On 26 June, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobuaki Makino separately met with the British and German ambassadors to Japan, and made it clear that the Japanese Government, which "loves peace and cherishes the lives of its own soldiers," has absolutely no intention of intervening in this European war and will "strictly maintain neutrality" for the time to come.

After a few rounds, the news spread from Tokyo to Berlin on the other side of the world. Hearing the Japanese government's statement, Qingying's heart was full of surprise; It didn't take long, however, for him to understand why Japan had made a very different choice from history. In addition to the fact that Germany won more victories on the battlefield than in history, which made Japan hesitate to cruise, the choice of prime minister, which is very different from history, is also a very important reason.

In this world, because the outbreak of the Great War in Europe was a full year and three months earlier, the Japanese prime minister at this time was no longer the pro-British Shigenobu Okuma, but the naval Gonbei Yamamoto. For the Japanese Fisher, it was clear that Germany was not a being able to declare war on him; Because the current German shipyards are outfitting two super-dreadnoughts ordered by Japan!

In November 1910, two Hanoi-class battleships were keeled at the two shipyards of Volkeng and Germania, announcing the final ownership of the order, which totaled up to £5 million. Because the German-made warships in the Combined Fleet played a mainstay role in the naval war against Russia, their performance was far superior to that of the British ships of the same type, which made the Japanese Navy favor German-made ships. At the strong request of the admirals headed by Heihachiro Togo, the Japanese Navy chose the German shipyard. As the contractor of the country's first class of super dreadnought battleships. If it weren't for Japan's efforts to maintain relations with Britain, it would have been difficult for the British Vickers shipyard to win this order in the competition with Germany's Bromforss, even the earlier battle patrol of the Kongo.

At present, the two super-dreadnoughts with a standard displacement of 25,000 tons and 10 356-mm guns have entered the final stage of outfitting and are expected to be completed in early 1914. The entire Japanese Navy, at this time, was somewhat impatient for the commissioning of these two battleships. After all, the U.S. Navy on the other side of the ocean already has four super-dreadnoughts with comparable firepower, while the Japanese Navy at this time has only one newly completed Kongo. Although these U.S. super-dreadnoughts are all deployed in the Atlantic Fleet, they are not imaginary enemies of Japan. But it still left the ambitious Japanese Navy feeling a thorn in the back. If Japan had declared war on Germany now. Isn't this an automatic gift of these two ships to the Germans?

If the current prime minister of Japan were a pure politician or an army figure such as Aritomo Yamagu, this would not be an unbearable loss for them. Compared to the large colonies of the Philippines, the value of two warships is obviously much smaller. However, Yamamoto is different. From 1890 onwards, he was the de facto founder of the Japanese Navy. He has an unparalleled passion for naval construction; Loss of two super dreadnoughts at once. This is undoubtedly a situation that he finds difficult to accept. In the opinion of the vast majority of people. The war would last a few months before it subsided, and Yamamoto waited for the Germans to fulfill the terms of the treaty after the war was over. I'll send them when I'm done. As a last resort, Yamamoto would never want to tear his face with the Germans!

For Germany, a neutral Japan would undoubtedly be of great benefit to their Far East strategy. At the beginning of the war, the Qing and Britain had already prepared for the worst plan to abandon the Philippines after Japan declared war, and when Japan became neutral, whether it was to round up the Spee fleet or attack the Philippines, the Entente would inevitably draw a large amount of manpower and material resources that should have been used in the European theater to relieve the pressure on Germany's frontal war. At present, the Speese fleet had inflicted a heavy defeat on the British in the Far East, and the Qing British had every reason to expect that the British would move their war patrols to the Pacific to calm the situation.

While waiting for the British war cruisers to leave their homeland, the German navy also had to do one thing for the final decisive battle: that is, to become the red cloth in the hands of the matadors to attract bulls, so as to ensure that the British fleet would engage in a decisive naval battle with Germany at the right time, as they had envisioned.

Historically, on May 31, 1916, the main fleets of Britain and Germany poured out, and a large-scale battle broke out in the Jutland Sea, consisting of two million tons of steel and involving more than 100,000 people. However, what most people ignore is that this battle of the Titans has been carried out for a long time in advance.

The battle cruiser fleet led by Hipper began to frequently harass and shell the British coastal areas since April 24, killing hundreds of British people, so that Hipper has become a "baby killer" in Britain that can scare children from crying at night. As for the German fast fleet, which had done a lot of evil, the whole of Britain hated it, and the British battle patrol group also went out of the port many times to intercept it, but Hipper, who was beaten and ran away without any suspense on the vast sea, escaped. By the end of the day, the British had become accustomed to Hipper's annoying but not lethal guerrilla tactics, and it seemed normal for them to leave Betty's fleet alone to meet the enemy. Had it not been for the fact that the German Navy's communication code had been deciphered by the British nearly two years earlier, when the Germans suddenly took the entire main force out of the base on May 30, it is very likely that Jericho's Grand Fleet would have thought that this was still a routine harassment by the Germans, and would not have chosen to send it out from Scarpa Bay!

Although there have been some changes in the situation in this plane, the Grand Fleet does not have much advantage in strength, and it does not have much confidence to fight with the High Seas Fleet; But it was still necessary for the German navy to use a detachment to go to the coast of England as it has historically been. The reason for this is simple: under Wilhelm's constraints, the current German navy is still anchored in the harbor as a surviving fleet, and the capital ships do not have any cruising activities. If the German fleet had suddenly made a surprise sortie without warning, even if it had only allowed the British to discover a fast fleet of battle cruisers, it would have made the British realize that this was probably a sign that the German fleet was going to take heavy action!

Once this information was known to the British, it would undoubtedly have an extremely negative impact on the German fleet in the following battles. Betty, who is brave and fierce by nature, will become timid because of the existence of the high seas fleet; The cautious Jericho will be even more cautious in using the huge fleet in his hands, trying to avoid the tragedy of "losing the whole war in one afternoon". And if the British had been ignorant of the situation in which the German fleet was pouring out, the battlefield would have been completely different. For the German High Seas Fleet, whose capital ship lineup is already close to the British Grand Fleet, the more bold and unrestrained the British, the greater the chance of seizing the opportunity to turn the tables in one fell swoop!

In addition, Qingying also wanted to use the patrol of the fast fleet to determine one thing, that is, to test whether the current coded messages of the German Navy had not been deciphered by the Entente.

In another plane, the communication code of the German Navy was directly deciphered by the Allies from the very beginning of the war. On August 25, 1914, the German light cruiser ran aground and sank while cruising in the Gulf of Finland at the Russian gates; Russian divers found the inside of the wreckage of the battleship and found the German Navy's code manual. As a result of the Triple Entente, the British Navy, which had obtained the codebook from the Russians, easily deciphered all the telegrams of the German Navy. Since then, although the German Navy has replaced three more codebooks, the British code-breaking department "Room 40" has figured out the principle of the previous German codebook; After some comparison and calculation, we still have a comprehensive understanding of the actions of the German Navy.

It is an unacceptable situation for any army to have a radio deciphered by the opposing side. One of the most important reasons why the Hinlu duo were able to achieve an epic victory in the Battle of Tannenberg before was that they were well aware of all the plans of the Russian army through Guò radio monitoring. Although none of the German Baltic Fleet sank in the Gulf of Finland with the name "Magdeburg", there was no doubt that several auxiliary ships had been lost in the nearly two months of the war. Fearful of the tragic consequences of the leak of the German Navy's code, Qingying decided to let Hipper's fast fleet test the waters.

Before the start of the operation, the German Navy carried out a qiē according to the normal process. Frederick the Great, the flagship of the High Seas Fleet, reported the fleet attack to the naval headquarters, and then the German side sent a series of encrypted messages to the fast fleet to inform the fast fleet of the objectives and timetable of the attack. If the German Rapid Fleet succeeded in shelling the British coast and returned triumphantly, it would mean that the German naval code had not been leaked, and Qingying would no longer have any worries about the future of this German navy. And once Hipper was intercepted by the British's cheating from God's perspective, it was enough to prove that the Navy's battle plan had been fully understood by the British.

In order to ensure that the operation was foolproof, it would not be self-defeating and allow the Hipper's fleet to be completely annihilated by the British Navy, which might have mastered the German naval code; The timing of this operation will be carried out in clear weather with far visibility as far as possible, according to the forecast of the meteorological department. In this way, the German reconnaissance fleet was able to detect the superior adversary who might come to intercept it in time, and then quickly turn to escape. In addition, the reconnaissance fleet can also take a seaplane carrier converted from a fast merchant ship to carry out a wide range of early warning when the weather permits. This kind of extremely avant-garde ship will not be ignored by Qingying, who is a traverser. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the reward of the book friend zhouyu1976~~~ The subscription is so bleak, and the author lacks motivation (╯_╰) to update