After Japan officially declared war on Germany and Austria, the first to act was not the army but the navy. According to the division of labor agreed with the Entente powers, the Japanese Navy was to organize a fleet to the south, which would be responsible for securing the western Pacific route and seizing all the German islands north of the equator, including the Mariana Islands, the Caroline Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Palau Islands, and Yap, the communications center of the Pacific submarine telegraph. To this end, the Japanese Navy organized two southern fleets, and the first southern fleet went south on September 12. However, the strength of the 1st Southern Fleet was inferior to the expectations of Britain and France, and the 1st Southern Fleet consisted of the battle cruiser Kurama as the flagship, the battle cruiser Tsukuba, the armored cruiser Asama, the 16th Destroyer Fleet (2 destroyers), and the transport ships Nankai Maru and Ene Maru. At the time of Japan's war against China, the Second Southern Fleet was still being formed.

However, the main force of the Japanese navy did not regard the elimination of German overseas colonies as the first priority, and the main force was engaged in the war of aggression against China. By 15 September, before the Sino-Japanese negotiations broke down, the Japanese Navy had organized its main forces into three fleets, of which the first fleet was commanded by Vice Admiral Yuzaburo Kato, which was responsible for guarding the Yellow Sea and protecting navigation. There were three destroyer fleets, consisting of 2 battleships (Settsu and Aki), 2 light cruisers (Kasaki and Otowa), and 5 destroyers.

The Second Fleet was in charge of the Qingdao Raiders, under the command of Vice Admiral Kato Dingyoshi, and consisted of 4 battleships (Shubo, Iwami, Kawachi, Tango), 3 armored cruisers (Iwate, Yakumo, and Tokiwa), 2 light cruisers (Chitose, Chiyoda), 2 coastal defense ships (Okishima, Mijima), and the seaplane carrier Wakamiya Maru. 8 destroyers and 5 large transport ships.

In order to contain the weak Chinese navy, Japan also organized the Third Fleet, which was responsible for the sentinel of the East China Sea, and the task was to blockade and annihilate the Chinese navy based in Shanghai and Guangzhou, which was commanded by Rear Admiral Mitsuyoshi Tsuchiya, and had 2 battleships (Settsu and Iwami), 2 battlecruisers (Kongo and Hiei), 3 light cruisers (Shintaka, Akitsushu, and Tone), coastal defense ships Kasuga and Nisshin, as well as 9 destroyers and 5 gunboats.

Compared to the army, Japan did not take the Chinese navy into account at all. Truly. Compared to the Japanese Navy, which is the first in Asia and the fourth in the world. The Chinese Navy is simply too weak.

With the strength of the Japanese navy, it is completely possible to penetrate the Yangtze River and enter the hinterland of China. According to the information available to Japan, China did not build large river defense batteries at Wusongkou and along the Yangtze River, but the Naval Command Department gave the Third Fleet only enough troops to blockade the Chinese Navy in Shanghai. That's kind of interesting. Russia's maritime threat to Japan has been lifted. Japan is virtually invincible in the western Pacific. If China's tens of thousands of tons of warships are completely wiped out, what is the need to form a First Fleet to guard the Yellow Sea and ensure navigation? The navy is an offensive service, and passive defense is doomed to defeat. The Japanese lined up like this. There are external factors, but more importantly, internal factors.

One of the external reasons was that Britain and France strongly forbade Japan to enter the Yangtze River and enter the hinterland of China in order to provoke a full-scale war with China. Britain and France, fearing an overreaction from China, forced China into the camp of the Allies, especially after the Battle of Tsingtao. As for internal factors, Japan is not ready for a full-scale war with China, not only because of financial troubles, but also because it cannot come up with the money to fight a war of national destruction, and because it is not sure. More importantly, they learned that the Chinese Navy has two submarine formations and more than 20 imported submarines, and the Military Command Department is worried that the fleet's anti-submarine capability is insufficient, and it will be a joke if a large warship is sunk by a Chinese submarine, so they organized the First Fleet for the purpose of escorting ships and the Third Fleet for the purpose of blockade. Japan's maritime strategy against China is to blockade the Chinese navy in its ports.

Compared with the Japanese navy, which has a luxurious lineup, the Chinese navy is shabby. Some beggars have the feeling of fighting treasures with the dragon king.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it took over the naval legacy left by the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the navy took Shanghai, Fujian, and Guangdong as its three major bases, but gave up on the Bohai Bay and the Yellow Sea. This is a helpless move. Shandong has a long coastline, but due to the existence of the German and British fleets, there is almost no foothold for the Chinese navy, and since the loss of the Bohai Bay in Lushun, there is no room for the Chinese navy to operate in this part of the Chinese inland sea. So he set up his base in the south and slowly gathered strength to wait for the opportunity.

In the second month after Long Qian established the capital in Beijing, he established the Navy Command, and Shi Jun, the chief of the General Staff and commander of the Shandong Army, with his old qualifications, became the commander-in-chief of the Navy. Long Qian set the 12-character policy of "cultivating talents, accumulating strength, and waiting for the opportunity" for the development of the navy. It is determined that the focus of defense construction is on land and not on the sea, and for at least ten years, the state will not spend a lot of money on naval construction.

Fang Shijun correctly understood Long Qian's intentions. On the one hand, it recruited talents, invited Sa Zhenbing, Yan Fu, Zai Ze and other naval officers, established the Fuzhou Naval Officer School and the Shanghai Naval Technology Research Institute, and invited retired and active officers of the US Navy to serve as instructors to train naval personnel and carry out naval weapons research. On the one hand, the existing forces were rectified and two fleets in the East China Sea and the South China Sea were formed to train officers and men. The third is to vigorously support the shipbuilding industry and lay the foundation for the navy to take off.

In this process, Fang Shijun showed his ability the most to collect talents. did not hesitate to descend to the nobles and invited out Sa Zhenbing, Yan Fu and others. Then, they recruited all the naval talents trained by the Manchu Qing Dynasty into the New Chinese Navy. In the end, he spent a lot of money to hire naval instructors and technical personnel from the United States, Germany, and other countries, and worked hard to build up the navy.

When Premier Fang Shijun visited the United States in 1910, he picked up the naval package agreement signed between the Manchus and the United States, which the United States was happy to reach. However, the Chinese side revised the contents of the original agreement, greatly reduced the purchase of surface ships, especially cruisers and destroyers, and instead purchased shipbuilding equipment, expanded the Jiangnan shipyard, added a large dock, and jointly established the US-China Pacific Shipping Company with the United States to expand Sino-US shipping capabilities. Of course, several American warships were also bought to meet the requirements of the Americans. By the summer of 1914, there were only seven cruisers on the surface ships of the two fleets of the Chinese Navy. There are 7 destroyers and 11 gunboats, with a total tonnage of less than 50,000 tons, and most of them are placed in the South China Sea Fleet, which is relatively safe.

By the summer of 1914, the total strength of the navy exceeded 20,000. It is worth mentioning that the Navy does not come from the Army, but recruits graduates from high schools. The naval officers (except for a few seniors) were all from the Fuzhou Naval Academy (the initial duration of study was two years, which was extended to three years from 1913) and cadets who studied in the United States and Germany. The number of officers in the Navy from the Army (including staff officers at all levels of the Navy Command) is extremely small and completely disproportionate. This situation led to the complete separation of the Navy from the Army. It has become a branch of the army that has a very different concept and thinking from the army. By 1914. For example, the majority of officers and men in the army smoke cigarettes, while the officers and men of the navy do not smoke at all, for example, the proportion of naval officers who know a foreign language is very high. But the Army is very few. Some high-ranking generals of the Mengshan Army ridiculed the navy as fake foreign devils. Then. No one realizes the significance of the Navy getting rid of the Army's self-development. It was not until more than 20 years after the founding of the People's Republic of China that the navy had developed into a large branch of the armed forces that could not be underestimated, and the navy made an increasingly strong voice on national politics.

Fang Shijun did not deliberately embark on the path of "independence" from the army. On the one hand, it is because Long Qian requires him to cultivate talents based on himself. On the other hand, army officers were basically reluctant to go to the navy, and even the formation of his headquarters took a lot of effort.

Although Long Qian established the principle of land first and then sea, his investment in the navy has increased year by year, and with the special loans from the United States, the investment in the navy in the five years since the founding of the People's Republic of China has approached the total amount of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to build the Beiyang Fleet. Much of this money was spent on the purchase and manufacture of submarines.

In the spring of 1911, China and Germany signed a secret agreement on naval cooperation, in addition to the purchase of two of Germany's latest U-boats, but also commissioned Germany to manufacture four submarines of the same type and purchased a full set of drawings, which opened the curtain on the development of naval submarines. Over the next three years, the number of German submarines purchased increased year by year, reaching a total of 22 submarines. Not only that, Germany also transferred a submarine factory and a full set of torpedo technology in 1912, and China established a torpedo factory in Nanchang, which could build ocean-going submarines and their main weapons torpedoes on the mainland under the guidance of German engineers.

In terms of submarine technology, Germany leads the world, so China is targeting Germany and not the United States. At the end of 1912, the Shanghai Naval Technical Research Institute, with the help of German experts, designed a large submarine, which was improved on the basis of the German U-boat attack submarine, the large structure did not change, but the tonnage and overall size of the boat increased. Capacity of 32 people, diesel power, surface 1700 horsepower, underwater 1200 horsepower, underwater displacement of 900 tons, draft of 3.65 meters, total height of 8.25 meters, speed of 15 knots of water, 9 knots of underwater, depth of 50 meters, the biggest change is the cancellation of the German submarine equipped with 105mm naval guns, so that the armament of this type of submarine is only torpedoes. It can carry 16 torpedoes with a total of 4 torpedo tubes (2 in front and 2 in the rear).

This Swordfish-class submarine was the first ocean-going submarine of the Republic with its own design ideas, and it revolutionized the German submarine thinking. It was affirmed by German submarine experts, who considered the Chinese's thinking of abolishing artillery as a revolutionary subversion that would lead to a huge change in submarine tactics. The German Navy also followed the example of China's abolition of artillery, which was largely ineffective, and concentrated on developing torpedo attack tactics.

Although the development of submarines achieved very good results, at that time, under the influence of the naval hegemon Britain, the doctrine of cannon and giant ships prevailed, and the naval powers concentrated on the development of a new generation of battleships, believing that battleships were the key to determining victory or defeat at sea. As for the new gadget of submarines, except for Germany, which was strongly suppressed by Britain, including Japan, they did not pay much attention to it.

The Chinese Navy's strategic approach to finding a new path has been questioned within the navy. With the recovery of national strength, the navy has also called for the purchase of large warships. In the Spring Festival of 1913, Vice Admiral Sa Zhenbing, commander of the South China Sea Fleet, sent a letter to Long Qian, requesting the purchase of two battleships to strengthen his momentum. To this end, the Ministry of National Defense held a top-secret seminar on naval development in Shanghai, at which Long Qian threw out the theory that "battleships" were useless, which was difficult for the navy elders to accept.

"I can boldly predict that the battleship will soon be retired from the stage of history. With the development of aviation technology, the Navy will present a completely different pattern than it is now. Instead of spending a lot of money to build a large coffin at sea, it is better to take the right path in the first place. In the development of the navy, it is necessary to grasp both ends and promote the middle. What are Two Heads? Submarines and airplanes, of course, are surface ships in the middle. Not wanting battleships is not the same as not wanting surface ships, destroyers, cruisers, transports, but subordinating to planes and submarines. You have to believe that the path of naval development that I have planned will be proven. Long Qian said this at a seminar on naval development held at the General Headquarters of the Navy in the spring of 1913.

"Airplanes? Can planes deal with battleships? "No one believed that an aircraft with only five kilograms of bombs and an extremely short range would threaten the survival of the battleship. Isn't that a joke?

"Who said that planes can only carry five kilograms of bombs?" Long Qian asked rhetorically, "What if the plane could carry a 250-kilogram giant bomb?" What if the range of the aircraft was increased to a thousand kilometers or even longer? Fellow Naval Staff, please remember the phrase, 'technology determines tactics', and the emergence of each new technology will change the existing tactics, which is why I attach great importance to the Naval Research Institute. We don't work on battleships, we don't do it now, and we won't do it in the future. Have you calculated how many planes can be exchanged for a battleship? How many submarines? We are still poor, the army is changing its equipment, the aviation is developing, and the navy has to keep up. With our national strength and technological foundation, we will always lag behind others, but we can be the leader in a new field, one is aircraft, and the other is submarines. By the time we prove the power of planes and submarines, the naval powers that have built dreadnoughts will regret it to death! ”

Long Qian's enormous power dictated that the navy could only go at his pace. In the past few years, the number of surface ships has increased slowly, but the submarine force has begun to take shape, the navy has set up an independent submarine command, under the jurisdiction of two submarine fleets, in Chongming Island and Zhoushan Islands to build submarine bases, in the summer of 1914, the total number of submarines that can be used for naval warfare reached 20, of which 2 are self-built Swordfish-class attack submarines.

The role of submarines was demonstrated in the small exercises of the Navy in the South China Sea in the spring of 1914, when four submarines from Zhoushan (one of which were of the Swordfish class) secretly crossed the Taiwan Strait and arrived on time in the exercise area, approaching the cruiser Haixiong, the flagship of the South China Sea Fleet, 300 meters undetected. If it was a real battle, the Haixiong might have sunk. In the ensuing live-fire shooting, Sa Zhenbing witnessed the process of the submarine carrying out torpedoes attacking the target ship and was very shocked. At that time, when anti-submarine technology was not yet formed, submarines were ghost killers who came and went without a trace, and it seemed that they were powerless to deal with giant battleships, but if they attacked a small-tonnage destroyer or transport ship, a torpedo could send the target ship to the bottom of the sea!

For the imminent outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the Navy Command drew up its own operational plan in accordance with the general strategy of the General Staff. It must be noted that the General Staff correctly anticipated the Japanese Navy's operational thinking and that the Japanese Navy would adopt a blockade strategy to block the Chinese Navy's exits, and therefore assisted the Navy in formulating a targeted combat plan aimed at avoiding the main forces of the Japanese Navy and with the main purpose of attacking its troop carriers and transport ships. Under this plan, the submarine force will assume the main combat mission, and a backup plan has been drawn up after the two major submarine bases in the East China Sea are destroyed by the Japanese army. Commander-in-Chief Fang Shijun, in the face of the Navy's strong desire for war, stressed that the Navy's strength was not enough to face the Japanese Navy head-on, "We are not fools. This is not cowardice, but judging the situation. Keeping the flame in waiting for time is the right course of action and has been approved by the President. The Army will not blame us, I assure you. (To be continued......)