A week later, in the early morning of June 22, under the leadership of the "Pu", the 21st Special Mixed Fleet left the anchorage of Liuhuangdao.

Almost at the same time, the 22nd special mixed fleet headed by the "Min" set sail from the anchorage of Beiliu Huangdao.

The commander of the 22nd Special Mixed Fleet is the Guards. He was promoted after the Spring Festival and is now a brigade general of the Navy, but for the time being, he is just the acting commander of the Special Mixed Fleet.

Before this, the guards participated in the battle to attack Shiquan City and led a fleet to respond to the "Prime Minister".

Although Li Mingbo is older and more suitable to serve as the commander of the 22nd Special Mixed Fleet, when the Navy Command made arrangements, he politely refused, saying that he was not a leader who was good at decision-making and was more suitable to be a staff officer. In fact, he wanted to continue to work with Bai Zhizhan.

As for Li Jie, his position is in the landing fleet.

Of course, Bai Zhizhan's current identity is the acting commander of the Second Fleet, and Li Mingbo is the chief of staff of the fleet.

A few days ago, Li Mingbo took a transit back to the empire and participated in the major general's rank ceremony.

Although it is different from the past, it is not the chief minister of the empire, but the commander-in-chief of the navy awarded the new general. After all, there are too many new generals and the chief minister is too busy. However, being promoted to a major general shows that Li Mingbo's contribution to the imperial navy has been recognized by the imperial authorities, and it also means that his career will be smoother in the future. After all, more than 80% of brigade generals cannot get the opportunity to be promoted to major general.

In the Imperial Navy, the Brigadier General is more like a rank of honor.

Even in peacetime, as long as you can work until retirement, you will most likely be able to obtain this symbolic honor when you retire.

The key is that the brigade general's allowance and benefits are not much higher than those of the colonel.

Of course, this also means that only those soldiers who have real abilities or who have made significant contributions to the Imperial Navy have the opportunity to be promoted to major generals.

Not to mention anything else, the Guards and Li Jie were not promoted and were still brigade generals.

The choice to leave the anchorage in the early morning was to be considered for confidentiality, but more because of habit.

The anchorage is in the deep waters northwest of Liuhuangdao. Shortly after the anchor was started, the "Pu" entered the deep water channel and then began to accelerate.

When Li Mingbo came out, Bai Zhizhan was looking at the "Lu" behind him.

"The guards have also anchored the news I just received."

Bai Zhizhan just nodded and did not answer.

Everything goes according to plan, nothing to worry about.

"The midnight snack is ready. If you have dumplings, do you want to send someone to deliver them?"

"No need, you go first, I'll come here later."

"Okay, I'll go to the restaurant first."

When Li Mingbo left, Bai Zhizhan looked back again.

In the rear, in addition to the "Lu", there is also a brand new warship.

Strictly speaking, it is not a warship.

The first ship of the Imperial Navy's first full-time flagship: the Qinling.

Long before the outbreak of the war, the Imperial Navy decided to build a warship dedicated to command tasks based on the problems reflected in the fleet exercises, that is, a full-time flagship. Unfortunately, due to funding restrictions, designing and building flagships has always been just a good wish.

It was not until the war broke out that the flagship project was officially launched.

After several naval battles with the Navy in the early stages of the war, the Imperial Navy realized the value of the flagship and increased its importance.

The main reason is that the space on the fleet aircraft carrier is too cramped.

With fleet aircraft carriers as the flagship, the number of officers and soldiers in the fleet headquarters must be controlled within 40 people, which makes it impossible for many positions to reach the regular staffing. For example, in the communications department, because the staffing is missing one-third, it can only work in two shifts. In high-intensity combat, officers and soldiers are often overwhelmed.

If the battleships act as flagships, the Fleet Command's personnel can be increased to 70.

It can even be expanded to 100 people at the "Longjiang" level.

In comparison, naval battles with fleet aircraft carriers as the core have higher requirements for fleet commands and much more information needs to be processed in a timely manner.

Although this problem has been alleviated on large aircraft carriers and the fleet command can be expanded to 60 people, it is still not as good as battleships. Moreover, compared with the heavy tasks it undertakes, 60 officers and soldiers are still too few to ensure that all officers and soldiers are in an ideal state.

With flagships, this problem no longer exists.

Of course, in addition to the problem of insufficient personnel, large warships such as fleet aircraft carriers and battleships also have hardware facilities when acting as flagships.

The most prominent one is the communication equipment used to command operations.

Even in wartime, communication equipment is very expensive.

Obviously, the Imperial Navy cannot allow all large warships to be built according to the standards of flagships, and it often chooses several of them as flagships. For example, among the first four "provincial" class ships, only the "Pu" and "Min" are flagships, and neither of the other two are.

The problem that this leads to is that after the flagship is severely damaged, the fleet headquarters may be shut down.

In addition, even large warships designed according to flagship standards have many flaws.

For example, on the "Pu", there are only 4 long-wave radio stations, which can cooperate with four friendly forces at most, and it is definitely not enough in high-intensity battles.

More importantly, after several battles, the signal characteristics of the "Pu" long-wave radio station will be mastered by the enemy.

After that, as long as the radio waves it emits are intercepted by the enemy, the enemy can judge its location and infer the whereabouts of the special-mix fleet where it is located.

Obviously, it is obviously impossible to frequently replace long-wave radio stations for a large aircraft carrier.

Not to mention anything else, it takes a lot of time to return to Hong Kong.

With flagships, this problem no longer exists.

Of course, this is also the main requirement of the Imperial Navy for full-time flagships.

Simply put, it is to carry a sufficiently personnel fleet command and sufficient communication equipment to command fleet operations more effectively.

As the scale of the war expands, the requirements for flagships have also been increased.

The main thing is that not only can command fleet operations, but also have the ability to command combat operations at the battle level, that is, be able to command landing fleets and transport fleets to fight landing troops, and even have the ability to cross-service command to become a maritime mobile headquarters.

Obviously, these requirements are not low at all.

This leads to a very serious problem.

Budget exceeds the standard!

What to say is the problem with the Imperial Navy.

When planning, to be precise, when doing cost accounting, the Imperial Navy's auditors seriously underestimated the manufacturing cost of electronic equipment and underestimated the flagship's use of radio stations, radio monitoring equipment, radar and other equipment, resulting in the accounting cost far lower than the cost.

From another perspective, the Navy actually sets the tactical indicators of flagships too high.

At the beginning, the Imperial Navy always wanted to control the cost of full-time flagships to the level of heavy cruisers, and in the future, one for each special mixed fleet, so as to free the fleet aircraft carriers and fast battleships from the cumbersome command work and provide a better working environment for the fleet command.

Obviously, this is simply whimsical.

The reason is that the large number of communication equipment makes the cost of full-time flagships very high, and it is impossible to control them to the level of heavy cruisers.

This also directly led to the fact that the first full-time flagship of the Imperial Navy almost dying in the design stage!
Chapter completed!