Chapter 20 Hindsight

The enemy's high-level strategy of strangulation warfare at sea - the sea strangulation war off the coast of the Yanar colony experienced by the decision-making group of the Marnerocco Empire. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Carlos Sagan, then Prime Minister of the Marne-Rocco Empire, who was deposed due to defeat, wrote in his report to his post: "The blockade of the sea lines of communication launched by the United Imperial Army of San Romain-Santsunia was the decisive factor in the defeat of the whole war. In the Yanar colony, what really defeated us was the lack of logistical supplies caused by the enemy's naval blockade. Our army, superior to the enemy in terms of equipment, training, tactical command, or anything else, ended up humiliatingly defeating. Here, all the defeats experienced by the empire can ultimately be attributed to the blockade of sea routes by enemy forces. ”

Other ousted top brass also attributed the failure to an enemy naval blockade of supply lines. In any modern war, the outcome of the war is closely related to the logistical supply. On the side of the Marnerocco Imperial Army, the lack of logistics supplies continued throughout the war in the Janar colony, and the logistics supply from the empire mainland was almost always cut off. As the colony's stockpile of war materials gradually ran out, the Marnerocco Imperial Army defending the Janar colony was increasingly desperate. As early as the early stage of this war, the logistics of the front-line troops of the Marnerocco Imperial Army were miserable, and at that time it was more due to poor transportation. By the middle and late stages, the line of the military station was short, but there were not many things in the warehouse. The front-line divisions were solving the problem of logistical supply throughout the war in the mode of primitive foraging.

An Imperial Army commander on the Yanar front said in his war memoirs: "It was a difficult time, a journey of hardship that I and all the soldiers under my command had never experienced - we were in the predicament of lack of supplies and the frustration of repeated defeats at the front, there was no suitable food, and many officers and soldiers had to gather all kinds of local food to feed their hunger." The soldiers' excessive consumption of wild fruits and tropical cassava resulted in widespread malnutrition, frequent incidents of food poisoning, a large number of personnel suffering from various strange diseases, and the lack of medicines left in the troops. …… The food supply that relied on the hunter-gatherer model was always intermittent, and the troops stationed there were always in danger of starving to death. Ammunition was an even bigger problem than the poor food supply, our troops on this line had up to hundreds of guns, but they could only fire a maximum of fifty shells per day, which was a total of fifty shells from a few hundred guns on the entire front. The machine gun could not fire because of the lack of ammunition, and the remaining ammunition could only be kept until the most critical moment. There were still rockets, but the heavy rain continued and the air was humid, and most of the rockets kept in the wooden boxes of the fence could not be used because of the dampness of the gunpowder in the propulsion section. Although rifle ammunition is still abundant, the hunting party is depleting ammunition every day, and it has not been replenished, and eventually it will become out of stock. There is still no shortage of hand grenades, and local arms factories can make them, but you can't just count on grenades to fight a war. …… The quartermaster officer of the unit repeatedly questioned the rear logistics department, and the answer was that they did not know when the ammunition would be delivered by the munitions carrier. If this continues, the only weapons we can use are rifles, grenades, and bayonets. Where is this like the firepower of the superpower army??!! The imperial army was on the verge of degrading to the pre-industrial state of the early Bth century. …… Undoubtedly, this was the main reason for our defeat. ”

The logistics that were almost cut off, the line of defense on the verge of collapse, and the hungry officers and soldiers were the true portrayal of the Marnerocco Imperial Army in the War of the Jarr Colony. Due to the superiority of the number of ships of the United Empire of Saint-Romain, the Imperial Navy of Marne-Rocco has always been at a disadvantage in this blockade and anti-blockade struggle. However, the Marne-Rocco Empire, the world's boss, did not sit idly by and watch the colonial defenders return to pure rifle-era tactics and primitive hunter-gatherer societies. In order to break the blockade, the officers and men of the Imperial Navy and the experts of the Imperial Academy of Military Sciences racked their brains and spared no effort, in order to keep this rich colony, the Marnerocco Empire used almost all the methods at its disposal, and in the end it was still exhausted by the expeditionary fleet of the Saint-Roman Empire. In this chapter, we will appreciate the performance of these highly intelligent Marne pigheads in the strangulation battle.

In the first stage, at the beginning of the war in the Jarr colony, ignoring the contempt for inappropriateness.

Prior to the Saint-Roman Expeditionary Force's landing operations in the Yanar colony, the various modes of sea line blockade/strangulation warfare of the country's expeditionary fleet had been the main threat to the Yanar colony of the Manrocco Empire.

Naval blockade, a naval method of warfare that played a strategic role in the Revolutionary War of the United States of America. The war elevated this tactic to an unprecedented strategic level, and the French navy's attack on the British supply fleet was the main reason for the successive victories of the American and French forces on the frontal battlefield. Before the American Revolution, this mode of warfare amounted to unorganized "guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines," tickling the thick regular army. After this war, the defeat of the British Empire caused the navies of various countries to pay attention to and study this ancient method of warfare that originated from the pirate group and was respected by the "pirate admiral" Admiral Drake of the British Royal Navy. It was an alternate historical alternate world, and the Marne-Rocco Empire at that time had no luck in getting such good teaching materials.

Compared with the regular traditional naval warfare, the intensity of the battle against the merchant ships was not enough and it was not enough to attract the attention of the Marne-Rocco Empire at the beginning, and the country even selectively ignored such losses in the early stages of the war, not sending escort ships to the merchant ships, but equipping these merchant ships with weapons, allowing them to break through the blockade line and maintain the lines of communication by their own firepower and luck. Merchant ships fighting warships, this is not a dream, is it?! During this period, the most effective measure taken by the Empire was to propose the formation of a fleet of ships to set sail in a centralized manner, and the Academy of Military Sciences concluded from mathematical probability calculations that the centralized fleet sailing mode could better avoid the enemy interception fleet than the single-ship multi-batch mode.

It was a bumsy time for the United Expeditionary Fleet of the United Empire of San Romain, the battle was easy, and the action was rewarding, as if it were a modern person sitting in front of a computer playing a game of fortune soldier or pirate robbery. In the vast ocean off the coast of Yanar Colony, the expeditionary fleet "Corsair Ships" haunted the expeditionary troops, and the officers and men of the expedition lived very happily, lacking nothing in terms of living materials, and even could use the surplus materials to do some small business. Correspondingly, the Marne-Rocco Empire, which was frequently raided by regular naval pirates, suffered greatly losses, and absolutely much more than the proceeds of the plundering of the pirates of the United Empire of San Romain.

In the following month or so, the United Imperial Army's expeditionary fleet, which was regarded by the Marne Imperial Army as "sporadic pirates, not a problem", gradually expanded the scope of its activities and the frequency of sorties. The small warships of the expeditionary fleet nearly cut off the open ocean routes, which were vital to the Yanar colony, and firmly choked the defenders of the Yanar colony, making it impossible to breathe. At this time, the Marne-Rocco Empire finally truly experienced the meaning of the word drop in the bucket.

With the strangulation of the United Imperial Expeditionary Fleet on the sea supply and transportation lines of the Yanar colony, the Yanar colony's source of industrial products and materials was cut off. The colony's original stockpiles of various industrial products would be gradually depleted within a few months. "The colonies do have large stockpiles of various industrial goods, but those are more for hurricane protection and commercial stockpiles. Quantitatively it absolutely does not meet the standards of combat readiness reserves. All kinds of goods can meet the normal consumption for three months at most. "Although the colony had civilian industry, it was limited to the maintenance of transport ships and other supporting facilities for the maintenance of local material supplies, and there were a large number of coal washing plants and mineral processing plants, which were not manufacturing at all, and even the most advanced industrial consumer goods, such as fine flour and canned military meat, could not be produced locally."

The situation on the army side is okay, since the sea battle of Curry Island in October, there has been no large-scale fighting, and there is no major attrition. The ammunition reserves of the colonial garrisons were fairly abundant, but they could only cope with limited military operations in terms of actual combat consumption. At that time, people did not have the concept of combat-ready ammunition, and compared to the combat-ready inventory in the warehouses of later armies, the overall amount of ammunition in stock here was still small, and it could not withstand large consumption at all. In the military industry, there is a small military factory that produces rifle, machine gun cartridges and some small-caliber artillery shells. Army rockets of all calibers can also be produced, but only black powder warheads can be used without picric acid supply. Auxiliary non-combat military material reserves, such as flour and canned food, that is, a day less than a day, no replenishment to eat the old book, the stock is exhausted, and it is a tragedy.

On December 5, B58, the first batch of reinforcements from the Expeditionary Force of the United Empire of Saint-Roman arrived, and a large number of Zorro-class fast gunboats joined the fleet, frequently raiding and harassing the Marne-Rocco Imperial transport fleet, destroying the enemy transport fleet many times, and the supply and transportation lines from the empire mainland to this colony were interrupted for a time.

From December 10, B58 to January 20, B59, the main trading ports along the Yanar coastline did not have a single material transport ship arriving for a whole month and ten days. According to incomplete statistics, from the date of the war to December 31, B58, in this only a little more than two months, a total of less than 70 days, due to the contempt and contempt for the United Imperial Fleet's strangulation at sea, the Marnerocco Empire lost 153 transport ships of various types and their goods under the flag of its own ship and its own Yanar colony in the outer sea of the colony, and the tonnage of empty ships alone was as high as 365,000 tons, of which three 10,000-ton freighters of the national company were sunk and one 10,000-ton ship was captured. In addition, a large number of neutral ships were intercepted by enemy fleets and escorted to ports controlled by the United Empire to be unloaded. Such a huge loss made the upper echelons of the empire realize the seriousness of the problem.

For the Marnerocco Empire, this pirate mode of strangulation is definitely a terrible thing! Very bad!! The people of the colony, who were about to fall into a shortage of materials, had not yet experienced the hardships of primitive society, and the upper echelons of the empire were furious. "These pirates must be punished severely!!" "We must maintain the normal life of the people of the colony." "The army has to do something to stop this."

Since then, there has been a strange phenomenon throughout the war, when the official supplies of the various state-owned companies in the colonies are scarce or even cut off, some of the civilian suppliers of illegal materials are abundant, and if you want more, he can get it for you, as long as it is not military supplies. Their channels were terrifying - smuggling, and the whole colony was counting on them in the late war to provide all kinds of industrial goods necessary for the livelihood of the people. However, these smugglers carried out smuggling activities through cooperation with the United Imperial Navy, which inevitably led to spying on military intelligence.

At that time, these treason smugglers had an excellent reputation among the people, and even in the time of the total blockade of the war, their goods were still much cheaper than in peacetime in the official stores of the Marne Rocco Empire. This price gap is a great irony for the Marne-Rocco empire, which has always been known to put people's livelihood first.

In the second stage, the Marnerocco Empire began to send a small number of warships to escort the ship and take proactive countermeasures in an all-round way

Historiography generally recognizes the specific time of this period from late December B58 to the end of February B59. The colonial fleet was dispatched to annihilate the enemy and strangle the fleet, which eventually triggered another decisive battle between the two fleets.

As early as late October, after the loss of Olive Island, the Marnerocco Empire began to taste the power of strangulation.

In early November, the Marne-Rocco Empire finally began to face up to the strangulation war launched by the United Empire Expeditionary Fleet, but their reaction speed was a little too slow, and these cabinet masters were a bit like sloths in the jungle. It has been more than ten days since the start of the war, and the specific war plan of the Marnerocco Empire has not yet been formulated. According to the regulations of the Imperial Cabinet, the enlarged meeting could not be held until the 25th of each month, and the meeting had to be notified by telegram at least half a month in advance. It is not easy to gather so many elderly people to hold a meeting, and it is even more difficult to produce results immediately at the meeting.

On November 25, an enlarged meeting of the Imperial Cabinet, which included nine members of the Standing Cabinet, discussed and formulated a plan for the war, and discussed whether the country should be transformed into a wartime constitution, but to no avail. The only substantive outcome of the two-day meeting was the requirement for the army to study and come up with a corresponding plan for dealing with the enemy's strangulation warfare. On the morning of the 27th, the old man's bickering meeting finally ended, and then the meeting documents were issued and the meeting documents were delivered. These things are all written by the book, it is a legal process, and it takes time to follow the process according to the system.

On the afternoon of December 3, the Cabinet order was finally delivered to the place where it was retransmitted, and this speed was already very fast.

On 5 December, a team of military experts composed of the Navy and the Academy of Military Sciences put forward three plans for the enemy's strangulation tactics: First, dispatch warships to escort the merchant fleet in the enemy's infested waters; Second, the main ships of the colonial fleet attacked and took out the enemy's old nest, Curry Island or Olive Island; Third, dispatch colonial fleets in batches and on a small scale to the enemy's ship-infested waters to find and destroy enemy fleets.

By December 10, the proposals were finally forwarded to the Cabinet, and the discussion of these plans will have to wait for the next enlarged Cabinet meeting.

On December 25, B58, the Imperial Cabinet authorities held another enlarged meeting, which was already considered an exception due to the war, which was usually held once every three months. At the meeting on the details of 26 December, a large number of military experts attended the meeting, and the politicians and military experts comprehensively studied and discussed these plans of action.

The first option is to require a large number of warships, especially small and medium-sized warships, as escort ships. However, the current colonial naval fleet is not equipped with any small and medium-sized warships, only the Coast Guard. There are only 66 small and medium-sized ships in the entire Yanar colony (10 of the original 76 have been sunk), all of which are small offshore patrol gunboats of 120 to 200 tons, and their range and firepower are not suitable for use as escort ships. The Imperial Navy of MarneRocco mainly focused on large ships capable of ocean-going operations, and did not pay attention to the manufacture of small ships, and only produced and equipped a small number of inshore patrol ships for anti-smuggling and border patrol. Obviously, these small ships could not be used as escort ships for ocean-going fleets. Some of the old men proposed that large and medium-sized ships could be dispatched to escort the fleet, and this suggestion was widely recognized, but the representatives from the navy at that time strongly opposed it, "This is to let the navy divide its forces, and in the event of a large-scale naval battle, it will not be able to effectively concentrate forces."

Option two, this is undoubtedly a naval battle, the implementation of this plan means to have a decisive battle between the two fleets, for the Marnerocco Empire, the war is sudden, and the decisive battle of the fleet needs to be fully prepared. During the last rescue operation to save Curry Island, many ships were injured and are still being repaired. They do not know much about the strength of the enemy's army, and whether or not they can win this kind of decisive battle has a bearing on the overall situation, and they must be sure before they can attack, and they must not be too casual. The old men were afraid of risky matters, and this plan was unanimously rejected by the Cabinet of Ministers, unprecedentedly unanimous, although the representatives of the Navy did not oppose it or even voted in favor of it. In the eyes of the Cabinet of Ministers old politicians or politicians, the naval fleet is an important national asset, and in the event of a loss, the state asset is lost. They are reluctant to take the risk of zeroing out the assets of the entire fleet, and they are not even willing to participate in the battle with capital ships that cost a lot of money.

The third plan is to attack against attack and gradually seize sea supremacy. Representatives of the Navy supported the third set of plans, the first of which was to make the Navy exhausted and useless, and the third option was to at least let the Navy do what it should do. The experts are extremely supportive, and the old men as a whole do not support or oppose it. The experts of the Imperial Academy of Military Sciences worked day and night to study calculus, war games and deduce the results of various schemes. The final conclusion of a series of scientific studies is that the third option is the most efficient and the most effective in combat. The old men finally expressed their approval of the plan, which was approved by a collective vote. In the opinion of these old people, there will be no big losses in this mode of operation, and if there are unacceptable losses, then at least the car can be braked in time, so that the entire fleet will not be caught in it.

The outcome of this meeting was even more tragic for the Navy than the implementation of Plan I. Option 1, Scheme 3, and two programs at the same time. The specific plan was to send a large number of armored cruisers, which were originally used as battleship escorts, as escorts for the merchant fleet, and to dispatch battleships and the remaining armored cruisers to attack the enemy fleet. The implementation of this mode of operation will make the Imperial Navy fleet of the Yanar Colony increasingly fall into extreme fatigue, not only to escort the merchant fleet but also to constantly take the initiative to find the enemy. This move can indeed reduce the loss of transport ships tactically, and it is even more significant to restore the lines of communication at the strategic level, but it is only a matter of time before the two armies fight another decisive battle between the fleets, and a fleet in a state of fatigue may not be an opponent of the enemy fleet that has been recuperating for several months. It is the best policy to send the home fleet to escort the supply ships, and even implement the second plan, and transfer the main force of the home fleet to fight the enemy in a decisive battle. The old man of the cabinet believes that the home fleet is a treasure of the town and the country and cannot be used lightly, and the experts of the Academy of Military Sciences feel that most of the voyage will not be attacked by the enemy at all, and it is a waste of resources for the home fleet to escort the whole process. The old politicians were so afraid of the loss that they felt sorry for the precious warships and were reluctant to colonize, and the pedants were calculating the so-called costs of the war, and a correct plan was put on the shelf. Caesar needed to officially such an enemy.

From January 2, B59, the colonial naval fleet began to carry out this laborious merchant fleet escort program, and more than 20 warships and two supply ships formed a convoy to go to the open sea to meet the merchant fleet. According to the tactics carefully devised by the experts of the Academy of Military Sciences, a convoy of at least three cruisers usually formed a convoy of four to six merchant ships, with the front side of the warships forming a triangular formation and the merchant fleet in a triangle. When I started using this trick, it could indeed effectively protect merchant ships. When the United Imperial Expeditionary Force found that the enemy had escort ships, it would usually decide whether to fight or not to fight, depending on the situation. But who knows if you can beat it? Then you have to rush to a certain distance to give the merchant ship a few heavy guns or even closer, and put a few torpedoes on it, and test the firepower of the escort cruiser to see if it can be beaten. This meant that merchant ships would inevitably suffer a few shots, which would slow down the fleet's speed and reluctantly return to port for repairs, or sink the heavy ones. Therefore, the first priority in the event of a broken ship escort ship is to open fire with all its might, regardless of whether it hits or misses, and effectively deter the enemy ship with strong firepower, which means that a large amount of ammunition is consumed in vain.

On 20 January, the first flotilla arrived at the port under the full protection of the convoy, unloaded the flour, planned to load it with coal and iron ore, and then set sail again under the escort of the convoy. After reaching the safety of the sea, the escort fleet continues to wait for the next group of escorted ships.

Soon, another situation arose, the strength of the escort fleet was significantly inferior to that of the broken fleet. The escort ship can choose to escape or stay and be sunk. And then, whatever the case, the whole merchant fleet will be tragic. For an expeditionary fleet with a large number of ships, it is easy to expand the size of a single fleet of broken ships with the same number. Soon, this full-blown tragedy was immediately staged. On January 22, the bad news came, the second batch of merchant ships and escort fleets, a total of 6 freighters and 3 cruisers, were all annihilated by the enemy, and the first batch of merchant ships were afraid to leave the port. The lines of communication that had just been restored were interrupted again.

After a miserable battle in the mode of complete defeat, the Marnerocco Imperial Fleet sacrificed the last move in advance - the iron bucket tactic, which is an invincible mode of combat developed by the Imperial Academy of Military Sciences. A powerful escort fleet of more than two dozen armored cruisers on the edge of the safe sea area protected the merchant fleet of more than two dozen ships, and the warships spread out outside the merchant fleet in a ring, and they had to maintain a formation, and each warship could not deviate too far from its position. In order to avoid falling into excessive engagement and better protect merchant ships, these escort warships can only use fire to drive the incoming enemy into combat mode, and "the enemy ships must fire when they come up". This kind of long-range fire, which can only serve as a warning, is actually emptying ammunition. This massive escort operation caused the battleships of the United Imperial Expeditionary Fleet to be dispatched, and cruisers and gunboats were also dispatched to set up cards to intercept them, and the fleet of the Janar Colony of the Marnerocco Empire decisively mobilized all the battleships to meet the supply fleet and sent a detachment to attack Curry Island. The fleets of both sides and the armed merchant fleets staged a thrilling sea battle. After the sea battle, which can be regarded as the end of the convoy war, only six merchant ships reached the colonial port safely, of which only one ammunition ship carrying various types of rockets, and the transport ship carrying the shells of the navy's large-caliber main guns was sunk. The Marne-Rocco Empire's blood transfusion operation to the colonies failed again......

The Jarnar Colonial Fleet still had certain results in carrying out off-attack operations, causing huge losses to the United Empire Expeditionary Fleet.

On January 6, B59, the colonial fleet began an active sortie with a detachment of two Yanar-class battleships in the waters near Curry Island in search of the enemy. The first operation had a lot of success, sinking 6 enemy ships. On 12 January, three battleships of the second sortie fleet attacked Curry Island, after which the frequency of enemy ship activity in this area was greatly reduced. However, at this time, the United Empire Expeditionary Fleet had already used Olive Island as a base to carry out interception operations, and it was of little significance to compress the area of fleet activity around Curry Island.

Over the next few dozen days, the United Empire Expeditionary Fleet had many encounters with the Jarnar Colony Fleet, which had gone out to sea to seek the enemy, and both sides suffered mutual damage. This can be seen as a battle for sea supremacy off the coast of the Yanar colony between the two navies. The Marne-Rocco Empire dispatched a large number of battleships to sweep away the enemy cruisers, and the United Imperial fleet was naturally defeated one after another, and rarely won.

In the later stages of this series of naval battles in the outer seas of the colonies, the United Imperial Navy, which had poor warship performance and often suffered defeats, began to take the initiative to attack at any cost, and the Imperial Navy of Marnerocco, which often won victories, was increasingly inclined to participate in the war passively. One of the reasons for this anomaly was that the fleet of the Colony of Yanar was running out of ammunition, convoys and combat operations were consuming too much ammunition, and the replenishment of ammunition planned to be brought from the mainland sank into the sea with the sunken merchant ships.

The merchant convoy and active sweep battles ended in the possession of the Janar colony's offshore sea supremacy in the hands of the St. Romain expeditionary fleet, which was unable to fight with a severely short ammunition fleet. Neither side expected this outcome.

On February 26, B59, the United Imperial Army, which had seized control of the sea off Yanar, landed on the coast of Yanar, and the defenders of the Manlok Empire's colony were at a disadvantage. The Imperial Cabinet decided: "The colonial army must be reinforced at all costs", and the still powerful Marnerocco Empire will never give up this colony, and the imperial top brass finally decided to use the native fleet and the native army to participate in this war for the colony. In March B59, a large number of the Marnerocco army sailed to the Janar colony, and the native Imperial naval fleet used a large number of ships to escort the whole process.

The main fleets of the two navies began to compete in the depths of the ocean, and the battle of strangulation at sea in the narrow sense came to an end. The Marne-Rocco Empire was defeated.

This contest between strangulation and counter-strangulation is a strategic battle of wits and courage, a competition in weaponry, equipment, and technical level between the high-ranking generals of the two sides, an all-round competition in the tactical quality and combat will of the vast number of officers and men participating in the war, and still more a systematic competition in the superstructure of the high-level ruling ability, state system, administrative model, and so on of the two sides.

Julius Caesar the Victor spoke highly of the strangulation war, and specifically pointed out that the prevailing position in the strangulation war at sea between the two sides was the most important factor in the final victory of the United Imperial Army in this B-century intercontinental colonial war.

The losers held a meeting to discuss the reasons for the failure, and the result of the discussion-style scientific research of the old men was that "it will only fail because it is a passive defensive side, and the defending side will lose in this mode of operation, and this thesis is a scientific truth that can be applied everywhere." "Most of the experts of the National Academy of Military Sciences of the country do not think so.

"The cumbersome and protracted decision-making system made it impossible to give full play to the superiority of the navy's overall combat effectiveness, and the decision-makers were overly cautious, evaded responsibility, feared failure, and sought no fault instead of merit, and these bureaucratic styles that had accumulated over the past hundred years eventually led to the defeat of this campaign and the entire war." This quote is excerpted from the War Research Report of the Expert Group of the National Academy of Military Sciences of the Marne-Rocco Empire. The old men of the Imperial Cabinet scoffed at the scientific report, saying that it was an incompetent person who was shirking responsibility for the defeat. It's just that I don't know who the "incompetents" in the war really are!?

Years later, these defeated soldiers united with the restoration of the old royal family and overthrew this old and rigid elm-headed system. The royal family was successfully restored, and a new and vibrant state, the Delstein dynasty, was established.

The war of strangulation and anti-strangulation in a broad sense runs through the entire war. Two years later, during the Naru Colonial War, the Marne-Rocco Empire launched the same pattern of strangulation warfare against the United Empire Expeditionary Force, with the strangulation and counter-strangulation swapping positions. The victor remained on the side of the United Empire of San Romain.

This kind of strangulation at sea is not strictly speaking a collection of several naval battles, but a protracted naval war, consisting of several campaigns and battles, and there are countless examples of successful battles on both sides. This desperate struggle around the sea lines of communication lasted for several years and ran through the entire war, not only on the victory or defeat of the war, but also on the development of the world's navy in later generations, and completely changed the world's understanding of maritime power.