Chapter 5 Landslide Launching
Since the Tang Empire is currently a British protector, this is Zhang Meng's strategic consideration, and it is easier to survive by relying on the British to protect him in the early stage of development.
But in terms of tactics, Britain also became an obstacle to the development of military power in the Tang Empire.
In order to form his own naval force as soon as possible, Zhang Meng called Constine to ask him for help.
At this time, Constine had already won the position of mayor of London with Zhang Meng's secret support, and was still very friendly to Zhang Meng. When he learned that Zhang Meng asked him to help him buy a few warships and submarines, he agreed readily.
However, it was obvious that Constine could not feed Zhang Meng at once. He seemed to feel that Zhang Meng had a great ambition, so he restricted Zhang Meng from purchasing large battleships and heavy cruisers. However, when he arrived at the British Navy, he further restricted it because the British government did not want the Tang Empire to change the military balance in the Central Pacific region, so he was allowed to purchase destroyers and submarines, and no more than six were allowed. The reason was that the Tang Empire was protected by the British Empire, so there was no need to have too strong offensive naval power.
Zhang Meng knew that once he built a large-scale naval force, it would inevitably cause reactions from surrounding Britain, the United States, Japan and other countries. Therefore, he did not buy warships from the United States and other countries to prevent the news from leaking. Instead, he first touched the British's bottom, but he guessed it, and the British did not allow it.
But Zhang Meng had some solutions and quickly gave up the idea of directly establishing a navy and changed it to the Coast Guard. He only changed one name, but the political significance was completely different. The Navy is a force of offense and defense, but the Coast Guard is a simple defensive law enforcement force.
Zhang Meng said that the three archipelagos of the Tang Empire were far apart and the islands were scattered. In addition, there were strong typhoons passing through every autumn and winter. The small destroyer was unable to perform patrol missions, so he requested the relaxation of restrictions to allow the Coast Guard to have light cruisers.
At this time, the British government was planning to further restrict cruisers from various countries in the London Naval Treaty. The Navy Department came up with an improved Linxian-class light cruiser plan, hesitating whether to build a batch on a large scale as a substitute for the treaty era. Zhang Meng took the initiative to propose that he would provide R&D funds and hoped to order Linxian-class light cruisers.
For the British Navy and Naval Shipyards, as soon as they took out the Linxian-class light cruiser, a buyer came to the door and provided scientific research funds, which is a good thing. In particular, the Naval Shipyards have very few orders, because the Labor Party has been controlling it for a while and has been pushing the Navy's funding for three or four, making it difficult for the Navy shipyards to obtain orders.
Therefore, for the economic interests of the naval shipyard, the British Admiralty believed that even if the Tang Empire had several light cruisers, it would not change the strategic balance of the Central Pacific. After all, the Tang Empire and other Central Pacific countries were British protectors and it was impossible to make extraordinary moves.
In response, the British government asked Zhang Meng again, and Zhang Meng said that it was definitely only a defensive naval force, which dispelled the British government's doubts and concerns, so it relaxed the restrictions, allowing the Tang Empire Coast Guard to have light cruisers, destroyers and submarines as defensive forces, and also relaxed the number of restrictions. However, it is still not allowed on the issue of battleships and heavy cruisers.
For Zhang Meng, he would not spend money to buy some vases and warships back.
Regarding the issue of which warship to buy, Zhang Meng mainly targeted the Japanese Navy, which was out of date before and after World War II or simply modified it to deal with World War II.
For the British Navy, the light cruiser that meets the requirements of Zhang Meng is the Linxian class. It does not refer to the Linxian class that started construction in the late stage of World War I, but the treaty-type Linxian class light cruiser prepared by the British Navy to deal with the London Navy Treaty.
Zhang Meng prepared the light cruiser to cooperate with the fleet light cruiser tailor-made for the aircraft carrier battle group equipped by the Imperial Navy of the Tang Dynasty, and the Linxian-class just met the standards of the future aircraft carrier battle group fleet light cruiser.
The Linxian class can be regarded as a reduced version of the Leander-class light cruiser and its improved model. It has a total length of 154 meters, a width of 15.54 meters, and a draft of 5 meters. The standard displacement is 5,270 tons, a full load displacement of 6,715 tons, a combat speed of 32 knots, a fuel carrier of 1250-1,325 tons, and a cruising capacity of 5,300 nautical miles at 13 knots. It is equipped with three dual-mounted 152 mm 50-diameter main guns, four single-mounted 55-diameter 102 mm secondary guns, two 12.7 mm parallel machine guns, and two triple-mounted 21-inch torpedo launch systems.
The British Navy Shipyard will build six Linxian-class light cruisers for the Coast Guard of the Tang Empire. According to Zhang Meng's requirements, the main gun and secondary gun systems will be changed to Gaoping dual-purpose artillery to meet the air combat needs. At the same time, two dual-mounted 40mm anti-aircraft guns and two quad-mounted 20mm anti-aircraft machine guns will be added to make them have strong air combat capabilities. This is also to prepare for future fleet air defense in advance, saving time and money for future modification and upgrading.
Considering the training of the Coast Guard of the Tang Empire, Zhang Meng proposed to rent six Leander-class light cruisers from the British Navy for training first, because the Linxian-class light cruisers are basically an upgraded and enhanced version of Leander-class light cruisers. By training on Leander-class light cruisers, after two years, the six Linxian-class light cruisers can be directly arranged for combat readiness patrols.
The British agreed to Zhang Meng's request, but he knocked Zhang Meng aside on the loan and training fees. The total cost of the six Linxian-class light cruisers was 4.2 million pounds, the total cost of the six Leander-class light cruisers and the training costs provided by the Royal Navy were 5 million pounds.
The rental fee is more expensive than the shipbuilding fee, but it is actually caused by the high daily maintenance costs of warships.
But Zhang Meng believes that it is worth it. At present, the training experience of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is still the highest level in the world. For the officers and soldiers of the Tang Empire's naval officers and soldiers, this will be a learning opportunity that will benefit a lot.
After reaching the agreement, Zhang Meng immediately assigned 10,000 people from the National Defense Forces and sent them to the Manchester Naval Training Base in the United Kingdom. In fact, each light cruiser only needs 300 people, and six ships are only 2,000 people. However, Zhang Mengzhi was not here. In the future, he would have to buy and build more warships, so he sent 10,000 people to receive training from British naval instructors.
At the same time, Zhang Meng even planned to rotate 10,000 people to the Manchester Naval Training Base in the United Kingdom for training every year. The main reason was that Zhang Meng believed that the national defense construction of the Tang Empire was mainly based on the navy and air force, with the weakest army status, and the Marine Corps who needed more.
Among the requirements of the Marine Corps, it is obvious that they need to adapt to living on warships. Otherwise, no matter how powerful they train on land, what kind of battle will they fight when they are on the boat when they are on the sea?
There, they will receive three months of intensive naval training, and then take another three months to drive six Leander-class light cruisers back to the Tang Empire. Along the way, they will continue to complete ocean training subjects under the command of British instructors.
He sent 20,000 people to the UK for military training at once. The British authorities were obviously very concerned about Zhang Meng's motives. Fortunately, Constine spoke for Zhang Meng at this time, saying that Zhang Meng's ambition was not in Tongan's larger place and would return to China to fight for military hegemony in the future.
At this time, the Kuomintang had completed formal unification of the country, but for the United States and Britain, they were not happy because Chiang Kai-shek and most of his direct officials during this period were basically pro-Japanese, which can be seen from the Kuomintang's blue sky and white sun flag.
The pro-U.S. and British warlords that the United States and Britain had previously supported in the mainland have now been defeated by Chiang Kai-shek, which is not something they are happy to see for the United States and British governments.
When they learned that Zhang Meng had an intention to return to China to fight for hegemony in the future, the US and British governments were interested in him and sent representatives to contact Zhang Meng. Zhang Meng's strong anti-Japanese attitude made Britain and the United States very happy.
Based on Zhang Meng's clear anti-Japanese attitude, the British authorities immediately showed sincerity and allowed Zhang Meng to send more troops to the UK to receive training in turn.
Of course, the British are willing to train for purpose. During their training, they will inevitably not export pro-British ideas to the Tang Dynasty National Defense Forces and establish good relations with these soldiers. This is also the deep strategic intention of the British authorities to allow Zhang Meng to send more people to the UK for training.
One thing about climbing along the pole was Zhang Meng's specialty. Seeing that Britain sent a very friendly signal to the Tang Empire, Zhang Meng immediately added 6 additional Linxian-class light cruisers to the UK.
Chapter completed!