Valley Emperor

It's not because the Tang Navy's ambitions, or arrogance and ignorance, don't want to wait until more warships are launched into service before taking action, but it's time to wait for me!

Nowadays, fleets of Ming army navy and Folang fighters will appear in the Pearl River Estuary after a short period of time. Folang fighters are fine, and they will not embarrass those ordinary merchant ships, but the Ming army navy is caught. One kills one, um, although sometimes the Ming army navy may not be able to beat those large-scale pirate gangs!

But this is a great threat to many small and medium-sized maritime merchants/pirates!

Forcing many small and medium-sized maritime merchants to dare not come to Guangzhou, but instead go to Lianzhou. Although Lianzhou has received this opportunity to develop and grow, the role of Guangzhou is still irreplaceable, so Li Xuan hopes The navy was able to clear the Ming army navy at the Pearl River Estuary as soon as possible.

I dare not say that the safety of the coastal areas of Guangdong is completely guaranteed, but the Pearl River Estuary should always be safe, so that the merchant ships can enter and leave the Pearl River Estuary smoothly. As for the merchant ships, they are basically safe in the open sea. It is a typical offshore mariner, but he has no ocean-going combat capability. If they dare to catch up, these mariners will become pirates in minutes and teach them how to behave.

Therefore, the task of the Datang Navy is still quite heavy!

They also want to wait until more ships are launched into service before taking action. However, it will take more than half a year for the second batch of warships to serve, which is too long!

Last year, the Datang Navy did not think about building a dozen or 20 warships at one time, but this was wishful thinking.

It's not that the navy has no money. Even these hundreds of tons of warships are very expensive. A third-class frigate, with its hull and artillery, costs 70,000 taels.

Why is the price so expensive? This is because warships need to be equipped with a large number of artillery pieces, and in order to enhance the protection capability, the wood used for the hull is very thick. , have never appeared before, everything needs to be explored from scratch, it is too difficult to build, and it requires more labor costs.

Then the shipyard still needs to recover the cost of building the shipyard as well as the research and development and design costs on these warships, so in combination, it leads to this kind of professional warships, and the price is quite expensive.

And this is just the internal price given by the Datang Ministry of Industry's own shipyard. It is not a profit, but a pure cost!

A third-class frigate costs 70,000 taels, and a third-class cruiser is more expensive, reaching 110,000 taels. That is to say, the cost per ton of such a professional warship is almost 200 taels per ton. about.

The cost of contemporary ordinary ships is only about one hundred taels per ton, which is still a medium and large merchant ship with a size of hundreds of tons that can sail far away.

As for small tonnage warships, the price of small ships that only sail in inland rivers and offshore waters is even lower. For example, the inland river gunboats used as the main force in the inland river fleet of the Datang Navy have a tonnage of about 100 tons. However, their shipbuilding is not enough. More than 6,000 taels of silver, much cheaper than a sea-going ship, only more than 60 taels of silver per ton.

And a small civilian vessel of dozens of tons that can only navigate inland rivers and offshore waters is even cheaper. If it is extreme, in fact, a few hundred taels are enough!

The price of warships is incomparable with ordinary merchant ships, and the price of large warships is more than that of small warships, and the price per ton has also increased exponentially.

This is like the cost of a destroyer of less than 10,000 tons in the future can reach several billion US dollars, but an ordinary freighter of 10,000 tons can support four or five million US dollars.

However, although the warships are expensive, the current Datang Navy is not a lack of money. Not only does it have conventional military expenses, Li Xuan has also twice drawn from the internal library to them a total of 800,000 taels of silver for the expansion of the fleet. .

Therefore, the Navy is still not short of this money!

However, this battleship cannot be built with money!

First of all, these warships have high requirements on the quality of wood, and it is impossible for the Tang Dynasty to directly cut wood for construction, but to purchase finished wood that has been dried in advance for construction.

If there is a shortage of raw materials, you can get it at a high price, but there is nothing the shipyard can do!

These hundreds of tons of ships can only be built by corresponding large-tonnage dry docks. Although the three large shipyards of the Ministry of Industry of the Tang Dynasty are expanding all the time, after all, the time is too short, and the large docks are too large. Time consuming and slow expansion.

And there are a few private shipyards in Guangzhou, but their docks are not large, only one or two hundred tons, and they are basically not free. Most of them are used to refit armed merchant ships or build some inland rivers. There are small and medium-sized warships in the offshore waters, and at the same time the sea trade is prosperous, and they are also building a large number of various types of civilian ships.

As a result, there are not enough docks for building large warships, and even if there are enough docks, there are not enough workers to build them.

The workers in the shipyard are not Chinese cabbage, and they can pick up a lot of them!

The limitation of various factors has also led to the fact that although the Datang Dynasty is already at full power, the speed of shipbuilding is still not fast. Even if it really knows so many ships, in fact, the Datang Navy is not like this. Multiple hands to start!

The century-old navy, these words did not come out of thin air!

However, if there are fewer warships, it is impossible not to fight!

To this end, the Datang Navy has already started to formulate relevant combat plans within the Naval Command. The core goal is to completely control the coast of the Pearl River Estuary. The specific tactical goal is to completely expel the Ming army navy entrenched near the Pearl River Estuary. The second goal is to get a vote for the Flange and force them to withdraw from the blockade fleet.

The Naval Command quickly submitted the exact strategic plan to Li Xuan, and Li Xuan approved it after reading the plan.

Although this plan looks quite responsible on the surface, all the ocean-going warships of the First Fleet and the Second Fleet will be used before and after, and many small ships of the Inland Fleet will also assist in participating in the war, and even the army needs to cooperate.

But the actual tactical core is very simple, that is to use a third-class cruiser and two third-class frigates that have been in service and will be in service in the next two months as the core, let them go out to sea and continuously kill the enemy. Small fleet.

Although the number of these three warships is a little less, each of them is of extraordinary combat power. A small fleet of three warships, even if it encounters seven or eight enemy ships or even a large fleet of more than ten ships, there is no need to be afraid. If the tactics If done properly, they can even pull their teeth out.

The other dozen or more armed merchant ships of more than 200 tons were used as auxiliary forces to cooperate with these three warships.

At the same time, the small boats of the inland fleet will also take advantage of the number to carry out auxiliary operations in the offshore waters!

Although the plan is huge, in Li Xuan's view, the core of this plan is actually the harassment and attack tactics!

Utilize the high speed and high mobility of the three warships to attack frequently, and continue to bleed the enemy!

After obtaining Li Xuan's approval, the navy began to prepare for this. In order to plan such a huge battle, the navy still needs to do a lot of work. The most important thing is to continue to test the Wuzhou. Based on the actual test, the relevant tactics and training manuals were compiled. After all, the Datang Navy had never played this kind of professional warship before.

At the same time, it is also necessary to train officers and soldiers to train enough qualified sailors for the subsequent two warships!

For a time, the newly commissioned Wuzhou was frequently going to sea!

At the same time, other ships and officers and soldiers of the navy are also busy. They have to survey the hydrology, they have to prepare ammunition, they have to practice artillery and various tactics.

Anyway, they have a lot to do!

The navy was sitting and preparing for their strategic plan, and the army was not idle either. They supplemented and reorganized the troops to take advantage of the rainy seasons in April, May and even June.

The core of which is of course the continuous adaptation of the existing five temporary groups, and the expansion of these temporary groups into mixed groups~www.wuxiaspot.com~ Among them, the first temporary group to be adapted, the fourth group, has been completed first. It was adapted and given a brand new designation, called the Fourth Mixed Group.

According to the reorganization plan, the third group, the fourth group, and the fifth group were temporarily edited, and they were directly renamed the third mixed group, the fourth mixed group, and the fifth mixed group.

The provisional first regiment and the provisional second regiment were renamed the sixth mixed regiment and the seventh mixed regiment.

After this adaptation, the Army will only be left with three types of establishments: infantry divisions, mixed regiments, and supplementary brigades. Their uses are also different. The infantry divisions are the main force, responsible for large corps operations, while mixed regiments are Responsible for independent operations on secondary fronts, supplementary brigade is responsible for recruit training, troop replenishment, and rear supply line **** tasks

In addition to reorganizing the temporary regiment into a mixed regiment, the Army also began to try to expand the infantry division, mainly to increase the number of muskets and artillery, and at the same time began to replace the heavy armored infantry with plate armor.

However, due to the limited production of ordnance, currently only the 1st Infantry Division and the 5th Infantry Division, two units with heavy front-line tasks, have accepted the initial expansion, and the adaptation is not complete. expanded.

When the army and navy were busy preparing for the war, and the war was coming to an end, and the Ministry of Industry, Taxation, Commerce and other affairs were on the right track, Li Xuan also slowed down the pace of work.

After being a workaholic for a few months, Li Xuan also felt a little tired. When he saw the memorial recently, he was a little upset. If he hadn't known the seriousness of the matter, he would have thrown it all over to the ministers in the imperial study. .

It is impossible to give up government, but it is possible to slow down the pace of work.

However, Li Xuan's slowing down of the work rhythm directly caused changes in the court, and even caused a lot of trouble for this!