"If you only understand war as a battle between two armies on the battlefield, then you are just a warrior. The definition of war is actually very simple, for a strategic goal, the participants in the war use various means to achieve this goal, whether it is economic means, political means or diplomatic means, all the means that are realistic ends will be the concrete manifestations of war, not only military means. —Xu Jie.

At this time, Xu Jie was also planning war preparations against Russia and the Netherlands according to his own definition of war. What will the Russians and the Dutch gain by cooperating to the ground? Xu Jie wrote on paper. In addition to a port where you can dock, the facilities of the port are also very important, but they are far from complete.

For example, the Dutch lacked slipways and canals to provide maintenance for their capital ships. A warship of nearly 20,000 tons is not something that can be maintained in ordinary places. In addition, there are shore fortifications that can provide cover for the fleet, which is not now in the Netherlands, and the current Dutch harbor has a fort, which the Chinese fleet can completely raze in two hours.

Therefore, in order to meet the arrival of the Russian fleet, the Dutch had to strengthen the defense and infrastructure of Batavia. And in addition to these, the Dutch need a lot of coal and food. One is the rations of warships and the other is rations of people, both of which are indispensable. According to the thinking of ordinary people, the most common energy source in the world of the second industrial revolution has been carried out at the beginning of the 20th century is coal, and it is said that the most indispensable thing for the ocean-going fleet to sail is coal, but in fact this is not the case. It's not that the total amount of coal is small, it's that coal can't be bought at all, and it's too difficult to replenish at sea.

Let's start with the consumption of coal. The first dreadnought in the world could only sail 6,620 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots with 2,900 tons of coal and 1,120 tons of oil. It is said that this range is not low, but it is important to know that once you want to accelerate the voyage, the fuel consumption will increase exponentially. That is, if the Russian fleet had followed the historical course and reached Batavia, a capital ship would have consumed 7,000 to 8,000 tons of coal and oil. The consumption of this entire fleet is absolutely astronomical! There is a lot of coal. But it's not easy to find hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of tons of coal. (The 2nd Pacific Fleet, which historically circumnavigated Africa, refueled coal 6 times on the way!) Another time the coaling interval is a full 2 and a half months! ）

There are only two solutions, either put a bunch of coal ladles on your own battleship, and then a whole bunch of transport ships behind the butt. Either or say yes to the powers along the way. Coal was supplied to the fleet. Historically, the British would never have provided it, and the French would not even allow the Russians to use part of the port. Eventually, Germany agreed to provide fuel and ports for the Russian fleet along the way.

Predictable. In this plane. The Russians still had to deal with this problem, and it could be even worse, because the Russians had a much larger fleet, consumed more coal, and it was more difficult to replenish fuel if they had to use oil-fired boilers, which were still abundant at the time, but tens of thousands of tons of fuel. It's not that easy to make, and if there is no fuel. Coal consumption will be greater, and the speed will not go up at critical moments!

As for the problem of food, it was another reason to limit the fighting power of the Russians, and according to the fact that the average person had all kinds of canned food at that time, at least it was not a problem to eat enough. But in fact, it is not enough to have all kinds of cans on the sea, people's stomachs are not boilers, it is not just things that can provide energy and throw them in, people have a sense of taste and human rights! If you can't eat anything fresh for two months at sea, and you can only eat canned food and brown bread, you probably won't want to see canned food in your life!

Some people may ask, isn't there a refrigerated ship, isn't it okay to freeze some fresh meat and vegetables? This seems to be a good way, but it's still that sentence, the ideal is beautiful, the reality is cruel, think about the level of technology at that time, the vegetables that have been frozen for two months and thrown into the pot will be the result of the gods? And since it is a long voyage, then all kinds of accidents are possible, and in history, a refrigerated ship of the Russians caused 700 tons of fresh meat to rot and deteriorate except for the breakdown. Therefore, for the Russian fleet of tens of thousands of people in this plane, eating is not only a problem, but a big, big problem.

Even if the Russians solve these two problems, satisfying the stomach problems of the battleship and the personnel, there is still the problem of "medical care" for the battleship and personnel that needs to be solved. According to the historical situation, the Russians walked from Europe to the Far East for half a year. Half a year the warship and personnel operated without maintenance, and it is conceivable how poor the condition of the ship and the quality of the personnel are, not to mention that if the boiler is not extinguished for several months, the scale and salting out phenomenon inside will greatly damage the life of the boiler and pipes. As for all kinds of aquatic plants attached to the bottom of the boat, they are even more of a big road, and they are not worth mentioning.

And then there's the problem of people, imagine if a group of people for months spent a few months in fear all day long, needing to breathe dusty air everywhere, eating rotten food crawling with cockroaches, and their bedrooms and even officers' canteens are full of coal bales, not only have no way to bathe and clean their bodies, but sometimes they can't even drink water. Facing the vast sea all day long, looking up at the blue sky and looking down at the blue, you will feel pleasing to the eye at first, but soon you will become irritable! Man is a social creature. If a group is in extreme bad situations, riots and suicides become very common. In fact, during the voyage phase, this kind of thing really happened.

Therefore, if the Russians want to ensure a certain combat strength when they reach Batavia, they also need to prepare a large number of replacement parts and medical supplies. If these things are already terrifying, then well, the rest of the things will make people feel even more hopeless and helpless. Not only do you have to complete the voyage, but you also have to fight powerful enemies! And if you fight, you will have to deal with the problem of shells!

If the Russians ordered Xu Jie's first-class American dreadnought, then based on the reserve of 100 rounds per gun, the Russians need at least 800 shells for a dreadnought, as well as the corresponding projectile pack, and if the American 10-inch guns are used, a quasi-dreadnought has 4 12-inch guns and 8 10-inch guns, then it needs 400 rounds of 12-inch shells and 480 rounds of 10-inch shells, which is not counting the secondary guns, if you count the secondary guns, the reserve ammunition of a 6-inch gun is 200 rounds! If it's 10 doors, it's 2,000 rounds!

What is certain is that the naval battle between China and Russia is definitely not one or two battles that can be ended, although the Russians are weak, but with the Netherlands as a forward position and there are still a lot of warships, if this really starts, the consumption of ammunition will be boundless. It is obviously impossible for the Russians to let the fleet carry enough ammunition to fight a war at once, the reason is simple, coal can be piled up casually, at most dirty spots, shells and propellant packs do you dare to pile up casually? If this thing is not careful, it will come out of the people! Look at the Japanese battleships that blew themselves up, and there is absolutely nothing to do with shells and propellants! Although the Russians are big, they will never joke with their lives.

And more importantly, the problem of ammunition is not just to solve the problem of transportation, the problem of production and preservation is also very important, the Russians have to meet the consumption of hundreds of thousands of army and huge navy at the same time, and it is also long-distance transportation, the humid air and bumpy vibration will definitely make some shells have problems, and many shells on both sides in the Battle of Jutland do not explode. Not to mention the shells that were delivered over long distances more than a decade ago, so one thing that can be concluded is that even if the Russian fleet comes, the Russians will still need to transport a lot of supplies and ammunition from the mainland, and even personnel!

The Russians must have needed a lot of coal and food after arriving in the Dutch East Indies, this is for sure, and from the current point of view, the coal production of the Dutch East Indies colonies is mainly concentrated in two places, one is in Sumatra and the other is in Kalimantan, the coal production of these two islands still accounts for more than ninety percent of the coal production of the entire Indonesia until 100 years later, and now, Sumatra is still very barren, and the indigenous riots above occur from time to time, so the coal mining above is very small and unstable. And the one that can really provide a lot of coal is Kalimantan.

As for oil? By 1940, the Dutch East Indies was one of the largest in the world in terms of oil production. But now, 40 years ago, there were almost no oil wells on this land, which means that the Dutch could only supply the Russians with coal at most, and most of it was raw coal, coal with a high sulfur content and smoke content, and no need to think about fuel oil.

As for hoarding anthracite coal for warships, such as high-quality coal like Welsh white coal, this is almost unthinkable, in Xu Jie's plane, the supply and export of this high-quality coal are restricted, if Russia wants to obtain good coal, it can only choose the coal of the Ruhr region of Germany or the coal of Calais in France, and no matter what kind of coal must be imported from distant Europe, otherwise, the Russians can only burn raw coal.

As for food supplies, if an army of tens of thousands of people and their fleet entered Batavia at the same time, Xu Jie could conclude that what the Russians brought to Batavia was definitely not a prosperous commercial trade, but an extreme shortage of materials! In particular, due to the shortage of food and daily necessities, is there a shortage of food in tropical Indonesia? There may be no shortage in the 21st century, but there are definitely not many in the early 20th century! The reason is very simple, the Dutch in pursuit of economic interests and the cultivation of cash crops seriously reduced the local grain production capacity, coupled with the primitive farming method of slash-and-burn, the grain production has become very low, and Java Island is the most densely populated place in the colony, and the bomb itself is not large, so the food and material supply on Java Island is definitely not sufficient, especially when the Russians arrive!

After this chapter was uploaded, the book had more than 1.5 million words. The author wrote a book for the first time, it is not easy to get to this point, Xie Lu thanks all the book friends for their support and encouragement, the author will continue to work hard~~~

Thank you for the reward of the Sword of Heaven and the monthly pass support of the book friend Book Sea Prowler and lx731209~~ (To be continued.) )