When Li Binglong led a number of warships forward and approached the port to bombard the Russian batteries holding the port, and blocked any Russian warships that tried to rush out of the port to block the landing of the Chinese army.

On the 'Longxiang' passenger steamer, Chen Yuechuan also deployed combat tasks in the temporary operations conference room.

Like most of the transports in today's fleet, the Longxiang passenger ship is not a warship directly affiliated with the military, but a vessel belonging to a domestic shipping company.

With the exception of one coal carrier and two transports of the navy's own vessels, the rest were ships of several domestic shipping companies, most of which belonged to the Royal Shipping Company, but four large passenger ships belonged to the Nanyang Shipping Company.

Because this operation required a large number of soldiers, it was necessary to improve the transportation conditions of the soldiers in order to maintain their combat effectiveness after a long journey at sea.

In the past, when the navy carried soldiers, it was often directly loaded with people on cargo ships, or simply on battleships, and the conditions in all aspects were naturally not very good, and the army has repeatedly reported that the transportation conditions are too bad, so that the army soldiers were injured or sick during transportation, and the soldiers were also in very bad condition after arriving at the destination, and it took several days to recover.

Even the marines within the Navy have said that the transportation conditions are too poor.

But the navy itself has nothing to do, most of the ships in the navy are warships, and the few transport ships are actually full-time auxiliary ships, such as coal carriers, supply ships, etc. There are also a small number of general cargo ships.

But there are no full-time troop carriers.

This time, the Navy was still planning to load people on cargo ships. But the army is heartbroken by its own troops, so the army is paying out of its own pocket. Four steam passenger liners were leased from the Nanyang Shipping Company.

These four passenger ships are all ocean-going passenger ships of more than 1,000 tons, which are used by the Nanyang Shipping Company to run ocean-going routes, and the Longxiang is a large cruise ship with a full load displacement of 3,400 tons.

These four passenger ships have been simply modified, well, in fact, to add some bed frames and so on, so that the cabins can accommodate more soldiers.

And Chen Yuechuan's mixed brigade headquarters was set up in the combat conference room on the Longxiang, and this combat conference room was actually the previous first-class special dining room.

The Long Cheung is the most luxurious, largest tonnage and fastest first-class ocean-going cruise ship of the Nanyang Shipping Company. The hull was built in the same pattern as the ironclad with a mixture of teak and wrought iron, and the extravagant use of military-grade shipboard steam engines, and the sails were completely abandoned for the sake of the beauty of the hull and the beauty of the upper deck.

Its top speed can reach fifteen knots, which is faster than most contemporary ironclads, and the cruising speed can reach as many as twelve knots, which is also surpassing most steam warships at this time.

As a luxury cruise ship, the interior decoration of the Longxiang is naturally how luxurious it comes, which can be reflected from its ticket. A first-class ticket from Shanghai to London costs up to 1,500 yuan.

In the past few years, Nanyang Shipping Company has also begun to set foot in the field of luxury cruise ships due to the prosperity of the Great Western Voyage route and the huge profits made by several shipping companies operating luxury cruise ships in Europe.

The Longxiang and two other luxury cruise ships were built at great expense. However, after actually putting these three luxury cruise ships on the market, it was found that the operating expenses were too high, and at the same time, there were not many passengers who were willing to pay a high price to take luxury cruise ships.

The three luxury cruise ships, which were supposed to sail from China to Europe, quickly lost money. The South Seas Shipping Company was forced to simply stop the operation of two of the ships and keep only one. The remaining two ships are also occasionally running the South China Sea or Japan's main routes, and this time they are simply leased to the military.

The rent given by the military is not very good. But at least the Nanyang Shipping Company has the money left over to maintain the ship, and if the ship is damaged or sunk in the war, the military will also compensate in full, anyway.

If the follow-up military does not continue to lease, then the Nanyang Shipping Company will consider transferring two of the three Longxiang-class cruise ships to the European branch to operate the Atlantic route from Europe to the Americas.

Not to mention the mistake of Nanyang Shipping Company on the luxury cruise ship, and to say that Chen Yuechuan was sitting in the luxurious war conference room at this time, the officers under his command who had accepted the task gradually left, leaving him alone.

At this time, he continued to look at the map of Port Bide hanging on the wall panel, which had been specially drawn before departure, referring to some civilian maps circulated by the Russians, in addition to maps from the British, and finally drew this topographical map of Port Bide and the surrounding area.

In this topographic map, you can see the port of Bide, i.e. Gapetrovpavlovsk is located on the eastern coast of Avacha Bay, with a small dock and a small town on the land.

The whole city of Bide is inconspicuous in the huge Avacha Bay, because the place is remote, and there are no resources worth developing inland, and at the same time surrounded by volcanoes on three sides, it is simply a dead land, so this place has been used as a fishing port before, a small number of warships are moored, the port infrastructure is extremely lacking, the docks are limited, and there are no deep-water berths.

This situation was considered quite wasteful by the naval officers of many empires.

Avacha Bay is an excellent deep-water port and the only one on the west coast of the North Pacific Ocean that is ice-free all year round, and its strategic value is quite outstanding.

This can be seen from later generations, this port is one of the two major bases of the Pacific Fleet of the Soviet Union in later generations, and a large number of nuclear submarines and other warships are deployed all year round, and after entering the new century, the Russians have repeatedly declared that they want to build a number of new aircraft carriers. Even in Avacha Bay, it can only be here.

The entire Avacha Bay is simply an irregular circle with a radius of five kilometers, with the mouth of the sea located in the southeast, and the narrowest part of the mouth of the sea is only three kilometers.

If necessary, it could be used as a massive naval base.

Fortunately, the Russians are now quite weak in the development of Avacha Bay, and there is no large-scale heavy artillery group deployed at the mouth of the sea, and now only a few small batteries have been found on it, and it is estimated that there are several front-loading smoothbore guns, but they are not heavy guns, and the firepower of these batteries is not a concern for the heavily armored ironclad ships in the fleet.

Therefore, it is not a problem to enter Avacha Bay, and the next important thing is how to land and capture this port city.

During the Crimean War, the British and French fleets besieged the city twice, but in the end they failed, and during the first siege, the British and French forces carried out two landing operations, but the casualty rate exceeded, especially in the second landing, more than 200 of the 700 people were killed on the spot, and most of the rest were also injured.

The example of the defeat of the Anglo-French forces has fully demonstrated that this port city is not easy to gnaw!

In order to avoid the same defeat as the British more than ten years ago, the military used a luxurious lineup, the Fuxi ironclad, three sail-steam hybrid wooden warships, and two Zhenguang-class small ironclad ships.

These battleships are enough to attack the batteries of a small port, even if they destroy the Russian Pacific Fleet in its heyday.

In terms of the number of troops scheduled for the landing operation, it was also expected leniently.

When the Anglo-French forces first attacked Port Bed, their combined sailors and marines numbered more than 2,600 men, and more than 1,500 troops participated in the landing operation.

You must know that the Russian army's defense in the city at that time was actually not much, only a few hundred, but this failed.

In order to avoid defeat, the Supreme Command of the Imperial Military was expected to be lenient to the enemy, and sent 3,000 troops for land combat alone.

Moreover, when necessary, according to the contemporary tradition of landing warfare, sailors have not yet been drawn from warships or other ships, and a naval unit of several hundred men can be easily formed for landing operations.

However, even Chen Yuechuan will not despise the Russians, and the war cannot be despised at any time.

Chen Yuechuan is still counting on relying on this war to win his own merits!

Since the unification of the empire, there have been no large-scale wars, although there are still some small-scale military operations every year, such as military clashes with the Russians, intervention in Japan, and the invasion of Hawaii.

But these small-scale war opportunities cannot be the turn of every army general.

The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of troops in the empire are idle in the country, and the absence of war is naturally a good thing for ordinary soldiers, who can smoothly serve in the empire for three years, and then be arranged to work in local governments or enter factories and other enterprises, so as to get rid of the fate of the loess.

But for those officers, especially those who are eager to be promoted, to win the title of nobility, it is very uncomfortable.

If there is no war, there will be no military merits, and without military merits, you will not be able to be promoted quickly, you can only work on your qualifications year after year, let alone the title of nobility, don't even think about it.

Last year, when relations with the British were extremely tense over the Hawaii and Hong Kong issues, the reason why there was a rumor within the army to simply march into Burma and India was because of this large-scale war, which represented countless military exploits, and then had the opportunity to win a noble title. (To be continued.) )