Today's Qinzhou Bay has become a fortress port area, with nearly 200 ships of the Chinese Navy's Southern Fleet moored in the harbor, and since the naval shipyard was built here in 1932, most of the entire Qinzhou Bay has been classified as a military restricted area.

Vice Admiral Sa Shijun was recalled from the Okinawa front to the Qinzhou Bay Naval Base, where he was promoted to admiral, and after the promotion order of the Admiralty was announced, Admiral Chen Shaokuan, who had made a special trip to Qinzhou, asked Admiral Chen Shiying to follow him into the office with him.

On the Navy's desk, Sa Shijun saw a nautical chart of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific and a large stack of folders. Routes and markings were drawn on the charts with lines of various colors, and on the cover of the stack of documents was marked in large German with the words "Operations in the East - Highly Confidential".

General Chen Shaokuan pointed to the map and said: "Our allies are planning an attack on Australia!" ”

After seeing the route marked on the map, Sa Shijun guessed the target of this naval operation, but he still asked with confirmation: "Australia?" ”

"Oh, it's not just Australia! The entire battle plan includes the entire Central Pacific Islands and Oceania, and of course, the primary targets are New Guinea and Australia, and we need to force the US fleet and air force to enter the operational range of our land-based air forces to respond to the battle, so as to gain the initiative on the battlefield. Admiral Chen Shiying explained that in fact, he was involved in the planning process of the entire plan of the Axis Alliance. The success or failure of this campaign mainly depends on naval operations, and the planning and formulation of the entire campaign is mainly done by the navy.

Obviously, if the Axis coalition forces began to land in Australia, it would force the Americans to devote most of their naval forces to the Pacific theater, and since the war against Japan would not end anytime soon, the Axis Far East Fleet would have to retain half of its forces for war against Japan. Compared with the US Pacific Fleet, which has been greatly strengthened, the Axis powers have no advantage, and the entire plan of action has a great element of adventure.

Of course, in order to force the Americans to enter into peace talks, the arrival of the entire Australian campaign was inevitable, and the Axis side needed to use the superiority of the army to maintain sufficient pressure.

"According to the scheme of operations in the East. The main forces of the Austro-Hungarian Far East Fleet and the Italian Far East Fleet are mainly responsible for combat missions in Australian waters, while the main forces of the German Far East Fleet and the Navy's Southern Fleet are responsible for combat missions in the direction of Okinawa and the Philippines, while our Northern Fleet needs to ensure security in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. In order to ensure the continuation of the entire campaign, the South Sea Fleet led by you will be responsible for the combat missions in the southern Philippines and the northern waters of New Guinea, and the German Navy has agreed to transfer a detachment composed of two "Bavaria-class" battleships to your command to strengthen the Allied maritime forces in this area. Admiral Chen Shaokuan gave a detailed introduction to the battle plan: "The entire battle plan is scheduled to begin at the beginning of 5 May, and the first step of the battle plan is to land in the western part of Illian Island and build an airfield. The main task of the South Sea Fleet is to ensure the security of the northern seas, and the fleet needs to reach Davao Bay in southern Mindanao by mid-March! ”

After the official order of the Admiralty, Sa Shijun became the commander of the newly established Nanyang Fleet the next day, and the fleet was still mainly composed of the aircraft carrier group under his command, which had under the jurisdiction of China's only 42,000-ton heavy aircraft carrier "Qingdao", in addition to the "Guangxi" and "Fujian" two "Zeppelin" class aircraft carriers, and also included the Navy's Third Cruiser Fleet and the 6th and 8th destroyer squadrons. In addition, a detachment of German Far Eastern battleships under the command of Vice Admiral Ziegri will also cooperate with his combat operations in the South Seas.

The Admiralty also incorporated all four "Qinzhou" class cruisers into the Third Cruiser under the jurisdiction of the Nanyang Fleet. At present, the only countries in China that can build large warships of more than 10,000 tons are the Qinzhou Naval Shipyard of the Navy and the Qingdao Naval Shipyard, which was taken over by the Germans. The four "Qinzhou" class cruisers built in China were originally first-class heavy cruisers built on the basis of the German Navy's "Blucher" class heavy cruisers, however. Due to the temporary inability to manufacture 203 mm naval guns in China, in desperation, this large warship with a displacement of 12,000 tons had to install four triple 152 mm main gun turrets.

In the process of designing and building warships, the Chinese Navy was obviously influenced by the traditions of Germany and Austria, and the hulls of the ships were simple and beautiful, but the backward concept of comprehensive protection also made the proportion of armor of warships much higher than that of British and American warships of the same class. The introduction of artillery production lines and manufacturing technology from the Škoda plant made it possible to use the 152-mm naval gun as a long-range anti-aircraft gun, making the Qinzhou-class cruiser a powerful anti-aircraft cruiser. It was enough to replace the battleship as the backbone of the air defense force of the aircraft carrier fleet, which aroused the interest of the German and Austrian Navy, and the heavy cruisers built later began to replace the twin 203mm main guns with triple 152 mm high-level dual-purpose main guns, making it an air defense cruiser with powerful firepower.

As a traditional continental country, the Navy Department is obviously at a disadvantage in the competition with the War Department in the supply and distribution of materials. With the army increasing the number of armored vehicles and artillery equipment in accordance with the establishment of the German-Austrian infantry division, coupled with the huge consumption of aircraft, automobile manufacturing and other industries, the annual domestic steel output of 12 million tons is far from meeting the needs of military production, fortunately, with the strong support of Germany and Austria, the domestic iron and steel plants including Wuchang, Chongqing, Kunming, Liuzhou, Xinyu, Laiwu, Handan, Xuanhua, Taiyuan, Baotou and Suzhou have expanded their scale one after another. It is expected that steel production will expand to more than 20 million tons per year during the year, which can greatly alleviate the current dilemma of steel production in short supply.

The focus of the war shifted from land to sea.

Oddly enough, the focus of the Pacific War was on the struggle for control of the Central Pacific, but the strategy developed by the Axis navies seemed to be detached from the center of the battlefield, and their chosen attack sites were not close and weakly defended Micronesia, but a chain of islands, turning the spearhead to Australia and New Guinea in the South Pacific.

By the time the war had been going on, it had become clear that aircraft carriers had replaced battleships as the decisive factor in naval battles. In fact, in the Pacific theater, because the Japanese navy had already lost more than half of its navy, the Axis powers had more aircraft carrier equipment than the United States and Japan, but the East Asian theater still contained about half of the Axis fleet's naval strength, and the Americans still had a slight advantage in the naval forces invested by the two sides in the South Pacific.

Admiral Yankel rejected the Austro-Hungarian navy's plan for a direct attack on the atolls in the Central Pacific, and the conservative admiral's tactic was to rely on the island chain, then establish airfields, and advance step by step. Avoid a risky naval tiebreaker with the U.S. fleet and instead drag the war into a tedious and long-term war of attrition.

This led to the fact that the entire Pacific campaign became quite long. (To be continued.) )