Chapter 1311: 1228 dragging-behind Navy

The Qin Country Navy, compared to the massive Great Tang Empire Navy, could be described as miniature. Even when compared to other countries’ navies, it falls far short of being powerful.

Due to the war between Shu Country and Qin Country, this navy was utterly unable to procure the Great Tang Empire’s submarine technology, so the Qin Country inherited the Shu Country Navy without any submarines to use.

So what battleships does the Shu Country Navy have? Or rather, how much of a foundation did the Qin Country inherit from the Shu Country Navy?

Firstly, the number of main battleships in the Shu Country Navy is very few; it has only five old battleships. When the world navy was developing greatly, Shu Country, due to its own focus issues, didn’t choose to keep up.

Shu Country, steered entirely by businessmen over the past decade, considered railway transportation between land and the Great Tang Empire as the most crucial, so they didn’t invest much in the navy.

After all, Shu Country didn’t plan to vie for supremacy with Chu Country and the Dorne Empire in the southern seas, so the navy’s development was very conservative.

The five old battleships generally have a displacement of around 17,000 tons, fully loaded not exceeding 22,000 tons, making their size rather petite.

With this displacement, the level of protection cannot be high either. In reality, these battleships are modeled after the Great Tang Empire’s first-generation dreadnought-class battleships, with overall performance remaining at the era of World War I.

Counting on these five battleships, which are slow and outdated with a main cannon caliber of only 305 millimeters, to attack the Great Tang Empire’s fleet is unlikely. Whether they can win against Chu Country’s battleships is questionable.

Early on, Chu Country built three battleships with support from the Dahua Empire. When the war with the Great Tang Empire started, these battleships fled to Shu Country’s port to avoid the heat.

After the war ended, the Dahua Empire’s plan for its vassal Chu Country’s navy to cut off the Great Tang Empire’s sea transportation line fell through, and these three battleships never came into play.

However, although Chu Country’s three battleships lacked the courage to target the Great Tang Empire Navy, they did have the boldness to fight the Shu Country Navy.

With help from the Tang Group, Chu Country’s three battleships underwent a series of modern upgrades, using better boilers and installing radar systems, significantly enhancing combat power.

Despite the main gun caliber of these battleships also being only 305 millimeters and a displacement of around 20,000 tons, the equipment is indeed better than Shu Country’s five warships, so… when it comes to real fighting, it’s hard to say who would win.

In terms of cruisers, Shu Country has quite a number, because Shu Country hopes their warships can protect their merchant fleets and remain highly visible in low-intensity conflicts.

This merchant mindset led Shu Country to build 33 cruisers of various models, and until Shu Country’s demise, these warships never participated in any decent combat.

Later, these warships all surrendered to Qin Country; they didn’t have the integrity to flood the sea valves for a dramatic self-sinking. They simply changed flags obediently, becoming part of the Qin Country Navy.

After all, Qin Country was previously a landlocked country and didn’t have this navy branch, so after controlling Shu Country’s ports and establishing its own navy, it still relied on the Shu Country Navy personnel.

However, Qin Country instinctively distrusted these Shu Country Navy commanders, so they installed a large number of their own people on each warship.

This behavior directly led to two outcomes: the first was that Qin Country’s novices influenced naval deployment and command without understanding anything, lowering the navy fleet’s combat power; the second outcome was that Shu Country Navy’s lower-level officers and troops complained about the lack of promotion channels, equally affecting the navy’s combat force.

Due to lack of training and temporarily not receiving enough fuel, this navy hasn’t been out of the port for over a year, and their actual combat power is as expected from a “nominal navy.”

As for destroyers, the majority of Shu Country’s destroyer troops weren’t equipped with torpedoes, virtually lacking any actual combat power. Relying on them to fight pirates or patrol the sea is fine; expecting them to challenge the Great Tang Empire Navy is truly like forcing ducks onto a perch.

Even though this navy is not much, in the hands of Qin Country, it is tasked with “attacking the Great Tang Empire’s southern sea area, restraining the Great Tang Empire fleet,” an impossible mission.

Ying Duo was also uncertain, so he decided to increase the navy budget over the next year, allocate funds for the navy, let the navy build more warships to accomplish that secretive, daunting task.

Qin Country’s shipbuilding plan is exceedingly ambitious and appears very targeted: Qin Country will purchase technology from Shireck and Dorne, self-construct and externally procure 150 submarines of various models!

The top tier of Qin Country, experienced in war despite not understanding naval battles, has a very sharp eye: rather than relying on the frail surface vessel troops, they plan to wage an asymmetric warfare using submarines!

Besides submarines, Qin Country also plans to deploy 300 torpedo boats near Shu Country’s coast, learning from Mirage Country’s suicide boat tactics and using torpedo technology to compensate for the suicide boats’ attack range shortcomings.

Furthermore, Qin Country built four aircraft carriers, following a proper path: according to Ying Duo’s plan, once Dorne’s main fleet, along with submarines, has dispersed and consumed a fair amount of the Great Tang Empire Navy fleet, their aircraft carrier fleet can justifiably defeat the Tang Imperial Fleet and seize sea control.

By then, coupled with Dorne’s carriers, the two countries forming a grand naval aircraft carrier formation, hundreds of aircraft plus dozens of warships spanning the Great Tang Empire’s maritime route, the Great Tang Empire heading towards exhaustion wouldn’t take long!

However, whether Ying Duo’s plan for 150 submarines will actually become a reality and what effects the submarines will achieve once built, is unknown.

In fact, from the surface, Ying Duo’s vision is quite unique: he keenly captured the key development direction for weaker nations’ navies: aviation, submarines, and speed. It’s just that due to technical constraints and urgency, how effective Qin Country’s entire system will be is uncertain.

Moreover, because of personnel changes, internal Qin Navy conflicts, outsiders leading insiders, Ying Duo’s ambitious navy development strategy is bound to face considerable challenges.

But the plan is in place. Various countries are utilizing this brief peaceful moment to bolster their military forces. Even, to ignite this war at the right time, both sides simultaneously left a fuse, an explosive barrel to light at any moment!

That’s right, both the Great Tang Empire and Great Qin Empire insist on letting the Dahua internal war continue. Zhao Jie obtained support from Qin Country but couldn’t conquer north; Zhao Yu received aid from the Great Tang Empire but couldn’t successfully march south…

Everyone is waiting, waiting for the moment they feel confident to break the balance of the Dahua civil war. Then the real players will emerge, starting a new round of war.

The main theme of human development is war… Peace is the precious thing interspersed between the gaps of war. And the advancement of science and technology makes war increasingly brutal, making peace ever more precious.