Zhou Changfeng smiled dumbly, and said: "It's useless to learn to land, the north and south seas are not in your hands, even if you are well prepared, it is useless to have no sea control." ”

"Hey, don't think like that." Zhang Xi just waved his hand when he heard this, and replied calmly: "At this time, we should be shrewd, according to the businessman's thinking, we will give people what they want, and don't care what they do!" ”

An air force brigadier general who had come to the military department to do business passed by, and he interjected with great interest: "Moreover, everything is foreseen, and everything is not foreseen, and it is wasted, perhaps the Germans are making long-term plans, or they may want to make a big gamble and force their way across the English Channel." ”

Both the North Sea and the Mediterranean were under the control of the anti-German alliance, with the British Royal Navy in the north and the Italian Royal Navy in the south.

The Anti-German Alliance, a term that has only recently become known to the world, was founded two months ago.

On September 22 last year, Britain, France (Third Republic), and Italy signed the "Britain-France-Italy Mediterranean Agreement," forming the rudiments of a military alliance.

On July 15 of this year, the diplomatic attachés of the three countries gathered in the North African port city of Tunisia to sign a new military alliance treaty aimed at working together against the feared German Society and the countries on the same front.

That's it, in one, two, three...... Today, more than 100 years after the establishment of the seven anti-French alliances, the European countries have to join hands to resist the enemy, but this time the protagonist has become the German Society.

Zhou Changfeng was puzzled at first, why did he deliberately indicate that he was targeting the German Society? This is not the case with military alliances at the same time in history.

He speculated that this might be because the United States has not yet been involved.

From a strategic point of view, the semi-encirclement of Britain in the northwest, Portugal in the southwest, and Italy in the southeast seems to have clamped down on the German Society.

The Germans, however, did not appear to be in a hurry, but had the intention of opening their bows left and right - to launch an offensive against Italy while continuing to attack Portugal.

"At present, this encirclement and suppression frame is quite scary, (the Germans) are planning to take the initiative so early?" Someone said.

Zhang Xi smiled and said disdainfully: "People are strong and strong, have a large population, and have abundant national strength, as long as they fight steadily, it can be said that it is easy to break the situation." ”

Zhou Changfeng's eyes were sharp, staring at the Apennine Peninsula on the map of Europe, "The German side now has a completely legitimate reason, and the battle preparations have been done for several months, and it should be started." ”

"Once the war starts, the Po River defense line will not last more than half a month." The air force brigadier general said in an unmistakable tone.

"Indeed."

"The main axis of attack on the western front is directly facing Milan, and on the eastern front is Venice, and the aircraft and artillery are opening the way, and the Italian army is expected to retreat south of the Po River in eight to ten days."

When it comes to specific campaign tactics, the level of the officials of the military department is naturally not comparable to that of the Dadu Governor's Mansion, and what you say now can only be regarded as casual chatter.

It was already a foregone conclusion that the German Society was going to use a knife against Italy, and everyone believed that Italy, which was in a state of war, was the weakest link in the anti-German alliance.

For the Italian elite, there is nothing more frightening than now.

Italy's economic and industrial essence is concentrated in the Milan Plain in the north, and the long Po River flows from west to east, with Turin, Milan, Venice and other large cities in this line.

Can this vast southern Europe's only plain withstand the raging red tide?

It can be seen from the layout of the Florentine line along the Apennines that the Italians themselves did not have confidence.

The dilemma made the Italians very helpless - to hold, not to hold; If you don't, you will lose most of your industry and taxes.

From the deployment of the Italian army, it can be seen that they are in a dilemma.

The main force responsible for defending the northern industrial zone was the Po River Army (3rd Army), which had 16 infantry divisions and 5 armored divisions, with a total strength of 310,000 troops.

The Venetian Army (2nd Army), which was responsible for defending the narrow corridor area in the northeast, had 13 infantry divisions and 1 armored division, with a total strength of 200,000 men.

The Venetian Army Group was originally planned to be the main force for the invasion of Yugoslavia, but the Italian upper echelons were slow to make up their minds – and Commander Benito feared that this would prompt Yugoslavia to turn to the German Society.

Rao is many generals and politicians have a pessimistic attitude, but it is unreasonable in public opinion to flee without a fight and abandon the Milan Plain, so the Italian army still deployed a heavy army group, trying to hold on to resistance for a period of time by relying on the natural danger of the Po River and the fortified areas along the line.

If the Milan Plain were to be lost, the main Italian forces would retreat to the Apennines, relying on the strong Florentine lines to fend off the incoming Germans.

Here, the Italian army deployed the Florentine Army Group (4th Army), which had 12 infantry divisions and 5 mountain divisions, with a total strength of 260,000 men.

At the same time, in accordance with the terms of the previous Anglo-French-Italian Mediterranean Agreement, the government-in-exile of the French Third Republic also sent three colonial infantry divisions and one light cavalry division to assist in the defense, with a total strength of 50,000 troops.

Since the beginning of this year, the General Staff Office of the Metropolitan Government has organized many exercises, and the relatively optimistic result is that the Italian army will block the Po River defense line on the Milan Plain, delay the German and Hungarian armies for half a month, and then be able to retreat relatively completely and calmly.

Correspondingly, there were also relatively bad results, that is, the Italian army quickly lost air supremacy, the logistics hub and the headquarters at all levels were blown up by air raids, and the Po River Army and the Venetian Army suffered heavy losses, lost their armor, and were completely annihilated by hundreds of thousands of people.

After finishing the small talk, Zhou Changfeng casually flipped through the technical projects summarized by the Ministry of War and had needs.

Basically, there are things such as high-precision stamping process, large-thickness armor plate welding, high-power magnetron, hydraulic torque converter, etc., which belong to the technology that Daming's industrial sector is lacking or insufficient.

The shortcomings of late-developing industrial countries are easy to ignore in many respects, and although most of the things can be produced in-house, the efficiency and quality are not good.

For example, the lightweight and easy-to-use, designed and finalized PK/PKM general-purpose machine gun in the sixties, the imitation of the original plane is the Type 80 general-purpose machine gun, but the integrated stamping process used by PKM was difficult for China to achieve at that time, so it could only be temporarily changed to the traditional riveting process when it was localized in the eighties.

Now the situation faced by Daming is similar - it has been solved, and the next step is to solve the problem of good or bad.

According to the plan, the foreign mission and the military inspection mission will depart at the end of the month, and there is still plenty of time left.

Zhou Changfeng calculated the days and decided to finalize the matter of the large-scale training center mentioned earlier before leaving.

"Where did you pick a position?" He asked.

Zhang Xi groaned: "Qiongya, or Xinhui County, there is no better." ”

Xinhui County is about the vicinity of Xinhui District, Jiangmen City, which is later known as Jiangmen City, with mountains and forests.

The location of the training center should meet two requirements: first, it should be suitable for the environment of overseas warfare, and second, it should be close to a port to facilitate the loading and shipment of troops.

Combined with his own experience, Zhou Changfeng said without thinking: "Xinhui is definitely not as good as Qiongya, there are many jungles on Qiongya Island, the natural environment is more appropriate, and it is relatively independent, not worried about disturbing the people, it is convenient for large-scale drills, and the traffic can go to Sanya or Qiongzhou." ”

"That's what the Army feels, too." Zhang Xi nodded, "I guess I will send someone over to select the site in two days." ”

"Are there troops there now?"

"Uh... In addition to the garrison, there were also the 107th Division and the 108th Division. ”

"Okay, I'll go myself."

Zhou Changfeng Mao then recommended himself to preside over the construction of the training ground, naturally no one objected, although this matter is not hard, but it is not beneficial, there is no merit and no benefit, whoever wants to go will go.

For the specific subjects of the training center, Zhou Changfeng can be said to be particularly concerned, and he has long been displeased with the establishment and training of the Ming Army.

On 9 September, he flew to the Sanya Naval Base aboard a Type 36B twin-engine torpedo bomber.

The southern part of Hainan Island has a complex topography, with hundreds of mountains and low mountains, and numerous rivers, which belongs to the tropical oceanic climate, which is quite suitable for the needs of actual combat.

After arriving at the naval base, Zhou Changfeng took a short rest and set off again, taking a slow biplane primary trainer plane around the sky, marking a triangular area for use as a training ground.

The total area of this area is nearly 20,000 hectares, which is equivalent to one-fifth of the later Shanghai city.

The garrison of the troops is north of Sanya, and the military department officially named it the Qiongya Joint Training Battalion, and the highest commander is the Admiral, whose full name is "Admiral/Qiongya/Military Training Affairs/Chief Military Officer".

The engineering units of the naval base and the engineer battalions of the two local infantry divisions immediately organized the construction, and the insufficient building materials were ordered from local enterprises in Guangzhou.

However, the appropriation of the Ministry of War was withheld and searched, so that when a large number of building materials were shipped from Guangzhou, the final payment of tens of thousands of yuan was still not settled, and the three building materials companies sent a reminder telegram a day, which made Zhou Changfeng extremely speechless.

In the past few days, the Military System Bureau of the Ministry of War has finally completed the revision of the establishment of infantry divisions and officially issued an order that all units with the conditions should immediately accept the reorganization.

The biggest change in the establishment of the 40-year-old infantry division (southern) compared with the 36-year infantry division (southern) is the addition of heavy artillery units, and the independent field heavy artillery brigade that once considered itself smart has been officially incorporated into the infantry division sequence, rather than being attached to the battle.

One of the changes: the divisional mountain artillery regiment was originally a mountain artillery battalion (12 112mm howitzers) and two light mountain artillery battalions (2×12 80mm howitzers), and now a heavy mountain artillery battalion (12 144mm howitzers) is added.

Change 2: The infantry regiment added a heavy mountain artillery detachment, under the jurisdiction of 2 Type 19 144mm howitzers, 2 tracked tractors, 3 trucks, a total of 52 officers and men.

Change 3: The infantry battalion's anti-gun platoon was reorganized into a recoilless gun platoon, replacing six 14.4mm anti-aircraft guns with four 80mm recoilless guns. War defense guns are not recycled, and each unit retains them according to the situation.

Change 4: The number of infantry squads remains the same, the grouping remains the same, it is still a seven-man rifle group and a four-man machine gun group, and the rifle team originally had two people using automatic guns (Type 20 automatic guns or Type 39 submachine guns), but now it has increased to three people.

The other changes were expected by Zhou, but the operation of sending large-caliber howitzers to the infantry regiment surprised him.

It's so rebellious! It's just nonsense, and the regimental troops cannot guarantee the use of such divisional artillery.

But he soon realized that his imagination was still a little lacking - the Ming Army purely planned to give it to the infantry regiment for direct shooting, smashing more than 80 catties of shells and 14 catties of explosives into the enemy's face, and did not even think about intermittent shooting.

This...... Suspected to be too extreme.

The 19 type heavy mountain gun is actually a domestic model of Schneider Mle-7917 howitzer, this kind of artillery was originally designed by Schneider for the Russian army, but because of its excellent performance, it was also adopted by the French army, and then the Ming army, the American army, the Italian army, the Western army, and the Finnish army also thought it was excellent, and they coincidentally imitated it.

The total combat weight of this artillery is only 3250kg, the weight of the shell is 43.5kg, and the barrel is only 15 times the diameter but can hit a range of 11.3km - the shortest barrel diameter of the same kind of artillery to achieve the longest range at that time, which is quite amazing.

That's why so many great powers adopted it, and after the outbreak of the Great War, the U.S. military restarted production lines to continue mass production.

In the few days when he was waiting for the construction of the battalion, Zhou Changfeng was not idle, and he drafted a charter for actual combat training that tens of thousands of officers and soldiers had condensed with the essence of blood since the beginning of the war.

In order to improve efficiency and deepen the impression, process-based military education films have also been adopted, which is a more intuitive and vivid way that is very conducive to recruits learning technical and tactical knowledge.

The 107th Infantry Division and the 108th Infantry Division became the experimental subjects of this set of intensive training.

The two infantry divisions had only been formed for a few months, and were originally planned to be deployed to Moresby to capture New Caledonia, but this plan was shelved, and the two divisions were temporarily stranded in Qiongya.

Zhou Changfeng decided to test the level of the two, so he ordered to organize a small-scale exercise, and the scene turned out to be a mess!

The regimental personnel were rather slow to make plans and were quite rigid......

The camouflage of the artillery positions is very sloppy, and at first glance it is that it has not been bombed......

When the communication unit was arranging telephone lines, there was an accident, and the off-road vehicle fell into a small stream in the mountains, killing two people and injuring two......

The movement of the infantry detachment from the offensive starting position to the assault starting position was very procrastinating, sometimes crowded and sometimes loose......

The mortar reacted slowly, and the results of the shelling were almost unsatisfactory......

The supply points set up by the logistics units were similarly very sloppy and lacked ammunition types, and the soldiers who went to collect the ammunition found that the supply points did not have mortar smoke bombs, so they had to go further to the rear......

Zhou Changfeng really couldn't hold back, shook his hand and slammed the telescope to the ground.

"Holy! That's all it takes for two months of practice? What the fuck are you guys fucking on? It's just a dull tactic, and if you don't go into battle and fight two battles, you won't learn to adapt, but you can't do well in regular subjects, so you can only say that you don't do it seriously at all! Don't even have a face! ”

Both divisions are half a pound and eight taels, and the same is unsightly.

The training level of the standing army of the Ming Army is good, but these wartime troops are really surprising - they are not as good as the forbidden army, which has always been nicknamed the watchdog of the capital.

Although the Third Mixed Brigade of the Praetorian Guards had not been in battle for a long time and had no actual combat experience, its basic technical and tactical skills were still relatively solid.

More than a dozen officers of the two divisions all felt humiliated, disgraced, and bowed their heads one by one in great shame.

Shen Xuesheng, the commander of the 108th Division, hesitated for two seconds and said loudly: "Please wait for the edict to give advice!" ”

(End of chapter)

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