Episode 158 Fleet Battle VS Tonnage Battle

This year's winter was particularly cold, and Vladivostok had a particularly early ice season this year, with ice on the continental margin, which began to freeze close to the coastline in late November, and by early December, the entire bay was completely frozen.

On the night of December 5, a large freighter was trying to break the ice to enter the port by its own power when the propeller propeller was damaged by broken ice. Then the captain did not dare to take the risk and ordered to stop, ready to ask him to come out and tow it into the harbor. But after such a delay, the whole ship was frozen and could not move. By the next morning, the hapless cargo ship had been targeted by Ming planes, and a bomb had sunk it in the bay.

The so-called "continental edge ice" is not actually the freezing of seawater, but the freezing of freshwater. Freshwater rivers on land pour large amounts of ice and icy fresh water into the sea, causing large amounts of ice to accumulate and gradually form an ice crust along the edge of the land. Sea water is too salty to freeze. It is the Raztorinaya River that forms the continental margin ice in Vladivostok today. The surface of the Raztorinaa River is frozen, but beneath the ice, there is still a large flow of fresh water that flows into the bay.

At this point, the plan to pollute the water had to be suspended. The floating corpses in the barrage are frozen there, not only will they not be able to touch the flowing river below, but they will also be frozen in the refrigerator and will not rot for several months.

So, the Ming army knocked down all the corpses on the barricade and buried them.

Winter can be both good and bad for Vladivostok. Fortunately, the surface of the river was frozen, and the Ming army was forced to stop polluting the river, and Vladivostok drinking water was no longer a problem. On the downside, the severe cold of winter exacerbates Vladivostok's need for "heat".

On the one hand, the lack of food and fuel in the besieged city made it even more difficult on cold days. In November, the common people of Vladivostok died of cold and starvation every day, and although the Soviet officers and men did not have enough food and clothing, none of them froze to death and starved to death. All kinds of supplies in Vladivostok were prioritized for the army. On the other hand, the lack of supplies was exacerbated by the fact that the Gulf was frozen and supplies were almost cut off by sea. All the people in Vladivostok, both military and civilian, and those who are sober-minded, understand that if this continues, it is only a matter of time before Vladivostok falls.

With the liberation of a large number of submarines of the Ming army from the Sea of Japan, the blockade of the Japanese archipelago itself also entered a peak period. In the month of November to early December, another 40 new submarines left the factory and entered service with the Navy's submarine forces. At present, the total number of submarines in the Ming Navy has reached 156, and the number of submarines that can be maintained at sea on a regular basis has reached about 60. In the month from mid-November to early December, the total number of sunks of cargo ships and tankers reached 258645 tons.

At the end of 1937, Japan finally felt the unprecedented pressure. Cabinets began to propose to reduce the construction of large ships and to devote limited resources to building more cargo ships and carrying more cargo to offset the amount of cargo ships and cargo that had been sunk. More destroyers will also be built to escort the convoy and maintain Japan's fragile war veins. However, even such a sober proposal was opposed by the military department, and there were many people who besieged it. It is said that this is cowardly, cowardly, and conservative, and that once Japan embarks on this simple "defensive" road, then Japan will always be in a situation of being passively beaten.

At present, the main argument of the Japanese military department is still the "decisive battle of the fleet," emphasizing the use of giant ships and artillery and the fleet of the Ming army to carry out a decisive battle at sea, and copying the model of "decisive battle at sea" and "the first war to determine the fortune of the country" of the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War to the Japanese-Ming War. The practice of "tonnage warfare," which is a trickle-down stream and a gradual confrontation and competition, does not conform to the spirit of Japan or the appetite of the top echelons of the military department.

To tell the truth, in addition to the role played by blood and adrenaline, this view of the upper echelons of the Japanese military department is indeed quite reasonable and indeed conforms to Japan's national conditions. This is because Japan today is not the same as Britain during World War I.

First, Japan's industrial base and output are not as good as those of Britain, and second, and more importantly, although Britain itself is small, it has a large number of overseas colonies to provide it with support, and its war potential is not small, and it also has the United States as its material backing, which is open to the supply of war materials. It is equivalent to saying that Britain has colonies all over the world to provide raw materials, and the entire American factories provide industrial products, and later the United States went into battle shirtless and directly participated in the war, which won the tonnage war with Germany.

But now Japan is fighting alone, the largest "cargo owner" of the United States, now the trade door is tightly closed to Japan, and there are not many countries that can do business with Japan. Moreover, among these limited countries, there is not a single one that can provide war materials in the same large quantities as the United States. On the contrary, the Ming Kingdom, with its vast land, abundant products, and abundant industry, took the industrial strength of the Northern Qing Dynasty for its own use after unification. Internationally, everything that Japan can buy can be bought in the Ming country, and what Japan can't buy in the Ming country can also be bought in the Ming country. Besides, when it comes to money, people have more money than Japan, whether it is self-produced or bought, Japan can't fight Mingguo.

In any case, it is completely impossible to fight a tonnage war with the Ming State for a long time and try to win this tonnage war with Japan's weak national strength. Once on this path, Japan loses. As for the decisive battle of the fleet, the Japanese navy is still in an advantageous position, but on the contrary, it has a great chance of winning.

As a result, the Japanese top brass vetoed the idea of saving resources for large ships and using them for the construction of cargo ships and destroyers. The two giant ships, the Yamato and the Musashi, were built as usual. Even the belt of the trouser must be built. In the eyes of the Japanese, once these two "invincible giant ships" were commissioned, the Ming Navy would lose.

But in Nanjing, the Ming army command was another calculation. Many generals of the General Staff still wanted a decisive battle with the Japanese fleet, like the Battle of Jutland, where steel behemoths lined up in battleships, spewing black smoke, chopping waves, and firing at each other...... What a majestic and romantic situation it was.

Many of these generals of the Ming Navy dreamed of this situation in their childhood, and the blood of teenagers in their veins boiled countless times, and they only went to apply for the naval school when they grew up, and they have come to this day. This generation grew up in the era of battleships, and they looked forward to such an opportunity in their lives to command the steel giant ship in a decisive battle at sea. This complex is not intellectually controlled. Including Xiang Xiaoqiang himself, he also has this complex.

But after all, this is a matter related to the fortunes of the country and the lives of many people. The navy is also a "sensible" service, and the Ming Dynasty is not as crazy as Japan. In the Daming Sea General Staff, at least Xiong Dingming is on Xiang Xiaoqiang's side. He has already seen the power of submarine warfare, and he is also very clear about the contrast between the national strength of the two countries tomorrow. And there were much fewer casualties in submarine warfare than in the decisive battles of the fleet. It can be said that a submarine is sunk probably not as many people as a battleship are killed by a single shot.

Therefore, he advocated that the Ming fleet should not take the initiative to seek a decisive battle with the Japanese fleet. It is necessary to put the main forces on guarding the coastal sea supremacy and defending the Ming Dynasty's own sea transportation lines. In fighting against Japanese warships, we must try our best to ensure that we will fight as many as we can, and that we will fight the weak with the strong, so as to make sure that we will not suffer heavy losses. The Ming army also sent a number of fast cruisers, one or two in pairs, to roam deep into the Japanese-controlled areas of the western Pacific, as ocean-going assault ships, waiting for opportunities to attack Japanese merchant ships.