After a long and tedious voyage, the Irish Navy training ship "Ku-Chulin" arrived in beautiful Honolulu and was invited to Pearl Harbor, the main base of the US Pacific Fleet. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The United States has only occupied Hawaii for 20 years, but Honolulu is as prosperous and lively as any European city, and Pearl Harbor has become a large modern military base under the Stars and Stripes.

Now commanding the Pearl Harbor Naval Base is General Mike Friedel, who is about to retire. Coincidentally, during the Limerick Air Fair, Natsuki met the white-haired but still pine-like U.S. Navy rear admiral, when he praised Ireland's single-engine, two-wing, two-seat water reconnaissance aircraft, nine of which were eventually signed by the U.S. delegation for 30 aircraft.

Friedel laughed heartily as he told Natsuki that the seaplanes were indeed the ones he had asked to purchase. Later, except for two planes that remained at the Norfolk base for training and testing, the remaining seven planes were all assigned to the Pearl Harbor base. Judging from the actual use of the situation, their performance is indeed better than that of the Curtis water reconnaissance aircraft in service in the US Navy, but the fly in the ointment is that the United States cannot find matching parts, and maintenance and repair need to travel thousands of miles to import materials from Ireland.

Price is not the key, the long process of waiting for the goods is the most tangled.

When he met the lord who spoke straightforwardly, Natsuki was also very open. He revealed to Friedel that the main parts of various types of aircraft in Ireland are more than 60 percent common, and that in the event of ordinary mechanical problems, they can seek help from the nearest private airline in Ireland. Now that the Irish National Airlines' eastern route has been extended to Hong Kong, it is possible to establish a direct flight route from Hong Kong to Honolulu in the future, and the troubles encountered by the US Navy will no longer be a problem.

Friedel suddenly realized and thanked him repeatedly.

As for General Friedel's aide-de-camp, the energetic Major Douglas, who accompanied the American delegation to the 1918 Limerick World's Fair, was able to see the King of Ireland and Miss Hill, who was not yet Queen of Ireland at the time, at a banquet, and his other experience was even more surprising - at the end of 1914, he participated in the Battle of the Faroe Islands as a special military observer with the British battle cruiser "Royal Princess", which sank in the battle and nearly lost his life. Fortunately, he was rescued by a British destroyer, and he had the opportunity to enjoy life in Hawaii, where the sun is shining and the sea breeze is pleasant.

In a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, Natsuki and his entourage accompanied by American officers visited Honolulu, where the natural and cultural scenery was amazing, but the coastal defense fortifications under construction were of more interest to the Irish.

According to General Friedel, construction of the fortified facilities began in 1907 and was built in batches from year to year, with the first phase of the plan approved by Congress being completed in 1914 and now the second phase of the plan.

Although it is inconvenient for Friedel to disclose the cost budget of these coastal defense facilities, based on Ireland's experience in building the East Coast fortress system, combined with the habit of Americans with deep pockets, it is not difficult for Natsuki to calculate a more realistic estimate, but what he cares about is not these innocuous contents, but the strategic direction of the United States in the Pacific region.

The Pearl Harbor defense system with the Oahu fortress group as the core began to be built in 1907, and the disputes that occurred in Europe in this year did not seem to affect the US strategy in the Pacific, but more than a year before that, that is, in 1905, Japan won the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first Asian country in modern times to defeat a European country on the battlefield, and the strong performance of the Japanese navy shocked the world.

In 1914, Japan entered the war and seized the South Pacific islands from the Germans, threatening the Philippine Islands and the Hawaiian Islands to the United States, and the U.S. Congress approved the budget for the second phase of Pearl Harbor's defense facilities at this time, apparently to guard against Japan's increasing ambitions, but only half a year later, the drastic changes in the world pattern had a huge impact on the Asia-Pacific situation. The re-establishment of the Pacific Fleet seemed to replace Japan as the number one enemy threatening America's Asia-Pacific interests, but from 1916 to 1919, Germany did not aggressively expand into the Pacific except for the takeover of Hong Kong and the resumption of military occupation of Jiaozhou Bay and the islands of the South Pacific. The German Pacific Fleet, which was based in Hong Kong, was almost a symbolic existence, and its strength was less than one-tenth of that of the Persian Gulf Fleet.

The Germans are bent on running the Middle East, the British are digging for oil in Southeast Asia, and the only thing that really has the ability to threaten the Philippines and Hawaii is still the Japanese Empire, which has the third highest naval strength in the world!

In the midst of casual conversation, Natsuki deliberately expressed his thoughts, and Friedel was noncommittal, but his decision to allow the King of Ireland and his entourage to visit some of the internal facilities of Fort Vahu already showed his attitude - given the close relations between Ireland and Germany, if there were any plans for the geographically important Hawaiian Islands, wouldn't it be a matter of minutes to provide this confidential information to the Germans?

Although Friedel was the commander of the base, he was the commander of the fleet, and he served as chief of staff of the Atlantic Fleet and commander of the Pacific Fleet. When it comes to the growing strength of the Japanese fleet, he has a kind of contempt from the bottom of his heart. Because of the adjustment of strategic deployment, the current Pearl Harbor is no longer the murderous spirit of the past, and the ships moored next to the pier are either overwhelmed old warships or light ships with limited combat power, but Friedel has absolute confidence that the Japanese fleet that dares to peep into Hawaii will not return.

On the one hand, Friedel's confidence stems from the increasingly complete Vahu fortress system, after more than ten years of construction, it already has a fairly large and solid coastal defense fortifications, and the heavy fortress guns deployed here have a range and power that are not inferior to the main guns of super dreadnoughts.

Anti-aircraft artillery, which appeared in the latter part of the war, was also deployed in considerable numbers in the fortifications around Pearl Harbor, sufficient to cope with any possible air raids of this era.

On the other hand, although the Japanese navy won a naval battle in the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the two opponents it defeated were both characters with their own accumulated shortcomings and decay, and they were not comparable to the real powerhouses of Britain, Germany, and the United States, which represented the highest level of the industrial age. Friedel hinted that Japan's Fuso-class is a 30,000-ton super-dreadnought ship with Britain's Queen Elizabeth, Germany's Bavaria, and the United States' New Mexico class. As for the reason, Friedel revealed that Fuso's protective design and watertightness are almost stuck in the previous era, and a single shot can cause fatal injuries; Its main guns are placed too densely, the muzzle storm will sweep across the ship when the salvo is fired, and the hull structure may cause catastrophic damage, such a super dreadnought that cannot fire a normal salvo is an out-and-out defective product from the original design.

Friedel inadvertently reveals this information, which is basically consistent with the historical information that Natsuki once read. Since the Meiji Restoration, Japan has been diligently learning the advanced shipbuilding technology of the West, and although it has made great progress, there is still a qualitative gap compared with the old industrial powers such as Britain and the United States. In the case of the four Kongo-class battlecruisers, the quality of the lead ship "Kongo" built at the British shipyard was significantly better than the other three built by the Japanese at the shipyard itself, even with the guidance of British technicians. Compared with the first ship, the structural strength of the three ships Hiei, Haruna, and Kirishima is much worse, and the hull life is about 20% lower than that of the "Kongo", and there are more or less problems with its watertightness.

The Fuso class built after the Kongo class is a battleship type designed by the Japanese Navy based on the British Lion-class battle cruiser, diligence and fearlessness can not make up for the lack of construction technology and experience, British technicians have provided a lot of help to the Japanese Navy in the design and construction process of the two Fuso classes, and the United States and Britain have worked closely together on the new generation of capital ship projects, Friedel, as a senior officer of the US Navy, knows that these inside information is probably through technical exchange channels, And the fact that they were easily revealed to Natsuki under the stimulation of a little alcohol made Natsuki find it intriguing: strategic cooperation is after all something that strategists spend their brains thinking about, and soldiers are used to talking with their fists. Half a century ago, any American gunboat could run amok in Japanese waters, and even aim its guns at the Japanese Imperial Palace, but now it has to accept the reality that the other side is flaunting its might in the Pacific waters, and is on an equal footing with itself, or even overpowering it.

Moreover, throughout the history of the development of the Japanese navy, the Japanese government has been tightening its belt from beginning to end to developing the navy, resulting in a heavy burden on the country's economy, meager national income, and widespread poverty. This is like a poor person who is hungry and saves money to buy weapons, and if he wants to survive, he must use the weapons in his hand to make a living, which is essentially different from Britain, the United States, and Germany first developing their own industrial economy and commercial trade, and then expanding after becoming rich. In particular, the United States, a wealthy man who started a business step by step by relying on capital accumulation and the industrial revolution, needs time to slowly digest the new territories seized through the Spanish-American War and successive expansions.

(End of chapter)