little relieved. But for the Russians, bad news soon followed, and that night, a gunboat on a routine patrol hit a mine six nautical miles outside the harbor, and just half an hour later, a freighter from Japan also sank outside the harbor. Only then did the Russians realize that the German Navy had used the same trick against the Americans again, this time. Thirty-six German mine-laying submarines unceremoniously laid more than 800 mines in the waters off Vladivostok Harbor.

Late at night on June 4th. Sixty-one Dornier II bombers flying from Qingdao Air Base dropped more than 400 anchor mines and drift mines near the mouth of the Golden Horn and Russky Island, and another Russian freighter trying to enter the port sank that night. Before a safe passage could be cleared from the German mine array, Vladivostok's sea route to the outside world was closed.

With 2 dreadnoughts, 11 old battleships, and a large number of light ships, the Russian Pacific Fleet soon tasted the taste of passive beating.

On the morning of 5 June, a second group of German bombers flew to Vladivostok, this time carrying not mines to blockade the harbor, but heavy aerial bombs of 500 kg, 800 kg, and 1 ton. According to the bombardier on one of the Dornier III ultra-long-range bombers, "Our fleet took off from Qingdao Airport at 4 a.m., then flew northeast at an altitude of 5,500 meters, and at 7:15 a.m. we could see the Golden Horn, when a dozen or so Russian ships were clearing mines in the harbor." Before we flew over the port, the navigator sounded the alarm that Russian fighters had been spotted, although it was more than 1,000 kilometers from Qingdao to Vladivostok. However, the Air Department has long prepared for us a long-range fighter with a range of nearly 1,500 kilometers to carry out escort missions, which is said to be an improvement of the Messerschmitt I fighter, and in addition to greatly increasing the capacity of its own fuel tanks, it also has an extra-large auxiliary mailbox under the belly. After the Russian fighters appeared, our escort fighters threw off their auxiliary fuel tanks and bravely pounced, there were 32 fighters on our side, and about 50 Russian fighters on the oncoming side, but they quickly divided into two parts, about 30 fighters responsible for entanglement of our fighters. The remaining 20 are coming straight for us! ”

"In the face of approaching Russian fighters, our lead aircraft did not give a climb signal, but made the planes ready for battle. Most of the pilots in our wing went through the war 204 years ago, and many of them had the opportunity to fight American fighters! The Russian fighters didn't look better than the American fighters, and when they came into range, I opened fire with the twin machine guns in the nose. At the same time, the planes also strafed with machine guns in the nose, belly, and sides of the fuselage, and the three Russian fighters rushing to the front were quickly hit by our crossfire, while others scattered in all directions, each looking for an opportunity. In total, we shot down about 15 Russian fighters before our fighters returned, and not a single bomber was shot down on our side! Although my plane was hit by a bullet, it had basically no effect on the flight. ”

"After clearing the Russian fighters, the fleet began to bomb Vladivostok. I saw the ships anchored in the harbor through the sight, and since we were still flying at an altitude of 5,500 meters, I could not distinguish their specific types at that time, but it was estimated that there were about 70 warships in total, as well as quite a few freighters and fishing boats. At 7:26, I pressed the bomb dropping button, and the sight's crosshair was fixed on the pier on the north side of Vladivostok. We are joined today by 22 Dornier II and 31 Dornier III, which are not particularly numerous. But a single Vladivostok flight can drop 280 tons of bombs, at that time we were carrying more than 500 kilograms of bombshells, I think if any Russian ** ship is hit by a 500 kilogram bomb falling from a height of 5,500 meters, even if this bomb does not explode, it must smash through the warship! Later, it became known that most of the bombs bombed that day had landed on the docks and urban areas, and only a few dozen had landed in the harbor area where the Russian fleet was anchored, but they still sank the Russian cruiser "Almaz", the destroyer "Cod" and another nameless gunboat, and damaged the old battleships "Victory" and "Peresvet". When we returned. Since they couldn't get out of the harbor to hide, those Russian battleships could only wander around the Golden Horn! ”

"The Russians' anti-aircraft artillery around the mouth of the Golden Horn and Vladivostok has not stopped since we started bombing but have not stopped, maybe their artillery fire height is not ideal, or it may be that their rangefinders have miscalculated the height of the target, most of the shells are hundreds of meters below our fuselage The enemy exploded, and we only lost 4 escort fighters in the first day of bombing, and not a single heavy bomber was shot down, which should be said to be a very successful operation!"

On 6 June, Major General Ahrens, commander of the German Far East Task Force in Qingdao, concentrated 142 bombers at his disposal and launched the largest air raid on Vladivostok, which at that time covered 513 square kilometers of German concessions along the coast of Jiaozhou Bay. There are three large air bases. There are more than 370 fighters in the two mixed air force wings, and long-range bombers already account for nearly 40 percent of them, which is already the limit of the ground without increasing the ground area of the air base. Because the Germans had to maintain a certain number of fighters, long-range reconnaissance aircraft, and dive bombers and torpedo planes that could be used to attack ships.

In any case, 97 Dornier II and 45 Dornier III made the entire Vladivostok tremble in the bombshell explosion one after another, this bombing not only destroyed a large number of Vladivostok military, civilian buildings and dock facilities, but also detonated two Russian oil depots, and four more Russian ** ships were sunk, six were damaged, the flagship of the Russian Pacific Fleet berthed at the south pier, the "Petrovna" ordered from Japan in 1925 was actually damaged by a near-miss bomb on the starboard side, it was confirmed, The newest battleship of the Russian Pacific Fleet was forced into the dock for at least 30 days of repairs, a nightmare start for the Russians.

As a price for this massive bombing, four Dornier II bombers were shot down by Russian anti-aircraft fire.

Most of the crew members were captured by the Russian army, but this exchange was undoubtedly a big loss for the Russians. Seeing the fleet passively bombed in the harbor, Alexander. Lieutenant General Garilov ordered that a safe passage be cleared from the mines outside the harbor as soon as possible at any cost, and even asked the Russian government to invite the Japanese Navy to send warships to assist in mine clearance. The 47-year-old Russian vice admiral's experience is quite similar to Sokolov's, he was also appreciated by the empress to quickly rise from a mid-ranking officer to a high position, the difference is that Garilov is a distant relative of the Russian imperial family, while Sokolov is a pure grass people.

After three days of mine-sweeping operations on 5, 6, and 7 June, 13 Russian minesweepers cleared only 49 drifting mines off the port of Vladivostok, which was less than 3 percent of the total number of mines laid by the German army. Moreover, on the evening of the 7th, one of the minesweepers unfortunately hit a mine, and this accident cast another shadow over the prospects of the Russian Pacific Fleet. For the Russians, it was even worse, and on June 10 and 17, two more German mine-laying submarines were mined in the waters off Vladivostok, making it even more difficult for the Russian fleet to get out of port.

Mine warfare and large-scale air raids are not the only means of ground warfare for the German army, and if you want to talk about the German navy's housekeeping skills, it must be submarine warfare! At the time of the war between Germany and Russia, the number of German submarines operating in Jiaozhou Bay reached an unprecedented 196, and such a large number of submarines not only became a beautiful scenery of the Qingdao Naval Base, but also became a major problem for Russia and Japan. The first attack was made by the Japanese Government, which frequently condemned submarine warfare in public as an extremely un"benevolent" tactic, and strongly demanded that all countries ban their submarine forces, proposing that "naval warfare should be conducted in an open and upright manner." The Russian Government naturally echoed this. In addition, Japan and Russia have also made a lot of painstaking efforts in the study of anti-submarine sonar and depth charges, and Japan has even spent huge sums of money to purchase any kind of ships with sonar from Germany in order to study Germany's extremely secret sonar technology, and finally developed the so-called "Thousand Eyes" series of anti-submarine sonars and "Turtle" series of anti-submarine bombs before the German-Russian war, and "generously" gave these weapons to the Russian Navy at low prices.

It is a pity that the Russian Pacific Fleet, which is equipped with sonar and anti-submarine bombs, was blocked in the harbor by German mines at the beginning of the war, and many German submarines were "free" to be active in the waters of the Far East, and the 2nd Submarine Squadron of the German Pacific Fleet, which was responsible for patrolling the Japanese Sea, sank seven Russian freighters between 4 and 10 June. German ocean-going submarines operating in the Sea of Okhotsk and Bering were also reported successes, and the German Pacific Fleet had just begun the war, and the German Pacific Fleet quietly dealt a heavy blow to Russia's maritime trade activities in the Far East and the Pacific.

On 10 June, Berlin received information that the Japanese Navy had decided to accept the invitation of the Russians and secretly send a minesweeper formation to Vladivostok to assist the Russian army in mine clearance. After making this decision, the Japanese Government seemed to have the intention of not doing anything about it, and only one day later, the Japanese Kwantung Army provoked the famous "Shenyang Incident" in northeast China, thus officially opening the prelude to the war of aggression against China.

After the "Shenyang Incident," the situation in the Far East suddenly became tense.

Since the capture of Feng's Beidaying and Shenyang, the Japanese Kwantung Army has encountered fierce resistance from Feng's army on other fronts, which has made the Japanese firm in the practice of "shooting people first and horses first, and capturing thieves and capturing kings first". On June 15, Zhang Zuolin's car was suddenly attacked by a grenade by an unknown person, and under the desperate protection of the guards, Zhang Zuolin himself was seriously injured. In this case, the Northern Expeditionary Army, composed of the four major armies of Chiang, Feng, Yan and Gui, first announced the cessation of the Northern Expedition and supported the righteous act of the Northeast Feng Army against the Japanese army.

However, just when the situation was improving, 53-year-old Zhang Zuolin died in Beiping due to the sudden deterioration of his injuries, and the situation in northeast China once again became confusing.