It's not that the Tang Navy is ambitious or arrogant and ignorant, and doesn't want to wait until more warships are launched into service before taking action, but that time is not waiting for me!
Nowadays, fleets of the Ming Navy and the Folangji people will appear at the Pearl River Estuary every once in a while. The Folangji people are okay and don't embarrass the ordinary merchant ships, but the Ming Navy is catching them.
Kill one by one, well, although sometimes the Ming navy may not be able to defeat those large-scale pirate gangs!
But this is a huge threat to many small and medium-sized maritime merchants/pirates!
This forced many small and medium-sized maritime merchants to not dare to come to Guangzhou and instead went to Lianzhou. Although Lianzhou got this opportunity to develop and grow, Guangzhou's role is still irreplaceable, so Li Xuan hopes
The navy can clear out the Ming navy at the Pearl River Estuary as soon as possible.
I dare not say that the security of the Guangdong coast is completely guaranteed, but the safety of the Pearl River Estuary must be ensured, 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 outer sea. The Ming Navy Navy
They are just a typical offshore navy, but they don’t have any ocean combat capability. If they dare to catch up, these merchants will turn into pirates and teach them how to behave in a matter of seconds.
Therefore, the tasks of the Tang Navy are still quite heavy!
They also wanted to wait until more ships were launched into service before taking action. However, it would take more than half a year for the second batch of warships to enter service. It was too long!
Last year, the Tang Navy thought of building more than ten or twenty warships at once, but this was a wishful thinking.
It's not that the navy has no money. Even these warships of several hundred tons are very expensive. The cost of a third-class frigate with its hull and artillery reaches 70,000 taels.
Why is the price so expensive? This is because warships need to be equipped with a large number of artillery, and in order to enhance the protection ability, the wood used in the hull is very thick. When the cost of raw materials goes up, because this type of ship is in the East or the West.
, have never appeared before. Everything needs to be explored from scratch. It is too difficult to build and requires more labor costs.
Then the shipyards still need to recover the costs of construction, research and development, and design of these warships. Therefore, combined, this kind of professional warships are quite expensive.
And this is just the internal price given by the shipyard of the Datang Ministry of Industry. It does not include profit, it is pure cost!
A third-class frigate costs 70,000 taels of silver. A third-class cruiser is even more expensive, reaching 110,000 taels of silver. In other words, the cost per ton of this kind of professional warship is almost 200 taels of silver per ton.
about.
The cost of contemporary ordinary ships is only about one hundred taels of silver per ton, which is still a medium-to-large merchant ship of several hundred tons that can sail on long seas.
As for small-tonnage warships, small ships that only sail on inland rivers and offshore waters are even cheaper. For example, the inland river gunboats used as the main force in the Tang Navy's inland fleet have a tonnage of about one hundred tons. However, their shipbuilding
More than six thousand taels of silver, which is much cheaper than a sea ship. One ton only costs more than sixty taels of silver.
And a small civilian ship of tens of tons that can only sail on inland rivers and offshore seas is even cheaper. If it is extreme, a few hundred taels of silver is actually enough!
The price of a battleship is incomparable to that of an ordinary merchant ship, and the price of a large battleship is exponentially higher than that of a small battleship.
This is like the cost of a later destroyer of only about 10,000 tons, which can reach several billion U.S. dollars, but an ordinary cargo ship of 10,000 tons can cost four to five million U.S. dollars.
However, although the battleships are expensive, the Tang Dynasty Navy is not short of money. Not only does it have regular military expenses, Li Xuan also twice gave them a total of 800,000 taels of silver from the internal treasury to expand the fleet.
.
Therefore, the Navy is still not short of money!
However, this battleship cannot be built just by having money!
First of all, these warships have very high requirements for the quality of wood. It is impossible for the Tang Dynasty to directly cut down the wood for construction. Instead, they will purchase finished wood that has been dried in advance for construction.
If raw materials are in short supply, they can be obtained at high prices, but the shipyards are powerless!
These ships of hundreds of tons all require corresponding large-tonnage dry docks to build. 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 shipyards are too large.
It takes time and the expansion speed is relatively slow.
As for private shipyards, there are a few in Guangzhou, but their shipyards are not large. Most of them only have one or two hundred tons, and there is basically no free time. Most of them are used to refit armed merchant ships or build some inland river ships.
There are small and medium-sized warships in offshore areas. At the same time, maritime trade is booming, and they are also building a large number of various types of civilian ships.
This resulted in insufficient shipyards for building large warships, and even if there were enough shipyards, there were not enough workers to build them.
Shipyard workers are not cabbages, they can pick up a lot of them just by picking them up!
Various factors were restricted, which led to the fact that although the Tang Dynasty was already operating at full capacity, it could not build ships any faster. Even if it could really build so many ships, the Tang Navy was actually not like this.
Multiple hands to start!
A century-old navy, these words did not come out of thin air!
However, if there are fewer battleships, we have to fight!
To this end, the Tang Navy has begun 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 navy entrenched near the Pearl River Estuary.
The second goal is to kill the Fulang robots and force them to withdraw 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, it will use all the ocean-going warships of the First Fleet and the Second Fleet. At the same time, many small ships of the Inland Fleet will also assist in the battle, and even the army will need to cooperate.
But the actual core of the tactics is very simple, that is, using a third-class cruiser and two third-class frigates that are already in service and will be in service in the next two months as the core, let them go to sea to continuously intercept and kill the enemy's
Small fleet.
Although the number of these three warships is a little small, each one has extraordinary combat power. A small fleet composed of three warships does not need to be afraid even if it encounters an enemy with seven or eight ships or even a large fleet of more than ten ships. If the tactics are
If done right, you can even pull out a tooth from a tiger's mouth.
The other dozen or so armed merchant ships of over 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 use their numerical advantage to carry out auxiliary operations in offshore waters!
Although the plan is huge, in Li Xuan's view, the core of the plan is actually harassment and attack tactics!
Use the high speed and high maneuverability of the three warships to attack frequently and continuously bleed the enemy!
After getting 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 of them is to continue to test the Wuzhou and use it to
Based on actual tests, relevant tactics and training manuals were compiled. After all, the Tang Navy had never played with such professional warships before.
At the same time, it is also necessary to train officers and soldiers to train a sufficient number of qualified sailors for the next 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 need to survey the hydrology, prepare ammunition, practice gunnery, and practice various tactics.
Anyway, they have a lot to do!
The navy was sitting back and preparing for their strategic plan, and the army was not idle either. They took advantage of the rainy seasons in April, May and even June to replenish and reorganize their troops.
The most important one is naturally to continue to adapt the existing five temporary troupes and expand these temporary troupes into mixed troupes. Among them, the fourth temporary troupe, which was the first to be adapted, has taken the lead in completing the adaptation and was awarded the
The brand new number is called the fourth mixed group.
According to the reorganization plan, the third regiment, the fourth regiment, and the fifth regiment were temporarily formed, which were directly renamed the third mixed regiment, the fourth mixed regiment, and the fifth mixed regiment.
The temporary No. 1 Regiment and the No. 2 Regiment were renamed the Sixth Mixed Regiment and the Seventh Mixed Regiment.
After this restructuring, the Army will only have three formations: infantry divisions, mixed regiments, and supplementary brigades. Their purposes are also different. The infantry division is the main force, responsible for large-scale corps operations, while the mixed regiment is
Responsible for independent operations on the secondary front, the supplementary brigade is responsible for new recruit training, soldier replenishment, and supply line security in the rear.
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 limitation of ordnance production, currently only the 1st Infantry Division and the 5th Infantry Division, two units with relatively heavy frontline tasks, have received initial expansion, and the adaptation is not complete. It does not mean that it is purely based on the expected new organization.
to be expanded.
While the army and navy were busy preparing for war, and the war had come to an end, and the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Taxation, the Ministry of Commerce and other affairs were on track, Li Xuan also slowed down his work pace.
After being a workaholic for several months, Li Xuan is also feeling a little tired. When he saw the memorial recently, he became a little upset. If he didn't know the seriousness of the matter, he would have thrown it all to the ministers in the imperial study.
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It is impossible to give up government affairs, but it is possible to slow down the pace of work.
However, Li Xuan slowed down his work pace, which directly caused changes in the court, and even caused quite a stir!