Located on the west coast of Ireland, just over 70 kilometres from the capital city of Limerick, Galway was originally a humble harbour town. With the rise of Limerick's political, economic and trade status www.biquge.info Galway has gradually prospered, and by the early 20s, the number of residents here has grown from more than 10,000 to more than 60,000, and a deep-water dock, large warehouse, large floating dock and a super dry dock that can build 50,000-ton ships, and the ocean-going tanker "Aegis", which set a new tonnage record for Irish civilian ships, was built here.

Limerick's urban planning was large enough to accommodate two million people, and by the time the census was carried out in 1927, the actual population of the Irish capital had reached more than 1.7 million, although there was still some room for the saturation of the city planning, and public facilities, including transport and water lines, were under great pressure. In order to alleviate this situation, and to take into account the adjustment of the national defense strategy, the Irish military handed over some of the military bases set up in or near the city of Limerick to civilian use, and the main fleet of the navy was moved from the military port of Limerick to Galway.

Geographically, Galway has many similarities with St. Petersburg in Russia, it is located at the bottom of a triangular bay deeply embedded in the coastline, and the entrance to the bay is formed by a series of large and small islands forming a natural screen, from which the port of Galway is more than 40 kilometers away, making it an excellent outpost warning station. In the five years from 1928 to 1932, the Irish government militarized the entire Galway Bay, making it a fortified fortress that could be attacked, retreated, and defended, and all-weather, on land, sea and air.

One day in the autumn of 1932, accompanied by Admiral Friedrich Schweichhard, Technical Director of Aviation of the German Navy, Major Wright-Farrell, Assistant Secretary of the Irish Navy, and others, a group of diminutive Orientals arrived in Galway. These Orientals wore civilian clothes rather than military uniforms, but they showed the ability of a soldier in their gestures. Because of the recent international uproar over the recent boycott of Ireland's sale of a large amount of war materiel to China, people assumed that these were visitors from China, and only a few people knew that these were actually active officers of the Japanese Navy!

The King of Ireland has always been very disgusted with Japan, even calling it a "bandit state" in public, which is almost universally known, and Japan is also the last military power to establish diplomatic relations in Ireland, and the two countries have relatively little official or private contact. It seems puzzling that such a contradictory situation would have arisen when such a group of Japanese officers entered the strategic point of the Irish Navy with the approval of the King of Ireland.

The crisp autumn weather was perfect for sailing training, and the two Irish Navy's aircraft carriers, the active aircraft carrier "Ulster" and the training aircraft carrier "Angus", were not in port on that day, and the two standard heavy cruisers and most of the light cruisers were also missing. Accompanied by German and Irish naval officers, a special delegation from Japan boarded the legendary German Navy battlecruiser "Von der Tann", which is also the current flagship of the Irish Navy, "Belfast". The majestic warship has become a 22-year-old ship, and its 280 mm caliber main gun has been upgraded from the original 45 times the diameter to 55 times the diameter, and the power and range have increased a lot, but using this kind of naval gun to deal with those giants built and in service in the twenties is like smashing armor with a wooden stick, and even if it shoots at close range, it may not be able to penetrate the hull, so in addition to being a spiritual symbol of the Irish Navy, it is more of a command and liaison role. After the second modern technical refit, the Belfast has reached a top speed of 27 knots, which is able to keep up with any fleet, and its superior seaworthiness allows it to cope with all sea conditions with relative ease.

The two Scharnhorst-class armored cruisers that the Irish received from the German Navy have long been converted into training ships, and the current Irish Navy has only one aircraft carrier, two dreadnoughts, and two heavy cruisers in active service with a displacement of more than 10,000 tons.

At the naval training base in the northern suburbs of Galway, Japanese officers were able to get up close and personal with every active carrier-based aircraft of the Irish Navy, and even took to the skies in the famous "Swordfish" torpedo plane, accompanied by Irish technical officers. For a long time after the war, the Japanese Navy spent a lot of money on the construction of battleships and battle cruisers, resulting in the slow development of aircraft carriers, so far there is only one large aircraft carrier, one light aircraft carrier and one training aircraft carrier, which is the smallest number of the four major naval powers, and the performance of these aircraft carriers and the carrier-based aircraft they use is considered to be behind the times.

The Irish Navy, which ranks among the top eight in the world, is far from Germany, the United States, Britain and Japan in terms of total tonnage, but their naval aviation technology and personnel quality have always maintained the highest level, and the "Angus" is known as "the world's most advanced training aircraft carrier." It adopts a double-decker hangar structure, equipped with a fast elevator and a steam catapult, and integrates many advanced technical concepts, and people even think that it is Ireland's stealth capital ship, and its actual combat effectiveness is much stronger than that of ordinary light aircraft carriers.

Most of the carrier-based pilots trained by the "Angus" were able to reach an excellent level, so much so that the German Navy sent several batches of naval pilots to receive short-term training every year, and Austria-Hungary and Italy, although they did not have active aircraft carriers, also fought for several training places every year, and these countries praised the aviation training of the Irish Navy in both official and private comments. The Japanese Navy secretly sent officers to Ireland this time in the hope of sending a group of carrier-based aircraft pilots to Ireland for training through military exchanges, and also to obtain the core technical information of Irish carrier-based aircraft.

In ordinary people's thinking, the Japanese Navy's thoughts are tantamount to a toad wanting to eat swan meat, and you must know that Japan is impressively among the signatories of Washington's secret treaty, and has been accused and sanctioned by the Allies for launching a war of aggression against China, so how can it receive military assistance from the Allies' formation?

In Limerick's "Forest Palace", Natsuki stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling window with his back hand, gazing intently at the setting sun. As the sun set over the sea, the boundary between the sea and the sky in the distance turned a fiery red, and he suddenly remembered that one day in the late summer of 1914, he and Crown Prince Wilhelm stood side by side on a small hill and looked at the Verdun fortress. At this moment, in the far east, on the land of China, which is under the iron heel of the Japanese army, are there also cities burning brightly, baking the sky into the same fiery red?

If you are backward, you will be beaten, and the Irish have also deeply experienced this bloody lesson, but they have already shaken off the nightmare of the past, and the sleeping lion of the East as described by Napoleon will have to go through a painful struggle to return to the forest of world powers. Looking back on the years before and after independence, every Irishman will be grateful to the name Joachim, and they will also compete to repay this monarch with their diligence, wisdom and loyalty, so that he will be respected and admired by the world, but they cannot see the pain and loss in the king's heart, nor can they understand the struggle and resentment in the depths of his soul.

Germany will help Japan build a first-class naval aviation, and for this purpose it will require Ireland to provide technical and personnel cooperation, and one of the three Ulster-class aircraft carriers ordered by the German Navy and under intense construction in Ireland may be directly transferred by Germany to Japan, these are all secret insiders that Natsuki knows as the king of Ireland, and the reason why Germany will provide Japan with such important military technology and weapons and equipment is because two military powers with their own plans are brewing an amazing move to divide the world.

The two countries were secretly cooperating with the young Japanese Emperor Hirohito and the German Crown Prince Wilhelm, who was 19 years his senior. The two men met Emperor Hirohito, who travelled to Europe as crown prince in the early 20s, and it is said that the two hit it off at first sight and have remained in correspondence ever since, including a secret visit to Tokyo in the autumn of 1928 to meet with an old friend who had become the monarch of Japan.

From a geostrategic point of view, Japan is under the encirclement of the United States, Britain, and Soviet forces, and its eastward expansion is to compete with the United States for the Pacific Ocean, to the south to conquer the United States for Southeast Asia, and to develop to the north with Soviet Russia, but aggression against China is tolerated by the anti-German camp, but China does not produce oil and rubber, two extremely important strategic resources, and if the status quo is maintained, Japan will only be able to import from the United States and Britain, and it will be difficult to get rid of the unfavorable situation of being controlled by others. In Washington's secret treaty, the United States and Britain promised Japan to monopolize China and share the benefits of West Asia, but in contrast, Germany's conditions for wooing Japan were much more advantageous -- whether it was the East Indies, which were rich in oil and rubber occupied by Britain and the Netherlands, or the Philippines and Hawaii, which were strategically well located by the United States, they were all the stepping stones that Japan could dream of going out of Asia and into the world!

If Japan were only engaged in a dog fight with the United States and Britain, Natsuki might not mind teaching the Japanese a few tricks, but the words "If you want to conquer the world, you must first conquer China" hung above your head like an alarm bell, and no matter whether or not there was the notorious "Tanaka Song" in this time and space, Japan's aggression against China would not stop, and if Japan was allowed to dominate the Asia-Pacific region and its national strength was growing day by day, there would be a big question mark over whether the Chinese residents could survive the eight-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

(End of chapter)