Seven Seas Beacon Fire

The poor anti-sinking ability of many warships after being hit by torpedoes during this period was not only due to problems with the original design structure, but many reasons can actually be attributed to some simpler and more basic thinking.

For example, for a long time, navies around the world had this understanding: if the buoyancy of the armored fortress of a central armored ironclad ship is enough to support the ship to float on the water, then the ship is unsinkable, and water entering the hull in other parts of the ship will not cause the ship to eventually sink.

But in fact, these designers seem to have overlooked the most basic and simplest problem – what to do if the armored bunker leaks?

In fact, even in the second decade of the 10th century, many warships that would be considered relatively advanced by today's standards sank for reasons that are quite humorous.

To take a recent example, the Leitanian Navy's battlecruiser Lützow, which suffered severe damage in the Battle of Jutland, would certainly have been able to return to Kiel if it had been a World War II ship with similar damage. Although the Lützow took on a lot of water in its bow during the battle, it still had reserve buoyancy after disengaging from combat, and could have been saved.

However, on the return journey, the Lützow kept leaking. It wasn't that the damaged hull was leaking from the outside in; rather, the Leitanians discovered that the entire central armored longitudinal wall was leaking. In other words, the thing that was supposed to be watertight was leaking, and eventually, all the buoyancy reserves were depleted.

The "headless senior sister" incident that Federal cruisers performed more than once during World War II would likely result in the loss of a ship in today's era due to such a basic problem as a leak.

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Three minutes after being hit by a torpedo, the cruiser Charleston lost power due to flooding in the generator room. When Captain Tannhäuser returned to the bridge, the Charleston was no longer able to send telegrams. To make matters worse, the ship's list was increasing uncontrollably. All damage control efforts were in vain. Just 10 minutes after being hit by the torpedo, Captain Tannhäuser had no choice but to order the ship abandoned.

After Colonel Tannhäuser climbed onto the last lifeboat and slid into the sea, the cruiser Charleston finally succumbed to the strain and capsized. The crew members, including Colonel Tannhäuser and those who had jumped into the sea with life rings, frantically paddled and swam away.

When a warship capsizes, its ammunition depots will naturally be overturned as well. Many warships have experienced ammunition depot explosions during the capsizing process, killing or injuring crew members who had previously jumped overboard.

However, the crew of the Charleston were sometimes lucky. Their ship did not explode, and they were quickly rescued. Tannhäuser saw a black submarine surface in the distance. As the submarine's watertight hatch opened, the crew members quickly operated the 88mm gun on the bow and the large-caliber machine gun at the rear, aiming at the people sitting in the lifeboats.

Colonel Tang Weiser, looking rather grim, asked the other officers and soldiers also sitting in the lifeboat, "Which of you has something white on you?"

“Me!” A sailor raised his hand and then took a white cloth out of his pocket.

After pulling this thing out, the sailor realized that everyone else on the lifeboat, including the captain, was staring at him intently, their eyes conveying the message: So you had even prepared this in advance?

The sailor quickly realized he had been misunderstood, so he immediately said, "My family is of Gaulish descent. This is the flag of the Bourbon dynasty that my father kept, saying that carrying it would bring me good luck."

Regardless of how many people believed what the soldier said, the white flag was successfully raised. Because the Charleston sank so quickly, more than half of the officers and men did not manage to escape from the warship. Even so, for a small submarine with a surface displacement of less than 500 tons, it was impossible to fit so many sailors who fell into the water into the submarine.

At this moment, another submarine surfaced in the distance. Officers and soldiers, including Colonel Tannhäuser, climbed onto the deck of the submarine and crouched on the deck under the guns of the Ming submariners. Colonel Tannhäuser was filled with remorse. He had been on guard against assassins coming out of the Vladivostok naval port, but he never expected that these assassins had already slipped out before this, causing the first-class cruiser he commanded to capsize in front of a small submarine of a few hundred tons.

However, just when Colonel Tannhäuser thought they were about to be taken to Vladivostok by the Ming army's submarine, he saw black smoke rising from the harbor entrance of Vladivostok. This was caused by the incomplete combustion of fuel in the main engine when the ships were sailing at low speed. Judging from the scale of the black smoke, it was clear that this was not just a few ships setting sail.

Does this mean the Ming army intends to seize the opportunity when their surveillance ship capsized, and send out a fleet of cruisers to stir up trouble in the Yingzhou Sea?

However, Colonel Tannhäuser quickly overturned his guess, because he witnessed the two cruiser squadrons equipped with new cruisers in the Vladivostok naval port sailing out of the port one after another. After the seven cruisers sailed out of the port in front of him, the Ming army did not stop. Destroyers followed the cruisers and emerged from the Vladivostok naval port one after another. At first, the thousand-ton destroyers came out one by one, but later the hundred-ton destroyers came out in a row.

Colonel Tannhäuser stared in astonishment on the deck of the submarine, his mouth agape involuntarily agape. He silently counted in his mind how many ships had sailed out of the harbor, but soon found himself unable to keep up the count.

Because after the destroyers came out, countless torpedo boats followed. He could at least roughly count the large torpedo boats in front, but when the small torpedo boats following behind came out of the harbor like school students having a blast, Colonel Tannhäuser felt a chill run down his spine.

Even though the temperature has started to warm up, and the sea temperature in Yingzhou Sea is around 17 or 18 degrees Celsius after a morning of sunshine, he feels like he is in the dead of winter.

He heard the exclamations of the sailors around him: "Are these Ming people magicians? How did they conjure up so many ships?"

No one could answer his question, but the captured officers and men of the Federal Navy knew very well that the sinking of the cruiser by a submarine was probably not a coincidence or bad luck, but rather the result of a premeditated act by the enemy.

Clearly, the enemy is planning a large-scale military operation, and they are now witnessing it all but are powerless to do anything about it.

These officers and soldiers of the Federal Navy had previously witnessed their own navy's main fleet entering and leaving the port. The magnificent scene of those towering, mountain-like warships sailing out of the port one after another left an extremely deep impression on every Federal Navy officer and soldier who witnessed it for the first time. The shock brought by this direct and intense sense of power was unparalleled.

But today they realized for the first time that the same shock could be felt from a group of small ships. If witnessing the deployment of capital ships was like watching a group of powerful mammoths strolling on the sea, then these swarming small boats now looked to them like a buzzing swarm of bees, a group of killer bees with bared teeth and claws!

Colonel Tang Weiser glanced at his watch. It was 1 p.m. The Vladivostok naval port was about 300 nautical miles from Wonsan. If these Ming warships maintained a cruising speed of 20 knots and sped south, the enemy would be able to reach Wonsan port at dawn the next day.

Could the defenses that Admiral Benson had set up at Yuanshan Port withstand the Ming torpedo boats that swarmed like bees before him?

If these Ming warships were to directly breach the United States Navy's perimeter perimeter around Wonsan... Colonel Tannhäuser could hardly imagine the consequences.

Chapter Sixty-Three: Advancing Under Fire! (4)

Benson has been in a good mood these past two days.

Although the troubles caused by the Ming Dynasty Royal Navy had embarrassed him somewhat, the retreat operation at Yuanshan was going smoothly, or even more smoothly than expected.

The more than 10 United States ground troops surrounded around Wonsan were in a precarious situation before the arrival of the Seventh Fleet. Due to the loss of most of the United States' heavy artillery in the previous battles, the United States ground troops, lacking artillery, ammunition and supplies, were almost on the verge of collapse. At that time, the Ming army outside the encirclement began to seize the last part of the high ground and hills outside Wonsan Port that were still under the control of the United States and could protect the port.

In this situation, the Federal Navy decisively deployed shallow-draft heavy gunboats leased from the Britons. These warships, built specifically for land attack, and the Royal Victorian gunners on board, indeed demonstrated exceptional skill.

Both are American-made 14-inch naval guns, but those mounted on shallow-draft heavy gunboats seem to be more accurate than the 14-inch naval guns mounted on the United States' larger, more stable, and theoretically more suitable capital ships.

These precise and powerful artillery bombardments successfully recaptured the hills and high ground that the Ming army had almost taken. The excellent performance of these heavy artillery pieces not only successfully struck the Ming army's offensive, but also boosted the morale of the United States soldiers in the encirclement. When the besieged Federal troops saw that the enemy had been repelled by the powerful naval artillery and had to withdraw from the positions they had just captured, this successfully brought a great sense of security to the officers and soldiers of the Federal troops who had retreated all the way here and whose organization had been completely chaotic. It also temporarily stabilized the entire front.

The stabilized front line is very important because the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people is not a simple task, especially since it has to be done through such a small port.

It's worth noting that in another world, separated only by the relatively narrow English Channel, the British, with the full force of the nation, launched the Dunkirk evacuation, which lasted from May 26th to June 4th.

Although the number of troops encircled at Wonsan was less than that of the Anglo-French forces besieged on the beaches of Dunkirk, the United States could obviously not deploy the same shipping capacity in the Sea of ​​England as Britain had at Dunkirk – after all, more shipping capacity had to be devoted to supplying the southern front around Luzon.

Therefore, under such circumstances, the retreat must emphasize order, and it takes time for the troops to restore order and retreat in an orderly manner.

Benson now believes they have successfully bought time. Today is the first day of the official large-scale evacuation, and everything is going smoothly. More than 3000 young men from the United States have successfully boarded transport ships from Yuanshan Port. Although this number is not enough compared to the encirclement, Benson sees no problem with it.

After all, this is only the first day. Everyone will become more familiar with the evacuation procedures. In addition to evacuating from the port, the navy is also preparing to add evacuation routes from the beach, reversing the procedures in amphibious landing operations so that some of the healthy officers and soldiers who are not injured can evacuate from the beach.

Simply put, the plan is to bring the transport ships close to the beach and then attach rope climbing nets to both sides of the ship. In amphibious landing operations, marines would climb down these climbing nets, board sampans, and row to the beach. Now, it's just the other way around: they would row small boats to the transport ships and climb aboard.

While the efficiency of such an evacuation is certainly not comparable to that at the dock, the beach is spacious enough to accommodate multiple transport ships and a large number of sampans at the same time. It is estimated that several thousand people can be evacuated in this way every day.

If all goes well, the retreat will be most efficient in the next 2-3 days, and in a total of about 10 days, most of the United States troops in the encirclement will be evacuated. Although some rearguard troops will inevitably be left behind, these tasks can be handed over to a small number of Yingzhou troops in the encirclement.

These people from Yingzhou are supposed to be followers of Bushido, aren't they? This is the perfect opportunity for them to demonstrate and prove their friendship with the United States of Colombia.

In high spirits, Admiral Benson first expressed his strong approval of the daytime evacuation operation after nightfall, and then stated that the evacuation would continue even at night. After dinner, Admiral Benson was in a good mood and even drank a glass of red wine. He then went to bed on the battleship Florida. However, his wonderful sleep did not last more than two hours before Admiral Benson was woken up from his sleep, and he received some unexpected news as soon as he woke up.

"Did the Ming army launch a full-scale attack at night?"

When Admiral Benson returned to the bridge, he could already see with his naked eye that the United States' defenses outside Yuanshan Port were now unleashing a hail of scorching bullets, much like fireworks during the Eastern New Year.

Benson finally couldn't resist taking the binoculars to examine it closely. By then, the sun had already set, and apart from the lights in the harbor and the fires from the battle, the only light came from the moon overhead.

Admiral Benson could not see the specific situation on the shore, but he could confirm two things. First, he did not see the large-scale artillery bombardment launched by the Ming army, because he did not see the explosions caused by enemy shells falling, whether on the positions outside the port, near the port, or on the beach.

Secondly, most of the tracer rounds he could see appeared to have been fired by the United States forces themselves.

He quickly had someone re-establish communication with the army command on shore, and without waiting long, he soon heard Brigadier General Douglas's voice through the microphone.

This star officer, formerly Colonel Douglas, assisted the wounded General Brewster in commanding troops as acting chief of staff of the Union forces currently encircled in the wake of General Andre Walker Brewster's injury and the death of the Task Force's chief of staff.

"The Ming army launched a night attack on us, attacking across the entire front. Can the navy provide us with artillery support?"

Admiral Benson asked, somewhat puzzled, "But from the ship, it seems only our troops are firing; I don't appear to see any enemy heavy firepower."

"No heavy firepower, that's for sure. The enemy is using a completely new tactic, just like the assault team tactics the Leicester Army used in the final stages of the European campaign! Yes, the Storm Assault Team! The enemy has deployed many tactical squads composed of elite veterans and sergeants, equipped with submachine guns, shotguns, light machine guns, and carbines, as well as light mortars (actually grenade launchers) and a large number of grenades. They have infiltrated our lines and launched attacks from multiple directions simultaneously. Our lads are no match for these veterans in this close-quarters combat! We need artillery!"

General Benson had never heard of any commando tactics. After all, he wasn't part of the Army. In his understanding, it was hard to imagine that deploying many small teams at night could overwhelm the main force on the entire front and even prompt them to call for artillery support. He even suspected that these Army guys had been spoiled by the Navy's artillery support these past few days and needed it for every little problem.

Artillery support isn't so easy to provide at night!

“It’s very difficult for us to provide artillery support at night,” Benson replied. “We have no way to accurately observe the point of impact at night.”

"Can't you just fire according to the daytime coordinates without observing the impact point?"

"Of course, but I would like to remind you that the enemy's troops are dynamic, while the coordinates we fired at during the day are static. Are you sure our artillery fire will hit the enemy?"

"And according to you, the enemy is already entangled with our frontline troops. Our large-caliber artillery has tremendous firepower, and under these circumstances, even the slightest deviation could potentially harm friendly forces. Are you sure you still need our artillery support?"

Chapter Sixty-Four: Advancing Under Fire! (5)

Brigadier General Douglas remained unconcerned about the issue of friendly fire: "We are at war, and there are always casualties in war. If these Ming army assault teams break through our lines, their follow-up troops will be able to follow them and smash through our lines, and then our casualties will only be greater!"

"I think it would be best to get General Walker Brewster's approval for such an order."

He was a seasoned veteran, a cunning fox among cunning foxes. He managed to climb to the position of Commander-in-Chief of a large ocean fleet in the Federal Navy. Putting aside his military skills, he had an absolute grasp on administrative matters.

If orders like these, which could potentially cause friendly fire, are not clearly defined now and assigned responsibility, then after the war, if the army were to renege on its promises and bring up past grievances, we would inevitably be embroiled in troublesome compensation lawsuits.

Therefore, Benson decisively gave Brigadier General Douglas a cold shoulder, because the general himself knew a little about General Walker Brewster from General Pershing. He was a rather brave and honest man, and given his past actions, it was highly unlikely that he would issue such an order that was somewhat disregarding the lives of his soldiers.

Seeing that no one was willing to fall into the trap he had prepared, Brigadier General Douglas could only reluctantly say that he would go and ask General Brewster for instructions. Not long after, Brigadier General Douglas returned to the radio receiver: "General Douglas hopes that the Navy can help us deal with the enemy's artillery positions."

"Artillery position?"

General Benson couldn't help but push up his glasses. He didn't see how many cannons the Ming army had deployed. Even if the Ming army's heavy artillery was behind the mountain, and they couldn't see the muzzle flash when it fired, they could always see the flashes produced when the large-caliber cannons landed, right?

But he saw nothing, so where were the artillery pieces that the Ming army had deployed?

"That's right! They didn't deploy large-caliber artillery! They deployed some small cannons, probably their mortars! The rate of fire is extremely high, and our frontline machine gunners can barely lift their heads!"

Brigadier General Douglas felt a bellyful of anger with nowhere to vent it. Although the unfavorable situation at the front had not affected his promotion speed, and he had even been promoted to brigadier general by General Pershing on the spot, the battle tonight was really infuriating.

It's like when you're playing Battlefield or War Thunder and you encounter a bunch of guys who specialize in killing kids and catching fries. These bastards are not only skilled but also incredibly annoying. If this were a game, Brigadier General Douglas would be somewhere between throwing his headphones and smashing his screen.

The most disgusting and troublesome aspect of the Ming army's assault tactics was their element of surprise. As early as the Napoleonic Wars, it seemed that regular armies of various countries followed a common practice in combat: before the infantry engaged in battle, the artillery of both sides would first establish a high ground, especially for the attacking side, which needed to maintain continuous artillery fire to suppress the enemy first.

However, in this era of trench warfare, unless your heavy artillery can reach the level of naval large-caliber guns, conventional artillery is not very effective at damaging trenches. Especially on the European battlefield, both the Allied and Central Powers found that prolonged continuous shelling was very inefficient.

Prolonged artillery bombardment not only fails to completely annihilate the enemy on the position, but may also lead the enemy to determine the direction of attack through continuous artillery fire, and then quickly concentrate their troops behind this section of the front line. At that time, even if the attacking troops can break through the first line of defense under the cover of artillery, they will run into the reinforcements that come to block the breakthrough.

The assault tactics emphasize not conducting large-scale artillery bombardment beforehand, but rather pursuing covert approach to the enemy, launching a sudden attack, and relying on its own powerful firepower to quickly defeat the enemy in front of it. Before the enemy's follow-up troops to seal the gap can arrive in time, the assault team will launch a fierce attack and quickly open a breach.

However, this does not mean that the assault team did not have its own artillery support. The Ming army's characteristic was that in addition to the grenade launchers carried by the assault team itself, it would also provide the assault team with corresponding mortar units.

These mortar units would typically operate covertly alongside the assault team in platoon or company-level units, setting up their mortars at a distance of more than 2 kilometers from the enemy positions. Meanwhile, the assault team would continue to advance covertly. Once the assault team launched its attack, these mortar units would provide the fastest possible artillery support.

The mortars used by the Ming army for fire support were 80mm mortars. These mortars had an astonishing rate of fire; essentially, the rate of fire was directly proportional to the speed at which the shells were loaded.

The 80mm mortar shells produced almost no flash after exploding, because mortars rely primarily on shrapnel to kill targets. So, although these mortar shells kicked up a lot of dust and caused panic among the United States troops within the encirclement after hitting their targets, Benson did not detect them.

“That might be difficult,” Benson said. “If those cannons are mortars, then they must be at the foot of the reverse slope right now. None of the naval guns we have right now have such a curved trajectory, nor do any of them have such a large elevation angle. The position where the enemy has set up mortars is a blind spot and dead zone for us. If we want to take down their mortar positions, I’m afraid you’ll have to find a way yourself.”

"Well, so what can our dear Navy do now?" Commodore Douglas's voice on the other end of the radio now betrayed his suppressed anger.

“I think we might be able to take another approach,” Benson said. “I think I could allocate a few destroyers and have them use searchlights to keep an eye on those hills. If those enemy assault teams you mentioned reach the top of the hills and the high ground, then we can just fire directly at the top, right?”

Fortunately, our destroyers use five-inch naval guns, which have a high rate of fire and are more than sufficient in power for the army.

"Isn't this the same tactic as the one from the past two days?" Douglas quickly realized that they had already used this method of luring the enemy to the top of a hill before attacking them: "Our enemy shouldn't drown in the same river twice, right?"

“It’s still different. We used large-caliber guns to bombard the ships before in order to achieve a destructive effect, but now we’re having the destroyers use medium-caliber guns in order to achieve a suppressive effect.” Benson patiently explained to Commodore Douglas, who was of a lower rank than him, “If a tactic is really effective, we can continue to use it. Besides, we have already made many improvements to the original one.”

Brigadier General Douglas paused for a moment on the other end of the radio: "Alright then, if we really can't hold on any longer, then so be it."

This sounds tragic, but when you think about it, the Ming army at the front line actually had only a fraction of the United States army's defending forces, yet they still managed to inflict heavy complaints from the United States troops on different fronts.

But as the radio call ended, General Benson looked at the bustling, even boiling, Yuanshan Port in the distance and really couldn't understand why the enemy would launch such an attack at night.

Didn't they realize that even if they successfully captured these positions at night, the United States Navy's artillery fire would still be able to drive them away at dawn?

I didn't think the commander on the other side was stupid, so why did he do this?

To put it bluntly, what is he after? Does he really think he can take Yuanshan in one night with just the commando team?

Chapter Sixty-Five: Advancing Under Fire! (6)

Compared to the United States' previous crushing defeat in Silla, the current setbacks of the United States army were even more disheartening for the federal troops within the encirclement.

Before this, the soldiers of the United States could find many reasons for themselves—we were ambushed by the enemy, the enemy's artillery was indeed of higher quality and had more combat experience than ours, and even the Ming army broke with convention by deploying cavalry in places like the Silla Peninsula.

In short, although the soldiers of the United States suffered a defeat, they were not incapable of fighting. They were all seasoned veterans who had experienced battles on the European front. They had seen all the cannons and poison gas used by the Leitanians, and they had also clashed with the Ming army in Yingzhou.

In their view, the reason why they were defeated by the Ming army on the battlefield was mainly because the other side had a world-renowned general and various off-field factors. However, these soldiers of the United States did not think that they were inferior to the Ming army. After all, they had indeed fought against the Ming army in Yingzhou before, and the quality of the United States army, which had experienced the European War, could even be said to be superior.

But tonight, these Americans realized that the gap between the Ming army and the Ming army was so great. The Ming army that was now launching an attack in small detachments felt to the Americans like a completely different army from the Ming army they were familiar with.

Unlike games like Battlefield 1, automatic weapons are relatively scarce in infantry units in this era. Therefore, the scenario where automatic weapons are more widespread on the battlefields of World War I than in World War II is unlikely to occur in the cyber world. Even for the Ming and Lai army commando teams that adopt commando tactics, considering the pump-action shotguns and the marksmen using rifles in the commando teams, only about half of the combat personnel actually use automatic weapons.

The main weapons classified as automatic are submachine guns, light machine guns, and carbines. The last one is not a simple short rifle; in fact, it is a semi-automatic weapon that uses large pistol cartridges. In the current era, the definition of automatic weapons also includes self-loading weapons, meaning that semi-automatic firearms can also be considered "automatic rifles."

Nevertheless, the proportion of such automatic weapons was already quite alarming for this era.

In each of the Ming army's assault teams, the light machine gun was naturally the mainstay of their firepower.

With an industry like the United States, the country naturally wouldn't skimp on equipping its troops with light and heavy machine guns. The main heavy machine guns used by the United States Army were the Browning M917 and the copy of the Galluschaeus light machine gun. However, in these rapid advances by small units, the Browning M917 heavy machine guns fixed in position under the cover of night were not only difficult to move, but were also often knocked out by grenade launchers fired by veterans before they could even unleash their firepower.

As for the Chaussa... if the light machine gun originally produced by the Gauls was barely usable, then the Chaussa, which the Colombians copied and used their own ammunition, was utter garbage.

The soldiers at the grassroots level have a lot of complaints about this thing. The vibration is too great when firing. Machine gunners who have used it say that the stock of this thing is like being slapped in the face. If these things can be tolerated, the high failure rate is the main reason for the low reputation of this weapon.

This much-criticized weapon has managed to gain a place in the military in this era simply because it is an automatic weapon. Of course, the United States Army is not unaware of the problem. They have considered replacing it with the Lewis gun, which performs better than the British. However, the United States had already obtained the patent from Gaul and set up the production line. Now, turning around to import the Lewis gun and put it into production would be both an economic decision and would take time.

This resulted in the United States forces being far inferior to the Ming army in the most basic pillars of infantry automatic firepower.

The light machine guns used by the Ming army were based on the Madsen light machine gun introduced in 05. The domestic production trial was completed in 08 and equipped the Ming army cavalry units. It was named the Type 08 cavalry machine gun and was copied by the Gongxian Ordnance Bureau.

In the same year, the MG-08 heavy machine gun was introduced to Letania and began to be copied at the Hanyang Arsenal under the name of "infantry machine gun". The trial production was completed in 910 and mass production began. After the tripod was changed, it was named the Type 10 infantry machine gun, replacing an early machine gun that the Ming army had previously used in the mid-9th century (which can be regarded as something similar to the Colt 1895).

After the start of this world war, the Prince of Jin, who was in charge of the expeditionary force and served as the Minister of War and Left Censor-in-Chief, concluded that the Northwest Army under his command needed lightweight machine guns in actual combat. Therefore, he equipped the infantry with a large number of Type 08 cavalry machine guns and gradually developed corresponding assault tactics.