Great Warlord: The Second Ancestor of the Empire

In April 1931, the Second Combined Fleet of the Daxia Empire received an order from the Imperial Military Headquarters, requiring them to assemble in Monkal City on Yizhou Island and begin preparations for a visit to Sakura Country.

As mentioned before, since Lin Yi came to power in Daxia and took charge of the Imperial Military Headquarters, the original Longxiang Army and Yinglong Fleet merged with the troops directly under the Military Headquarters.

The Longxiang Army was merged into the Imperial Army's battle order, while the Yinglong Fleet merged with the original Imperial Navy to form a combined fleet.

The combined fleet was also divided into three.

Among them, the First Combined Fleet defense area is from Penglai Military Port to the northernmost tip of the empire, including the defense of the Bohai Bay, Koryo Peninsula and Sakhalin Island.

The defense area of ​​the Second Combined Fleet also extends from Penglai Port to the Imperial South China Sea, including Yizhou Island and Qiongzhou Island.

The Third Combined Fleet is the fleet with the previous Yinglong Fleet as its main force.

Their defense area is the vast Imperial South China Sea from Qiongzhou Island to the south, including the Java Islands and Malacca City.

This means that the fleet closest to Sakura Country is actually the First Fleet.

And why did Lin Yi ask the Second Fleet to visit Sakura Country instead of the First Fleet?

You can think about the reason for this yourself.

At the same time, Lin Yi asked Ding Yi to transfer an air division to Busan City on the Korean Peninsula.

The First Combined Fleet retreated to Penglai and Jeju Island on the Koryo Peninsula.

Of course, all these transfers were hidden from Sakura Country.

It is also worth mentioning that the Second Combined Fleet preparing to visit does not include the two aircraft carriers belonging to the Second Combined Fleet.

On April 1931, 4, the Second Combined Fleet of the Daxia Empire set off from Monkal City and headed towards Kyoto Bay in the Sakura Kingdom.

After a day and night of sailing, the Second Combined Fleet approached the territorial waters of Sakura Country.

When they just approached the territorial waters, they discovered a Sakura Kingdom heavy cruiser, the Atago heavy cruiser.

At this time, in the command room of the Ming Taizong, the temporary flagship of the Second Combined Fleet, the Ming-class battleship, the commander-in-chief of the Second Combined Fleet, Liu Yuxi, was holding a telescope and looking at the Atago, which was five nautical miles away from him.

The first mate Zhu Shaotong on the side began to introduce information about the Atago to Liu Yuxi.

"Sir, the Atago was designed and built by the Pennsylvania Shipyard in Millikin."

"The ship was started in 1925, launched in 1927, and delivered to Sakura Country in 1928."

"After that, this kind of battleship became one of the main battleships of Sakura Kingdom."

"The Sakura Kingdom named this kind of warship the Atago class, and this Atago was the first to be delivered to the Sakura Kingdom."

"The Atago class has a full load displacement of 1.34 tons, a draft of 6.32 meters, a total length of 203 meters, and a cruising speed of 18 knots."

"In terms of weapons, there are five twin-mounted 50mm main guns with a caliber of 203 times. It adopts a layout of three in the front and two in the back."

"There is also a 45mm secondary gun with a diameter of 120 times. This secondary gun can attack ships and can also be used for air defense."

"It's just that there are relatively few secondary guns of this kind, only 4, mainly distributed in the middle of the battleship."

"The rest are just some machine guns and anti-aircraft machine guns. Don't pay too much attention to those."

Zhu Shaotong told Liu Yuxi all the information he knew.

Liu Yuxi nodded when he heard Zhu Shaotong's words.

"This Atago-class looks pretty good, a little bit cool."

Liu Yuxi said with a smile.

When Zhu Shaotong heard Liu Yuxi's words, he curled his lips and said nothing, but he didn't think so in his heart.

In his opinion, both Millijan's warships and the warships designed and built by Sakura Kingdom were so unworthy.

Not to mention that Daxia now has a complete attack mode that uses aircraft carriers as the main firepower output, even if it only relies on battleships and cruisers to fight.

Their Second Combined Fleet is also confident that it can sink all the warships of Sakura Kingdom head-on.

After all, in Zhu Shaotong's opinion, the 203-caliber main gun was a little less interesting.

For the "Ming-class" battleship now under their feet, it can be regarded as a comprehensively upgraded version of the "Tang-class" battleship.

Although the Ming-class battleship uses the same 460-caliber main gun as the Tang-class battleship, its caliber has changed from the original 45 times the caliber to the current 55 times the caliber.

Generally speaking, the longer the diameter, the better the artillery's range and armor-piercing ability.

But there is a problem, that is, the longer the diameter, it will also cause problems for the balance of the battleship.

In short, because the diameter is too long, it is easy to cause the warship to roll over when firing.

Therefore, the barrel length of a naval gun needs to be measured very precisely before a reasonable length can be given.

Logically speaking, the 460 mm caliber and 45 times the caliber have reached the limit.

But I don’t know how Daxia’s engineers designed it. They actually increased the caliber of the main gun to 55 times.

This results in the maximum distance of the Ming-class battleship's main gun reaching a distance of meters when firing at a 45-degree angle.

It is more than 2 meters longer than the main gun of the Tang-class battleship.

Of course, this extra range is not of much use in actual naval battles.

After all, at more than 6 meters, you can't even see the other party on the sea, let alone the problem of aiming.

Firing at that distance is a waste of shells.

But when providing fire support on land, this ultra-long-distance support can provide good support to the army preparing to land on the beach.

After all, in the current world, there is no fortification that can block the repeated attacks of four triple-mounted 460 main naval guns.

In addition, the internal structure of the Ming-class battleship is also different from that of the Tang-class battleship.

The independently partitioned confined space allows the Ming class to isolate the ship from water by sealing the bombardment compartment even if it is hit by a torpedo.

This can ensure the survivability of first-class battleships.

It is also worth mentioning that the Ming-class battleship was originally designed to escort aircraft carriers, so the designers made some changes in the secondary guns.

The designers canceled the original 155-caliber single-shot secondary gun and instead used a 100-mm quadruple-shot gun.

This kind of artillery uses a bomb platoon to feed ammunition. A bomb platoon contains four rounds and uses an open hopper.

This means that as long as the logistics loaders can keep up and keep stuffing platoons of bombs into the bucket, then this quadruple 100mm secondary gun can keep firing.

What is even more exaggerated is that the pitch angle of this quadruple artillery is between -10 degrees and 75 degrees.

This means that this quadruple secondary battery can be placed flat to attack enemy ships, or it can be used for air defense.

There are a total of 10 such quadruple artillery pieces on the Ming-class battleship.

Just imagine, when a group of planes flew over and prepared to bomb the Ming-class battleship, they found that the secondary guns on the Ming-class battleship kept making clanging sounds.

The entire sky is filled with dense shrapnel. What kind of scene would it be like?

Or, when a Ming-class battleship is engaged in a close-range fight with an enemy ship, what kind of scene will it look like if this kind of secondary gun is laid flat and attacks the enemy ship's deck?

It is estimated that after being plowed by him, only stumps and broken arms would be left on the opponent's deck.