readx; Yanjing in July is still in a very hot and dry state, the warm and humid air flow in the south is still in the coastal basin of the Yangtze River, the rainy season will slowly pass with time and slowly go north, and then after the end of July, the rainy season will gradually go north to the Shandong region of northern Jiangsu, and then enter the Zhili area, which will bring the largest rainfall in a year to the Zhili area in the first month, and the rain belt will continue to go north, all the way to the northeast region, bringing a short rainy season to the northeast region. www.biquge.info The rain belt will slowly move south, return to Zhili and Shandong, and then pass through the coastal area of the Yangtze River to bring a second rainy season to the Jiangnan region, and finally continue southward until it completely withdraws from the coastal area, thus ending the rainy season cycle of the year.

It can be said that the rainy season that lasted throughout June and July was also an important reason for the Nationalist Army and the Beiyang Army to continue to maintain a state of confrontation in southern Jiangsu, in which the military commanders of both sides did not want their troops to trek through muddy water to attack the well-prepared enemy, and the poor road traffic conditions would make the people in charge of logistics want to commit suicide by swallowing guns. In the Anhui and Jiangxi wars, the national army has already encountered this kind of bad weather when it marched into southern Anhui, not to mention the slow march of the troops, what is even more tragic is that there are great troubles in logistics and transportation, if it is not for the combat effectiveness of the Huangxing Soviet army in the face is far inferior to the national army, but if it is replaced by the Beiyang army, then the national army is very likely to suffer a certain degree of defeat in the war in southern Anhui.

The rainy season in southern Jiangsu in July continues, but there will always be an end, when the rain belt begins to shift northward, then it is the time when a major war breaks out between the Nationalist Army and the Beiyang Army.

"The air force has already departed, right?" In the scorching summer, Yuan Shikai wore a cool silk horse coat and asked casually while drinking chilled lotus seed soup.

Duan Qirui on the side also put down the small bowl of iced lotus seed soup, and then said: "The air force has gone south yesterday!" Don't be good president! ”

"After the air team arrives in Jiangbei this time, it should be able to make Huapu feel a lot more at ease!" Yuan Shikai said: "In last year's war, we suffered a lot of losses in the matter of aircraft, and now we have also formed an aviation team, and we can also reconnoiter the national army in the south from the air!" ”

"We did suffer a lot of losses on the plane last year!" Duan Qirui still vividly remembers last year's war in southern Jiangsu, when Feng Guozhang's telegram often mentioned the planes of the Nationalist Army, saying that under the surveillance of the Nationalist Army's aircraft, the movement of the troops was completely controlled by the Nationalist Army, and the one-way transparency of air intelligence was also an important reason for the defeat of the Beiyang Army.

Whether it is the senior generals of the Beiyang Army or the leader of Yuan Shikai, they are also very interested in these fresh weapons and equipment, and when the war in southern Jiangsu was still ongoing, they had already purchased Gao Delong aircraft from France, and then purchased pigeon planes from Austria, and collected only a few aviation talents to open an aviation school in Nanyuan. However, the aircraft is still a new affair, Beiyang itself does not understand, even if you want to hire foreign aviation instructors, there is nowhere to ask, the development of the air force of the great powers is also in a primitive state, and the establishment and tactics and training are not as good as China's, excluding the speed of aero engines, the design and manufacture of aircraft of the national army and the training of aviation units are not a problem in the world. Even the Beiyang Aviation Force, which had just started gradually, made three purchases in three large amounts, directly purchasing 20 Gao Delong aircraft with cash payment, and then purchasing 12 pigeon aircraft. The number of aircraft has even surpassed many countries in the world, you must know that before the First World War, Britain was only less than 100 aircraft, Germany was only two or three hundred, but after the war aircraft played an important role, almost overnight, Britain, France and Germany were full of all kinds of military aircraft, and the speed of the outbreak made the current agricultural country like China incomparable.

There is no place to learn when you go out, and the people in the Beiyang Army are not stupid, and if you can't learn from foreign countries, you can directly learn from your opponent. As a result, the air force building of the Beiyang Army is almost identical to the air force building of the Nationalist Army, and it does not even bother to change the name of the air force from the establishment of the organization to the establishment of the air force, and directly sets up an air force department under the Ministry of War. Moreover, in the process of establishing the Air Force Department, the appointment of personnel is also a great breakthrough in the old system of the Beiyang Army, almost all the people in the Air Force Department are aviation professionals, and the director of the Air Force Department is Qin Guoyong's classmate Liu Baoming, who studied aviation together in France, before being asked by Duan Qirui to be the director of the Air Force Department, Liu Baoming was just a civilian major in the staff of the Beiyang Army. It is not difficult to get ahead with his aviation manufacturing expertise, and he even wrote a letter to Wu Shizhong, but before Wu Shizhong could reply to him, Duan Qirui just found him.

The first sentence was to ask him if he was studying aviation in France, Liu Baoming was stunned at the time, Duan Qirui, the boss of the Beiyang Army, was second only to Yuan Shikai in status, he had seen him go to a small major in person, but now, Duan Qirui found him in person. Liu Baoming nodded in a daze, and then Duan Qirui said to him: "Now you are the director of the Air Force Division under the Army Department of the Beiyang Army!" ”

Immediately afterwards, Liu Baoming jumped two levels in a row, soared from an ordinary civilian major to the rank of major general, and became the director of the Air Force Division of the Beiyang Army. Before Liu Baoming could react to what was going on, Duan Qirui told him that your task is to build an aviation team, which has always been no weaker than the air force of the Air Force of the National Army.

Liu Baoming was then personally received by Yuan Shikai, who said to him heavily: "In the future, China's sky will depend on you!" ”

When Yuan Shikai said this, Liu Baoming had the urge to die as a confidant, and the original dissatisfaction, the original envy of Wu Shizhong and Qin Guoyong, the mood of these classmates had already been left behind, and Wu Shizhong, who did not know that Liu Baoming had become the director of the Beiyang Air Force Division, replied that he was invited to serve in the south, Liu Baoming tore the letter to shreds with a chuckle. Going south to serve is bound to be below Qin Guoyong and Wu Shizhong and others, and he knows that many people who studied in the French aviation department have gone to serve in the Air Force of the National Army, and if he goes now, he will definitely have to squat below those classmates, where there is the boss of the aviation unit in Beiyang.

People are self-motivated, Yuan Shikai and Duan Qirui personally invited him to serve as the director of the Beiyang Air Force Department, and now Beiyang is still the justifiable central political axe, Liu Baoming has no reason to refuse this position.

After taking up the post of director of the Air Force Department, Liu Baoming's first thing was to send an invitation letter to the aviation talents he knew, not every talent in China who studied aviation in France in the pre-Qing Dynasty had a good relationship with Qin Guoyong and Wu Shizhong, but everyone would go to the Air Force Department of the National Army, although Qin Guoyong and Wu Shizhong had collected most of the part, but there were still a few people left for Liu Baoming, and Liu Baoming set up the Air Force Department with these few people as the team.

Since there were no learning objects for the aviation units of other powers, Yuan Shikai and Duan Qirui and other senior Beiyang generals were not pedantic, and others could not learn to simply study the Air Force Department of the Nationalist Army, so only then did the War Department make an Air Force Division, and even the various subordinate institutions of the Air Force Department were the same as the Air Force Division of the National Army, and even the names were the same without changing.

Yuan Shikai spent a lot of money to purchase more than 20 Gao Delong planes and more than 10 pigeon planes from France and Germany respectively, but he handed over these planes to Liu Baoming, and asked Liu Baoming to train enough pilots in the shortest possible time, so Liu Baoming set up an aviation school in Nanyuan, and selected qualified elite soldiers from the Beiyang Army for training.

Liu Baoming has the ability, it didn't take two or three months to train more than a dozen pilots, and gave Yuan Shikai a flight show, Yuan Shikai was quite satisfied with the air show, and on the same day he approved the establishment of the First Air Wing, which first governed a squadron. Then, at the suggestion of Liu Baoming, Yuan Shikai sent another order to Germany to purchase more than 30 pigeon planes for the formation of two more squadrons.

Although the Beiyang Army does not yet have a systematic intelligence agency, there are still relevant intelligence sources, although I do not know the details of the Air Force of the National Army, but the general establishment is still known, and I know that an air wing of the National Army has four squadrons, and it is also divided into reconnaissance, combat, and bombing squadrons, and more importantly, the National Army does not have only one air force wing, but there are three. In order not to fall too far behind his opponents, Yuan Shikai spent a lot of money to continue to purchase aircraft.

Liu Baoming and others believed that the pigeon aircraft was the most suitable choice for Beiyang today, but in fact, the Beiyang Air Force had no other choice except for the pigeon and Gao Delong aircraft. Nowadays, the development of aviation is still extremely primitive, and there are only a few aircraft models that are really mature and usable, and the pigeon is one of the best, and the German army is also equipped with more than 100 pigeon aircraft. As for the special combat and bomber planes equipped in the air force of the Nationalist Army, there are no planes at all, and the current planes are all reconnaissance planes, and if they want to fight in the air, the pilots of pigeon planes can only use pistols, so even if the Beiyang Army wants to buy fighters or bombers, they have not bought them, and the powers themselves do not have them, and the Nationalist Army obviously will not buy a Beiyang plane.

At present, the Nationalist Army is still in a stage of secrecy about aircraft, and it is very strict about fighters and bombers, and even the military instructors in the army units of the Nationalist Army say: "It is difficult for myself and the Americans to figure out what the fighters and bombers of the Nationalist Army are."