1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3257
It sounds like a good idea to attack Yingtian Mansion in the north instead of Liyang Siege, which is easy to defend and difficult to attack, but Shi Diwen does not agree with this idea.

If the nail in Liyang is not pulled out first, even if the Haihan army advances the battle line to the territory of Yingtianfu, the logistics supplies will inevitably be under the threat of the Liyang defenders.

What's more, Yingtianfu's Nanjing City is a big city that has been built for thousands of years in the past dynasties. The city's defenses are extremely strong, and it has more time to mobilize reinforcements.

According to the information Shi Diwen possessed, the city of Nanjing has been strengthening its city defenses in recent years. Obviously, the other party also knows that the battle with Haihan will break out sooner or later, and has done a lot of preparation work in advance.

Even with the strength of the Haihan army, Shi Diwen believes that it is unlikely to win Nanjing in a short period of time, and it may be a stalemate under the city for a long time. It is unrealistic to conquer Nanjing first and then turn around to persuade the Liyang defenders to surrender.

Take Liyang first and eliminate your worries before you can concentrate all resources to attack Nanjing.

Shi Chengwu's understanding of the battle situation is obviously closer to Shi Diwen's idea. As for whether the plan of using boats to build floating bridges on the moat to launch a siege is feasible, this is a secondary issue in Shi Diwen's view.

As the commander-in-chief of an army, setting goals and controlling the overall situation is the most important thing. The specific tactics and implementation are issues that front-line commanders need to consider. This is also the awareness that Shi Diwen instilled in Shi Chengwu since he was a child.

Shi Diwen is already over half a hundred years old, and the time he can lead troops to fight will be less and less. This armed force that has spent countless energy and financial resources under his command will be delivered sooner or later.It is impossible for a person to be selfless. He has been in charge of the East China Sea region for so many years, of course he hopes to hand over this powerful army to his descendants.

Shi Chengwu was able to inherit his own strategic thinking, so Shi Diwen dared to slowly hand over military power to him.To Shi Diwen, this matter is far more valuable than a small county town.

However, compared with the northern region and the surrounding areas of the South China Sea where wars are frequent, the Donghai region has not had many military operations in recent years, and there are not many opportunities for Shi Chengwu to make military achievements.Therefore, when attacking Daming this time, Shi Diwen specially brought Shi Chengwu with him, allowing him to participate in decision-making as a combat staff officer, and took this opportunity to accumulate some valuable experience in commanding large-scale battles.

While advancing northward smoothly by land, the Haihan Fleet led by Yan Chujie also advanced steadily on the Yangtze River.

Starting from Zhoushan and traveling upstream along the Yangtze River, this fleet has almost concentrated more than [-]% of the main combat power of the East China Sea Fleet.The fleet includes not only the most powerful Guangrong-class lead ship of the East China Sea Fleet, Zhoushan, but also several warships that rushed back from the Sasebo base in Japan to participate in the operation.

This is also the first war that the Zhoushan has officially participated in since it entered service.Although it is a bit suspicious to put such a huge naval battleship into the inland river battle, it also shows the importance Shi Diwen attaches to this battle.

Compared with the Haihan Fleet, which has strong ships and powerful guns, Deming's surface armed forces are more focused on numbers, which also echoes its current situation.

Since Haihan almost completely controlled the coastline, the Daming Navy was also forced to give up its struggle for sea power and instead concentrate its resources on developing the inland river fleet to guard against Haihan, the only opponent on the water.

Compared with the Haihan battleships that are constantly being enlarged, the warships of the Daming Navy still maintain the traditional style. Most of the warships have a small displacement, so as to obtain seaworthiness on various inland waterways capacity and flexibility.

However, the small size of the ship means that the weapons and equipment that can be carried are limited. When facing the huge Haihan warship equipped with a large number of artillery, the disadvantage is very obvious.

In order to make up for this shortcoming, the only way Daming can adopt is to expand the size of the navy fleet as much as possible, and use quantity to make up for quality.If necessary, adopting ant colony tactics may also be able to fight.

Small warships with fast speeds such as net shuttle boats, eagle boats, red dragon boats, Cangshan boats, and wheel boats are all built in accordance with this tactical thinking.During the war, hundreds of ships were dispatched in one breath, and the siege was launched in the melee mode on the river, and the number was used to share the enemy's firepower.

Inland river warfare is different from the environment at sea. The formulation of tactics is closely related to the flow direction and hydrological conditions of the river. The party in the upper reaches will have a certain advantage. This is one of the few conditions that the Ming army navy can take advantage of.

Warships such as mother-child ships, serial ships, and fire dragon ships all adopt tactics to take advantage of the upper reaches, set fire on partially detachable hulls or place explosives to impact downstream enemy ships.

The Ming army spent a lot of thought to formulate such a special combat method, which can be said to be tailor-made for the opponent of the Haihan army.

But this set of tactics itself will also be limited by the objective environment. For example, it is not suitable for open waters with gentle currents, and the effect will be greatly reduced. Therefore, the choice of the battle location is also very important.

In the lower reaches of the Yangtze River to the east of Zhenjiang, the width of the river is often three or four miles. If you confront the Haihan fleet head-on in this environment, it will be like moths to the flame.

Therefore, after entering the Yangtze River, the Haihan Fleet basically encountered no resistance, and the ships of the Ming Army Navy only followed a few miles upstream, marching upstream simultaneously with the Haihan Fleet.

However, Yan Chujie still didn't dare to be careless. He knew that although the navy division of the Ming army had the ability to use three axes, if they used it unexpectedly, they might hit someone, so they had to be prepared.

During the upstream march of the fleet, several reconnaissance speedboats were dispatched to advance along the river bank to ensure that no Ming army navy would hide in places such as river branches, river beaches, and fishing ports for sneak attacks.

"My lord, after crossing the mouth of the Jiajiang River, we will enter the section of the Zhenjiang River."

Yan Chujie nodded and said, "Understood. Send me an order, send a signal, and everyone will reduce their speed, and the fleet will enter the second level of combat readiness."

The Jiajiang River is less than a hundred miles long. It is not a complete river, but a narrow waterway sandwiched between Taiping Island and the south bank of the Yangtze River, hence the name Jiajiang.

Originally, Jiajiang and Taipingzhou belonged to the boundary of Zhenjiang, but when the two countries signed the armistice agreement last time, the demarcation of this area was involved. At Haihan's insistence, this section of the Yangtze River, including Jiajiang, was included It was assigned to Yangzhou Prefecture controlled by Haihan.

At that time, with this stroke on the map, even Changzhou Prefecture on the south bank of the Yangtze River was demarcated to nearly half of the area to Suzhou, which was under the rule of Haihan in the east.

After hundreds of miles upstream from the mouth of the Yangtze River, it is considered to have reached Daming's first line of defense on the Yangtze River.According to the information seized by the Military Intelligence Bureau, the navy of the Ming army has at least two military ports in Zhenjiang, with over a hundred warships of various types and thousands of sailors. Presumably they will not just sit back and watch the Haihan fleet pass here safely.

(End of this chapter)