Valley Emperor

Even if the Seventh Army on the army side can't win Malacca for a while, it will not be dangerous. What about the 19th Infantry Division and the 7th Artillery Brigade?

There are still two divisions ready to participate in the battle. These two divisions are also directly affiliated to the Seventh Army. They are the 35th Infantry Division and the 36th Infantry Division. These two infantry divisions are from the reserve. The troops reorganized in the division.

Because it is a reorganized army, its combat effectiveness is also limited. On weekdays, there are seven or eight thousand troops each. Although the Datang Empire decided to let the Seventh Army participate in the war very early, these two divisions also carried out the personnel replenishment two months in advance. And related training, but now that there are troops and equipment, but to restore the combat effectiveness of those retired soldiers who have returned to service, it is not enough to train for just one or two months, at least adaptive training is required.

And then, they have to wait for the capacity to be freed up!

For this Malacca campaign and the subsequent Indian Ocean campaign, the military not only dispatched warships, but also recruited a large number of merchant ships, but merchant ships could not be recruited indiscriminately.

Fighting Portugal, although it is a big event, is definitely not more important than maintaining the stability of domestic production and transportation.

So even if the military wanted to recruit all civilian ships, the cabinet would not agree, and Li Xuan could not agree, so the military could only recruit some of the civilian ships.

These conscripted ships, together with various military transport ships, need to transport a total of nearly 30,000 ground combat troops, as well as various supplies needed for these 30,000 people and a large number of sailors. .

In fact, in the joint landing fleet going south this time, the tonnage of the ships that transported supplies was more than the tonnage of the ships that transported personnel.

The military simply can't make more ships to transport the remaining two divisions. In fact, it doesn't need to. The Portuguese in Malacca plus the indigenous army, there are only 8,000 people in total.

The remaining two second-line infantry divisions of the Seventh Army are only used as reserves in the early stage. If the war in Malacca is not smooth, then the ships of the Joint Landing Fleet will be used to organize the second batch of transportation. If the war in Malacca goes well , and if the losses of the 19th Infantry Division and other units are not large, then the time for them to go south by boat will be further delayed.

According to the military's speculation, after the defeat of Malacca, the remaining troops of the troops going south will be enough for the follow-up battle, and there is no need to transport the second batch of reinforcements.

After all, to organize such a large cross-sea landing operation, what we need to do is not only to transport the combat personnel, but also to transport a large amount of combat materials needed to maintain the combat troops, which is difficult and costly.

If it is not necessary, the military will not invest too much troops in the Southeast Asia or India. It is too troublesome to maintain the supply line.

However, it is estimated that such a large-scale cross-sea landing operation will be the case in the near future. Because Malacca is a special place, the Portuguese attach great importance to it, and have organized a total of 8,000 troops to defend, and Malacca itself is a Bastion fortress.

However, apart from Malacca, the other Portuguese strongholds in the Southeast Asian region are basically small strongholds, no less than a hundred people, no more than three or five hundred people, and the number of Portuguese strongholds in India is not too many. .

If the Portuguese built every colonial stronghold as strong as Malacca, they would not have so many troops and no such strong national strength.

There are nearly 30,000 ground combat troops fighting in the south, which is already sufficient.

No matter how much more troops are wasted, the military is also unbearable.

However, as a precautionary measure, the Army still reorganized and mobilized the 35th Infantry Division and the 36th Infantry Division of the Seventh Army, and conducted relevant adaptive training. In addition to daily operations, they also practiced cross-sea landing operations. Wait, this is all just in case.

Whether or not this reserve force can be used in the future is another matter.

On the huge combined landing fleet, Lieutenant General Ding Chenzhen, commander of the Army's Seventh Army, was standing on the bow deck of the flagship Dinghai of the Army's First Maritime Transport Division.

However, his eyes were on the front of the huge fleet!

At the forefront of the combined landing fleet, there is an incomparably huge warship, which is now braving thick smoke, and all the sails are raised.

That is the Navy's Liaoxi battleship, a behemoth with a standard tonnage of 1,580 tons. Its tonnage is even larger than that of the Jiangnan steam battleship. A huge pure sail battleship.

It is a pity that the ship was out of date when it was still undergoing the final outfitting on the slipway, because it was the nineteenth year of Xuanping at that time. Tested and soon shipped.

The outfitting of the ship at that time was already in the final stage, and it was not long before it was officially launched into service and became the new flagship of the Second Fleet.

After serving, apart from daily training, he never even went on an ocean voyage, and most of the time he stayed in the port, because the internal structure of the ship used a lot of steel structures. There were some small problems with these steel structures, so that even The sea trials in the pre-service period have not yet been completed, and they have hurriedly returned to the shipyard of the shipyard again!

Therefore, after only three months of service, even the sea trials were not completed, and the combat effectiveness had not yet been formed, the ship returned to the dock of the Qingdao Naval Shipyard to repair part of the steel structure in the hull.

At the same time, it also took this opportunity to refit the steam engine. After all, the navy had already decided to refit the existing sail capital ship by steam, but the fate of the ship was really bumpy.

After a few months of refitting, the steam engine on the ship suffered a major accident during the first steam-powered trial.

A high-pressure steam leakage accident occurred in the steam engine. After the high-pressure and high-pressure steam leaked out, it instantly killed more than ten officers and soldiers in the engine room at that time.

There were two problems, which also led to the implication of a large number of people within the Navy, the Qingdao Naval Shipyard and the Naval Steam Plant. After all, this was the largest sailing battleship built in the history of the Tang Dynasty. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For this reason, a Commodore in charge of the ship's oversight was ordered to retire from active service and became the direct person in charge of these two accidents, or a scapegoat!

In the end, the Liaoxi returned to the slipway for maintenance. During the maintenance process, it was found that the steam engine installed before was not installed properly during the installation process. The shaking directly leads to deformation, rupture of steam pipes and a series of other serious accidents.

In the end, it was determined that many parts of the steam engine were seriously deformed and damaged, and it is better to reinstall a new one.

Therefore, the Liaoxi can only continue to lie on the slipway, and it has undergone several months of refit. In order to avoid another problem, the naval technicians were very conservative. A three-cylinder steam engine that is too stable, continue to use a two-cylinder steam engine.

After the final modification and sea trials, it was not until the beginning of this year that the combat effectiveness was re-formed!

At this time, it has been six years since the ship officially started construction, and three years have passed since the ship was completed and launched!

The ship has spent most of the past six years on the slipway!

The fateful Liaoxi, after being re-commissioned, was once again incorporated into the Second Fleet, but this time it was no longer the flagship of the Second Fleet, because the title of the flagship of the Second Fleet had been taken away by Jiangnan. .

When the Datang Empire was scheduled to fight against Malacca, the ship, as one of the first-class main ships of the navy, was naturally incorporated into the battle sequence, but it was not incorporated into the Indian Ocean Fleet, but was incorporated into the United The landing fleet became the flagship of the combined landing fleet and performed **** missions.

In addition to the Liaoxi, there is another sail battleship that was incorporated into the Joint Landing Fleet to perform **** missions, and it is also a powerful Shanxi, whose tonnage and firepower are second only to the Liaoxi in the Datang Navy.

The reason why the Navy put the two main battleships with the largest tonnage and the strongest firepower into the Joint Landing Fleet for **** is because the Joint Landing Fleet is carrying nearly 30,000 ground combat troops and countless supplies.

Its importance is indisputable.

Of course, this is also because the two battleships, although large in tonnage and strong in firepower, have average power, and a relatively conservative steam engine modification scheme was adopted during the modification, so that the steam power on these two battleships is not very strong. , at most, it can only be used as auxiliary power, and it is difficult to rely solely on steam engines for combat.

However, the other nine battleships in the Indian Ocean Fleet are all relatively powerful and fast battleships. Most of them are equipped with three-cylinder steam engines~www.wuxiaspot.com~, and have the ability to independently sail and fight by relying on the power of steam engines.

Therefore, after the navy made some trade-offs, it was to incorporate these two big fools into the joint landing fleet and let them **** them.

In addition to these two battleships, the Joint Landing Fleet also had three cruisers and nine frigates escorting them, and the ships they escorted all added up to more than sixty ships.

This is also a huge fleet that is not inferior to the Indian Ocean fleet!

Of course, the maritime combat effectiveness of the two cannot be compared!

Although the Portuguese in Malacca did not know that there was a huge landing fleet coming from behind, they saw the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Datang Navy!

It is even more known that the two countries have entered a state of war!

What is even more interesting is that even if the Portuguese in Malacca knew that the two countries had entered a state of war, but the Portuguese diplomats who were expelled and returned to Malacca from Shanghai were still floating on the sea at this time!