The Lushun song and dance that night, the spirits were fragrant. The courtesans who accompanied the army swayed lightly on their willow waists, and the alcohol and the life-and-death excitement of going to the battlefield made the officers who usually looked mighty and extraordinary also extraordinarily indulgent, singing and clinking glasses, and in the end, even Terauchi Masayi couldn't hold back, and hugged a courtesan back to the room to enjoy the beautiful night before the war.

The soldiers also quickly felt something strange in the air, the barracks were extraordinarily quiet, many people took the last opportunity to write letters to their families, of course, there were fanatics who sharpened their knives and guns, and there were even those who lined up to rush into brothels or rape people's women, ready to experience the restlessness of women before they died. At this moment, two black dots quietly surfaced from outside Port Arthur.

After the sealed hatch was opened, the filthy gas in the submarine was suddenly swept away by the sea breeze. Dozens of big men stuffed in a stuffy jar tasted really uncomfortable, especially in order to maintain physical strength, they had to eat those high-protein bean foods, which made the submarine stink, if it weren't for the snorkel, I don't know what it would look like along the way.

Even so, there was a minor accident, as the submarine support vessel was continuously tracked by Japanese warships, and the radio failure of Boat 02 caused it to arrive two days later than expected.

For the first time to put a submarine into real combat, such mistakes and accidents were forgivable, and the journey was not peaceful, although the Japanese Navy did not go all out, but after setting off from Shanghai, it still encountered a number of Japanese ships, and the snorkel saved the submarine's life. Since Japan also had no experience in dealing with submarines, it deceived the Japanese naval lookout several times by maintaining the depth of navigation on the snorkel.

Anyway, it's finally here.

Chen Shaokuan raised the telescope, it was still about five kilometers away from Lushun, the two submarines were already in the center of the main channel, there were still sporadic lights over the city in the distance, there was no movement on the most dangerous battery for the time being, and there were no ships around.

"The moon is dark and the night kills, and the wind is high and the sky is on fire."

Before the first mate who came out to breathe was finished, Chen Shaokuan slapped it with a smile: "When you catch the fish, let's start work first." The first mate smiled, and immediately led the sailors who had climbed up from the other hatches to the stern, untied the mines on the slide, and slowly lowered them.

For example, before this departure, Chen Shaokuan chose to give up dealing with a destroyer of several hundred tons, and chose to set a depth of three meters, so that ships of about 2,000 tons will not be hit due to the draft depth, and this depth is not easy to be seen by the naked eye in the turbid water pattern conditions at the junction of the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea.

Since the two boats only have 24 mines, if the layout of the two boats is not tight enough, there will be a large gap in the middle, so Chen Shaokuan chose the zigzag mine array.

As the name suggests, 24 mines are deployed in several consecutive zigzag rows at 30-meter intervals each, although this mine is not arranged in a few zigzags, but this deployment method has an advantage. Because the fleets are all coming and going one by one, and the interval is generally about 300 meters, as long as one of the ships hits a mine, then the ships behind it will inevitably yaw left and right, so it is very likely that they will continuously hit the mines deployed on the "zigzag" diagonal angle.

Of course, this is just a theory, a continuous zigzag mine array needs at least 48 mines, and it needs at least 80 or so to block the main channel with a wider outside, such as Lushun, so everyone knows that this time it is a gamble of luck.

Because of the fear of alarming the battery, whether it was Chen Shaokuan, who was standing in the enclosure to direct the submarine's slow maneuvering, or the first mate who led people to throw mines down, they were cautious and did not dare to come out, when the No. 1 sea wolf was deployed and took the lead in withdrawing to the side, No. 2 slowly approached to take over the work, and the sailors above raised their hands to greet each other when the two submarines staggered and passed by.

Time passed minute by minute, and after the last mine was dropped, Chen Shaokuan found that he had broken out in a hot sweat, and immediately took two submarines to the open sea to recharge the supply troops, he didn't want to come back tomorrow morning to "pick up the leak" because of the lack of power and lose the most important underwater diving ability.

After the two submarines converged with the support ship ten nautical miles away, two thick leather pipes immediately fed precious diesel fuel into the submarine fuel tank, which was already at the bottom.

It took three hours to refuel and recharge, and after the battery was fully charged, the two Seawolves were back to power, and because they were already in the war zone, they could encounter the enemy at any time, and the sailors who had been staying up for so long gradually became excited. Probably God paid off, and just as Chen Shaokuan got rid of the cable and turned back with the depth of the snorkel, a formation of five large transport ships and three destroyers also slowly headed towards Lushun in the morning light.

The Tsukumaru is a registered merchant ship of Yawata Steel, with a displacement of 7,600 tons, and is the largest bulk carrier in Japan (Japan did not have a 10,000-ton ship at that time, and the first one to be traced back to 20 years of Ping An Maru, only three months earlier than China's first self-built 10,000-ton ship), which used to be mainly used for the transportation of ore from Hanyeping, and was once used for the Nanyang and Japan routes after the loss of Hanyeping, until it returned to the Lushun and Yokohama routes after increasing the mining volume of Baofen.

On the deck, soldiers from the 5th Division, known as the most elite of the Japanese Army, from Hiroshima, stood on the railing, and groups of herons sometimes circled in the morning light, sometimes swooping after small fish that were lifted by oars.

What a harmonious picture! These soldiers, who were about to set foot on the mainland and greet the baptism of bullets and bullets again, couldn't help but sing the songs of their hometown. Lieutenant General Kituzo Otani stood in the middle of the soldiers, looking at these young but without any nervous faces with great pride, this is a heroic and glorious division. The first battle of the First Sino-Japanese War was fought by this division, and it was even recorded in the history of the Japanese Army, and it was this division in the Rilu War, which was at the forefront in the most difficult battle of Liaoyang, and at the cost of more than fifty percent of the division's losses, it was killed from Liaoyang to Shahe until the final Battle of Fengtian, and all the way was a sea of corpses and blood!

In view of the prestige of this division, after the war, the emperor also authorized the preservation of all the formations, and was stationed in Korea to deter Russia, until 1911, when it was withdrawn to Hiroshima and handed over the task of guarding the outposts on the mainland to the 16th Division.

But no one expected that the Xinhai Revolution broke out in China a few months after the withdrawal, and three years later issued a voice to challenge Japan, as for the 16th Division that replaced him, it was even more humiliating, and it was actually trampled by the squadron and lost its armor, and lost nearly half of its troops, even the battle flag of the wing awarded by the emperor was lost!

The government and the opposition are shaken, and the people are shaken! When South Manchuria was in danger, the first unit that could defend the lifeline of South Manchuria was the Fifth Division.

After a lapse of three years, the 5th Division finally returned.

After resting for three days, taking advantage of the all-out attack in Kwantung Prefecture to drag down the enemy's main force, what a wonderful encirclement tactic it was. The prestige of the Fifth Division will be even higher in its own hands. Definitely! Otani Kikuzo was a little stupid, not noticing that two small dots that were rising and falling in the waves were slowly approaching several kilometers away.

The blue and white striped paint proposed by Yang Qiu made the periscope much less likely to be discovered, and Chen Shaokuan couldn't hold back his excitement behind the lens, 2 Japanese merchant ships, 3 leased foreign freighters, and Japanese soldiers everywhere on the deck If it weren't for the three Japanese destroyers on the side, he couldn't wait to pounce on it immediately and hit it with a torpedo!

But it was the three destroyers that he did not dare to get too close, the submarine is not a capital ship with thick armor, in fact, its level of protection is not even comparable to a destroyer of several hundred tons, and a 76-mm shell can kill dozens of lives.

The air was already scorching, every sailor clenched his fists, and the three loaders and firing men in the torpedo compartment looked at the pressure gauge and the snorkel for a while, and finally simply picked up a rag and wiped the torpedo tube up and down to make it transparent.

Pressure, that's pressure! Soldiers who experience war for the first time are not nervous, and how to solve it is the key. Fortunately, the Germans were very experienced in this area, and the sailors who had been training with the Germans for almost a year also learned to relieve their nerves with busyness and work. Under the pressure and anticipation, Chen Shaokuan's eyes slowly lit up, and through the bulging green tendons on the back of his hand, the sailors clustered next to him seemed to see the enemy on the water slowly driving into the mine array.

The sailors guessed correctly, the first Japanese destroyer had already entered the mine array, and it was impossible for it to touch the torpedo with a draft of less than two meters, but the waves brought by the propellers could roll the one-ton anchor mine out of several meters, and the fleet behind it was extremely rigid, like a straight line along the channel opened by the destroyer.

The Japanese Navy is well-trained, and even when the enemy is not a threat, it still maintains a serious way of working. Seeing that the destroyer had sailed out of the mine array, Chen Shaokuan was a little disappointed, could it be that the Japanese were really so lucky? The waves of water carried by the destroyer's propeller will sweep away all the mines in the channel?

The Tsukumaru followed it into a minefield, and at a speed of only eight knots, it slowly headed towards Port Arthur like a hill of steel, and the expected explosion did not appear in the middle of the line. It seems that today's luck is not on his side Chen Shaokuan shook his head bitterly, it is very dangerous to launch an attack without chaos, but he has no choice, so he has to order: "The speed is 6 knots, the course is 11 o'clock, and the torpedo compartment is accurate." ”

At this moment, when the word "preparation" was still echoing in the throat! A sudden violent explosion suddenly came, like a thunderbolt that made all the soldiers in the submarine stand up and frantically rush to the periscope.

Even though he had been looking forward to this explosion for a long time, Chen Shaokuan was still stunned when he heard it, and after his eyes quickly attached to the observation glass, the distant picture suddenly pierced his eyeballs! I saw that the bow of the troop carrier, which was lined up behind the Tsukumaru and carrying 537 Japanese soldiers, had been lifted out of the water by the water column, and then smashed down and submerged below the sea surface, and many sailors on the deck who were caught off guard were thrown directly into the sea by this violent turbulence, and thick smoke and eddies quickly formed around the troop carrier.

A one-ton mine is enough to fill 450 kilograms of yellow explosives! Even a battleship with rough skin and thick flesh will either be killed or injured when encountered, let alone a troop transport merchant ship with a displacement of less than 10,000 tons and a completely civilian structure! The sound of the rapid whistle resounded across the sea in an instant, and Otani Kikuzo's jaw was about to fall off on the Tsukumaru, and the captain who rushed out roared angrily: "What's going on!" What's going on? ”

"Mines, there must be mines here!" The captain was an old navy who had participated in the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, and he immediately realized that it was a mine, and only a mine could cause such a big damage.

The mines that suddenly appeared on the main channel made the transport fleet agitated, especially the three hired British and Dutch merchant ships behind them were evaded, although according to the Lend-Lease contract, once there was a loss, the Japanese government would compensate according to the price, but in the eyes of the British and Dutch sailors, life was priceless! For a little money to go straight to the mine-lined shipping lane, isn't it looking for death.

"Go to the bow! Everybody go up to the deck to look underwater, I'm going to be on the right track! Damn it! These yellow-skinned monkeys lied, there are mines here! We're getting out of this damn place! The Dutch captain with a pipe in his mouth and silk pajamas rushed into the bridge and cursed at the same time, commanding the sailors to observe the sea, grabbing the rudder and carefully operating it, this cargo ship cost him half of his life savings, he did not want to lose it in vain, let alone be buried in this sea that does not belong to Europe.

The two freighters behind also moved quickly, these old sea wolves who have been crisscrossing the sea all the year round are indeed experienced, and soon stabilized the situation The bow began to yaw a little, and at this moment, two white high-speed wakes suddenly appeared on the left side of the British 10,000-ton ship in fourth place.

"God! It's a torpedo! Torpedo left full rudder! There are submarines here! Damn it, these damn yellow-skinned monkeys, they lied to us! The experienced British captain never expected that two torpedoes would appear next to him, and in addition to immediately realizing that there were submarines nearby that could move underwater, cold sweat crawled all over his back.

If he could go back and start over, he would definitely shoot the Japanese monkey who came to charter the boat in the head! Because that stupid bird didn't say that there were mines here, let alone submarine activity!

At this moment, the deck of the first Japanese troop carrier that had struck a mine had been tilted ninety degrees, and hundreds of helpless Japanese soldiers were clinging to everything that could be fixed, but it was still in vain, although some persevered to the end, but with the sound of "squeak" and tooth ache, the troop carrier suddenly turned over, revealing the cyan bottom covered with parasitic carapace.

The huge gravity at the moment when the ship capsized stirred up a wave full of two meters high, and swept all the soldiers who were still struggling desperately around them! This scene further stimulated the next three freighters to speed away, and the British captain could not solve the trouble of being torpedoed, and the last Dutch cargo ship also appeared on the left side of two wakes.

Lose your marbles!

There are at least 2 more submarines here!

Two torpedoes, fired at 30 knots at the slow-moving cargo ship, and although the British captain narrowly avoided the first, the second hit the stern. In the roaring explosion, a column of white water several meters high swept all the sailors and Japanese soldiers there, and the explosion also caused the hull of the ship to be whipped as if it had been whipped, and the bow of the ship suddenly deflected more than ten degrees to the left, hitting an undetected mine.

The third explosion sounded! The Tsukumaru and Otani Kikuzo, who were the first to get out of danger, are already cold in their hands and feet! A few hundred soldiers is still a trivial matter, but the American ship not only had more than 400 soldiers, but also brought a full sixty cannons!

"Get out of here, get out of here! These damn yellow-skinned monkeys! God, what have I done! The British captain shouted while leading his men to rush to the lifeboat, in order to fight for the chance to escape, the British sailors also clashed with the Japanese soldiers, when a fiery British sailor took out a revolver without saying a word and killed two Japanese soldiers in the lifeboat, a fire broke out! Although they were quickly stopped by officers and captains, five British sailors and seven Japanese soldiers were killed, which led the British captain to bring the Japanese along with him when he accused Chinese submarines of attacking merchant ships, accusing them of lying and slaughtering British sailors in the chaos in spite of international practice.

No merchant ship could deal with a mine loaded with 450 kilograms of high TNT explosives, and when the captain's lifeboat commanded the sailors to row to shore, the 8,770-ton merchant ship had its mast still exposed.

Although all this seems to be a long time, in fact, the whole process of the three explosions was less than five minutes, when the last Dutch freighter was also torpedoed below the hull amidships, the three Japanese destroyers had already shelled fiercely in the direction of the submarine torpedoes, and the last Dutch merchant ships also did not get rid of bad luck, hundreds of tons of seawater poured into the hull at high speed, causing the deck to overturn and sink in an instant.

One shell after another exploded violently above the head of the submarine, and after firing the torpedo, the two sea wolves had actually dived underwater, and when the explosion was louder than the last made the sailors stomp their feet and shout excitedly, the dense shells began to fall.

The violent explosion made the two sea wolves feel like they were in a raging storm, and their excitement also fell to the bottom at once, and everyone was very nervous.

"The left full rudder continues to dive." Although Chen Shaokuan urgently ordered to evade, he was also startled by so many cannonballs that exploded on his head, all the sailors abandoned their concentrations, and many even took out the jade Buddha and peace charm that they prayed for before setting off and clenched them in the palm of their hands, praying that the big guy under their feet could get out of the danger zone quickly.

The turbid yellow water made it more difficult to search for the destroyers, but the gunners on the three destroyers, who were deeply stimulated, kept turning on all the guns and swept around, from 76 mm to 47 mm Habekai machine guns, and even the Maxim machine guns. Just as they frantically retaliated and vowed to sink the sneak attackers, there was chaos in the Lushun fortress in the distance.

The violent explosion alarmed Masaki Terauchi, who was still naked, and hurriedly left the moving person who let him find his youth last night and rushed out of the room.

"What's going on?"

"Report to Your Excellency! The transport fleet of the 5th Division was attacked on the sea, and two ships had already sunk! ”

"Wait." Probably because he had exhausted too much strength last night, and Terauchi Masatsuki, who was already in his sixties and ran out of the room in a hurry, only felt that his feet were weak, and then he was dizzy, and he thought that he was hallucinating and tinnitus, and after a pause, he continued to ask, "What did you just say?" ”

This young man obviously didn't know how "hard" His Excellency the General was last night, and shouted: "Your Excellency the General! The transport convoy of the 5th Division was attacked on the fairway, and two ships had already sunk. ”

"What!"

Terauchi Zhengyi, who finally heard the bad news clearly, felt like someone had smashed a stick on his head, and his eyes were black and dizzy. Last night, he was still saying that he would start a full-scale offensive to completely take Manchuria, and this morning the Fifth Division suffered a sneak attack off the coast of Arthur and lost two transport ships! This is simply a naked humiliation of your own **!

There were several explosions on the sea in the distance, followed by a dense artillery fire, which made Terauchi Masayi even more puzzled, could it be that the Chinese fleet, which was weaker than Geji, had all come?

ps: small history (words don't count money)

From 1918 to 1919, Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard accepted orders from the United States to build four 10,000-ton ships of the same type, all of which were fully covered deck bulk steam engine cargo ships, powered by the vertical three-expansion reciprocating steam engine designed by Qiuxin Shipyard (although this steam engine is not as powerful as the advanced steam turbine, it can save 30% of coal, and is a common power choice for cargo ships that do not require high speed at that time) and Jiangnan's self-produced small water tube boiler. They were named "Mandarin", "Celestial", "Oriental", and "Cathey".

The ship is 135 meters long, 16.7 meters wide, 11.6 meters deep, has a speed of 11 knots and a displacement of 14,750 tons. The first of these, the "Guanfu", was launched on June 3, 1920 (three months after the first Japanese Heian Maru), and all four ships were delivered after strict acceptance by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In contrast to the first of the Leap Forward, which ran aground on its maiden voyage, three of the four ships were put on the stormy Atlantic route and used until the eve of World War II. No matter what you say, history is history, from the late Qing Dynasty to the first decade of the Republic of China, after the Westernization Movement, China's industrial level and technology can barely keep up with the pace of the world, but because of domestic turmoil and no demand, it has led to the manufacturing industry slowly shrinking until 49 years of poverty and whiteness.