Episode 117 Guangwu goes out of the mountain

The Celestial Pivot squadron made a large circle around the western Pacific Ocean and finally circled the southern tip of the Philippines, entered the Celebes Sea, and then headed south between Borneo and Sulawesi. Surabaya is at the eastern tip of Java Island, which was ceded to the Ming Dynasty during the Ming-Dutch War. The local Chinese cheered and were excited, and they all flocked to the port to see and warmly welcome the Ming sailors.

Obviously, the commander of the Tianshu detachment decided to preserve the victorious results of this voyage, as well as the three valuable aircraft carriers, and decided to completely avoid all risks. He did not enter the East China Sea directly from Taiwan, but made a detour of the South China Sea for thousands of miles, and then went north from the South China Sea, and then passed through the inner side of the Taiwan Strait, all the way to the sea area under the complete control of the Ming Dynasty. At the very least, it would be possible to avoid crossing the southern tip of the Ryukyu Islands and avoiding the risk of encountering the Michinoku subfleet. The commander of the Celestial Pivot intends to retreat with all his body, not wanting to be in unnecessary danger again.

However, there was another danger of returning to the East China Sea Fleet base, which was the four battleships deployed by the Japanese army in the East China Sea. It was an extremely powerful force, which had always deterred the Ming warships from going to sea for a decisive battle. Now in the base of the Nanyang Fleet, there are not only the original cruisers of the Nanyang Fleet, but also the Yongle detachment, which had gone to Europe to blockade the Soviet Union and turned back halfway. After the Yongle detachment returned to Nanyang, it received an order to stay on the spot and not continue north.

On the one hand, the General Staff of the Navy was worried that the strength of the south was too weak, and the Nanyang Fleet wanted to defend the Strait of Malacca and the Daming sea line of communication, but it did not even have a single battleship, and if the Japanese army sent a large fleet to the south to attack, the consequences would be unimaginable. On the other hand, at the beginning of the war, the Ming navy pursued a policy of "preserving its strength and avoiding a decisive battle", and was unwilling to let the four battleships in the harbor of the East China Sea Fleet leave the port for a decisive battle, nor was it willing to allow the Yongle sub-fleet to return to the sea with a weak battleship, and it was possible to encounter four Japanese battleships in the East China Sea.

It's different now. The top brass of the Ming army saw a series of victories on their aircraft carriers, established strong confidence, and also saw the tremendous power of naval and air combat. Ground-based aircraft were now regularly sent to attack Japanese battleships in the East China Sea. The four Japanese battleships also continued to retreat eastward, until they could be protected by native aircraft. At present, although they are still in the East China Sea, they can no longer form a "blockade" posture against the East China Sea Fleet.

Therefore, the General Staff of the Navy ordered the Yongle and Tianshu sub-fleets to merge into one and form a large task force, with the Tianshu as the flagship, and return to the East China Sea Fleet. But the battle cruiser Zhurong was left behind to strengthen the South Ocean Fleet.

At present, the "strengthened" Tianshu sub-fleet has three aircraft carriers, one battleship, two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers, which is huge in scale and extremely powerful. Even if it collided head-on with the Japanese Mitsunoku detachment, the Ming Army's General Staff was confident that at least it would never suffer.

……

Negotiations with the Ming Kingdom for many days had already made Stalin restless. Many things in the country also made it even more difficult for him to sleep. In politics, there are still many veterans of Lenin's time, including those of his own seniority, who have not been eliminated. In military circles, the situation was even more unsettling for Stalin. Because of the war against the Ming Dynasty, the purges that were originally intended to be carried out in the army have not dared to start. Moreover, in the previous stage, there were more victories and fewer defeats, and the generals in the army, especially many generals who were not their own direct lineage, such as Tukhachevsky and his ilk, also took advantage of the victory to establish a general prestige in the army and were supported by the majority of officers and soldiers. The situation has been even worse with more defeats and fewer wins recently. Stalin's political system was constantly secretly reflected, and a mood began to permeate the army, and the generals tended to blame the defeat on such reasons as "political suppression of the military" and "political command", and some even directly said that it was because of "the blind command of the political commissar."

Stalin, on the contrary, was somewhat envious of the Ming army. Whether the Ming army lost more in the early stage and won less, or won more and lost less in the later stage, whether it was the generals of the Ming army or the high-level leaders in Nanjing, they never had to worry about any "instability of the army". He has great power in his hands, and he has the power to kill everyone in the whole Soviet Union, but on the contrary, he is too cold to be in a high place. Not only do they have to be vigilant all day long against "other forces" against them, but they also have to take care of everything themselves. I don't dare to make up my own mind at all. Even in the current negotiations with Ming, there is no one who makes suggestions like himself, and everything has to be judged by himself.

Stalin even had the feeling that the whole Soviet Union had only one brain.

He flipped through the reports sent from the "Ili Kingdom" and gradually fell into deep thought.

Originally, it was intended to install a local prince to be king, but pan-Turkism, Islamism, and Muslim resistance in the northern part of Xinjiang became increasingly prevalent. Stalin had intended to install a local prince as king, in order to ease the local Muslim revolt. But now suddenly there is a sign of a more dangerous than the Muslim revolt. - That is Pan-Turkism.

Once a local prince was installed as the king of the Ili kingdom, wouldn't this "pan-Turkic" national sentiment be encouraged even more? Then a series of allies of the USSR in Central Asia, they are all in this "pan-Turkic" circle. Once there is a chain reaction, the consequences are unimaginable.

Stalin pondered for a long time and came up with a bold idea.

- It's time to make a trade-off. A card that has been in your hand for so long is time to be played.

Foster the exiled emperor Guangwu and make him the king of the Ili Kingdom. Use a foreigner to suppress those natives.

……

As Xiang Xiaoqiang expected, his new insights were questioned by many people in Office Zero. Among them there are even people from the submarine forces.

The main focus of their opposition is the new concept of "wolf pack tactics". The reason why they insist that "it is difficult for submarines to fight in groups" is that this tactic will inevitably break the radio silence in the course of the operation, so that the submarine will expose its position and lose the concealment advantage of the submarine. Obviously, Xiang Xiaoqiang's proposition is that once a submarine is the first to spot the enemy fleet, it should call other nearby submarines to come by radio waves. Without breaking the radio silence, submarines cannot work together.

Xiang Xiaoqiang had already been mentally prepared. He expected that opponents would inevitably talk about "breaking the radio silence." He put forward his own idea, that is, that of Dönitz, that radio communication was only a means, not an end, whether it was used or not. Radio communications are for tactics, not tactics for radio. If the use of radio energy enables our army to quickly concentrate a large number of submarines and thus achieve a greater victory in combat against the enemy, then the shortcoming of "breaking the radio silence" must be tolerated for the time being.

But in the face of the facts, any language pales. Xiang Xiaoqiang intends to refer to previous experience and speak with facts. He instructed his subordinates to begin preparing for an experiment in wolf pack tactics. Moreover, this is not a drill. It's a real battle in the western Pacific. It is necessary to make bold use of radio communications and concentrate on the "wolf pack".