To be honest, Bismarck's first thought after receiving detailed information about the Dakar incident was to beat these Chinese people hard. He needs Xiao Letian as an ally, but for a strong prime minister like Bismarck, he needs controllable allies, which means you can't destroy my strategy.
The Dakar incident was not on the schedule at all, and it was not even part of any fantasy plan. This feeling of being caught off guard was so bad.
In the end, it was Prince Carl's persuasion that made Bimarck change his mind. No one knew that that night, there was an unsigned Prime Minister's Order in the Prime Minister's desk drawer.
In the order, all engineers preparing to be dispatched to Ryukyu were suspended, and China's continued heavy-duty hydraulic presses were also suspended. Without this industrial mother machine, the production of steel keels and crankshaft blanks for large warships would not be possible at all.
Of course, there are also many precision instruments, such as pressure gauges for steam boilers and scopes used in modified sniper rifles. These are in-demand goods that the German industry is proud of but is in short supply in China.
It is conceivable that when the core parts of a warship cannot be produced by oneself and can only be imported from Europe and the United States across the ocean, this is to put one's neck into someone else's noose.
Industrialization must start from the original foundation. Steel plants, precision machine tools, and heavy processing machinery are all indispensable. It is difficult to imagine that a country that cannot even process and produce battleship crankshafts can develop a real navy.
When the Sino-Japanese War was defeated, the Qing Dynasty did not lose unjustly. Even if it temporarily won, it would have to lose later. Because at that time, Japan was walking on two legs: purchasing and building its own, while the Qing Dynasty could only choose to purchase this path. Although Nanyang and Beiyang both had their own shipyards, in addition to producing some light gunboats for offshore defense, The main battleship is simply out of the question.
Prince Karl's intervention gave up the idea of Bismarck sanctions, which allowed Ryukyu to obtain the most precious industrial equipment and technology, allowing China's self-made warships to appear on the East Asian ocean earlier.
The prince and the prime minister had a very long meeting that evening. They not only reached a consensus on the strategy against France, but also carefully analyzed the strange tactics used by the Chinese in the Battle of Dakar.
Karl flipped through the secret message that he had just translated and said with great emotion, "The battle in Dakar was actually not only a practical exercise on the performance of the Zhiyuan battleship, but also allowed us to see a unique tactic practiced by these Chinese. !”
"Complicated... yes, please forgive me for not being able to use the right words to describe the chaotic thoughts in my heart. This classic battle of less defeating more, I think I can only use the word complicated to describe it!"
"How on earth did a battleship and 180 soldiers destroy a small city with a population of 30,000? How on earth did they defeat more than 3,000 French regular troops? If we don't study the reasons clearly, it will be really difficult for us. It’s such a huge regret…”
"If I guessed correctly, Lord Moltke has now led the military researchers to carefully analyze this battle... Fortunately, our intelligence personnel waited for the arrival of the Zhiyuan at the scheduled position in the Atlantic Ocean. Let us have first-hand data to restore the battle!"
Although Bismarck looked angry on the surface, he was actually very interested in the victory in Dakar. When talking about this topic, the drowsiness that the prime minister had just felt disappeared immediately.
"First of all, this war is a classic night attack. Surprise and unpreparedness are the basic elements of victory. Although Molière tried every means to send a signal to Dakar, he did not expect that the Zhiyuan would be so fast. Didn't give him any time..."
"Secondly, this battle fully proved the excellent performance of the battleship designed by Xiao Letian. We can finally confirm with confidence that the direction of future battleship development is high firepower, high protection while reducing the number of artillery. The thinking of the sail battleship era has really outdated……"
Speaking of this, Karl said with great emotion, "Three large-caliber naval guns, bombing a city from a long distance... It must feel great. I really can't imagine how powerful a 210-caliber cannon can be in a single explosion! I'm afraid in the past, battleships continued to Several volleys may not be able to reach the power of that one shot, right?"
"Firepower, protection, mobility...this is the mainstream of future warship development. I suggest that based on the data fed back by Kevin, we should continue to build this type of warship as Prussia's killer weapon for future ocean breakthroughs!"
Bismarck sighed, "That needs to be considered in the long term. The navy is too expensive. When there is no stable imperial fiscal surplus, blind investment is really not worth the gain..."
The Prime Minister did not clarify the second half of his life, but Karl could already understand that Bismarck was still worried about Britain.
"Okay, let's continue to analyze the secrets of these Chinese successes. The third point is that the Chinese have an effective method of combining infantry and artillery..."
"Using fireworks to localize long-range artillery is a genius and very dangerous tactic that only these fanatical Chinese lunatics dare to try... I even think that each of these Chinese soldiers are fanatical martyrs. They Just use your own flesh and blood in exchange for a successful artillery fire coverage..."
"It's hard to imagine how much danger those soldiers who release the signal will encounter, but these madmen are not afraid of death at all. Even if they sacrifice themselves, as long as the firepower can successfully cover the target area and eliminate the enemy, then their sacrifice will be valuable..."
Bismarck nodded, "Yes, this is a very strange tactical idea. On the surface, it is asking your soldiers to die, but it can allow individual soldiers and long-range firepower to be softened together..."
"Our previous war models were linear and flat. Soldiers were soldiers, artillery was artillery, and cavalry was cavalry. Although they cooperated with each other, they were all placed in their respective positions like chess pieces!"
"But Xiao Letian and his soldiers are not like that..." Bismai struggled to think of suitable nouns, "I think it is better to use three-dimensional to describe this brand-new tactic..."
"Yes! We all know that the foundation of war is actually effective firepower output. Even in the Greek heavy infantry phalanx in the cold weapon era, Rulin's spear is also a way of firepower output, but it is not as far as the range of a musket... …”
"When gunpowder was widely used, firepower became a subject studied by all military experts. Our rifles became more and more advanced, and the caliber of our cannons became larger and larger, but our ideas on firepower output were still very backward..."
