Chapter five hundred and ninetieth battle between land and sea
ps: Thanks to classmate ‘Aimi Daidai’ for the 10,000 reward
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With the current shipbuilding capabilities of the Tang Dynasty, or in other words, with the strength of the coastal private shipyards currently controlled by the Tang Dynasty, there is no problem in building a ship of one or two hundred tons, and it is okay to barely build a ship of four or five hundred tons.
, as for how big it is, it will be very difficult. This is not only limited by the limitations of shipbuilding technology, but also limited by the strength of the shipyard.
Therefore, the tonnage of Datang's first ocean-going warship was not very large. It could reach the sky at 500 tons. To be on the safe side, it should actually be less than 300 tons.
Because according to the plan, the first warship has a very experimental nature, because Li Xuan has extremely high requirements for warships and has only one design standard, and that is to be born for combat!
Any ship type that can both fight and carry a large amount of cargo must get out!
All designs of warships are for combat. This is the premise that all subsequent warship designs of the Tang Navy should follow!
It is obvious that Li Xuan's requirements for traditional Chinese ships such as Fu Chuan and the armed merchant ships of foreigners currently operating in Nanyang are actually unable to meet the requirements.
To this end, the craftsmen of the Naval Ship Administration Department, turned warship designers, and some naval civilian officers pondered for several months, and finally proposed two candidate solutions.
The first plan is to build a third-class cruiser with a displacement of 500 tons and more than 30 guns, focusing on speed and seaworthiness.
The second plan is to build a third-class frigate with a displacement of 300 tons and 20 guns, trying to achieve a balance between firepower, speed, and seaworthiness at a relatively small tonnage.
The first option is relatively high-risk in construction, because the Ministry of Industry Shipyard under the Tang Dynasty does not have the ability to build it. It can only be built by private shipyards in Guangzhou, and it is difficult to say whether it can be built.
The second option is actually a conservative option. Although the shipyard of the Ministry of Industry still cannot build a 300-ton hull, many private shipyards in Guangdong have this technical capability.
In the end, Li Xuan personally made the decision to choose the second option, which would take a smaller step and make it less likely to get messed up. Moreover, the first ship was a test ship, so it would be easier to control risks if it was built smaller.
After the third-class frigate of the second plan is successfully built, mature experience can be used to build a 500-ton third-class cruiser.
There are design plans for frigates and cruisers, but there is no design plan for battleships because such ships are too large and far exceed the current shipbuilding capabilities of the Tang Dynasty.
However, as a substitute, several shallow-sea gunboats can be built. They have the same 300-ton hull as the third-class frigates, but the shallow-sea gunboats are prepared to have thirty cannons packed into them. Their firepower is comparable to that of a third-class cruiser, and their defensive power is
It even surpasses a third-class cruiser.
It’s just that its seaworthiness is extremely poor. If it goes out on a long sea voyage, it won’t be able to withstand the strong winds and waves in the deep sea, and it might sink.
As for the inland river gunboats, it is simple. Just continue to build the original Dragon-class gunboats.
Of course, the construction of such warships is a matter for the future. To improve the strength of the Tang Navy now, the fastest way is to simply use the hulls of existing civilian ships to simply modify them, sacrificing the ability to load cargo and load more artillery.
An armed merchant ship converted for military use.
This modification plan is to modify five second-class armed merchant ships, ten third-class armed merchant ships, and more than twenty fourth-class armed merchant ships.
As for where the hulls come from, there are more of them in Guangzhou. As a traditional maritime trade port, Guangzhou has a large number of sea-going ships all year round.
The unparalleled Datang Tax Inspection Team alone confiscated more than ten ships in Guangzhou, all of which were merchant ships of more than 100 tons!
Naturally, the remaining ones cannot be confiscated directly. It would look too ugly. The Tang Dynasty is a regular dynasty and is no longer a bandit!
This requires refitting civilian ships. Naturally, real money will be spent to purchase the hulls of civilian ships and then refit them. It is best to use hulls that have not yet been completed.
This time, the imperial navy meeting only lasted for more than two hours, but a lot of things were discussed, and many of them were very important things.
But this is still not the focus of Colonel Bao Yifen. His real focus is the reform of the naval system!
After the imperial naval strategy meeting, Li Xuan officially issued an imperial edict on the third day, declaring the complete separation of land and sea in the Tang Dynasty, making the Naval Department, which directly belonged to the Privy Council, independent, establishing the Naval Command of the Tang Dynasty, and stipulating that the Naval Command was
The emperor is directly under the jurisdiction of the navy. The emperor is the supreme commander of the navy and has supreme power over the navy.
Under the independent Naval Command, departments such as the Naval Command Department, the Naval Staff Department, the Naval Logistics Department, and the Naval Ship Administration Department were established.
At the same time, the Ministry of War of the cabinet was divided into two, and the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Navy were established to be responsible for the support of the army and navy respectively.
In addition to the changes in the navy's high-level organization, Li Xuan also made changes to the fleet organization, aiming to build two fleets, namely the Pearl River Fleet, which is responsible for inland operations such as the entire Pearl River Basin, and the Nanyang Fleet, which is responsible for ocean operations!
Of course, Li Xuan's series of reforms to the navy's system actually affected the army. After the navy and army were completely separated, Li Xuan also made certain changes to the Privy Council. The detailed organization remained unchanged, but the name changed.
There has been a change. Most of the departments under the Privy Council have been upgraded to ministries. For example, the Operations Department was renamed the Operations Department, and the Ordnance Department was renamed the Ordnance Department.
But in general, the changes in the army are not big. The biggest change is just a change of titles, and then the promotion of the new ministers of each department. They are no longer colonels, but start with the rank of major general.
In fact, the structures of the Privy Council and the Naval High Command are very similar, except that one is in charge of the army and the other is in charge of the navy.
However, after the separation of land and sea, various things came up, and the biggest disagreement was naturally the distribution of military expenditures.
In the past, the navy and the army were not separated, and the military expenditures were all used together. But now that the navy is separated and lives independently, it is natural to divide the military expenditures. And there are only so many military expenditures. If the navy takes more, the army will naturally have less.
Therefore, after the navy and army were separated, the first major event that the Tang Dynasty encountered was not the seizure of another important city from the Ming army, or the annihilation of many people from the Ming army, let alone the fall of some political bosses.
It's a conflict between the navy and the army over the distribution of military expenditures!
At the beginning, this conflict was just a matter of the army and the navy jointly sending personnel to negotiate on the distribution of military expenditures for this year. At the beginning, neither side thought that any conflict would break out, because both the army and the navy believed that their conditions were reasonable.
However, this kind of reasonableness seems to be a big deal in the eyes of the other party, and it is absolutely unacceptable.
As for the Army, in the distribution of military expenditures for the rest of this year, the Army has heavy tasks. It wants to launch military operations in Huguang, Yunnan, Fujian, Jiangxi and other directions at the same time. At the same time, with the expansion of the occupied areas, it also needs to have the number of troops left behind in each occupied area.
More and more, it is not enough to rely on the existing troops, so we must continue to massively expand the number of the army. Today's army is far from enough in size and needs to be doubled or even tripled at least.
As for the navy, it only served as an assistant to the army and helped transport some logistical supplies. And with the end of the Guangzhou War, the navy was basically unable to help with the Tang Army's combat direction in the later period, and it could not even transport logistical supplies.
Done.
Based on this reality, the Army proposed that the next allocation of military expenditures should follow the principle of military expenditure allocation in the first half of the second year of Xuanping. What the Navy received in the first half of the year, it will continue to receive in the second half of the year.
Even if it doesn’t cut the navy’s military expenditure, it’s just a face-saving measure. As for wanting more, basically don’t expect it.
Therefore, the proportion of military expenditures proposed by the Army is 95% for the Army and 5% for the Navy.
Yes, that's right, the Army is so powerful that it only leaves the Navy with a mere five percent share of military spending.
The navy believes that after winning Guangdong, the coastal defense pressure of the Tang Dynasty is very high, which requires a large amount of military investment to build warships and build forts to consolidate the maritime territory, and at the same time prepare for subsequent coastal attacks on Fujian, Zhejiang, and
To lay the foundation for the offensive in Jiangsu and other places, it is necessary to greatly increase the military expenditure of the navy.
Naturally, the navy does not expect to be able to share military expenditures equally with the army. After all, the main direction of the Tang Dynasty's military deployment is Huguang, so it is reasonable for the army to spend more.
Therefore, the plan proposed by the Navy is for the Navy to take 30% and the Army to take 70%, which is 37%, which is enough to show the Navy's tolerance.
On the one hand it is five percent, on the other hand it is thirty percent.
The gap is so huge that there is no way to coordinate.
The army and navy tried several times but were unable to resolve the matter through friendly negotiation, and then it turned into a quarrel. At first, they sent people to each other to have a small-scale quarrel at the coordination meeting, and then the top brass of the army and navy personally intervened in the quarrel, and then it developed.
The two sides quarreled in front of Li Xuan.
In this battle for military expenditures, no matter whether it is a strong army or a weak navy, they will not give in at all. Rear Admiral Bao Yifen and a group of mid-level and senior navy generals on the navy side are working on this matter every day, and
Bao Yifen made excuses to see Li Xuan every day and did nothing while he was there. He just suffered from how pitiful and pitiful the navy was!
The Navy firmly believes that children who cry will get milk!
Faced with such shameless complaints from the navy, the army generals naturally lost face and did not care about dignity at all. Headed by Zeng Ziwen, the director of the operations department, a group of senior army officers who stayed in Kyoto pestered Li Xuan every day, saying that the army
How miserable it is that many army soldiers have no guns and can only use their flesh and blood to fight against the enemy's guns. Every time they fight, they suffer heavy casualties!
So much so that Li Xuan was speechless: The army soldiers used their flesh and blood to fight against the large number of guns and artillery of the Ming army?