How long will this war last?

For such a question, everyone standing on this battlefield will have their own speculations and hopes, and in general, the vast majority of people are willing to see this war end as soon as possible.

Of course, there are a handful of people with different hearts who will pray to Heaven for this war to last, for a year, two years, preferably a protracted war, so that their selfish desires can be satisfied to the greatest extent.

On this issue, Maximilian von, who was about to be awarded the rank of Marshal of the Navy and the Grand Cross. Spee, on the other hand, had a different mentality, an ambivalence that he wanted Germany to win a complete victory as soon as possible but did not want to see his naval career end prematurely.

Despite his good performance in previous wars, Shi Pei also understands the eternal truth that time does not spare people. In a few months, he will be 69 years old, and in such an era of new talents, there are few people in the three German armed forces who can still serve in the front-line troops at this age. Although Spee's body was still very strong, when he learned that the Kaiser would personally come to confer on him the rank of Field Marshal and the Grand Cross of the Order of the Supreme, he knew that the best time was coming to end his career as a horseman.

At this time, although the sea was cold and windy, Shi Pei, who was standing on the bridge, was reluctant to smell the familiar salty smell of the sea, the waves in the near distance kept slapping the thick steel hull of the battleship, and the faint explosion sound in the distance was that his frigate was only using depth charges to attack enemy submarines, and the stars in the night sky were exceptionally clear, and in the near future, he should say goodbye to them.

"General, we have arrived off the coast of Busan, is it unfolding and shelling as planned? Please instruct! ”

How many times will I hear such a pre-war report?

An inexplicable sense of loss suddenly rose in Shi Pei's heart, if he could continue to stay in his beloved Admiralty as a senior adviser after retiring from the front line, then at least he would not be too far away from these most loyal warships, but if he completely retreated to the countryside. I'm afraid there won't be much chance of being as surprised at sea as we are now.

"Well, pass on my order, the whole fleet will be deployed in a predetermined artillery formation, the destroyer detachments will pay attention to protecting the shelling fleet, and the minesweeper units will advance in the direction of the harbor! The shelling began in half an hour! With that, Spee took out the pocket watch that had been with him for many years, and the golden shell was not rusted with the years, but became brighter and brighter in the process of constantly rubbing against his clothes. Look at this pocket watch. How much he wished he could be like him and not lose his usefulness because of age, just like the battle in front of him, Spee, he felt that he was in a very ideal state both mentally and physically. - In the blood-red afterglow of the setting sun, a large number of ships from Germany, Mexico, and Chile moved quickly and orderly, and 4 battleships, 1 battlecruiser, and 6 heavy cruisers formed the shelling force of this fleet. With the fall of Korsakov, Spee remained bare-bones commander for two months, and it was not until the German High Command reorganized the Navy's Western Pacific Cluster that he re-established himself as a veritable fleet commander, with the German fleet heading south from the Kuril Islands and the Allied fleets arriving one after another, under his command, which soon surpassed the original First Pacific Fleet.

On the opposite side of this coalition fleet, Busan. One of the best natural harbors on the Korean Peninsula.

There are no fortified fortresses comparable to Vladivostok or Sasebo. After all, neither the Japanese Navy nor the Japanese Army has ever made Pusan a defensive priority, in their sense of the land. No national ground fleet can attack here through the Tsushima Strait or the Korean Strait. However, the Sea of Japan was no longer Japan's "inland sea", and ships from Germany, Mexico, Chile, and even Australia could roam freely here, and soon even the U.S. Navy would join the ranks.

Shi Pei's opponent today is only less than 3,000 Japanese and North Korean soldiers mixed port garrison troops and 12 large-caliber fortress guns, not to mention those fortress guns with a caliber of 280 mm, but most of them are veterans who have experienced the Russo-Japanese War, and their range and rate of fire are already old.

Even hiding behind strong fortifications could not compete with the formidable German battleships.

Around the German artillery fleet, a considerable number of destroyers, submarine hunters, and minesweepers were also in a state of battle, and it was their presence that made the Japanese attempt to use submarines, mines, and fast strike ships to fight the Allied forces in the Sea of Japan early and frustrated. No, in order to delay the allied fleet's attack on the Korean Peninsula, the Japanese army not only deployed a large number of mines in the strait, but also sent out a limited number of submarines in its hands, and even the heavy cruiser "Haifeng", which had not yet been officially commissioned, left its home port and entered the southwestern part of the Sea of Japan.

Despite its name as a heavy cruiser, the Sea Breeze was actually another aviation warship with a flight deck and large-caliber naval guns, after the German Navy's Gneisenau and Leipzig, with a top speed of 30.5 knots, up to 12 carrier-based aircraft, and a new type of aviation warship armed with 203 mm naval guns!

It is clear that the German High Command will not regard such an expected "follow-the-trend" as a serious danger. The only thing they regret is that although the Japanese Navy has a huge follow-up plan in terms of aviation warships, it was the only one that was implemented when Germany and Japan started the war, and it only cost the Japanese government about 10 million yen financially, but the Japanese Admiralty used it as the last straw after the tragic defeat - they expected the "Sea Breeze" to become a super attack ship with its high speed and its own carrier-based aircraft. in order to harass the German routes in the Sea of Japan and to exhaust most of the German ships in this area.

According to the instructions of the Supreme Command, he divided the entire fleet into a main action formation plus a number of mobile formations, and those alert mobile formations that are also called "123 formations" usually include 1 10,000-ton escort aircraft carrier, 2 10,000-ton cruisers and 5 destroyers with long range and strong anti-submarine capabilities. With the current strength of the Japanese Navy, it is difficult to threaten such a maritime formation unless the entire main fleet is dispatched.

Behind Spee, more than 6,000 German Marines and 1,200 Mexican soldiers, divided into 76 landing ships, are seizing the time to make a final rest. The landing was scheduled to start at dawn, but for those soldiers from the Mexican Marine Corps, it would be the most exciting night for them, because they had not participated in a single overseas landing operation before, and most of them were even stepping out of the country for the first time.

The situation in front of him seems to be very good, but every time he thinks of these German and Mexican soldiers who are about to land on foreign beaches to fight, Shi Pei is still a little uneasy in his heart, because on this morning, the Far East Cluster Command in Qingdao sent him a secret telegram, in which he was informed that the operation of the German ground forces on the Korean Peninsula had been changed from "advancing from the north to the south" to "first north and then south", but the coalition forces launched a landing operation in Pusan as originally planned. It's just that after landing, the Marine Corps will no longer attack and advance northward, but rely on naval cover to hold on to the Pusan area. Correspondingly, the length of time Spee's fleet remained in the waters off Pusan, and although this fleet was enough to confront the Japanese navy that had poured out, Spee was worried about the remnants of Japanese submarines and an unknown number of torpedo boats.

Half an hour was lost in an instant, and the Allied fleet began a massive shelling of the opposite shore as promised, and as night fell, Spee's fears also appeared—at 6:10 p.m., the destroyer detachment on guard in the southeast of the fleet sent a report that more than a dozen unidentified small ships had been spotted coming from the direction of Tsushima, and judging by their speed and trajectory, it was very likely that they were high-speed torpedo boats of the Japanese Navy.

"The 1st and 2nd Artillery Detachments remain in their current formation, and the 5th Destroyer Detachment and the 9th Submarine-Hunter Detachment are scattered in sniper formation to the east and south!"

Without much thought, Spees ordered these adjustments that had been brewing in his chest for a long time. In recent years, the Japanese Navy, which has tasted the sweetness of torpedo boat sneak attack tactics many times in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, has become much less enthusiastic about this "traditional weapon" because of its enthusiasm for giant ships, cannons, and aircraft carriers.

Despite this, from the outbreak of the World War in 1914 to the beginning of the German-Japanese War in 1928, the Japanese Navy successively developed nearly ten kinds of torpedo boats, including small high-speed torpedo boats that could be carried by battleships, and imitations made by purchasing torpedo boats from the German and American navies for analysis and research, with a displacement ranging from 10 tons to 40 tons, with wooden and steel hulls, and even a speed of 43 knots.

It was only because of the absolute superiority of the Japanese Navy in the Far East that these torpedo boats were built in small batches without exception, and by 1928 the entire Japanese Navy had no more than 50 torpedo boats, except for those old torpedo boats that were included in the reserve.

After all, it has been more than a year since the war between Germany and Japan, and the funds and resources consumed by small ships such as torpedo boats are not as good as those of battleships, as long as the Japanese government is willing, they can allocate a part of the manpower and material resources for building capital ships to build torpedo boats, and it is obviously much easier to train a group of torpedo boat crews than to train a pilot or a battleship commander. (Full Text)