Seven Seas Beacon Fire

No wonder the guy who came out of the house just now didn't say anything! Ling Xiao turned around and looked at a kind-looking Jinyiwei officer next to him, shook his head and smiled: "His Highness has already made this arrangement, what else can I say? It's just that His Highness asked me to see what he meant by this."

“The selection process for you is to have each of you officers evaluate this operational plan. You can speak freely and point out any problems,” Li Che said. “I will judge whether you are qualified to serve as the commander of one of the detachments based on your comments.”

Ling Xiao nodded: "In that case, Your Highness, may I take a closer look at the entire battle plan?"

Li Che gestured for him to proceed, and Ling Xiao immediately opened the document and began reading quickly. Many parts of the operational plan were marked in red, presumably by his colleagues who had come in earlier. Although he could choose the same parts to comment on, after reading the entire operational plan again for about five minutes, Ling Xiao closed the document, straightened his back, and said, "Your Highness, let me talk about a relatively obscure aspect that no one has mentioned before."

"Which aspect?"

“Communications,” Ling said with a smile. “More than 300 torpedo boats, divided into more than 20 squadrons and 4 attack groups. The most difficult part of the entire operation is not how to carry out the torpedo attacks or what attack formation to choose, but how to ensure smooth communication throughout the entire fleet, especially since in addition to the more than 300 torpedo boats, there are also cruisers and destroyers deployed for the operation... This is a huge challenge, Your Highness.”

Li Che nodded, signaling him to continue, so Ling Xiao continued, "Since arriving in Vladivostok, I've noticed that all the torpedo boats that have been transported there are having radio communication facilities installed, especially some of the older torpedo boats and the hastily built torpedo boats, which didn't have radios installed before they arrived in Vladivostok."

However, simply installing radios is not enough. With so many units equipped with radios on the battlefield, their calls during emergencies would almost certainly contaminate the entire radio communication channel.

Li Che finally revealed a hint of approval in his eyes. In an era when radio had only just emerged for military use at the beginning of this century, this technology was undoubtedly a very cutting-edge and advanced field. Ling Xiao was already able to realize that large-scale use of radio would cause radio channel pollution, which meant he was already a little ahead of many generals of this era.

"Do you have a solution? If so, please feel free to say it. I'll see if it matches the preparedness plan in the battle plan or if it's even better."

Chapter 52 Disable Friendly Fire

"I believe that with current technology, radio pollution is an unsolvable problem. We can only try to improve it as much as possible by emphasizing radio discipline, but there is no way to completely and permanently solve the problem."

Ling Xiao's words caused the staff officers recording the events to frown, because the Ming Dynasty Royal Navy had a tradition of emphasizing "sea spirit," which meant that the spirit of officers and soldiers played a more important role in naval battles. This was mainly because, in the era of sail, the Ming Dynasty Navy was at a disadvantage in terms of the quality of its ships compared to the West, and its officers and soldiers often had to fight against larger Western ships when they were engaged in battle.

This is why the Ming Dynasty navy traditionally emphasized the courage and spirit of its soldiers, the so-called "sea spirit." In addition, due to the tradition of making up for what was lacking, just like an army in another world that fell into a fear of insufficient firepower and then frantically piled on firepower, or an army that fell into a fear of night battles and then vigorously developed night vision equipment, after entering the era of steam ironclad warships, the Ming Dynasty navy, having suffered from the lack of large ships in the sailing era, completely embraced the fleet decisive battle faction of large ships and big guns.

Therefore, in the eyes of traditional naval personnel, Ling Xiao's words were "very unspirited." How could it be an unsolvable problem? How could there not be a complete and permanent solution?

Although Li Che showed no expression or action, he couldn't help but secretly agree that the problem of radio communication pollution was a difficult one to solve, not only in this era but also on the battlefields of the next century.

For example, the Federation could even cause a female officer on the bridge to keep making dirty jokes to another female officer over the radio, which led to the harassed female officer turning off her radio. In addition, the ship had not been maintained for a long time, and the navigation radar base was rusted and could only be manually refreshed. When it detected the approaching civilian ship, it was too late to notify it to take evasive action. In the end, an expensive Aegis destroyer was smashed to pieces on the side.

If it weren't for the even more embarrassing incident of a Norwegian frigate being sunk by a cargo ship, the most shameful event of the year for the navy would have been that of the Federal Navy.

Since the problem of radio channel pollution cannot be solved in the next century, Li Che naturally does not expect it to be solved in this century.

“We don’t like officers here who only raise questions but can’t offer solutions.” Li Che felt he had to push this guy a little harder.

“My approach is not to start with solving the problem of radio pollution, but to address it from other angles,” Ling said with a smile. “Besides adhering to strict radio discipline, and ensuring that torpedo boats in each formation, except for the command boat, do not use radios to make calls unless absolutely necessary, I think that considering the special nature of the equipment deployed by our army in this campaign, we can consider not distinguishing targets so precisely.”

"You might as well put it more clearly."

"We're going to use torpedoes and destroyers to attack enemy transport ships, cruisers, and even battleships. The draft of any type of enemy warship is much deeper than most of the combat vessels we'll be deploying," Ling said with a smile.

"We just need to change the depth setting of the torpedoes, so we don't have to worry about accidentally hitting friendly ships. For example, we can set the torpedo depth to be deeper, so that even if the previous attack group accidentally enters the torpedo attack range of the next attack group, these torpedoes will only pass under the torpedo boats of the previous group."

Ling Xiao's method is extremely simple in principle, but extremely effective. It's like turning off friendly fire in a game, so you can splash water on massive numbers of zombies without worrying about accidentally harming your allies.

In any case, whether Li Che is playing Left 4 Dead, Bloodbath, or even the full-fledged mode of Genshin Impact in another world, his own people often hurt him more than his enemies.

Li Che nodded in satisfaction, then winked at a staff officer next to him who was registering on a form. The staff officer then put a checkmark next to Ling Xiao's name.

-------------------------------------

The interview and selection process in Office No. 1 was still ongoing. The staff officers who were taking notes in the office were specially selected by Sa Dingming from the Navy Department for Li Che.

While these staff officers were recording and scoring the officers participating in the selection process, they inevitably whispered among themselves, and much of what they talked about was not actually the officer who had just opened the office door today.

They were discussing Li Che.

Because they had traveled north from Songjiang Prefecture by train with Li Che, they were well aware that His Highness had not yet prepared the selection list for today, as he did not know who had come from Vladivostok at that time.

However, having only met him once, Li Che's self-drafted selection list is not very large, but it contains quite a few impressive talents.

Just like Ling Xiao from earlier, he clearly has some skills; he uses the simplest methods to solve the most complex problems.

What these advisors find most incomprehensible is that they still don't know how His Highness the Crown Prince selected these people.

You're saying it's based on the backgrounds and identities of these officers? Not entirely.

If we're going to base it on their grades and GPA, then the person who ranked last that year would also be on the list.

You mean according to their professional fields? But by observing His Highness the Crown Prince's conversations with these people, it becomes clear that His Highness the Crown Prince is not entirely clear about the specialties of some of them.

Furthermore, these selected officers are almost certainly meeting His Highness the Crown Prince for the first time today.

Moreover, some officers who did not perform well in military academy were actually quite capable after assessment.

Everyone was even more baffled as to how His Highness the Crown Prince came up with this list.

Being a talent scout isn't easy, because not everyone can spot a thoroughbred horse from a herd at a glance.

In fact, Li Che's selection criteria for most people on today's list was very simple—"I've heard of this talent before."

Just like Jia Baoyu meeting Lin Daiyu (this analogy is a bit far-fetched), Li Che relied on his impressions from another world, plus some achievements in this world and people who had made a strong impression on him, and compiled this list in a rather hasty manner.

The fact that some of these individuals, living in such a harsh environment in another world with such a weak navy, were still able to demonstrate their abilities to a certain extent speaks volumes.

In Li Che's view, it's as if Mbappe and Haaland were born in China. In such an environment, even if their talents are squandered and buried to some extent, they can still grow into useful talents. So what kind of development they could have made in a relatively superior environment is simply unimaginable.

As one person after another came in and went out, Li Che personally vetted each one. These officers were not only the key talents he had selected today to carry out the most important part of the entire operation plan he had proposed, but also the core team that Li Che had gradually built up in the navy.

At that moment, a guard at the door shouted loudly, "Xu Yueming! Come in!"

Li Che noticed this young man who had almost embarrassed Commander Long earlier that day, even without his presence. He was rumored to be a "junior student at the Imperial Naval Academy" and also seemed to be the pioneer of using aircraft for artillery calibration in this era.

Moreover, this person is the only "old acquaintance" among his key targets who does not have a corresponding relationship with someone from another world.

Chapter 53 From the grassroots to the real battle (1)

When Xu Yueming pushed open the office door, his unusual appearance made the others present take a second look at him. It was because if the military police saw him with his military bearing, he would definitely be criticized.

Do different countries' armies have special requirements for daily duties? For example, our army requires blankets to be folded into neat squares, while Russians, no matter how dirty other parts of their uniforms are, must keep their boots shiny. These are all to cultivate discipline among officers and soldiers.

Although when war breaks out, no one really pays attention to these things, it is rare to see someone as unkempt as Xu Yueming.

Looking at Xu Yueming sitting casually in front of him without even saluting him, Li Che became even more certain that the guy sitting in front of him was an eccentric person.

In any case, either IQ or EQ is definitely lacking.

“You’re the last person on today’s list, and also the most relaxed, or rather, the most arrogant of all the people who came in today,” Li Che asked Xu Yueming. “And you’ve even ruined your uniform like this. Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you were doing before?”

“I saw workers and sailors at the dock replacing the cannons on the warship this afternoon. I happened to have nothing to do, so I went over and lent a hand,” Xu Yueming said. “Because it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, I didn’t change my clothes. While working, I inevitably got some oil on my body, so I ended up looking like this. If I had known that I was the last one on the list, I would definitely have changed my clothes before coming.”

When Li Che heard him say that he had gone to help the workers and sailors replace the cannons on the warships, he was somewhat surprised. After all, in this day and age, even officers from commoner backgrounds would rarely do such manual labor with workers and ordinary sailors when they had nothing else to do.

As for what he called "rapid-fire artillery"...

What are your thoughts on the rapid-fire cannons that are being replaced on the warships?

Li Che asked casually, but his hand, which was resting on his thigh under the table, had involuntarily clenched into a fist.

Regarding these rapid-fire weapons, among the many people who came in before, opinions on them were almost polarized, with some strongly supporting them and others strongly opposing them.

The so-called rapid-fire cannon is actually a 40mm autocannon that is similar to a bang-bang cannon, using a water-cooled barrel and belt-fed ammunition. These cannons are very similar to water-cooled Maxim machine guns in both appearance and actual performance.

In fact, the structure of this machine gun is indeed closely related to the Maxim gun. This type of machine gun has a more resounding name: the bang bang gun. It originated in Britain. At that time, the earliest QF 2-pounder was called the Mk.II type. It was essentially an enlarged Maxim machine gun, but the caliber was enlarged to 37 mm and the bullet weight was about 2 pounds.

In its earliest days, this thing was more like an automatic grenade launcher than a machine gun, because the shells it fired had a low muzzle velocity, making it more like an old-fashioned Mk19.

During the Boer War, the Boers used this weapon to leave a deep impression and inflict heavy damage on the British. After gaining fame in the Boer War, various countries successively imported some of it. However, because the shells for this type of cannon were very expensive, wealthy countries bought more, while those without money bought less to study.

The Ming Dynasty directly imported the complete production technology of this cannon. The navy mainly introduced it to provide its infantry with a weapon to replace the old 75mm sampan cannon. When necessary, it could also be directly installed on warships to enhance short-range firepower.

However, the gongs at this time had a very serious problem: their muzzle velocity was insufficient—only 585 MPs. So, after producing a batch of the original gongs, the Ming Dynasty made drastic modifications to them.

For example, increasing the caliber of the artillery to 40 mm and changing the shells to the more powerful 40×158 mmR shells not only increases the caliber but also the propellant and extends the barrel length.

After improvements, the finalized 40mm autocannon achieved a muzzle velocity of 732 MPs, significantly exceeding the QF 1-pounder in both altitude and power. The initial 40mm autocannon also used canvas belts for ammunition feeding, later replaced by metal belts with 14 rounds per belt.

In terms of muzzle velocity and power, this 40mm autocannon still has a significant gap in performance compared to the famous Bofors 40mm autocannon of World War II.

Upon learning that the Ming Dynasty's arsenal contained such equipment, Li Che immediately ordered all the 40mm machine guns and original 37mm cannons that could be collected to be sent to Vladivostok.

The former is the closest thing he could find to the performance of a Bofors 40mm autocannon or a 37mm anti-aircraft gun, while the latter is something he considers better than nothing, since these days if you don't use a cannon, you have to use a manually cranked Hotchkiss rotary 37mm cannon or a Nordenfeld twin-mounted cannon.

Those two machine guns looked even more retro than the hand-cranked Gatling guns; they were typical 9th-century weapons.

“I think this is the weapon and equipment we need most right now,” Xu Yueming said. “However, many officers in our navy have not yet realized the value of this equipment. For example, I have seen the commanders of a destroyer and a large torpedo boat who are very resistant to replacing the 55mm and 75mm guns on their ships with this machine gun.”

Li Che was somewhat surprised that Xu Yueming would give such a high evaluation to this rather novel weapon, but considering that he was capable of conducting flight firing corrections, it was not surprising that he could see further than other officers.

"So it seems you've already recognized the value of this equipment?"

"Yes." Xu Yueming nodded with considerable confidence. His current air of composure made it hard to believe that he was once a student at the bottom of the class at the Naval Officer Academy.

"A considerable number of officers in our army do not trust this new equipment because they believe that its structure is complex, its reliability is questionable, and that this continuous-fire automatic weapon is not necessarily better than small-caliber rapid-fire cannons that fire shrapnel."

在我们的海军当中有大量的12磅炮（也就是75毫米火炮）的拥趸，尤其是海军当中75毫米速射炮的技术吸收了不少75小姐的技术经验之后，我们军队当中的一部分军官显然认为在短距离的军舰肉搏当中有12磅炮以及榴霰弹就绰绰有余了。”

Li Che nodded slightly. Since the era of ironclad warships, various two-pounder, six-pounder, and twelve-pounder guns may not seem remarkable, but in reality, they played a significant role in naval battles.

"It seems you don't think so."

"Of course, no matter how fast the loading speed of a small- or medium-caliber rapid-fire cannon is, it is still just a single-shot cannon. Compared to a machine gun that can fire in bursts, the difficulty of calibrating the cannon is obviously much higher."

Xu Yueming said, "Especially for the vast majority of officers and soldiers at the grassroots level, expecting them to properly use the continuous aiming method to fire these cannons is giving too much credit to the quality of our naval grassroots officers and soldiers."

But it's different with this kind of machine gun; even inexperienced greenhorns can adjust their aim and distance based on the final impact points of a series of shells.

"In other words, the biggest value of our current machine guns compared to traditional small and medium caliber rapid-fire cannons is that they lower the barrier to entry for use?"

“Of course it’s more than that.” Xu Yueming shook his head: “The greatest value of these machine guns lies in just two words—suppression.”

Chapter 54 From the grassroots to the real battle (2)

"The Federation must have a fleet outside Wonsan Harbor for surveillance purposes. If our attack group wants to attack the United States' transport fleet and the warships providing artillery support in Wonsan Harbor and the landing area, we must be able to suppress the United States' surveillance fleet with firepower. However, the number of cruisers and destroyers in the entire Vladivostok Harbor is far less than that of the Federation forces."

Xu Yueming spread his hands: "If we use normal methods, even if we wipe out all the cruisers and destroyers in Vladivostok harbor, it would probably be difficult to break through the Federation's perimeter fleet. Of the light cruisers in Vladivostok harbor, only two have 150mm main guns, and the rest of the small cruisers only have 120mm guns. Their main gun calibers are not much larger than those of the destroyers."

The destroyers in the harbor are all over 1,000 tons, and there are only 5 large destroyers equipped with 105mm guns. The rest are old destroyers with a displacement of less than 1,000 tons and a main gun caliber of only 88mm. They are over 10 years old. If we were to engage in a gun battle with the Federation's destroyers, we would naturally be at a disadvantage.

Even if we bring along those old pre-dreadnoughts and armored cruisers from the harbor, these slow-moving vintage ships will only slow down our overall pace. If we drag it out until daytime... then we'll be completely out of the game. I think that's why His Highness sent so many machine guns here, isn't it? In His Highness's eyes, these machine guns are the 'main guns'.”

Li Che's gaze towards Xu Yueming revealed unexpected joy. Among the people who came in before Xu Yueming, many were relatively famous naval personnel whom Li Che had learned about on the internet in another world—regardless of whether they were famous for good or bad reputations, the fact that they had made a name for themselves in the navy of that era already proved that their potential was relatively excellent.

Li Che's selection of these people was essentially like having the answers in hand, or playing a game with X-ray vision.

A small opening does not count as an opening!

But Xu Yueming, who was added to the list at the very last minute, was a truly unexpected surprise.

Li Che nodded slowly: "You're right, those 40mm autocannons are what I consider the 'main guns'."

The reason Li Che thought of using these early machine guns was naturally because he drew on advanced experience from some classic "small boats fighting big ships" naval battles in another world. That's right, advanced experience. Don't be fooled by the seemingly rudimentary "small boats fighting big ships" tactics of that time and think that it was just a victory achieved by courage. In fact, it was based on experience summarized from a series of naval battles at that time.

Given that the tonnage of the ships is far less than that of the hypothetical enemy at sea, the development of close-range deck-washing naval combat using rapid-fire cannons can be considered a targeted optimization for special circumstances.

Although the tactic of deck washing was popular since the advent of rapid-fire guns in the era of ironclad warships, the tactic of deck washing with small-caliber machine guns is completely different from the tactic of deck washing with medium-caliber rapid-fire guns at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century.

The latter is essentially a "health bar world" in the real world. Whether in the Battle of the Yalu River, the Battle of the Western Seas, or the Battle of Tsushima, due to the primitive and inefficient structure of armor-piercing shells at the time, neither side had the ability to quickly and decisively sink the other in a naval battle. Therefore, the artillery battle between the two sides can be seen as integrating multiple factors such as buoyancy reserves, armor coverage, firepower reserves, and personnel reserves into a "health bar".

They would suffocate each other with high-explosive shells, seeing whose buoyancy reserves would give out first, or whose gun positions were poorly protected and had their firepower knocked out, turning them into shipwrecks at sea. Or, in the long-term artillery battle, the casualties on the warships were so heavy that although the warships did not sink, they had lost most of their combat capability.

This early version of the deck-washing strategy often involved very long battles, with each player slowly whittling down the other's health bar. Battles could last for several hours, making it an unforgettable, slow death for both sides.

However, the use of rapid-fire machine guns to wash the decks was different. In this targeted tactic of small boats attacking large ships, the large ships were essentially just "large" relative to the small boats. In reality, they were still relatively low-end destroyers and frigates in the naval system.

These destroyers and frigates lack armor protection; both their hulls and gun emplacements are practically naked. Their small-caliber machine guns can rely on their superior rate of fire to suppress the entire deck with a storm of fire before the guns on these "big ships" can react.

Therefore, following this set of operational concepts and technical routes, we successively developed the Type 62 escort boat and the famous Yellow-water battleship—equipped with two twin-mounted 57mm machine guns and two twin-mounted 25mm machine guns, adopting a forward-two-aft-two-bore-back configuration—the "Yellow-water battleship"! (Sound! Seres has its own battleship!)

This tactic even played an important role in the Yeonpyeong Island naval battle between South and North Korea in the 21st century, demonstrating its powerful effect in achieving a kill on first sight.

Destroyers of this era were generally much smaller than those of World War II. The gun emplacements on these destroyers didn't even have the shrapnel shields that protected against shrapnel from World War II. For example, the Caldwell-class and Vickers-class destroyers, which were the mainstays of the Federation at this time, are probably familiar to anyone who has played Genshin Impact or Volvo.

With only four four-inch main guns in total, no armor protection, and a maximum of three guns per side, the Federation could still gain some advantage in artillery battles when engaging other destroyers of the era, thanks to their relatively larger tonnage (at that time, many destroyers were actually less than 1000 tons) and larger caliber guns (before World War I, most destroyers did not have guns larger than 100 mm).

However, once they get close, a large number of machine guns can quickly disable the main guns on the Federation destroyers. Even if they encounter Federation cruisers, they don't need to be afraid. Nowadays, apart from the Omaha-class, most of the Federation's light cruisers only have a very narrow main armor belt, and their gun positions are also poorly protected. After all, it's no longer the era of mutual deck-washing in the pre-dreadnought era. The main hypothetical enemy of cruisers these days is destroyers that attack their own capital ship formation.

Therefore, these cruisers all aimed to intercept destroyers at greater distances, opting to use six-inch guns rather than five-inch guns. With such a firepower configuration, if they were to suddenly encounter a small destroyer equipped with a large number of rapid-fire guns and a large torpedo boat cosplaying as a prehistoric 037 at close range at night, the scene would surely be quite spectacular.

"So that's why Lieutenant Xu, whose colleagues describe him as rather laid-back and someone who would rather do as little as possible, has chosen to spend these past few days at the docks with the workers and sailors replacing and adding machine guns to the warships involved in the war?" Li Che found Xu Yueming increasingly interesting: "When did you come up with the idea of ​​using machine guns to suppress the enemy ships' firepower?"

"I just didn't want to do anything stupid and pointless." Xu Yueming shrugged nonchalantly. He didn't seem to regard Li Che as a prince of high status. Both his words and subtle body language showed that he was very relaxed. "As for Your Highness asking how I came up with the idea, I initially just imagined using machine guns for friend-or-foe identification."

"Using machine guns for friend-or-foe identification?"

“Yes.” Xu Yueming nodded: “Our machine guns fire red tracer rounds, while the Federation’s tracer rounds are green or white. So my idea is that on the battlefield, we just need to keep the machine guns firing, and we can distinguish which ships are our own and which are friendly ships by the color of the tracer rounds they fire.”

“...You really are a genius.” After a moment of silence, Li Che shook his head and exclaimed, “I thought it was already quite impressive that Ling Xiao could come up with an alternative plan that was almost identical to the one from the General Staff Department, but I didn’t expect you to have an even simpler, more intuitive and more effective method.”