At the beginning of the 20th century, Tuxpan on the east coast of Mexico was a small and inconspicuous port, with fishing boats and small merchant ships coming in and out of the area. When the U.S. fleet blockaded the Gulf of Mexico, it sent only a light patrol boat to read the U.S. "anti-bandit strategy" to the residents, and threatened the residents not to have any contact with the Zapatista gang or the Villa bandits, and those who assisted the bandits would be punished with the severest punishment.

After the blockade of the Gulf of Mexico by the U.S. fleet, the fishermen of Tuspan could only fish near the port, which naturally reduced the income of the fishermen, and the Mexican merchant ships could only sneak through the U.S. Navy blockade at night. Against this backdrop, April Fool's Day in Tuspan doesn't have a bit of atmosphere.

When the first person said that the bandits were going to attack Tuxpan, people were not interested in this kind of "dry humor" until more and more people said that the bandit forces were approaching, and people realized that this was not an April Fool's show.

Just after lunch, thousands of bandits launched an attack on military targets such as the Tuspin police station and the civil defense team, and the gunfire lasted only about 10 minutes, and the police and civil defense team, who had barely had decent combat effectiveness, all laid down their arms. The local population was not very afraid of these peasant rebels, as they usually only targeted government troops and Americans. Therefore, when a large number of peasant troops pulled horse-drawn carts and ox-carts into the port area, many residents stood in front of their homes and windows to watch, and some bold ones even ran up to make some small deals with the peasant army.

When more than 2,000 peasant soldiers arrived at the humble wharf, there were only a dozen dilapidated fishing boats and two freighters of less than 200 tons in the small harbor, and the sea was calm, and there was not a single American warship in sight, but not a single German ship.

"Fireworks, first red, then green!" It was only at this time that the liaison officer from Germany told the peasant army how to respond.

Several fighters took out from the car fireworks sticks wrapped in red and green cardboard, which were also prepared in advance by the German liaison officer.

Ten red ground fireworks sticks were set on fire first, and the warriors held them up and shook them towards the open sea; After the red fireworks stick is extinguished, there are 10 green ones. When the 10 fireworks were extinguished, everyone looked at the harbor with longing eyes.

The German liaison officer frequently looked at his watch and looked at the sea with a serious expression.

"There! There! Suddenly, someone pointed to the sea and shouted.

Not far from the port, a black object slowly surfaced, followed by a second and a third.

"God forbid!" Quite a few people have crosses on their chests.

"It's our submarine!" The German liaison officer was relieved.

The three submarines slowly sailed into the harbor after coming to the surface, and the crew on them quickly ran to the deck, some preparing the cables, others preparing the pedals. There were also people on the first submarine who waved flags to the shore.

The German liaison officer then walked up to the commander of the peasant army, "Major, let your men keep an eye on the situation on the sea, and the others get ready to unload!" ”

The man nodded, and shouted a big call in Spanish to the surrounding peasant army soldiers.

But when the three submarines approached the dock, most of them forgot what to do and just stood there staring at the strange things.

"These are the Mexican peasant rebels......" Looking at the people on the dock in different costumes and with dull expressions, Max standing on the control tower didn't know what to say.

At this moment, a reconnaissance plane flew over the port of Tuxpan, and this accident suddenly made the originally harmonious atmosphere tense. Although that plane flew away very quickly. But whether it was Max and the submarine forces in other places, or the peasant army that came to meet them. At this time, I have a bad feeling in my heart.

On board the USS Missouri, the flagship of the U.S. blockade fleet, which had just arrived in Peska Harbor, the fleet commander, Colonel Cody Girez, was already sullen because the so-called peasant army attacking the port was nowhere to be seen, after receiving a telegram from Pershing. He felt the urge to vomit blood. When Pershing asked him to lead his fleet to Pesca as fast as possible, which was attacked by the peasant army, the telegram was full of the terrible attempt of the Mexican bandits to attack the port, which caused Colonel Cody and his detachment to arrive all the way from Puerto Madero, more than 90 nautical miles, at maximum speed. In order to maintain the speed of the cruiser, the No. 4 boiler of the cruiser "Victoria" was damaged, and several pipes on the cruiser "Lubbock" cracked, but the stokers had to brave the steam and insist on shoveling coal, as a result, a total of six stokers were burned. Now, not only was there not a single peasant army to be seen here in Peska, but Pershing had come to tell himself that it was just a gangster feint. The real target of the opponent is Tuspan, who is 140 nautical miles away and only 50 nautical miles from Madero!

"Crazy! It's insane! Colonel Cody shouted hysterically, and after a while he calmed down, and after careful consideration, he ordered the cruiser "Monroe" to go south with three destroyers, followed by the "Victoria" with a faulty boiler, the "Lubbock" with pipes in need of repair, and the "Missouri" with a poor speed of the flagship.

Colonel Cody did not know that, regardless of his decision, the German submarines arriving in the port of Tuspan would have enough time to unload. The only place that could pose a threat to them was the 1st Air Wing of the American Expeditionary Force, stationed near Veracruz.

Fortunately or unfortunately, today the commander of the aviation wing, Lieutenant Colonel David Percy, still sends reconnaissance aircraft on the orders of Brigadier General Pershing to conduct routine reconnaissance in the vicinity of Mexico City and in the coastal zone. After returning to the base, the No. 2 reconnaissance plane, which took off at noon, brought him very valuable news, that is, the peasant army had occupied the port of Tuxpan, and three unidentified submarines were parked next to the port dock!

When he received this report, Pershing was so surprised that he could barely speak, he never expected that the other side would use a submarine for transportation, needless to say, it must be a German submarine. The sudden declaration of war and the large-scale invasion of France by the Germans had shocked the world, and now they were actually providing supplies to the "bandits" under the noses of the American fleet and the expeditionary force, and Pershing felt that this was not only a manifestation of the Germans' empty eyes, but also a serious provocation to the American army and to the dignity of Pershing himself!

What's next? Without conclusive evidence, it would be impossible for Washington to condemn the German government. The more he thought about it, the more unconvinced Pershing then made a bold decision, he grabbed the phone and connected to the ground aviation unit under the expeditionary force.

"Lieutenant Colonel David? How many planes do you have in your hands to send out right now? What the? Part of the pilots went on vacation, only 6 fighters, 6 bombers, 3 reconnaissance aircraft and 2 airships? Okay, send me as many as you want. Send them all to the port of Tuspan and attack the bandits and submarines there! ”

"What? Then you don't have to worry about it, you just let your pilot beat me, hit hard! Wounded a submarine, I awarded them a medal! …… That's right, I've got the final say! Hurry up and give it to me! ”

After hanging up the phone angrily, Pershing did not regret it at all, he knew that the attack on a German submarine by American planes was likely to cause a diplomatic dispute, because Germany was not a belligerent. They could well have said that their submarine was stranded in Tuspan, but Pershing was not afraid, because he was him, the hard-nosed John Joseph. Pershing!

A quarter of an hour later, Lieutenant Colonel David Pesci, commander of the U.S. Expeditionary Force, sent out all the pilots and planes at his disposal. By the time the mixed formation of various aircraft approached the port of Tuxpan, the German submarines had already unloaded most of their supplies, and some peasant armies had already driven back with wagons and ox carts full of munitions.

As early as more than an hour ago, after the US reconnaissance plane appeared over the harbor, Major Max kept his crew on alert and sent two crew members with binoculars and signal flags to a nearby hill to set up a temporary guard post. Therefore, before the US military planes flew to the port, his crew was fully prepared.

But. Although it is ready to deal with the attack. But Major Max was still nervous at this time, the displacement of this UTV submarine is second to none among the submarines of various countries at present, and it is even 100 tons more than the limit of the Washington Naval Treaty. But there is no advantage in using it against a dozen aircraft. The submarine's 77-mm deck gun can fire scattered grenades into the air, but only at low-altitude targets; At the rear of the conning tower is a two-seater twin-mounted 7.92 mm machine gun, the rate of fire is not to be said, and the power is okay for a wooden-skinned aircraft, but the firing range is very limited, and it can only shoot at targets within 180 degrees of the rear of the submarine, and there is almost no armor protection, and the operator is extremely vulnerable.

In the face of the constantly circling and descending American planes, Max had to do his best to exercise restraint, and he shouted to the crew: "There is no order from me." No one is allowed to shoot! ”

At this time, under the rebuke of the commander, the peasant soldiers on the dock not only did not find a place to hide, but carried boxes of weapons and ammunition from the submarine to their wagons and ox carts more quickly.

The three German submarines were quietly moored by the docks, but the atmosphere above was terrifyingly tense, and in the warm spring sun, the crews on the deck were sweating from their temples, and they kept moving their deck guns and machine guns to fire shells and bullets at the attackers at the first opportunity.

Today as the leader of the bomber squadron of the 1st Flying Wing of the United States Expeditionary Force. It was Lieutenant David Wilson, the pilot of the No. 3 plane, and as the second vice captain of the bomber squadron, David became the leader because the captain Captain Jeff had been given permission to go out on weekends and was supposed to be having a good time in a woman's bed, while the first vice captain, Captain Scott, was ordered to take people to Veracruz to receive a shipload of aircraft parts and some new pilots that had just arrived from the continental United States. So, the 33-year-old lieutenant, who usually doesn't talk much in the bomber squadron, had the honor of becoming a public figure throughout the United States after this operation, a national hero, in the words of some radicals.

Before dropping bombs on the black submarines near the dock, David didn't know if they were German submarines or not, and he only heard the wing commander say that "Jack the Terrible" was very angry today, and if the flying wing could not drop the bombs on the heads of the peasant army in Tuxpan, the pilots would take turns emptying the toilet for him.

So, David took his bomber to launch an air raid on the port, and before the submarine could fire, David dropped the first bomb, and the bombers behind followed suit, and the 50-pound aerial bomb suddenly set off a column of water near the dock. I saw a large fire rise on the deck of a submarine, and the hull of this unlucky submarine immediately tilted to the side, and the crew on it immediately jumped into the water one after another.

After being attacked, the remaining two submarines finally opened fire, and the sound of guns and cannons suddenly intensified, and shrapnel and bullets from artillery grenades continued to pass by the US planes, and before David's bomber squadron could withdraw from the battlefield, one Garr-holding bomber was shot down.

After the bombers dropped the bombs, the fighters who were originally watching from the heights also flew close to the dock to strafe the remaining two submarines and the peasant army on the dock, but I don't know whether it was poor technology or bad luck, the two fighters strafed two shuttle bullets and were hit by the opponent's anti-aircraft fire, one broke its wings on the spot and fell into the water, the other nose pulled smoke and lost altitude and finally made a forced landing near the dock, the poor pilot was caught by the angry peasant soldiers, it is estimated that the evil is more than lucky.

David then circled out of range with his bomb-dropping bomber, the bombed submarine had completely flipped on its side next to the dock, and the remaining two had untied their cables, and they were heading towards the harbor while firing fiercely at the air.

After running out of ammunition, the US aircraft stopped their air strikes and returned home. After that, the two submarines returned to the dock to pick up the crew of the bombed submarine and planted bombs on the overturned submarine.

In a few moments, the capsized submarine completely disappeared from the water in a violent explosion, and the American plane that had landed was also crushed to pieces in another explosion.

After hastily bringing with them the bodies of those killed in the air raids, the peasant army occupying the port quickly withdrew from the port area.

Three hours later, when Pershing's cavalry troops arrived in Tuxpan, the peasant army left them with nothing but the wreck of a submarine.

However, it didn't end there.

On 3 April, the German government abruptly announced that a German ocean-going submarine had run aground after straying into the Mexican port of Tuxpan, and that the submarine was subsequently bombed and sunk by the Air Force of the United States Expeditionary Force, killing two crew members on the spot and wounding seven others, while the remaining crew members were subsequently rescued by German vessels.

Later, the U.S. Foreign Office admitted that its Expeditionary Force Air Force had attacked a submarine in Tuxpan, but that the submarine was transferring arms to Mexican bandits, as evidenced by the firearms department left behind in the wreckage.

The German Foreign Office then refuted the US government's argument that it was normal for submarines to carry a small number of light weapons, and that German submarines were parked at the docks at the time to exchange supplies with local residents.

In this way, the dispute between the two sides intensified, and finally turned into a serious diplomatic crisis. The United States and Germany each awarded medals to the protagonists of the Tuspan submarine incident, and half a month later, the German Navy sent an ocean-going fleet to "protect the diaspora" to the Gulf of Mexico, and the German and American ships faced off again. (Full Text)