The Second Joint Landing Fleet has nearly a hundred ships. Such a large fleet cannot be concealed at all. Coupled with the slow transmission of contemporary news, even if they are discovered by the Portuguese, they will not be able to obtain anything in a short time.
reinforce.
In this way, the Second Joint Landing Fleet simply did not conceal its whereabouts and headed directly from Gohe Prefecture to Ceylon Island, taking the shortest and fastest route.
When they arrived at the northern coast of Ceylon Island, they were naturally discovered immediately by the local Portuguese patrol ships.
But what happened was that the second joint landing fleet had nearly a hundred ships. Except for about ten escort warships, most of the other ships were also armed merchant ships.
If the Portuguese wanted to stop such a large fleet, they would not be able to do it without sending dozens of ships. The Portuguese could gather so many ships at this moment.
Although the city of North Coron is a military stronghold that the Portuguese have attached great importance to in recent years, even if they attach great importance to it, they cannot garrison dozens of ships here. That is, only a few warships are permanently stationed. In addition, there are also passing
Here, and several armed merchant ships temporarily anchored in this port.
On the other hand, there are more warships and armed merchant ships in Neijia across the Palk Strait. The Portuguese there have recently maintained a fleet of more than ten warships, including a battleship of nearly a thousand tons, and others.
There are also small and medium-sized ships of several hundred tons.
However, these ships were usually used to block the Palk Strait and attack the lone ships or small fleets of the Tang Dynasty, but they were powerless against large fleets.
In the past year, Datang organized more than a dozen large merchant ships to pass through on many occasions, and dispatched at least a dozen large warships to escort.
Whenever this happens, the Portuguese act as if they haven't seen it and will not leave the cover of the port fort and come out to cause any trouble.
There are now more ships coming from the Second Joint Landing Fleet, not to mention that the main fleet of the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Datang Navy has already been deployed in advance.
The Indian Ocean Fleet dispatched a total of more than 40 battleships and auxiliary ships to cover the landing operations of the Second Joint Landing Fleet. Among them, there were five battleships alone, three cruisers and eight frigates, and the rest were from the navy.
Its own auxiliary ships include transport ships loaded with ordinary supplies, coal ships loaded with a large amount of high-quality anthracite from China, and troop transport ships are also indispensable. When the Tang Dynasty navy goes there, it always brings a large number of land troops.
Battle teams, and then there are fast communication ships and other ships that are indispensable to the Tang Navy.
Basically, they brought along all the ships the navy needed for its ocean-going operations.
There is no way, the Indian Ocean is so big, and the navy's ships have very heavy tasks. They often go to sea for several months, so they have to bring many auxiliary ships. Otherwise, just relying on sixteen warships will not seem to be enough.
It was powerful, but it actually only lasted a short time on the sea.
Not to mention, the main task of the Indian Ocean Fleet this time is to cover the various actions of the Second Joint Landing Fleet, and this task cannot be completed in a month or two.
After conquering the island of Ceylon, they still have to conquer the city of Nega and several nearby Portuguese colonial strongholds. Then they will go straight to southern Africa and fight around South Africa.
Even if everything goes well, the entire operation is expected to last at least half a year, or even longer.
For this reason, the navy is also fully prepared and has assigned a large number of auxiliary ships to the fleet to carry various weapons, especially various types of artillery shells and coal.
Because whether it is artillery shells or coal, it is impossible to obtain supplies outside, and they are both extremely consuming items.
Although the Tang Empire gradually hoarded a lot of coal, artillery shells and other materials in some supply ports in India, these ports generally did not hoard much because the largest colony and supply port of the Tang Dynasty in India was Gohe Prefecture.
Other colonies and ports are relatively small and can supply supplies to small fleets, but supplying dozens or hundreds of ships is simply a drop in the bucket.
Therefore, they had to bring enough supplies such as artillery shells and coal before leaving Gohe State.
In addition, Datang actually tried to survey and mine coal in colonies under its control such as India, West Asia and even Africa. However, this work only took a year or two to start, and the results were not great. Even if a small amount of coal could be found,
However, the quality of these coals is too poor, and there is a huge gap compared with domestic high-quality anthracite coal.
The Navy will not use these low-quality coals unless absolutely necessary.
It is precisely because of the huge demand for supplies that the main fleet and the second joint landing fleet of the navy are actually only a small part of the real battleships and troop transports, and most of them are various types of transport ships.
However, these sixteen warships in the Indian Ocean Fleet may not seem like many, but their combat effectiveness is very powerful!
Because these are professional medium and large warships, they are essentially different from those armed merchant ships, not to mention that the main warships of the Tang Navy have basically completed steam modification, and their maneuverability is quite powerful. In addition,
The powerful firepower made the professional warships of the Tang Dynasty very powerful in combat. The Portuguese suffered losses in the past several battles. Now they basically avoid the warships of the Tang Dynasty when they see them.
Not counting these professional warships, most of the other types of transport ships are armed ships. All types of transport ships in the navy are armed, and often have a lot of artillery.
Even the many requisitioned civilian merchant ships in the Second Joint Landing Fleet are mostly armed merchant ships.
This kind of fleet composed of professional warships and a large number of armed transport ships is also a common practice of contemporary navies. Not only the Tang Dynasty Navy does this, but also the Portuguese, Spanish and even the rising stars in recent years, such as the United Kingdom, basically do this.
Dry.
The reason is also simple. Professional battleships are too expensive and we cannot afford to raise too many professional battleships.
The expensive mentioned here does not only mean that the construction cost is expensive, but also that the maintenance cost is expensive.
If it is a professional warship, it basically does nothing and only performs military tasks. However, when it is an armed merchant ship, it can be used to conduct maritime trade and make profits during peacetime, and then be requisitioned for combat during wartime.
Therefore, the use of a large number of armed merchant ships is not because the navies of various countries do not know that professional warships are more powerful in combat, but rather a way of maintaining a larger fleet with less military expenditure.
However, this approach has been gradually abandoned by the Tang Dynasty Navy!
In the Datang Navy's steam steel battleship plan, the future navy's main battleships should be equipped with steam engines and use steel for external armor. Their combat effectiveness will far exceed that of traditional sailing wooden battleships.
After the Jiangnan was put into service, its many exercises and tests fully proved this point. In the live-fire exercise at the beginning of this year, the Jiangnan used pure steam power to maneuver in order to better simulate the use tactics of steam-steel warships. Although it lost
The sails were down, causing the sailing speed to be slow, but the wind direction was completely ignored, and the "T" was seized many times.
At the same time, relying on its strong steel defense capabilities, it withstood the attack of more than a dozen sail-made wooden warships on the opposite side, calling them one by one, and turned the more than ten warships on the opposite side into a ball of fire.
Of course, although it is called a live-fire test, it is not possible to actually conduct a live-fire bombardment. Instead, it conducts a certain amount of live-fire tests, and more often uses training bombs for simulation.
However, in order to test the defensive performance of the Jiangnan, the navy's group of people were really bold and directly bombarded the Jiangnan with naval guns, and they used live ammunition. Of course, for safety reasons, only a small number of people were on board the ship at the time.
The ship is hidden in the engine room behind the thick armored belt.
In this live-fire exercise, just one Jiangnan, relying on its strong defense capabilities, was able to calmly counterattack from the siege of more than a dozen wooden sail warships, and then destroy the more than ten wooden sail warships on the opposite side.
Blast them one by one!
This result made all the senior officials of Datang Navy dumbfounded, and then ecstatic with surprise!
Steam steel warships are so awesome, and Datang, as the only country that has mastered the construction of such warships, will be able to completely sweep all navies around the world in the future?
There is no need to even compete with the Portuguese and Spanish on the number of warships as in the past.
This result made the Tang Navy more determined to vigorously develop steam steel battleships. It is said that those in the Ship Administration Department have already begun planning to build a five thousand ton battleship.
But these are things for the future. As the only steam steel battleship currently in service in the Tang Dynasty Navy, Jiangnan is still very powerful, but it is still squatting in the country. Its main mission is not to fight, but to carry out various tasks.
Testing provides experimental data for the navy's large-scale construction of steam steel battleships and subsequent battleships.
Today in the Indian Ocean, the Tang Navy, like the Portuguese, uses wooden warships, but most of them use coal.
However, even this kind of Tang Dynasty navy is not something that the current Portuguese can resist.
The Portuguese in North Cologne almost watched helplessly as the Second Joint Landing Fleet landed in Mali City, more than 20 kilometers away, but they did not dare to move at all. The only few ships were
They were hiding in the port and relying on the forts in the port to survive.
Because just outside the port is the main fleet of the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Tang Navy. There are a total of sixteen warships and more than twenty auxiliary armed ships. A total of more than forty warships are blocked outside the port. Except for a small mobile and flexible sampan
Except for ships such as ships, other medium and large ships are destined to die as long as they dare to go to sea.
The port is blocked and a powerful enemy is landing more than 20 kilometers away!
what does that mean?
What else could it mean? Just run away if you don’t want to die!
It had only been a day since Dong Qiankun led his army to land, and before he had time to march to North Cologne City, he heard a report that the Marine Corps had occupied North Cologne City?
When Dong Qiankun heard this, he thought that the navy had hidden a secret plan and secretly deployed the main force in the main fleet. However, when he asked carefully, he did not expect that it was the Portuguese who took the initiative.
Yesterday evening, the navy discovered something strange in the city of North Cologne. A large number of people left the city and headed south. Then they randomly sent a hundred marines to check out the situation.
At first glance, well, there is only an empty city left!
After the Marines landed, not a single Portuguese was seen!