I want to be emperor

Chapter 720 An Unprecedented Steam Fleet

In the spring and February of the 26th year of Chengshun, Hong Kong Island, the southernmost point of Xin'an County, Guangzhou Prefecture of the Great Chu Empire, had the largest naval base of the Great Chu Empire.

In the early years, it served as the main base and headquarters of the Nanyang Fleet. Later, the Nanyang Fleet gradually moved south. The headquarters was established in Singapore Port, and Singapore Port, Cam Ranh Bay and other places were used as the main bases.

However, this did not affect the strategic position of the Hong Kong Naval Base, because it is still the largest naval base in the Great Chu Empire, and a large number of various warships are moored all year round.

Apart from other things, the number of battleships that are moored and maintained here is maintained at more than [-] all year round.

After all, this is the mainland coast of the Great Chu Empire. There are a few ports with very good natural conditions, and this is a purely military port. Unlike Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Wusong and other ports, there are a large number of civilian ports around. There is still some impact on tasks such as daily training.

This spring, the number of various warships in the Hong Kong Naval Base has increased, not only more warships, but also a large number of transport ships.

This is because the Great Chu Empire has launched a war plan against the Indian peninsula, preparing to launch a large-scale offensive in the Indian region, in order to completely drive many European colonists out of the European peninsula.

In this way, not only can it monopolize the market of the Indian peninsula, but it can also further control and guarantee the cotton supply from the Indian peninsula.

It is worth mentioning that since the Great Chu Empire first imported cotton from the Indian Peninsula more than ten years ago, the amount of cotton imported from India to the Great Chu Empire has been increasing year by year. Up to now, imported cotton from India has accounted for a large The Chu Empire imported more than 80.00% of the cotton, and although the absolute amount of imported cotton was not as good as domestically produced cotton, it still accounted for a considerable proportion.

The 150mm front-loading rifled gun equipped on the cruiser Busan has a cylindrical howitzer with several times the charge of a spherical howitzer of the same caliber!
This is several times the difference in charge, and it also means several times the difference in explosive power!
In the live ammunition test, the explosive power of the cylindrical howitzer shell fired by the 150mm front-loading rifled gun was greater than that of the largest 250mm siege gun currently in service in the Great Chu Empire!

This battleship is a decisive battleship designed by the Naval Department of the Great Chu Empire for naval warfare in the new era, and it is used for decisive battles.

At this time, the cruiser Busan was moored at the berth of the naval base. With a huge tonnage of more than 2000 tons, coupled with the design and positioning of the cruiser, a larger aspect ratio was adopted in pursuit of speed, so that its hull length was not only longer than that of the next door. The several third-class battleships in the city are a lot longer, even longer than the first-class battleship Kunming at the berth next door!

When these big guys are sent out to India, it can also be seen that the navy attaches great importance to the Indian war.

So in recent years, this set of models has been copied in other regions one after another, such as in the central and eastern regions of Java Island, such as Borneo, Luzon Islands, and other places in the Nanyang Peninsula.

This huge charge advantage made the navy choose to put the semi-finished front-loading rifled gun on the battleship even when the rifled gun technology was immature and the service life was extremely low.

Because this time the Indian strategy can be promoted smoothly, a large part of the reason is that the top leaders of the Great Chu Empire want to directly control the cotton producing area of ​​​​the Indian Peninsula to ensure that the cotton supply is not lost.

This spring, we are preparing to increase our troops to over 5 in India one after another, some of which will be drawn from various places in Southeast Asia, and some of them will be drawn directly from the mainland.

At the same time, this battleship is also the battleship with the largest tonnage in active service in the Great Chu Empire. As for the larger Hantian-class battleship, the first ship, the Hantian, has not yet been completed.

To put it bluntly, it is still for money!
In addition to economic factors, another major reason for the implementation of India's strategy is military considerations. The Great Chu Empire has set its sights on the east coast of Africa and even South Africa.

What the Great Chu Empire wants is not to conquer the Indian peninsula now, but to control and monopolize the foreign trade of the Indian peninsula.

The role of the textile industry in modern industry is huge, and it plays a role similar to that of an industrial leader. Without the textile industry leading the way, a large number of machinery, chemical and other industries in the back have to be caught blind.

If you want to fight India, no... to be precise, you want to fight the colonies of the European colonists entrenched on the Indian peninsula!
This point must be made clear that the Great Chu Empire’s attack on India this time did not target the indigenous peoples on the Indian Peninsula, especially the Mughal Empire.

As for the fact that after the Great Chu Empire dumped a large amount of weapons and equipment on them, they fought on their own or something, this has nothing to do with the Great Chu Empire.

For the smooth implementation of India's strategy, the Great Chu Empire Navy dispatched all the advanced warships that were in charge of the family!

Therefore, more than 5 people are almost enough. As for more...there is no shortage of troops. The Great Chu Empire Army has a standing force of more than 180 million. The problem is that the logistics supply is not easy to solve.

The fleet also needs logistical supplies!

Regarding the handling of the Fusang area, the top leaders of the Great Chu Empire are still very satisfied. Since they have obtained a puppet country, they have also obtained a dumping place for industrial products, and these daimyos are still fighting every day, causing the weapons of the Great Chu Empire to The export business is very profitable.

As the largest industry in the Great Chu Empire, the cotton spinning industry had a huge impact.

And among this batch of warships, there is a very special cruiser. Not only is the tonnage of the ship larger, reaching [-] tons, but also because the artillery equipped on these two cruisers is rifled artillery.

Once the supply of imported cotton is affected, it is not only the cotton spinning industry that is affected, but also a large number of upstream and downstream industrial chains that rely on the cotton spinning industry.

It was the colonists of European countries entrenched on the east and west coasts of the Indian Peninsula, mainly the Dutch and the Portuguese, followed by the colonists of England, Denmark and other European countries.

In order to implement the Indian strategy, the Great Chu Empire specially established three task force fleets: the First Indian Task Force, the Second Indian Task Force, and the Third Indian Task Force.

After all, it makes no difference to the Great Chu Empire who is the native king.

After all, there are hundreds of millions of indigenous people on the Indian peninsula. It is unreliable to annex them directly. They can only play colonies and treat them as places for supplying industrial raw materials and dumping industrial goods.

The overall pace is similar to the original treatment of the Fuso area.

The lower the life of the barrel, the lower the barrel. At worst, you often go back to the port to change the barrel. If the battle is fierce and the rifling is polished, at worst, you can use it as a smoothbore gun...

In short, compared to the army's twitching and shunning of high-cost, immature rifled firearms, the navy's side is much more aggressive.

But if you want to completely turn the Indian Peninsula into an open market for the Great Chu Empire, those European colonists have to drive away first.

In recent years, many daimyos in Fusang are desperately trying to make money, and then find the Great Chu Empire to import weapons and equipment, and then launch wars against the surrounding hostile daimyos. After Gan fell to the ground, his main army was wiped out, and with the signing of a treaty that forfeited power and humiliated the country, he had already lost his strength, prestige and popular support.

The Busan cruiser was originally the fourth ship of the Fengzhou-class large cruiser of the latest generation of the Great Chu Empire Navy. Selected as a test ship, equipped with the first generation of front-loading rifled guns developed and manufactured by the Great Chu Empire.

The first-class battleship Suzhou moored at the opposite berth has a full-load displacement of 100 tons. It is equipped with a high-power steam unit, which can achieve a speed of seven knots under pure steam power. The cruising range of the steam engine has reached [-] nautical miles. Equipped with more than [-] large-caliber naval guns.

This has no qualifications, how can he be promoted!
The No.70 Second Division and the Guards temporarily organized the Second Mixed Regiment, with a total strength of over 2 troops. This was the first batch of reinforcements sent by the Great Chu Empire to India this time.

The front-loading rifled gun on the cruiser Busan is a semi-finished product, and its service life is less than a hundred rounds...

The first-class battleship Suzhou was only completed and put into service last winter. This time, it is going to India as the flagship of India's third task force. At the same time, this is also the first time it has performed a formal combat mission after completing a series of sea trials.

Because in addition to the army, there is actually a huge fleet!

Along with the No.70 Second Division, there were more than [-] people from the Second Mixed Regiment temporarily organized by the Guards.

As for the first-class battleship Kunming, it was a first-class battleship that only served in Chengshun for 19 years. Its full-load displacement reached more than 600 tons. Last year, it underwent a large-scale refit and installed a set of steam engines as auxiliary power.

The combination of many factors finally led to the decision of the top leaders of the Great Chu Empire to promote the Indian strategy.

In this way, with the reinforcement strength of more than 5 people, plus the original strength of more than 8000 troops of the Indian Expeditionary Force, it is basically enough.

In addition to these two units, the Army is also deploying about 3 troops from various parts of Southeast Asia, Myanmar and other regions to reinforce India.

At the same time, by directly controlling the cotton export in the Indian peninsula, it will also be able to bypass the Dutch, Portuguese and other European colonists who are second-hand traffickers, thereby reducing the cost of cotton imports and increasing their own profits.

After all, the strategic goal of the Great Chu Empire was only to expel those European colonists and seize their colonies. It did not mean to go deep into the hinterland of the Indian Peninsula and fight the local indigenous people, especially the Mughal Empire.

Today, Fusang is the largest arms exporter in the Great Chu Empire. The Fusang Arms Trading Company, jointly formed by the seven major arms companies, exports a large amount of weapons and equipment to many daimyos in the Fusang area every year.

Now the first batch of troops that are used as reinforcements for the Indian region are concentrated at the Hong Kong Naval Base, where they are preparing to take a transport ship to India.

In addition, I also want to test the performance of front-loading rifled guns in actual combat.

Because of the replacement of the front-mounted rifled gun, the cruiser Pusan ​​is very special in the Navy of the Great Chu Empire.

From smoothbore guns and matchlock guns, down to waist knives and spears and even military uniforms and tents and other messy military supplies.

However, in the previous several tests, the front-loaded rifled artillery showed excellent performance, which made the navy unable to put it down...

These three task forces all belong to the Indian Ocean Fleet and belong to a typical wartime combat mixed fleet.

In fact, in the past ten years, the relationship between the Great Chu Empire and the Mughal Empire was not bad. The Mughal Empire exported a large amount of cotton to the Great Chu Empire, and the Great Chu Empire also supplied them with a large amount of weapons and equipment , the scale of trade between the two sides is still quite large.

And these ships are either newly built sailing warships or sailing ships that have been equipped with steam engines.

This is also understandable. After all, for the navy, a battleship costs hundreds of thousands, so much money is spent, and it doesn't care about spending more money to switch to better naval guns.

At the beginning, the Great Chu Empire also killed the Dutch first and monopolized Fusang's foreign trade, then gradually infiltrated and controlled Fusang, and finally launched a large-scale war to completely turn Fusang into a puppet state and a dumping ground for industrial commodities.

It is already very difficult to maintain the ground force of more than 5 people and the supplies required by the huge fleet by sea transportation alone, and it will be really terrible if there are tens of thousands more.

For this reason, the military of the Great Chu Empire also made sufficient preparations.

In the future Indian peninsula, the Great Chu Empire is also planning to do the same.

The reinforcements from the mainland were No. 70 Second Division. This is a standing second-class division. It was originally stationed in Guangdong. It has certain experience in landing operations and is more suitable for tropical operations.

During foreign wars, the Guards sent troops of different sizes to form mixed troops to participate in the battle. This is also the tradition of the Great Chu Empire. At the same time, it is also to solve the problem of the qualifications of the soldiers of the Guards.

The First Task Force and the Second Task Force were composed of warships drawn from the previous Indian Ocean Fleet and the South Sea Fleet, while the Third Task Force was composed of warships drawn from the Northern Ocean Fleet of the Empire itself.

If you want to enter Africa, you will inevitably face the Dutch.

In addition, there is a huge advantage that outsiders often overlook, that is, the shells of rifled artillery can take a cylindrical shape, thereby obtaining more explosive charges than spherical shells.

Today, the large array of ready-to-go warships moored at the Hong Kong Naval Base is the warship belonging to the third Indian Task Force.

As for the front-mounted smoothbore gun, when shelling at sea, it will maintain a hit accuracy of two to 300 meters if it is dead.

Therefore, those European colonists are the enemies of the Great Chu Empire, and the natives on the Indian Peninsula are not.

The hit accuracy is higher, so it can accurately hit the enemy at a longer distance when fighting at sea. This is a huge advantage of rifled artillery over smoothbore artillery.

Just looking at the hull, the cruiser Busan feels bigger than the early first-class battleships, but it is relatively small compared with the new battleships that have been in service for the past two years.

As the arms merchants of the Great Chu Empire continued to enter these places, wars would often break out in these places.

Therefore, for the textile industry in the Great Chu Empire, and even for the entire industry, the supply of cotton from the Indian peninsula cannot be missed.

Of course, this is only temporary. When the Great Chu Empire has completely controlled the foreign trade of the Indian Peninsula, it will inevitably gradually increase the colonial area in the Indian Peninsula, and finally deal with the Indian Peninsula through various methods such as division and war. region for final conquest.

This time in the Indian strategy, the navy intends to use large-scale actual combat to test the application tactics of steam engine warships that it has been tossing for several years. At the same time, it also wants to know how big the sail power is against the pure sail power warships in actual combat. advantage, and how to make better use of this advantage.

You must know that there is actually no large-scale equipment base for front-loading rifled guns. In other words, the industrial strength is not enough, and the cost of the front-loaded rifled guns produced is too high and the service life is too low.

In this way, the Tokugawa shogunate, let alone controlling the situation, will not let the famous families under their hands fight back and forth. They are too busy to take care of themselves. They are licking their wounds and looking for weapons imported from the Great Chu Empire to form a new army. It's over.

At the same time, warships are not meant to fire frequently, only when they are performing large-scale combat missions, they will continue to fire when encountering enemy warships, and the enemy will not give you the opportunity to fire more than 100 times...

After all, this is the first battleship in the Great Chu Empire Navy to be equipped with front-loading rifled guns. Although it was only temporarily decided to refit midway, rather than being designed for front-loaded rifled guns from the beginning, the ship still has great significance.

In other words, these sixty warships are all sail warships, and they will form an unprecedented fleet of steam warships!

In order to prevent the sea lanes from being invaded by European colonial ships during the subsequent colonization of Africa, it is necessary for the Great Chu Empire to expel them first, and eliminate the threats on a series of routes in the Indian Ocean in advance.

Although it is only experimental equipment, once it performs well in actual combat, the navy may have to grit their teeth and replace it with front-loading rifled guns on a large scale.

According to the assumptions of many people in the Navy, although the barrel life of today's front-loading rifled guns is very poor, it is no problem to survive a high-intensity battle.

Because of this point, it was finalized a few years ago as a new batch of overseas garrison troops, and began to strengthen training in navigational transportation, amphibious operations, and jungle operations.

There are a total of twelve battleships, sixteen cruisers, and 32 frigates.

Most of the time, the foreign policy of the Great Chu Empire is still relatively soft. As long as you don't affect my business, you will rarely directly interfere with the internal situation of the indigenous countries.

Whether it is the battleship Suzhou or the cruiser Busan, these represent the cutting-edge naval power of the Great Chu Empire, as well as the top industrial strength of the Great Chu Empire.

The accuracy of front-loading rifled guns far exceeds that of smoothbore guns, especially in sea sports artillery hits of 500 meters or even thousands of meters, the hit accuracy is still very high.

Whether it is the large steam unit on the Suzhou or the front-loading rifled gun on the Busan, without exception, they all reflect the top industrial strength of the Great Chu Empire.

But the idea is just an idea, and the specific effect has to be tried, and it has to go through the test of actual combat.

This is the reason why the cruiser Pusan, the test ship, was also incorporated into the third Indian task force, and it was to participate in actual combat experiments.

As more and more warships and transport ships gathered at the Hong Kong Naval Base, a large number of crew members and ground troops boarded the transport ships one after another.

On February 26th, [-]th year of Chengshun, it was finally time for this huge fleet to set sail.

(End of this chapter)