The three hospital ships were named Bian Que, Hua Tuo and Li Shizhen, while the Peace Ark hospital ship was collectively named.

Among them, the Bian Que and Hua Tuo sailed for the Caribbean Sea, escorted by the Sea Scale along the way. And Li Shizhen remained in the fleet on standby.

With a hospital ship, it is equivalent to having a field hospital at sea, and for the officers and men, it is undoubtedly equivalent to an additional insurance. The hospital ship is very popular in the navy, and most of the medical staff on the hospital ship are women, which has also become a beautiful scenery, bringing color to the boring life of the navy officers.

After arranging the affairs of the American Expeditionary Force, Wang Chenhao also had to take care of the preparations for the attack on Spain in Asia.

For the Asian offensive, Wang Chenhao's side was very relaxed, and only needed to capture Guam and some Spanish islands in the Pacific Ocean.

In the entire Asia-Pacific region, in addition to the Spanish Empire's deployment of heavy troops in the Philippines, Guam was once a springboard for the occupation of the Philippine colony, when a fortress was built on Guam, but hundreds of years have passed, with the consolidation of Spanish rule over the Philippines and the decline of the Spanish Empire, Guam has no economic support, so the Spanish garrison in Guam has been decreasing from the beginning of 50,000 people. With the turmoil of the Philippine Revolutionary Army, the Spanish Philippine Governor's Office reduced the Guam garrison from 1,200 a few years ago to less than 50 now, and these 50 Spanish soldiers are still guarding the Guam Governor's Palace, and the fortress has been completely abandoned. The fortified guns on it were dismantled and transported to Manila to strengthen the city defenses, and the ammunition was also transported, and the whole of Guam was an undefended island.

As for the occupation of Guam, Wang Chenhao didn't bother to care, but just ordered it to the Navy Fleet Command to let Deng Shichang handle it himself.

Deng Shichang and other officers and men of the navy fleet were very excited about the foreign war, and Deng Shichang immediately dispatched a reconnaissance fleet to reconnoiter Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Caroline Islands, and other Spanish islands.

After investigation, it was found that except for Guam, which had three officials and 50 guards of the Spanish Viceroyalty, there were no Spanish garrisons on the other islands, and less than 20 Spanish officials maintained their rule over the island.

Deng Shichang immediately handed over the investigation report to Wang Chenhao, who believed that these islands had little contact with the outside world, and even if they were occupied, it would be impossible for news to come out within half a year. When the United States sent troops to occupy Guam, it had been three months since the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, but the governor of Guam did not know that he was still marching to welcome the American troops. It was not until a year later, in 1899, that Spain sold the Northern Mariana Islands and other Pacific islands to the Germans, and it was not until 1900, when German officials landed on the Northern Mariana Islands, that the Spanish officials on the islands learned of the Spanish-American War that had broken out two years earlier.

Based on these historical facts, Wang Chenhao then issued an order to Deng Shichang, asking him to send a fleet and marines to occupy Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Caroline Islands and other more than 2,000 Spanish islands in the Pacific Ocean. Of course, only a little over a hundred of the more than 2,000 islands are inhabited, and only a few Marines from each island will be enough to complete the occupation.

After receiving the order, Deng Shichang immediately dispatched 17 warships of the 2nd, 5th, and 6th warbands to the waters of the Central and South Pacific.

Guam is the largest island in the Mariana Islands, with a length of 45 kilometers and a width of 6 kilometers to 12 kilometers. It is a volcanic island, the coast is full of coral reefs, and the inland is a plateau plateau, with high and low elevations, most of which are steep mountains, and the highest peak on the island is Tengjue Mountain at 3,300 meters above sea level.

The commander of the second combat team, Du Xigui, led the fleet to Agana Bay on Guam, and the huge Aganya fortress did not have a single cannon, and easily occupied the Guam fortress and the Guam Governor's Palace.

"Thank you so much, I've been looking forward to this day for a long time, you are here, I can finally leave this hellish place!"

Du Xigui was quite speechless, and after careful questioning, he realized that Governor Kaichenlachi had been serving as governor of Guam for 40 years, and he was the son of his father, and he became the governor of Guam at the age of 15. However, Guam was in a primitive agricultural life, and there were no living conditions in the big cities of the West, and he never dreamed of leaving Guam, but the Spanish political axe did not allow it.

Now that the Qing Empire is going to occupy Guam, Kaichen Lachi is naturally very happy, because he can finally have a reason to leave this ghost place and not have to suffer.

Du Xigui smiled helplessly, he understood Kaichenlachi's feelings, but he still had to be wronged to stay on Guam, until the official outbreak of the Sino-Spanish War and the end of the war can be allowed to return to China as a prisoner of war. Du Xigui promised Kaichenlachi that he and his soldiers would be sent home.

Over the next half month, Du Sigui sent three warbands and ships to more than 100 inhabited islands, including the Northern Mariana Islands and the Caroline Islands, to occupy them, sending an average of three marines to each island, and detaining twenty-four Spanish officials there. And these officials were really just businessmen, and they didn't care about the island's gains or losses, as long as they were allowed to do business, whoever wanted to take over would take over, and they even entertained those who came to take over.

Guam is no longer important to the Spaniards, but it is still very important in the eyes of Wang Chenhao. First of all, Guam's location is between the United States Hawaii and the Philippines, and the United States has sent troops from the mainland and Hawaii into the Philippines, and Guam is a choke point, which can not only prevent the US military from reinforcing the Philippines, but also wait for an opportunity to attack Hawaii and the Philippines, or launch an offensive in the South Pacific, which is a strategic point and an important supply base. It is a liaison station between the United States and the Philippines and controls the sea and air traffic in the western Pacific, and its strategic position is self-evident.

After completing the occupation of Guam, Wang Chenhao immediately ordered the Fourth Division of the Ryukyu Volunteer Army to move to Guam and become the Guam Resident Army.

After the 4th Volunteer Division moved to Guam, it was to build a defensive system on Guam, including the task of reinforcing and upgrading the Spaniards' Fort Aganya Lanlan on Guam and expanding Apra Harbor as a naval base.

The original Fort Agana could only control the harbor and the local Aboriginal settlement, and after extending to Mount Lanlan, because Mount Lanlan is the highest mountain range in Guam, as the commanding height of Guam, the fort fort built on it can control the entire island of Guam and help defend the original fortress of Agania. Of course, the fort will also become a garrison for Guam's garrison.

Located in the middle of Guam's west coast, Apra Harbor was once one of the largest naval bases of the U.S. Navy in the western Pacific, as well as an important logistics, maintenance and reconnaissance base, as well as a nuclear submarine base.

The water depth of Apra Port is more than 10 meters, and the port is deep and wide, which can berth a large fleet of dozens of warships. Backed by Lanlan Mountain, surrounded by Lanlan Mountain in the middle, protected by Lanlan Mountain Fortress, it is also a natural sheltered harbor.

Therefore, Wang Chenhao planned to grasp the Apra Naval Base and the White Beach Naval Base as the same major matter, and ordered the Engineering Department of the Admiralty to rush to Apra on Guam Island to design and plan the Apra Naval Base.

Due to the special geographical location of the Apra naval base, the warships departed from here and arrived in the Philippines in two days, Taiwan in three days, Ryukyu and Honhon, Australia in five days, and Hawaii in seven days.

Because Wang Chenhao demanded that the Apra Naval Base be treated as important as the Baitan Naval Base, after the design of the naval engineers, it was planned to invest 6.3 million dragon coins to build 40 wharves and 50 water drums in the port, which could berth more than 80 ships at the same time. Moreover, according to Wang Chenhao's special requirements, Apra Port is directly connected to the North and South Pacific Oceans, and is near the world's deepest trench, which will be the natural home port of future submarines.

At the same time, as a naval base, it is necessary to have a repair dock for large warships. Therefore, a 300-meter breakwater was extended on the Cartel headland in the outer harbor, and two 20,000-ton dry docks were built in the inner bend of the peninsula for regular maintenance of warships. In this way, the fleet can be stationed all year round at the Apra naval base.

In order to strengthen patrols and early warning on Guam, Wang Chenhao planned to build a large radio liaison station on Lanlan Mountain to get in touch with the fleet. Cooperate with patrol ships at Apra Naval Base to provide early warning to Guam against surprise attacks.

Speaking of large-scale radio contact stations, we have to mention Tesla in the Beiyang Science and Technology Heavy Work War Laboratory. On the premise of receiving almost unlimited capital supply from Wang Chenhao, Tesla has developed a large-scale land-based radio system through the upgrade of Marconi Company's latest radio products.

The latest radio system developed by Marconi Radio has been connected by radio at Tianjin and Baitan Naval Base. Marconi and his radio technical team built a radio ground-based transmission tower in Tianjin, and the signals from the high-power radios were transmitted between Tianjin and the Baitan Navy in June, and the battleship Weiyuan, which stayed at the Baitan Naval Base, received encrypted radio signals. Thousands of miles apart, Marconi immediately set about improving the sea-based radio system after his success.

At the same time, Tesla was asked by Wang Chenhao to improve Marconi's latest land-based radio system, so that the radio signal transmission reached 3,000 nautical miles. However, the equipment was still too bloated and complex to be built on land, and there was not enough space on sea-based warships to install such large radio equipment on ships.

But even if it is a land-based radio system, Wang Chenhao also feels satisfied, at least Wang Chenhao can directly sit in Tianjin, and he can always know the situation thousands of nautical miles away.

Once the construction of the radio transmission base station on Guam is completed, and the radio base station at the White Beach Naval Base in the Ryukyus is relayed, Wang Chenhao will be able to know the situation at a longer distance at any time and make timely judgments.

In addition to the progress of the radio communication system, after a year and a half of development, talents from all walks of life have gathered, and a series of new inventions and new technologies have also appeared or improved.

Wang Chenhao used one of the natural waters at the Baitan Naval Base to create a natural seaplane. With a seaplane, of course there will be a seaplane.

When it comes to airplanes, even Wang Chenhao only knows that the Wright brothers of the United States successfully flew the world's first airplane in 1903. However, after coming to this world, Wang Chenhao knew a lot of things that he didn't know before.

The Wright brothers' successful flight test was summarized after more than 2,000 trials and failures, and they did not succeed until 1903 after more than 2,000 tests and failures. Ten years later, it became a killing machine for European countries, which shows that the foundation of the aircraft projects of various countries has been laid for a long time, but it has not been taken seriously.

Lilienthal, a German engineer, gliding aviator, and one of the world's aviation pioneers, was the first to design and manufacture a practical glider. Lilinthal was fond of flying since childhood, and observed and studied the flight laws of birds for a long time, and wrote the book "Bird Flight - The Basis of Aviation" in 1889. In collaboration with his brother G. Lilinthal, in 1891 he made a bat-shaped bow-wing glider, which successfully glided over a distance of more than 30 meters, thus affirming the rational form of curved wings. Since then, a number of monoplane and biplane gliders of different types have been built. In 1891~1896, Lirinthal conducted more than 2,000 gliding flight tests at the test ground near Berlin, and wrote books such as "Practical Tests in Flight". He planned to install a steam engine on the glider to achieve powered flight after fully mastering the stable longitudinal, but this wish was not realized. In 1896 he was killed in a crash during a flight test. Lilienthal's extensive flight practice and research provided valuable experience for later aircraft researchers.

The crash of the Lilinthal test plane has prompted many people around the world who are studying airplanes alone to focus their attention on the balance of airplanes. In particular, they studied the flight of birds and delved into almost all the books on the theoretical aspects of aviation at the time. During this period, the aviation industry suffered one setback after another, the flight technician Peel plane was destroyed and killed, the inventor of the heavy machine gun Makqin failed to test the flight, and the aeronautist Langley even took the plane into the water with people, etc., which made most people think that it was completely impossible for the plane to fly on its own power.

But the last decade of the nineteenth century was an era of technological superbangs. Many people's inventions have been buried, including the Frenchman Clémentader, the inventor of the water dragonfly. He invented all sorts of machines (tracks, submarine wires, engines of all kinds, and even later automobile engines), but none was the airplane.

The airplane invented by Adel successfully flew for the first time on October 9, 1890, flying 50 meters at an altitude of 20 centimeters. This flight altitude and flight distance are really worthy of the name, and it should be named a water dragonfly.

Adel's airplane was built just to make his daughter laugh, because his wife disliked Adel for being poor and dumped him, and his daughter was depressed, so Adel made a dragonfly to make her laugh.

Adel also came to Tianjin, China with his daughter with Wang Chenhao's sweep of European and American talents, at first he was unknown in Beiyang Science and Technology, although he had good treatment, but Xu Jianyin, the president of Beiyang Science and Technology, has been surrounded by hundreds of bigwigs in the science and technology industry and Taishan Beidou, and has no time to pay attention to the small role of Adel.

Adel was assigned to the Gasoline Engine R&D Lab, helping to upgrade the engines needed for submarines and automobiles. But Adel did not give up on the development of the aircraft, and after work he began to design and improve the water dragonfly in his apartment. Thanks to Beiyang Technology's achievements in gasoline engines, Adel improved the surname of the water dragonfly in August 1897, and the plane could fly up to one meter and fly (should be called taxiing) 100 meters.

One day, Adel was not at home. His daughter Catherine was reprimanded by the teacher at Beiyang Middle School for failing Chinese, and the sullen little Catherine got the plane out of the hangar after returning home, but for some reason, the plane climbed more than ten meters high that day, flew out hundreds of meters at once, and fell directly on the lawn outside the Beiyang Science and Technology Operations Laboratory building. The plane surnamed Suo was not fast, nor too high, and finally glided and landed because of the exhaustion of fuel, and little Catherine was not injured, but choked enough.

Coincidentally, Wang Chenhao inspected the combat laboratory that day, and Xu Jianyin reported the situation to Wang Chenhao.

When Wang Chenhao learned about it, he was overjoyed, he didn't expect Beiyang Technology to have such a talent. So Wang Chenhao immediately visited the plane that was about to fall apart, and Xu Jianyin saw that Wang Chenhao was very interested, and immediately called Adel to explain.

After listening to Adel's explanation, Wang Chenhao pouted a little disappointed, he didn't want to set up a project to study airplanes, and planned to eat ready-made ones, but after thinking about it, Wang Chenhao still felt that it was much better to develop and train aircraft designers by himself now than to wait for the American planes to go into the sky five or six years later and then start developing airplanes.

Moreover, the cost of aircraft manufacturing at this time was very low, and the research and development funds were not much, Wang Chenhao had money anyway, so he ordered Xu Jianyin to open a separate aircraft project research and development laboratory, and handed it over to Adel to research the aircraft, and the funds were temporarily assigned to the combat laboratory for scheduling.

Wang Chenhao nodded in agreement, and taught Adel another lesson, pointing out that in the future, aircraft will become the mainstream of the sky and the master of war, and encouraged Adel to let go of his hands and feet to develop aircraft projects. All funds are provided first, and what equipment is needed to buy what equipment. For an avid scientific inventor, that's the temptation of nakedness! Fatal temptation! A temptation that cannot be refused!

As a result, Adel began the development of the aircraft project. Previously, the aircraft developed by Adel was not supported by other technical departments, so he had to rely on his own tinkering. Now that there is a separate laboratory and project funding, Xu Jianyin has given Adel the right to support the deployment of technical achievements and equipment from other research departments. In this way, the speed of Adel's aircraft development has developed rapidly.

First of all, the aircraft skeleton (the aircraft at this time had no shell) is no longer rough, and there are special craftsmen to assemble it according to Adel's design drawings, so that the structure of the aircraft is perfect, and it is not easy to fall apart, and at the same time, it has also been optimized, eliminating the excess structure and reducing the weight of the aircraft.

Secondly, Adel installed the latest model of the MK-12 high-surname gasoline engine on his new aircraft from the power laboratory (according to Wang Chenhao's request, it is no longer called a water dragonfly).

Thirdly, the propellers, wings and tail of the aircraft are designed by specialized airflow experts to create aircraft propellers that conform to the aerodynamic layout. The transmission technology provided by the Transmission Laboratory between the Adel engine and the propeller allows more of the engine's power output to be transferred to the propeller.

Fourth, Adel obtained the relevant car driving equipment and related power gear control technology from Ford's automotive laboratory, and changed the aircraft's driving ability according to the principle of car driving.

With these technical supports, Adel's aircraft surname can naturally be greatly improved.

On October 3, 1897, on the runway of the aircraft test site, Adel flew his plane. The flight was a success, with an altitude of 52 meters, a distance of 520 meters, and a stay time of 142 seconds. However, the landing gear below was damaged due to the unreasonable structure of the aircraft's fixed-wing skid during landing.

Wang Chenhao personally watched the test flight, and on the whole he was satisfied.

Subsequently, Adel found someone to specially improve the structure of the landing gear, replacing the skid with wheels, and installing a spring system for artillery withdrawal on the wheels, so that the structure was able to land smoothly in the test flight three days later, announcing the official success of the aircraft.

The plane was named by Adel after his daughter and was called Catherine 1.

The Catherine I aircraft has a wingspan of 14 meters, with an elevator in front and rudder in the rear, two sets of two-blade propellers driven by chains, and a wheeled landing device equipped with a 70-kilogram, 9.8-kilowatt four-cylinder gasoline engine.

Wang Chenhao praised Adel and gave him a reward of 10,000 dragon coins. At the same time, new requirements were put forward for Adel, and in addition to improving the land plane, Wang Chenhao asked Adel to develop a seaplane as soon as possible.

Seaplanes were as simple as replacing the wheels that fixed the landing gear with pontoons, and because the weight of the aircraft was very light, Adel quickly designed a twin-pontoon seaplane.

Since it is much safer to fly on water than on land, Adel took the initiative to increase the engine power and increase the fuel load.

A month later, Adel conducted a test flight of a seaplane over the waters of Bohai Bay, and it was a success. The aircraft flew at an altitude of 100 meters, a distance of 1030 meters, and a speed of 5.2 meters per second. However, because the exhaust cylinder of the engine was not properly designed, the plane was flooded with seawater after landing, causing the engine to stall.

However, this is not a problem, it just needs to be improved.

In Wang Chenhao's view, the overall development direction of the aircraft is right. In the future, it is necessary to increase the engine power, fuel load, improve the aerodynamic layout of the aircraft, and solve the problems of the aircraft.

Wang Chenhao believes that with the strength of Beiyang Technology, it only needs to invest heavily in research and development, and it will not be a problem to dominate the air in the future.

(To be continued)