March 15, 1927 is a memorable day!

Guangxi, Fangchenggang. Horseshoe Bend is a very special place, the whole bay is surrounded by two mountains as if a person is opening his arms, and a bay is wrapped in the form of a gourd mouth.

A few years ago, Horseshoe Bend was a place name that frightened fishermen near and far, and legend has it that there are sea monsters in the vicinity, but whenever a ship passes by, it will run aground or sink for no apparent reason. Finally, one day, a military camp was built behind Horseshoe Bend, and a major construction project began.

Strange cars, with a large bucket in front of them, can dig up a large bucket of dirt as soon as they dig into the mountain wall. There are also cars with a large wheel in front of the car that is not the engine box, but a large wheel is pushed and rolled on the ground, flattening the originally uneven ground. Then truckloads of cement were dragged out of a nearby cement factory day and night, and the high-grade cement soon became two cement roads several kilometers long and dozens of meters wide.

This is what the occasional mountaineer would see when he walked into the mountain to collect medicine, but he was soon asked away by a few polite soldiers, who were told that it had been designated as a military exclusion zone.

Actually, this is a seaside airport. Not far ahead of it is a much larger project.

The Horseshoe Bend project was divided into two parts, one part was a large shipyard located in Horseshoe Bend, and the other part was a reef renovation outside Horseshoe Bend.

The discovery of Horseshoe Bend was actually directly designated by Zhang Shusheng.

This unique bay was actually a resort in later generations, and after scientific investigation, people at that time discovered that there was a deep reef belt outside Horseshoe Bend. It is this unique reef zone that prevents foreign ships and fishermen from coming. At that time, some people even lamented that if it could be fully utilized in the 20th century, it would definitely be a hidden naval base. It's a pity that in the 21st century, the state no longer needs such a base, but instead grants a local company to build a resort bay.

After Zhang Shusheng sent someone here to investigate, he was very satisfied with the results of the return, and sure enough. It only takes about half a year for the reef zone outside Horseshoe Bay to be blasted and cleared, and after retaining a safe waterway, Horseshoe Bay will become an excellent haven for small and medium-sized fleets.

After getting this huge good news, Zhang Shusheng immediately launched a series of plans.

Behind Horseshoe Bay is a first-class coastal defense airport with two high-end runways, and the fact that Fangchenggang was wantonly occupied by the British and himself in the Sino-British and French wars in the previous two years made him realize the shame of having no sea defense. As a latecomer, he knew very well that the coastline around Guangxi was not very long, and having a large seaside airfield would be a devastating blow to the enemy's navy in this era that wanted to rely on ordinary warships or a small number of aircraft carriers to land. In order to ensure his own peace of mind, Zhang Shusheng signed an order to build a total of three coastal airports, and the Horseshoe Bay Haiphong Airport was selected so far forward to take care of this strategic location.

The original coastal shipyard will be moved into this naturally defended bay and expanded into a large shipyard, which will also be the only shipyard in the southwest to be fully built in a few years. It determines whether the southwest will have the ability to build ships nearby in the next few years. Although the Shanghai shipyard is a ready-made shipyard, it is not a long-term solution at present, and it is okay to build a few ships secretly, but many problems will arise over time.

In the early morning of 15 March, the troops of the Horseshoe Bay garrison suddenly sounded the alarm for an emergency assembly, and the well-trained soldiers rushed out of the barracks one after another as fast as they could, and waited for the commander of the garrison to give a lecture.

"Comrades, I would like to announce good news to you. Chief Zhang Shusheng, the supreme head of the three southwestern provinces, will arrive at the base today, and our three regiments have been widely commended as troops that have participated in the war against France. ”

"Yes!!" More than 3,000 people in the whole regiment roared in unison, although the soldiers had long known that senior leaders would come down to inspect the base, but they did not expect that it was General Zhang who came in person, and they were all excited, the soldiers trained by honor-based education, loyalty education, and mission-based education, and the soldiers of the base with the lowest junior high school and primary school education are no longer the people who joined the army just to eat well, they know what a soldier is, what a mission is, and what honor is. And today, they will usher in their greatest honor since joining the army: the supreme head of the garrison.

Many people think of the naval base they are guarding at night, and they immediately think of something. A naval shipbuilding and fleet base with nothing but a shipyard may usher in something different from a military port today.

Half an hour later, a string of armored vehicles came from a distance, and after layers of inspection, the head of the base personally saluted loudly: Salute. All the officers and men of the 3rd Regiment of the 4th Division of the Garrison Division welcome General Zhang to the base for inspection!!

Zhang Shusheng came out of the armored car and joined the commander of the navy, Deng Haoqian. After nearly three years, Deng Shichang's descendants finally have the opportunity to realize their dream, that is, to let this disaster-ridden nation have a naval force to defend her children and grandchildren. He has been fighting for this goal for several years, and even until his death, just to repay his father's legacy.

After visiting the base, Zhang Shusheng left for the Horseshoe Bay Naval Base with great satisfaction.

So much had happened in the past two years, so much that he didn't want to remember so much chaos. There is chaos at home and abroad, and politicians are jumping around in the political arena with their ugly faces, but they don't care about the lives of the people.

The march from the south to the north was defeated, and it did not produce the same brilliant results as in history. The defeated southern army retreated to Jiangxi, and the descendants of the southern forces were entrenched in several important towns in Jiangxi to prevent the northern army from advancing south, and for a time, Jiangxi became the front line. Everyone is in danger, and many people even stay away from this area, for fear of being affected.

Chiang Kai-shek also officially came to power and began to unabashedly display the political ambitions he had hidden for many years. While expanding the power of his descendants, he also squeezed out his colleagues in the Kuomintang party, and was bound to tilt his power to the southeast.

The British finally agreed to the terms of the negotiations, and the two sides signed an explicit treaty, a secret memorandum of understanding. Overall, it took the British two years to finally bring their last prisoner of war home. And the price they paid was that they diplomatically declared that they recognized the South-West political axe as the legitimate autonomous political axe of the South-West, and because the South-West properly disposed of the prisoners of war, they made a symbolic reparation for this erroneous war. Of course, the amount of compensation seems to be very small, a mere few hundred thousand pounds, which is insignificant compared to the tens of thousands of returning prisoners of war. However, privately, the price paid by the British was a secret war reparation of 23 million pounds, which was carried out in the form of secret payments by the Far East military + transfer of colonial materials + a large number of advanced machinery and equipment. Nominally, of course, these things are just military expenses for the Far Eastern Command's covert operations, strategic reserves, and scrap iron-grade machinery that was purchased by Chinese businessmen because of scrapping.

As soon as he received the war reparations, Zhang Shusheng ordered the production of Jian-2 fighters and H-2 bombers to be expanded, and within more than two years, in the form of actual combat deployment, the air force was deployed to the Sino-Burmese border, the coastal areas of Guangxi, Guangzhou, and the Sichuan-Yunnan border. In the past two years, excluding the aircraft used for civilian, transportation, teaching, and air force research institutes, the number of fighters in the southwest has increased from just over 120 to 335, including carrier-based aircraft for experiments. Among them, there are 245 land-based fighters and bombers, and 90 carrier-based aircraft of the Navy.

Zhang Shusheng felt that it was appropriate to maintain an air force of this size, and judging from the current situation, the Southwest Navy would mainly focus on defensive operations, and the fighters deployed in several directions would already be able to meet the demand. On the contrary, the situation on the Sino-Burmese border is stable, and the tense Sino-French border, with several broken planes, the French themselves dare not drive too close to the Sino-Vietnamese border.

"Haoqian, this is really a natural harbor."

When looking at Horseshoe Bend from afar, Zhang Shusheng found that this place was indeed as in the photo, almost perfect naval base.

After coming down from the winding mountain road, he saw the nearby Horseshoe Bend base, which made Zhang Shusheng sigh and picked up a treasure. The resort bay of later generations, but I didn't expect it to be cheaper.

Deng Haoqian couldn't suppress the excitement in his heart, although he stayed in the base every day, he always felt that he couldn't get tired of looking at it, except for the base building and the keel laid in the shipyard, there was nothing in the military port, but today it was about to break the peace.

"Yes, Chief, look, our 301 destroyer is coming!"

The welcoming ceremony was simple but not lacking in grandeur, and after the ceremony, Zhang Shusheng boarded the 301 destroyer sailing from outside Horseshoe Bend. This series of destroyers was named the Ruili class. The destroyer, with a full load displacement of 2280 tons, was built by the Shanghai shipyard and returned to the Fangchenggang shipyard for outfitting. The total length of the ship is 104.29 meters, the total width is 11.04 meters, and the draft is 3.15 meters. The design of the entire warship abandoned the traditional design thinking, did not use heavy armor protection, and did not have the super-large caliber naval guns favored by the navies of various countries, but adopted a new 150mm naval gun.

The 301 destroyer featured torpedoes and air defense.

Four quadruple torpedo tubes with a total of 16 torpedo tubes, the scientists of the Southwest Naval Weapons Research Institute, after thoroughly understanding the ordinary torpedo technology, relied on the technical information provided by the higher departments, and developed a trackless electric torpedo, and it is this advanced torpedo on the Ruili destroyer that solves the shortcomings of the thermal torpedo that is easy to be found due to the formation of a track by discharging gas during navigation, and the firing range has also reached a satisfactory range of more than 8,300 meters.

Air defense is also the highlight of the Ruili destroyer, and the entire warship looks like it is densely packed with slender gun barrels. In total, there were 17 anti-aircraft guns and 3 anti-aircraft machine guns. The air defense of the destroyer as a whole reached the leading level among ships of its class.

Compared with the warships of the same period, the overall shooting of the warship is much more rational in design, and the overall appearance is also much more beautiful. Zhang Shusheng and Deng Haoqian boarded the bridge of the 301 destroyer, faced the sea breeze, and sailed out of Horseshoe Bend.

"Is there no problem with the preparation?" Although he had already received the relevant report, Zhang Shusheng still couldn't help but ask Deng Haoqian on the side, this naval mission is too important, because the navy in the southwest will welcome back their best gift belonging to 1927.

"No problem, the submarine force has already moved out to the waters around here, ready to deal with possible contingencies. The carrier-based aircraft unit at the Horseshoe Bay airfield is also ready. Deng Haoqian replied in an excited voice.

"That's good! This day is so important for us. ”

"Report to the chief chief, the Kunming call reports that there are still 20 minutes to sail into the predetermined area, and the 301 ship has 10 minutes to arrive at the viewing position." The captain of the 301 ship, Gao Xiaochuan, reported.

"Well, let's get ready to get started." Zhang Shusheng waved his hand and ordered, and then faced the sea breeze, staring intently into the distance, he wanted to see this "new transport ship" secretly produced by the Shanghai shipyard with all his might for the first time.

(To be continued)