In a blink of an eye, the time came to the middle of October of the 27th year of the Republic of China, that is, in 1938.

Qingdao in October has said goodbye to the cool autumn and ushered in a colder winter, because Qingdao is on the edge of the vast East China Sea, so whenever the tide blows, it is much colder than the inland cities.

However, today Qingdao is a rare sunny day in winter, and the sun is not very strong on the earth, giving people a warm and pleasant feeling.

On the Qingdao wharf, hundreds of small gunboats, transport ships, cruisers, and two battleships with a displacement of more than 50,000 tons are moored in the wharf military port.

On the shore, it has already been guarded by thousands of heavily armed [***] soldiers, and it is impossible for idle people and others to approach the dock.

However, as a shrill car horn sounded on the highway in the direction of Qingdao City, countless people who were blocked by the vigilant troops on the periphery of the dock suddenly began to boil.

The reason why these people all gathered at the periphery of the Qingdao wharf, which was heavily guarded, was that Qiao Anbang, commander-in-chief of the Tiger Army, was the hero of the Chinese nation's resistance and the commander-in-chief of the Tiger Army, who was officially announced in his speech in Qingdao yesterday.

The founding ceremony of the Chinese nation's first modern and powerful navy in the true sense of the word was held today.

As soon as the news came out, the entire Qingdao and even the entire Kuomintang region suddenly boiled, and people with a little common sense knew that the navy composed of those old and broken ships of the former Qing Dynasty that the national political axe originally received could not be regarded as a real navy at all, and it had been completely lost as early as the Battle of Songhu.

Until now, there is not a single Chinese ship flying the Chinese flag on the coastline of more than 10,000 kilometers of coastline of the 40,000,000 Chinese sons and daughters, including the Yangtze River, the Huai River, and other inland rivers in China.

This is an absolute disgrace, and today, Qiao Anbang, the unborn national hero of the Chinese nation and the founder and leader of the Tiger Ben Army, the most elite unit of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army, is finally going to personally build a modern navy in the true sense of the Chinese nation.

As soon as such exciting news spread, patriotic people, enthusiastic youths, workers, businessmen, and other people from all walks of life in Qingdao rushed to the naval wharf outside the city, which had already been designated as a military restricted area.

It was also Joan Bang's intention to let his compatriots visit and witness this glorious moment that will go down in history, so he instructed the garrison in charge of the security of the pier to allow the people who came to visit to enter the safe area to observe the ceremony of the formation of the navy.

The car horn sounded several times in succession, and the checkpoints set up along the highway were lifted one after another to let them go, and the officers and men at the checkpoints also saluted and greeted Qiao Anbang's car that was slowly passing by.

Sitting in the passenger seat of the jeep in the middle, Qiao Anbang frequently saluted and waved to the sentries on both sides and the people in the distance with a smile on his face.

In front of Jo Anbang's car were two side three-wheeled motorcycles carrying three elite soldiers, each armed with an MG42 general-purpose machine gun for one of the machine gunners, and an STG44 fully automatic assault rifle for the driver and the soldiers in the back seat.

All of them performed their duties with cold expressions and unsquinting eyes.

The number of jeeps that followed behind Qiao Anbang's car were the vast majority of the officers above the division level of the entire 11th Group Army, and it can be said that except for a few individual division commanders who were unable to arrive due to special reasons, all the more than a dozen 10th brigade commanders under Qiao Anbang arrived.

In addition to Liang Jiahan, a personal guard, who served as the driver, Li Pinxian, deputy commander-in-chief of the 11th Group Army, and Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, who are currently commanders and chiefs of staff of the Fifth Theater, sat in the back seat.

The two were also invited by Qiao Anbang to hurry from Chongqing to attend the ceremony of witnessing the establishment of the navy, because during the period when Qiao Anbang went abroad, due to the failure of Gu Zhutong's counterattack on Shanghai in the third theater, the strength of Jiangnan [***] was greatly damaged, and Nanjing, the capital that had been recovered, was once again under the threat of the army.

Therefore, in a hurry, Chairman Chiang hurriedly ordered the main force of the Fifth Theater, which had penetrated deep into Shandong, to turn around and move south, cross the Yangtze River, and go to the Nanjing front to deploy defenses and consolidate the Nanjing defense line.

Therefore, Li Bai and the others were naturally called to Yucheng by Old Man Jiang to hold the so-called strategic meeting of the Military Committee, but Old Man Jiang did not move south to Tang Enbo, who had in fact formed a confrontation with Qiao Anbang's 11th Army, which was entrenched in most areas of Luzhong and Luxi.

In addition, he also transferred Liu Zhi, the main force of the first theater of operations, to march eastward, threatening Qiao Anbang's old nest pheasant and Ji, that is, the base area in northern Anhui.

In addition, the elite main force of Hu Zongnan's department, which was originally stationed in Shaanxi, also began to gradually move eastward, and the strategic purpose is self-evident.

At this point, Old Man Jiang's intentions can be imagined.

However, Qiao Anbang was not without his deeds; within less than a month of returning to China, he first quickly divided the entire 11 th Group Army from 10 reorganized divisions into two and expanded them into 20 reorganized divisions; of course, the so-called expansion means that one-third or half of the original 10 divisions and recently recruited recruits will be transferred from the original 10 divisions to form a new mechanized infantry division with newly recruited recruits in accordance with the actual conditions of each division.

As for the source of soldiers, during the period from his departure to his return to China, the number of recruits recruited from Shandong, northern Jiangsu, Anhui and eastern Henan exceeded 200,000, especially in Henan, as soon as he heard that the Tiger Ben Army had expanded its army on a large scale again, there was the generous treatment of the Tiger Ben Army and Qiao Anbang's personal prestige and the good reputation of the Tiger Ben Army as a heroic unit, so almost all the young and middle-aged people in Henan flocked to the Tiger Ben Army base area like crazy and signed up to join the army.

In this way, the Tiger Army was able to recruit more than 200,000 qualified soldiers in just one month, and after returning to China, Qiao Anbang was slightly surprised by this, and after thinking about it, he was relieved that China had a population of 40,000 at this time, not counting the population base of Taiwan and the four provinces outside the Guanwai, and the area he occupied was almost the most densely populated Central Plains and East China in the entire Chinese population, so the source of troops was naturally not a problem.

After all, China's population base is there, Xiao Yue has less than 100 million people, and its entire military base is nearly 10 million, not to mention China, which has a large population?

Although Qiao Anbang's method of rapidly expanding the troops will cause the overall combat effectiveness of the entire 11th Army to decline, it can quickly enable the newly formed divisions to form combat effectiveness as soon as possible, and then make use of the powerful air force and logistics supply system of the Tiger Ben Army to make up for the disadvantages caused by the lack of combat experience of the new recruits.

Therefore, today, not counting the soon-to-be-established navy, the total strength of the troops under Qiao Anbang's command does not count the non-active militia that helps with logistics and transportation, and counting the air force units and the guard regiments and armored divisions directly under the group army, it is already worthy of exceeding the 500,000 mark.

This is also due to the fact that all the personnel of the newly formed 10 integrated divisions have not been recruited, and the regiments have not yet been fully established, otherwise the total strength of the troops will directly exceed the 600,000 mark.

If you want to count the huge logistics personnel, then the strength of Qiao Anbang will reach an astonishing one million, why do you say that, because the logistics personnel and militia are all qualified soldiers, if the war requires, they can be pulled to the battlefield at any time, and go to the front line to fight as regular troops.

In order to cope with the possible changes that may occur in the future, Qiao Anbang also formally expanded Gao Xiang's flight regiment into the First Air Force Division at the same time as expanding the army, with three full-fledged flight regiments under its jurisdiction and more than 1,000 combat planes and transport planes.

After the expansion, the 11th Group Army deployed four main integrated infantry divisions on the Shandong front, namely the first integrated division, the fifth integrated division, and the ninth and tenth integrated divisions adapted from the original 31st Army and the 48th Army, among the four integrated divisions, three (1st, 8th, and 9th) were placed on the Luzhong front line to monitor the Tang Enbo group, and one (5th) was responsible for the defense of Qingdao and the Jiaodong Peninsula.

In addition, on the Taierzhuang line north of Xuzhou, Chen Bing, an armored division directly under the 11th Group Army, formed a corner with three integrated infantry divisions to deal with Tang Enbo's department.

More than 300 fighters and bombers of the 1st Air Force Division and 1st Regiment were stationed at Xuzhou and Qingdao airports, and they could immediately provide air fire support and reconnaissance.

In Xuzhou, since Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi were ordered to lead their troops south, Qiao Anbang ordered Liu Guodong to lead his reorganized Eighth Division into Xuzhou, echoing Zhang Xudong's armored division and monitoring Liu Zhi's headquarters.

Along the Xuzhou South and Jinpu Railways, more than 50,000 men of the Sixth and Seventh Divisions of Zhang Zizhong and Pang Bingxun were ready to fight, and they formed a long snake formation with the Eighth Division of Xuzhou.

In the rear of the 6th, 7th, and 8th integrated divisions, the newly formed 11th, 12th, and 13th integrated divisions are stepping up their training and are also serving as reserves just in case, so that if a battle breaks out on the front line, they can quickly enter the battle and fight side by side with the front-line defensive troops.

In Qiao Anbang's Laochao base area in northern Anhui, Chu Jingming's fourth integrated division plus three newly organized divisions were mainly used to form the western line of northern Anhui, that is, the eastern Henan defense line, to prevent Hu Zongnan's army from launching an attack from Henan.

In addition, hundreds of fighters from the Second Flying Regiment of the First Air Force Division are also stationed at Longshan Airport, the old nest of the Tiger Ben Army, and they are on standby at any time.

On the southern front, Cao Er and Li Jupeng's 2nd and 3rd integrated divisions had already advanced the defensive line to Huainan, and a large number of elite main forces were deployed along the Huai River line.

In addition, in order to deal with the possible battle on the southern front, that is, to prevent the main force north of the Yangtze River from suddenly going north, and to cooperate with the main force of the Central Plains Jiang Army to attack the Huben army, Qiao Anbang also asked people to build a military airfield in Guzhen on the north bank of the Huai River, and deployed the 3rd Flying Regiment of the 1st Air Division here to deter the Jiangnan army.

(To be continued)