"Major General, we will definitely win!"
The speaker was David Jones, the "China Hand" in the Dutch Navy and the commander of the battleship Zealand.
His words were not nonsense, but after receiving reports from the reconnaissance ship and the Johor Castle, he confirmed the strength of the Ming army fleet that was performing a landing mission in the Johor Strait.
This fleet is not the main fleet of the Nanyang Fleet, but a landing mission fleet-the current Ming Dynasty Navy is getting larger and larger, and its organization is becoming more and more complex. At the next level of the Naval Department of the Generalissimo's Mansion is the front fleet, which is divided into three major fleets: Beiyang, Nanyang, and Dongyang.
Among them, the Beiyang Fleet is responsible for guarding the "gateway of the country" between the Yangtze River Estuary (including the Yangtze River Estuary) and the Liaodong Peninsula. It is a fleet that looks after homes and hospitals. It looks very important, but in fact it does not have much strength.
The Nanyang Fleet is responsible for a large area from the south of the Yangtze River Estuary to the Nanyang Islands. It is a main fleet responsible for maritime hegemony and is very powerful.
The Eastern Fleet has the same nature as the Nanyang Fleet. It is also a fleet that controls maritime hegemony. It is mainly responsible for sea power east of Japan (including Japan) and up to the New World. It is also powerful.
Under the three fleets, there are two daily troop establishments: the Coast Guard Department (Naval Base) and the Fleet Squadron. The fleet detachment is only responsible for administrative management and training, and is not a wartime combat command unit.
In a wartime or quasi-wartime state, the admirals of the three fleets will form a mission fleet, which is a fleet temporarily formed to perform a specific mission. If this particular mission is a decisive battle, the name of the mission fleet is usually "Some Ocean Main Fleet". If this specific mission is a landing, then the mission fleet is the "Some Ocean Landing Fleet".
If there are multiple mission fleets performing the same mission, they will be distinguished by numerical numbers.
So what is now appearing in the Strait of Malacca is the Nanyang Landing Fleet, which is a fleet under the jurisdiction of the Nanyang Fleet that performs landing missions.
Under this kind of mission fleet, detachments with specific mission names will no longer be established, but will be named with numbers.
That is, "which detachment of the Nanyang Landing Fleet" or something like that...
Before David Jones left the Ming Navy, he served as the Deputy Chief of Staff in the Navy Department and was directly involved in the establishment of the three major fleets of the Ming Navy. He was very familiar with the establishment of the Ming Navy.
In addition, he is also very familiar with several standard fleet combat modes of the Ming Navy. Although the Ming Navy was brought out by the Dutch, because their foundation is so poor, they have always lacked enough outstanding officers and sailors, so Unable to adapt to complex and confusing tasks.
Therefore, the Ming Navy has always paid attention to standardized operations, that is, fighting according to the book!
After studying the naval battle cases of the Ming Dynasty and Europe, the Navy Department summarized five major combat modes: "Decisive Battle Mode", "Escort Mode", "Landing Mode", "Defense Mode", and "Counterattack Mode", and targeted each of them. Based on this model, several corresponding formations and battle plans were formulated... and these plans were compiled into books and sent directly to every navy captain and in the captain's room of every ship. I also placed a copy!
If you forget it due to excessive tension during the fight... you can still learn and use it now!
Only the Ming Dynasty had this kind of command among the navies in the world...
And David Jones also has a copy of this book - he originally participated in writing it! Can you still hide it from him?
So he knew exactly how the Ming Navy fought the landing battle.
"Now they should be deployed according to the landing pattern in the "Combat Instructions". In addition to the landing team, there will only be two combat teams at most." David Jones said to Tropp, "We The formation discovered by the reconnaissance ship in the waters west of Temasek Road should be one of the combat units. There should be another formation of similar size to the east of Temasek Island.
Our reconnaissance ship reported the discovery of a Ying Tianfu class, so there will be another Ying Tianfu class east of Temasek Island. Both formations will use the Yingtianfu class as the leader and flagship, plus several modified 'Flying class' ships to form a battle line formation for maneuver.
As for the combat ships in the landing formation of the Ming Army Navy, they should be dominated by state- and county-level hard-sailed bombardment artillery battleships. "
Tropp crossed his arms and said thoughtfully: "What if one of their combat detachments discovers three parliament-class ships? Will they run away?"
"No." David Jones shook his head. "The Ming Navy is known to destroy the enemy upon sight. There is very little content in the "Battle Instructions" about avoiding battle and retreating... Of course, this is not because they have How brave, but because their capital ships are relatively slow, it is difficult to escape the pursuit of the enemy's superior force."
Now the manufacturing industry of the Ming Dynasty can independently design and build soft-sail battleships, but their design level is still a bit lower than that of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The bombardment battleships they designed and built have the characteristics of "small and slow". The reason is that the soft sail technology has not yet been fully understood, so the design is relatively conservative, resulting in a slow speed of the ship. Therefore, we dare not build a ship with a larger tonnage, because the larger the ship, the slower it will be.
Tropp smiled and said: "That's good... we can eat one of their detachments first, then destroy the second one, and finally deal with their landing detachment! I believe that after this battle, It’s time for the Chinese to know who is the real overlord of the oceans!”
David Jones indeed knows the Ming Navy very well!
This analysis by him and Tropp actually guessed the deployment of Shi Lang and Liu Guoxuan, the two admirals and deputy admirals of the Nanyang Landing Fleet!
At this time, Shi Lang and Liu Guoxuan were each leading a combat unit to patrol the seas on the east and west sides of Temasek Island.
The composition of the two detachments is exactly the same. The flagship is a Yingtianfu-class ship, followed by two Feixiang-class ships, then four Military Guard-class ships, and finally four Senhushuo-class ships. Such a formation consists of 11 combat ships, plus several galleys for reconnaissance and escort missions. The two formations total 22 warships.
The flying class among them has undergone two modifications. The first time was to install a swivel bombardment cannon on the deck. The second time was a comprehensive overhaul, dismantling all the cannons, and then making major changes to the two-layer cannon overtime. The lower gun deck was closed, leaving only the upper gun deck for gun cabin reconstruction, that is, the direct gun deck was transformed into compartments, and each compartment was placed with two 15-pound guns that can fire explosive shells. Cannon. A total of 12 artillery compartments were built, totaling 24 15-pound cannons. The heavy revolving bombardment guns originally installed on the upper deck were completely canceled during this major renovation - because people from the Ming Dynasty Naval Shipbuilding Bureau still felt that all bombardment guns should be put into reinforced gun bays to feel at ease... ...
The military guard level and Qianhusuo level are smaller versions of the Yingtianfu level.
Among them, the military guard class is named after the military guard. It has a load capacity of 500 tons, three masts, a flat deck, and a total of 9 gun bays on the first floor, which can be equipped with 18 15-pound cannons.
The Qianhusuo class is named after Qianhusuo. It has a load capacity of 300 tons, two masts, a flat deck, and a total of 5 gun bays on the first floor, which can be equipped with 10 15-pound cannons.
In addition to these four types of warships, there is also a state-level hard-sail bombardment gunboat around Temasek Island. It is a bird ship-type bombardment gunboat with a load capacity of 500 tons. It has a total of 7 gun cabins on one floor and can be equipped with 14 15-gun guns. Cannon.
However, such state and county-level ships generally do not participate in fleet decisive battles, but are used to escort or support landings. Because the main task of the Nanyang Landing Fleet is to land, it is equipped with many state and county-level ships, as many as 24 ships. Including the 22 battleships of the two combat detachments, there are a total of 46 battleships with strong combat effectiveness!
In terms of quantity, its strength is much stronger than Tropp's fleet.
Although the East India Company collected about a hundred armed merchant ships for Tropp, most of the armed merchant ships were too thin and it was difficult to install bombardment guns, and Batavia did not have that many bombardment guns to use.
Therefore, Tropp finally selected only 18 of them for modification, plus the 14 new gunboats he brought from Europe, for a total of 32 warships.
