Chapter 452: The Battle Off the Coast of Hong Kong
Li Tie's special plane arrived directly at the airport of the Hong Kong Huaxing Aviation School on the main island of Hong Kong. When Li Tie and his wife Thousand-tailed Scorpion stepped off the plane. The top managers of Hong Kong Huaxing Industrial City and the bigwigs of Hong Kong Hongmen all greeted them at the airport.
The first thing Li Tie saw was Qi Dehai, a college classmate in the prime of life, who is now thirty-five years old, when he was in the prime of life, and after so many years of training, Qi Dehai is already at the helm of the world-famous Hong Kong branch of Huaxing Company.
Almost all the commodities of Huaxing Company that pass through the world are produced in Hong Kong's Huaxing Industrial City. And it was Qi Dehai who organized the production of these dozens of giant enterprises.
Today's Qi Dehai has long been a well-known celebrity in China, and his legendary cooperation with Li Tie has also become the talk of businessmen across the country after dinner.
Today, Qi Dehai has only one wife, and he is indeed the father of three children. At the same time, he is also one of the shareholders of Hong Kong Huaxing Company, although he only owns 5% of the shares of Hong Kong Huaxing Group, but now he is the second richest man in the country.
It is estimated that in his lifetime, he will be the second richest man in the country. Because Li Tie is now ranked first in the wealth rankings of all countries in the world, there is no way for Li Tie to have the nationality of Britain, France, Germany, the United States and other countries.
And all governments also regard Li Tie as a member of their own country. It seems that no matter what era it is, rich people are popular.
Especially a world-renowned tycoon like Li Tie. However, those who came to welcome Li Tie today did not come for Li Tie's wealth. Those present today are the core figures of Li Tie Group. Including more than a dozen hall masters of Hongmen, they have already earned a lot of money because of their years of cooperation with Huaxing Group.
Let's talk about Zhao Dabao who came to greet him, now Zhao Dabao is the commander-in-chief of the Hong Kong Huaxing Guards, and the 10,000 carefully selected Huaxing Guards are Zhao Dabao's descendants.
Zhao Dabao's Huaxing Escort was not only well-equipped, but the guards were also well-trained and had high morale. The entire Huaxing Escort Force even has veterans who have served for more than ten years.
Today, the Hong Kong Huaxing Guard Force actually has 10,000 veteran members who are more than five years old, and 10,000 members who are less than five years old. It can just be formed into an army.
Considering the future development, Li Tie's visit to Hong Kong this time also had the purpose of reorganizing the Hong Kong Huaxing Guard. After several days of discussion, Li Tie finally decided to reorganize the Hong Kong Huaxing Escort Force into the Huaxing Fourth Army, and the commander was Zhao Dabao.
As for the generals at all levels in the army, there are still Hongmen hall masters, and the main task of the Huaxing Fourth Army is to defend Hong Kong, and I believe that with Hongmen's strength in Hong Kong and the full assistance of the Huaxing Guards, it is still possible to defend Hong Kong.
At the same time, the original Hainan Guards were renamed Huaxing Guards. In this way, the entire Huaxing Guard Army became Li Tie's personal arm.
Li Tie absorbed the advanced management experience of mercenaries in later generations, and then hired them with high salaries to leave most of the veterans with many years of service experience. After Li Tie's reorganization, the entire Huaxing Group now has four armies.
They are the First Army of Special Operations led by Wang Yaqiao himself, the Second Army of Huaxing led by Cai Tingkai and Jiang Guangnai, and the Third Army of Huaxing stationed in Vietnam led by Yang Hucheng and Bai Fengxiang.
Now increase the Huaxing Fourth Army led by Zhao Dabao. The number of the entire Huaxing Group's official army has actually reached 100,000.
In fact, the number of troops that Li Tie could use was far greater than this number. For example, the black kill Xiangzuo is recruiting troops in Manchuria, and Xiangzuo has more than 100,000 troops two years ago, not to mention that he now occupies part of Mongolia.
Ma Zhanshan also has more than 100,000 troops on the Heihe border, and now Ma Zhanshan is still reclaiming wasteland in Russia on the Heihe border, and I heard that there are hundreds of thousands of armed immigrants there alone.
In addition, Liu Wenhui also helped Li Tie watch the 100,000 dead word army in Sichuan. In fact, Li Tie now has more than 400,000 regular soldiers.
If we add the gangster forces in Southeast Asian countries, the resistance forces of the Hei brothers in various countries, and the hundreds of thousands of militiamen provided by Hong Kong Hongmen and Huaxing Industrial City, Li Tie may actually be able to use more than one million troops.
Fortunately, only Li Tie and the thousand-tailed scorpion knew these military strengths, including Wang Yaqiao and the heads of Huaxing branches in various places, and they did not know Li Tie's real military strength.
As for Commander Chiang, who was far away in Chongqing, he was even more unclear about Li Tie's military strength. He always thought that Li Tie only had 50,000 regular troops.
But don't think that Li Tie has such a strong strength and can compete with Commander Jiang for the world. In fact, Li Tie's army group is still quite fragile.
That is, Li Tie's army is actually all maintained by money and gang forces. It is easy for a military group like theirs to form a warlord system like the Nationalist Government.
More importantly, these military groups have a strong territorial character, mobilize them to actively protect their homeland, and they do not hesitate to define it.
If they are mobilized to compete with Commander Jiang for the world, I am afraid that they will end up in the same fate as Zhang Xueliang and Li Zongren, and they will eventually be swallowed up by Commander Jiang.
Because Li Tie is not good at politics, his group leaders are inextricably linked to him. It can be said that everyone is bound to each other's interests.
In fact, the entire Li Tie clique does not have the capital to compete for the world, because they are not a political party, they do not have a ruling program, and they do not have a mature ruling system.
Just like many people in later generations said that this was not good, and said that it was not good, many organizations even wanted to overthrow the current state organization and establish another world. But how can an organization that does not even have a governing program lead the country?
Just like a large enterprise wants to change its CEO, the new CEO does not even have a concept of how to manage the enterprise, let alone a mature management team, and he fires all the management members as soon as he comes up, and the final outcome of such a company must be bankruptcy.
If the state really allows this kind of person to take control, it will only plunge China into chaos immediately, just imagine if the whole country is at war, and the people can't even guarantee the most basic lives, what kind of freedom can they mention.
The same is true of the current Republic of China, and it is precisely because of years of warlord warfare that China's strength has been greatly depleted, that China has been bullied by various countries.
Now that most of China has been occupied by the Japanese, the first priority of the people of the whole country is to get rid of the Japanese as soon as possible. Therefore, there was a situation in which the Kuomintang and the Communist Party united, and all parties and warlords in various localities worked together to resist Japan.
Li Tie had just completed the reorganization of the army in Hong Kong. The vanguard of the 23rd Army launched a tentative attack from Shenzhen. This time, the Japanese made a lot of determination, and they must play Li Tie's true strength.
As a result, as soon as the two sides made a move, the Japanese army discovered that Li Tie's military strength was really strong.
First of all, the 38th Division had just set off, and before they could reach Shenzhen, they were attacked by the Hong Kong Huaxing Air Force.
The Japanese thought that after the British navy and air force stationed in Hong Kong suffered heavy losses, their land forces would be able to drive straight in.
Although he knew that Li Tie's Huaxing Fourth Army had a certain strength in Hong Kong. However, the 38th Division has also made operational arrangements, and as long as it encounters the Huaxing Fourth Army, the naval and air forces of the Japanese Fifth Fleet will cooperate to bombard the Chinese troops blocking the 38th Division's attack.
In fact, however, before the carrier-based planes of the Japanese Fifth Fleet could take off to bomb Hong Kong, nearly 100 carrier-based planes of the Japanese fleet had to take to the skies to protect the entire Fifth Fleet from being wiped out.
Because around the Japanese fleet, a fleet of more than a dozen British ships suddenly appeared, and this fleet was all under the banner of the Huaxing Group.
And this fleet under the banner of the Huaxing Group is very strong, with a full eight British destroyers, two cruisers, and two aircraft carriers converted from 10,000-ton oil tankers, and there are not many planes on each aircraft carrier, only forty or fifty.
However, the two aircraft carriers were also equipped with nearly 100 fighters, which was far more than the 75 planes of one aircraft carrier of the Fifth Fleet.
Even more terrifying was the fact that the fleet was accompanied by sixteen German submarines.
If it was just this huge fleet, the Japanese Fifth Fleet could still fight desperately, but before the two fleets entered the battle distance, hundreds of fighters took off from Hainan Airport to help in the battle.
And at the thought of his seventy-five planes, it was almost impossible to retreat under the siege of nearly two hundred fighters. What's more, Hong Kong's air force has just bombed the 38th Division.
And the various artillery attacks of the Huaxing Navy are equally sharp. Therefore, the Japanese Fifth Fleet finally decided to avoid the enemy's sharp first, and then look for fighters to fight to the death with the Huaxing Fourth Army.
But they wanted to run, but the Huaxing Navy didn't want to let them go, and it was rare that they suddenly came to the battlefield with an absolute superiority in numbers, so the Huaxing Navy, who was in contact with the war for the first time, chased after them like chickens and fought with the Japanese fleet.
It has to be said that the Japanese navy of this era was really strong, although the Japanese Fifth Fleet was scarce in number, and the Huaxing Navy also had the help of German sailors.
However, the Huaxing Navy, which had never experienced a naval battle at all, even if it had a numerical advantage, not only did not quickly destroy the Fifth Fleet, but instead caused the Fifth Fleet to severely damage several destroyers.
It turned out that the naval and air force battle was the first encounter between the two sides on the sea, and it was the training level and equipment performance of the soldiers on both sides that were tested.
Because the Huaxing Navy uses ships of the British Navy, the quality of the ships is not inferior to that of the Japanese Navy. But after all, the Huaxing Navy has never fought with other navies.
Although the Japanese Navy had only bullied the low-strength Nationalist Navy, the Japanese Navy had assisted the Army in participating in ground attacks on many occasions, and in addition it had trained hard in peacetime, the Japanese sailors had better tactical quality and were more accurate in their fights.
Many Japanese ships hit their targets with almost the first shell, and the ships of the Huaxing Navy had to hit the ships of the Fifth Fleet until the third round or more.
On the other hand, the Japanese Navy is much more clear, knowing that it is not superior in the air and that it is the Japanese fleet that will be unlucky in the end in the long battle. And I don't know if Hainan and Hong Kong will come to help with more planes.
At the same time, it also knew that the Huaxing submarine force was relatively harmful, so the Fifth Fleet quickly left the battlefield after firing more than a dozen rounds of artillery fire with the Huaxing Navy.
Nearly 100 fighters of the Fifth Fleet also successfully blocked nearly 200 planes of the Huaxing Air Force. The two sides fought a big battle off the coast of Hong Kong. In the end, the Huaxing Air Force lost 50 planes and the Japanese army lost 30.
This naval and air battle was the first time that the Huaxing Navy and Air Force fought with the Japanese Navy and Air Force in real battles, so the weakness of the Huaxing Navy and Air Force's lack of actual combat was undoubtedly exposed.
However, after this Hong Kong naval and air battle, the soldiers of the Huaxing Navy and Air Force will soon grow up. The next time they meet, it will definitely not make the Japanese army feel better.