Since the Tang Empire is still a British protectorate, this is Zhang Meng's strategic consideration, and it is easier to survive by relying on the British in the early stage of development.

But tactically, Britain also became an obstacle to the Tang Empire's military development.

In order to form his own navy as soon as possible, Zhang Meng called Justin and asked him for help.

At this time, Justin had already won the position of mayor of London in one fell swoop with Zhang Meng's covert support, and he was still very friendly to Zhang Meng. Knowing that Zhang Meng begged him to help buy a few warships and submarines, he readily agreed.

However, it was obviously impossible for Justin to feed Zhang Meng at once, he seemed to feel that Zhang Meng's ambition was not small, so he restricted Zhang Meng from buying large battleships and heavy cruisers, but when it came to the British Admiralty, it made further restrictions, because the British government did not want the Tang Empire to change the military balance in the Central Pacific region, so it was only allowed to purchase destroyers and submarines, and not more than six, on the grounds that the Tang Empire was protected by the British Empire, so there was no need to have an overly strong offensive navy.

Zhang Meng knew that once he built a large-scale navy, it would inevitably cause reactions from the surrounding Britain, the United States, Japan and other countries, so he did not buy warships from the United States and other countries to prevent leakage of news, but first went to the bottom of the British first, and the result was guessed by him, and the British really did not allow it.

But Zhang Meng had a solution, and quickly abandoned the idea of directly establishing a navy, and instead changed to a coast guard. Only one name has been changed, but the political meaning is completely different. The Navy is both offensive and defensive, but the Coast Guard is purely defensive law enforcement.

Zhang Meng's argument was that the three archipelagos of the Tang Empire were far apart, the islands were scattered, and the strong typhoons passed through every autumn and winter, so the small destroyers were not up to the patrol duty, and asked for the restrictions to be relaxed to allow the coast guard to have light cruisers.

At this time, the British government was further restricting the cruisers of various countries in the London Naval Treaty, and the Admiralty came up with an improved Linxian-class light cruiser program, and was hesitating whether to build a batch on a large scale as a replacement for the treaty era, Zhang Meng offered to provide R&D funds, and hoped to order Linxian-class light cruisers.

For the British Admiralty and Navy Shipyards, which are short of money, it is a good thing that as soon as they took out the Linxian-class light cruisers, buyers came to the door to provide scientific research funds. In particular, the Navy shipyards have a pitiful number of orders, because the Labour Party has been pushing back on naval allocations, making it difficult for the Navy to get orders.

Therefore, out of consideration for the economic interests of the naval shipyards, the British Admiralty believed that even if the Tang Empire had a few light cruisers, it would not be able to change the strategic balance in the Central Pacific, after all, the Tang Empire and other Central Pacific countries were British protectorates and could not make unusual moves.

In this regard, the British government asked Zhang Meng again, and Zhang Meng said that it was definitely only a defensive naval liliang, which dispelled the doubts and worries of the British government, so the restrictions were relaxed, allowing the Tang Imperial Coast Guard to have light cruisers, destroyers and submarines as defensive liliang, and also relaxed the number restrictions. But it was still not allowed on the issue of battleships, heavy cruisers.

As far as Zhang Meng is concerned, he will not just spend money to buy some vase warships and come back.

On the question of what kind of warships to buy, Zhang Meng was mainly aimed at the Japanese Navy, which was not outdated before and after World War II or was enough to deal with the warships of World War II if they were simply modified.

For the British Navy, the light cruisers that met Zhang Meng's requirements were the Lin Xian class. It does not refer to the Lin Xian class, which started construction in the late World War I, but the treaty type Lin Xian class light cruisers prepared by the British Navy in response to the London Naval Treaty.

Zhang Meng's preparation of the light cruiser was to match the fleet light cruiser tailored for the aircraft carrier battle group that the Tang Imperial Navy would be equipped with, and the Lin Xian class just met the standard of the future aircraft carrier battle group fleet type light cruiser.

The Linxian class can be seen as a smaller version of the Leander-class light cruisers and their modifications, with a total length of 154 meters, a width of 15.54 meters, and a draft of 5 meters. The standard displacement is 5270 tons, the full load displacement is 6715 tons, the combat speed is 32 knots, the fuel load is 1250-1325 tons, and the endurance is 13 knots at 5300 knots. It is equipped with 3 twin 152 mm 50 x diameter main guns, 4 single 55 x 102 mm secondary guns, two 12.7 mm parallel machine guns, and two triple 21-inch torpedo launch systems.

The British Navy Shipyard will build six Lin Xian-class light cruisers for the Tang Imperial Coast Guard, and according to Zhang Meng's requirements, the main gun and secondary artillery system will be changed to Gaoping dual-purpose artillery to meet the needs of air combat, and at the same time add two twin 40 mm anti-aircraft guns and two four 20 mm anti-aircraft guns, so that they have strong anti-air combat capabilities, which is also to prepare for the future fleet air defense in advance, saving time and money for future modification and upgrading.

Considering the training situation of the coast guard of the Tang Empire, Zhang Meng proposed to lease six Leander-class light cruisers of the British Navy for training first, because the Linxian-class light cruisers are basically an upgraded and enhanced version of the Leander-class light cruisers.

For Zhang Meng's request, the British side agreed, but knocked Zhang Meng on the loan fee and training fee. The total cost of the six Lynsen-class light cruisers was £4.2 million, the lease fee for the six Leander-class light cruisers and the training provided by the Royal Navy totaled £5 million.

Lend-lease fees are more expensive than shipbuilding fees, which are actually due to the high cost of daily maintenance of battleships.

But Zhang Meng believes that it is worth it, the current training experience of the British Royal Navy is still the highest level, and it will be a great learning opportunity for the officers and men of the Tang Imperial Navy.

After the agreement was reached, Zhang Meng immediately separated 10,000 men from the Wehrmacht and sent them to the British naval training base in Manchester. In fact, each light cruiser only needs 300 people, and six ships only need 2,000 people, but Zhang Mengzhi is not here, and he will have to buy and build more warships in the future, so he sent 10,000 people to be trained by British naval instructors in one go.

At the same time, Zhang Meng is Jihua rotates 10,000 people to the British Manchester Naval Training Base for training every year, mainly because Zhang Meng believes that the national defense construction of the Tang Empire is dominated by the navy and air force, and the army is the weakest, and more is needed by the marines.

Among the requirements of the Marine Corps, it is obvious that they need to adapt to life on a warship, otherwise no matter how good the training is on land, what kind of war will they fight when they are on a ship at sea?

There, they will undergo three months of intensive naval training, and then spend another three months sailing six Leander-class light cruisers back to the Tang Empire, along the way they will continue to complete ocean-going training courses under the command of British instructors.

Sending 20,000 men to Britain for military training at once, the British authorities were apparently concerned about Zhang Meng's motives. Fortunately, Justin spoke for Zhang Meng at this time, saying that Zhang Meng's ambition was not in Tonga's big fart, and he would return to China for military hegemony in the future.

At this time, the Kuomintang had completed the formal unification of the whole country, but for the United States and Britain, they were not happy, because Chiang Zhongzheng and most of his descendants during this period were basically pro-Japanese, which can be seen from the Kuomintang's blue sky and white sun flag.

The pro-American and British warlords that the United States and Britain had previously supported on the mainland had now been defeated by Chiang Chung-cheng, and it was not something that the American and British governments were happy to see.

Knowing that Zhang Meng intended to return to China in the future to compete for hegemony, the US and British governments were interested in him and sent representatives to contact Zhang Meng one after another, and Zhang Meng's strong anti-Japanese attitude made Britain and the United States very happy.

Based on Zhang Meng's clear anti-Japanese attitude, the British authorities immediately showed their sincerity and allowed Zhang Meng to send more troops to Britain for training in turns.

Of course, the British are happy to train for a purpose. During their training, it is inevitable that they will not export pro-British ideas to the Tang National Defense Force and establish good relations with these soldiers, which is also the deep-seated strategic intention of the British authorities to allow Zhang Meng to send more people to Britain for training.

Seeing that Britain had released a rather friendly signal to the Tang Empire, Zhang Meng immediately ordered an additional 6 Lin Xian-class light cruisers to the British.

In this way, Zhang Meng will get 12 Linxian-class light cruisers in the next three years.

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