Chapter 369 Sino-German Joint Military Exercises

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When the clouds accumulated in the north and all kinds of characters began to appear one after another, after Yang Qiu submitted a bill to the parliament to form a municipality directly under the central government, he quietly went south to Sanduao with Zhang Xiaozhun and Sa Zhenbing.

Sanduao is located in the southeast of Ningde, Fujian Province, which is the middle point of China's coastline. The topography here is also quite peculiar, the bay is deep, from the mouth of the sea to the bottom of the bay is 26 kilometers, the entire water area is 714 square kilometers, but the mouth of the sea is only the only east mouth, the width is only 2600 meters, it is a rare deep-water lake in the world. Moreover, the deep-water area and the water depth of the channel here are the world's largest, the port is sheltered from the wind in all seasons, does not freeze or silt, and the wharf construction is very convenient, and it is one of the few world-class good ports in China.

As early as the 19th century, Italy proposed to the Qing government to lease Sanduao, and Germany also had the idea of continuing to occupy this place after occupying Qingdao, and the United States also proposed to lease Sanduao as a military port and coal wharf in recent years, and the British Navy sent an admiral to investigate. Eventually, under pressure from the Qing government, it was opened as a treaty port in 1898, and within a decade Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Italy and other countries built a large number of wharves here, and the island also built oil depots for large companies such as Mobil, Texaco and Asia. In 1905, after the laying of submarine cables, it officially became a world-class commercial port, and the total value of goods entering and leaving the country from here last year alone exceeded 10 million yuan, and the import and export tax was as high as 500,000 yuan.

After the third division took Guangdong, Yang Qiu immediately ordered to control here, which also attracted strong protests from Britain, France, the United States and other countries, fortunately, with the efforts of the Beiyang and naval people, the Qing government never leased this deep-water port, so its control of the port still belongs to the Republic of China government.

Because Yang Qiu was never at ease with the Guangdong system, which had a deep relationship with the Kuomintang, the Guangdong army could be said to have been wiped out after the reunification of the whole country, and some of the soldiers brought out by Long Jiguang from Guangxi were still absorbed into the National Guard, but the other Guangdong revolutionary army established by Hu Hanmin and others during the Xinhai Revolution was all ordered to be disbanded, and the weapons and ammunition were also confiscated. Even if you don't want to go to Henan, you have been recruited by Jiangnan and other big factories ().

With the 3rd Division stationed in Zhejiang, the 7th Division transferred to Guangdong, and Xie Ruyi's 8th Infantry Division took over the defense of Jiangxi and Fujian provinces and continued to be stationed here until the first batch of 12 brigades of the National Guard was completed last month, and the 3rd Guard Brigade composed of soldiers from Lianghu and Sichuan began to take over the defense of Fujian's customs and wharves, and the 8th Infantry Division gradually withdrew from Sanduao.

Yang Qiu would never let the foreign powers dominate such a world-class seaport, so when the Third Division was in charge at the earliest, it recovered a batch of land and deep-water wharves illegally occupied by various countries under various pretexts, and also bought all the 7 deep-water berths in Tanwan Town in the depths of the bay and the 130,000 mu of flat land in the entire port area for the construction base of the new Mawei Shipyard. For this reason, when Liu Qingen visited Krupp and Austria-Hungary Koda at the beginning of last year, he placed orders for four 305-mm, eight 240-mm and 16 150-mm shore guns from the two companies.

In addition to the use of data machines, the Japanese Type 99 L30/105 mm howitzer with a range of 12,000 meters, and the Type 92 L45/105 mm cannon/shore gun with a range of 18,200 meters, and also reserved a field airfield position behind the shipyard, the prototype of a naval fortress gradually appeared.

Since Britain and France did not agree to let the Second Fleet deploy across the Leizhou Peninsula, Yang Qiu could only retreat and build this place as a base for the Second Fleet. According to the plan, within 10 years, a naval base with a complete system of shipbuilding, aircraft and shore artillery will be built here. But now after all, it is not the years of 20 years ago when fortresses were built on the coast, and the ambitious Sanduao naval base plan was blocked by the British and other powers from the beginning, so when the plan was put forward in 13 years, it was only used as the base of the new Mawei shipyard, but after entering 14 years, the attitude of Britain, France and other countries began to loosen in the face of the pressure of European reality. The first to change was Germany, and in the case of its own obsessiveness, Germany never wanted this world-class port to fall into the hands of Britain and France, so Traun took over the work of helping to build the fort in a high profile, and then the United States began to avoid this issue, because it was related to the shipyard's multimillion-dollar large order, and at the same time, the United States also had the idea of curbing the growing Japanese navy and breaking the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

After Germany and the United States changed their attitudes at the same time, and Yang Qiu promised that he would not change the policy of opening up Sandu, Macao and Hong Kong, Zhu Erdian had to pinch his nose and admit it, because he found that the more Yang Qiu was forced too tightly, the more he would throw himself into the arms of Germany and the United States, and it would be more detrimental to the relationship between China and Britain ().

After Britain, the United States and Germany acquiesced, other countries had no choice but to watch the fort take shape little by little, and watch the new Mawei shipyard in Tanwan Town start construction.

This time, the new Mawei shipyard is not a relocation of the old factory, but a completely new one. According to the plan, after the completion of the shipyard, there will be four docks, including one 20,000 tons and one 10,000 tons, and will also have two refining Martin furnaces, as well as a boiler and a steam turbine factory, including several supporting factories, which will also be merged with Lao Mawei to form the state-owned Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding Group.

In order to complete all the construction tasks before the United States entered the war in 17 years, the government mobilized 20,000 civilian men and soldiers, and even the navy sent a cruiser, three gunboats, and a working group to live and eat on the construction site for a long time. In addition, Yang Qiu also ignored the outside world's personal doubts about him, and strictly demanded that the United States must deliver all the equipment by the end of 15 years, even if it is slowly assembled at the dock, it must be delivered first.

Since 1907, the Qing government ordered Mawei to stop shipbuilding, the Mawei factory could only rely on selling scrap iron to survive, which built more than 40 ships for the Qing Dynasty, accounting for seventy percent of the domestic total, and the shipyard that built the first steel-armored cruiser in China was on the verge of collapse, and the original more than 3,000 outstanding skilled workers also began to fend for themselves.

But this time they all came back, and many people came back from the motherland and even Nanyang and other places to join the construction with tears in their eyes after hearing that Sanduao was going to build a new horsetail. The construction of the new Mawei also alarmed the Nanyang Chinese circle, and these people did not believe it at first, because Yang Qiu used to like to build industry in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and it was not until after the start of construction that they believed that the largest shipbuilding enterprise in South China was coming back, so many Nanyang technicians who had stayed in Europe and the United States also joined this construction torrent.

Although the entire industry of South China was swept up by Sanduao and Xinmawei, Yang Qiu remained calm. It is not difficult to build a factory, millions of dollars can always be smashed out, but the workers are not so easy to train, the technical strength of Mawei is not as good as Jiangnan, and it has been delayed for seven years in vain, so even if there is the best equipment, it will not be able to get up at all without ten years of slow training.

Therefore, he attaches great importance to the construction of technology and talents, in addition to leaving all the old Mawei people and Nanyang technicians, he will build four technical schools here in Fuzhou and here, and directly kick out the old officials who do not understand technology. In the choice of the new leader, the first batch of Gengzi indemnity students who were only 28 years old were boldly used, He Maoqing (the word Mianwu), who majored in naval architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his classmate Xing Qixin, but Xing Qixin said that he could only return to China after studying aviation manufacturing and ship design in the United States.

He Maoqing knew that he was young and lacked qualifications, and he was not comparable with foreign large-scale project engineers, so he was extremely serious about the facts, for fear of delaying the major events of national construction, and even introduced Yang Qiu and his party in great detail.

"The Jigongshan Fort is located in the middle of the channel and is an important barrier to the estuary of the east, so I have strengthened the strength of the fort, and the materials selected are also products of the United States, Germany and France." He Maoqing has been in the United States for many years, and is accustomed to using the metric system to calculate the size, pointing to the deep pit in the center of the fort and saying: "This is the base of the 30.5 mm shore gun, which is equipped with slide rails on the base after it is built, and is driven by an electric motor to aim and turn. The battery consisted of two 30.5 mm guns, two 24 mm shore guns and six 15 mm shore guns, with eight 10.5 mm gun mounts added according to naval requirements. At present, the bases of the three batteries are almost complete, and German engineers say that it will take about 10 months to install and commission the shore guns, and it is expected that the navy will be able to move in this year. ”

Although He Maoqing was the general office, the designers of the three forts were German experts, and the rigorous Germans didn't know whether they wanted to show excellent construction techniques or win over Yang Qiu, but they designed the forts to be extremely strong, and the reinforced concrete bunkers were one meter thick, which made Yang Qiu, a person who had never seen a real fortress, also stunned, thinking that this thing did not know that it could withstand a few inches of direct shells.

The fort is a dead thing after all, and no matter how powerful the fortress is, it will be breached, so whether Sanduao can be built and make it a truly world-class military port depends on the navy itself, so in his opinion, the value here is far less important than the simple construction of the airport, but the huge 305 mm shore gun base can see Zhang Xiaozhun's eyes shine: "Good guy, these three batteries alone can block a fleet, right?" ”

Sa Zhenbing was not as optimistic as him: "Don't be too optimistic, the fortresses of Lushun and Liugong Island before the First Wu Dynasty were stronger than here, and the number of giant cannons was countless, but in the end it was not." ”

"Chief of Staff Sa is right, no fortress is invincible, to crack Sanduao is actually very simple, as long as small warships are sent to deploy mine belts outside the mouth of the sea to block the fleet in the bay, the cost of 500 mines is not as good as a 240 mm heavy gun ()." Seeing that Sa Zhenbing was aroused, Yang Qiu continued: "If we want to build this place into a real naval base, we still rely on our own strength. ”

Sa Zhenbing nodded sympathetically, but Zhang Xiaozhun was still a little puzzled: "It's difficult to send small warships, it's very difficult to have these three batteries to guard the waters within 20 kilometers, let alone 500 after this range, even 5,000 can't be filled." ”

"That's not necessarily, night and bad weather can help small warships break into the offshore sea to lay mines, let alone what if they are mines from underwater?"

"Underwater minelayering?" Zhang Xiaozhun found that he couldn't understand it? When he went to explain and explain, several small black dots in the far side of the channel suddenly entered everyone's sight, and after taking the telescope from Lei Meng's hand, Yang Qiu's lips suddenly turned up: "I'm back." ”

Four small black warships with long black strips rising and falling between the waves suddenly appeared in the middle of the blue waves, and behind them were two Dutch special transport ships. ”

"It's a submarine."

Yang Qiu was very excited, and after a year of waiting, the first 4 of the 6 U-boats ordered from Germany finally returned!

Soon after taking the speedboat back to the dock of the Tanwan Town Shipyard, four submarines that were launched in advance in the open sea and came back from the boat appeared outside the dock, and the submarines that appeared on the Chinese Navy sequence for the first time undoubtedly caused a sensation, not only several warships and sailors stationed here poured onto the deck, but even the workers on the shipyard site rushed to watch, and many Mawei people even muttered whether they could build this kind of small boat that could dive underwater.

The telescopic snorkel has been retracted for fear of leakage, and the narrow deck looks very simple and fluid. In order to meet Yang Qiu's requirements for endurance and torpedo deployment of the first four and the last one, the displacement was slightly enlarged, 537 tons on the water, 505 tons underwater, two 250 diesel engines provided by MAN Company, the maximum speed on the surface was 12 knots, 10 knots under the snorkel state, 1300 nautical miles at 6 knots speed, 6 knots of maximum underwater speed, 2 hours of battery self-sustaining force, 5 450 mm German blackhead torpedo tubes, There is also a German L40/76mm German gun on the bow deck ().

Because of the snorkel technology and the special requirement to configure the diesel engine, this U-boat is undoubtedly one of the most advanced equipment in the world, but unfortunately Germany did not continue to place orders because of doubts about the use of submarines after ordering 6 units, and it will take one or two years to digest Germany's pressure-resistant steel technology in China, so it can not be built for the time being.

"Your Excellency, with all due respect, this submarine is one of the most perfect products of German industry, and with it you have an elusive fleet." Traun, who accompanied him to welcome the submarine home, almost boasted that the submarine was more powerful than the battleship, which means that the submarine is back, and you should fight Japan.

, but just about to say a few perfunctory words, Xie Ruyi, the commander of the Eighth Division, who had made a special trip, suddenly walked over, Fujian and Jiangxi were his defense areas, and the vice president and commander-in-chief came to inspect and duty, but at this moment, his face was obviously not good, and he approached and muttered a few words quietly.

"Tang Jiyao became the commander of the Manchurian Army?!"

"Yes, the news was sent by Zhang Renjun, who returned to Shanghai from Nanman, and it seems that he doesn't want to be involved in this whirlpool. Deputy Chief of General Staff Cai sent an urgent telegram asking me to remind the Commander-in-Chief to be careful of this person. "No wonder Xie Ruyi's face is not good, no matter what Tang Jiyao says, he can't get rid of their Yunnan lineage, and he threw himself into the arms of Japan, which undoubtedly put salt on the wounds of the Yunnan generals who had just recovered from the Northern Expedition.

Traun saw that his face changed suddenly, and he was busy asking the reason, of course Yang Qiu would not tell him about Tang Jiyao, suppressed his anger and looked at the submarines lined up, and it was time to break through this veil.

Immediately turned his head: "Your Excellency, I have always admired your ** team, I wonder if I can have the honor of having a friendly military exercise with your troops stationed in Qingdao?" ”

"Sino-German joint military exercises?" Traun's eyes lit up.

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