There are still many officers busy in the headquarters of Mirage Haiping. Although the main fleet of Mirage Navy has been completely wiped out, the supporting officer system still exists, so there are a lot of idle people.
Except for a few old-fashioned destroyers hiding in the North Island, the Mirage Navy now only has a few hundred suicide speedboats left to deal with.
Due to the lack of sailors, half of these speedboats are made up of officers recruited from the army. They are at least somewhat educated and are slightly easier to train.
Their shortcoming is that they are not very familiar with the technical equipment of the navy, so they lack cleverness in operating speedboats. The advantages are obviously obvious: he was selected from the army and is very determined to commit suicide.
Others who are easier to train are coastal fishermen. They are familiar with driving boats and can train quickly. However, they lack fighting spirit. Many are timid about "suicide attacks" and are unwilling to drive speedboats to ram enemy ships.
The only way the navy can deal with this is to mix the two types of people and supervise each other and learn from each other... to ensure that the suicide speedboat can carry out suicide missions on its own.
As time goes by, the Mirage Navy is actually improving its suicide speedboats according to battlefield conditions.
They found that simply relying on inferior speedboats to increase the number of suicide speedboat units was not very effective.
In the latest attack, Mirage Haiping dispatched 30 speedboats in an attempt to attack the Tang Army destroyer that was approaching and bombarding Mirage City. In the end, only one speedboat exploded ten meters away from the Tang Army destroyer, which was regarded as a wounding result.
The remaining speedboats were sunk by Tang Jun's artillery, and most of them did not even get within 500 meters.
Therefore, Mirage, who had regained some of his love for naval battleships, began to try to install searchlights, machine guns, cannons and other weapons and equipment on speedboats.
The purpose of installing searchlights is to give these speedboats a little bit of night search capability, so that they can launch attacks at night: Although the results of the experiment were not good, Mirage Haiping still found a way to install searchlights on many speedboats.
At the same time, it seems necessary to install a machine gun on the speedboat so that it can fire at critical moments to interfere with the artillery fire intercepted by the Tang army.
Therefore, the Mirage Navy took out some anti-aircraft machine guns from the warships in stock and installed them on these speedboats, giving them a certain amount of firepower.
Sometimes...human beings always have some attributes of taking advantage of themselves: after installing machine guns on their speedboats, everyone turned their attention to the stock machine guns in stock.
The navy's anti-aircraft guns have been moved to land for use. In fact, there are no large-caliber anti-aircraft guns in the navy's inventory. But the Navy no longer exists, but the Air Force does...
The Zero fighter production was reduced due to bombing, and the engine production capacity was insufficient, but the production capacity of the cannon and fuselage was still surplus. Instead of leaving it there and waiting for engine production capacity to resume, it would be better to install a base and weld it to the speedboat for use.
When things have developed to this point, many of Mirage's suicide speedboats are actually only inferior to torpedo boats compared to torpedo boats.
What makes Mirage Haiping depressed is that although the whole world sympathizes with Mirage, which was beaten by the Tang army, almost no one is willing to provide help to Mirage.
No one is willing to secretly contribute the torpedo technology they have purchased to the Mirage to support the Mirage's great Patriotic War...
Therefore, it is impossible for Mirage's torpedo boats to appear in a short time. They can only place their hopes on suicide speedboats equipped with various weapons.
Ever since, within the headquarters of Admiral Mirage Haiping, the system that was originally responsible for commanding and dispatching the main fleet began to be busy commanding those speedboats. People who don't know the current situation of the Mirage Navy will really think it's something serious.
Just when Mirage Haiping was gradually becoming more arrogant for the growing force of speedboats, an officer reported the latest intelligence to him: "Report, a coast observation post has discovered two destroyers! They are sailing along the coastline! Look! It seems like he is provoking us."
"Provocation?" Mirage Haiping was slightly startled. In recent days, Tang Army destroyers have only appeared in the distant sea. In most cases, they are luring Mirage Air Force suicide planes out to die. Under normal circumstances, they will not stick to the offshore sea.
This time, the other party posted close to the sea. It was obvious that it must have a purpose, so Mirage Haiping immediately thought of the word provocation.
The officer who came to deliver the information immediately lowered his head and said, "Yes, they haven't sent a ship so close for a long time since we damaged one of their destroyers last time."
"Their destination?" Mirage Haiping raised his head and looked at the sea map around Mirage hanging on the wall.
The officer walked to the chart, stretched out his hand to indicate the approximate location of the Tang Army's destroyer, and then traced the opponent's route along the coastline: "If they don't change their route, they will soon be close to the mirage! It's possible. Bombard the port!”
"Do they have aircraft cover?" When Mirage Haiping asked this question, he actually wanted to determine whether the Air Force could dispatch aircraft to track the opponent's destroyers and guide his speedboat troops to surround the opponent and launch an attack.
Of course, his men also knew what Mirage Haiping meant. They shook their heads and gave an inaccurate answer: "Not sure! Their planes can fly very high and set up ambushes above the clouds! The radar shows that there are no enemy planes nearby... But it’s not certain.”
The Tang Empire's fighter jets are so fast that if they take off from the New Island or the South Island, they can rush to the battlefield in about 20 minutes.
This kind of thing has happened many times. Every time the Mirage Army's Zero fighter jets arrived at the battlefield within a few minutes, the Tang Army's planes would kill them. Naturally, the Mirage Army suffered a loss, losing both the aircraft and the pilots.
Being hit by the Datang Air Force's 30mm cannon, the Mirage pilots basically had no chance to parachute. Precious pilots were lost like this, and even the mirage army that encouraged pilots to commit suicide attacks could not afford the loss.
In fact, the destroyers of the Tang Empire still frequently appear near the coastline of Mirage's main island. In most cases, they serve as bait to lure Mirage's suicide planes.
Because the Tang Army hopes to consume more Mirage suicide planes before the next landing to reduce the risk of landing operations.
Whenever Tang warships appear, there are often Tang jet fighters or Butcher fighter jets lurking nearby. They can shoot down Mirage Zero fighters very easily. After several losses, Mirage did not even bother to take off its suicide planes to die. .
"Should we notify the port and let the speedboats attack?" The officer asked Mirage Haiping for his opinion.
Mirage Haiping pinched his chin and fell into deep thought. It is tactical to dispatch speedboats now. They are more willing to fight during the day than the Tang army.
In fact, it is not easy to find a destroyer on the vast sea. As long as the opponent strictly adopts lighting control measures, it will be difficult for the suicide speedboats released by the Mirage Army at night to find the target.
If a destroyer wants to run away during the day, it can actually easily hide its whereabouts, let alone at night.
Unless there is a clear area, for example, there will be destroyers patrolling near the landing site of the Tang Army. Most of the remaining suicide speedboats will return without success.
When the first suicide speedboat operation was successful, it was because the Mirage speedboat was going to raid the landing site. They were actively stopped by the Tang Army's warning destroyer, not that they found the Tang Army's destroyer.
The second time they sank the Tang Army's destroyer, it was because they were close to the Mirage City. The Tang Army's destroyer moved during the day, and the Mirage State took off a plane to guide its own suicide speedboat, surrounded and attacked, and achieved a victory.
Therefore, although sneak attacks at night are more advantageous, in actual operations, because they cannot find the target, Mirage's suicide speedboats attack Tang destroyers more often during the day.
This time, the destroyer of the Tang Army approached the coastline again, and was immediately discovered by the observation posts deployed by the Mirage Kingdom on the coastline.
For Mirage, this was definitely a provocative act: the Tang Army had just sunk a destroyer twenty days ago, and seven or eight days ago another of their destroyers was damaged while operating nearby.
Although the Mirage had sunk more than a dozen suicide speedboats, if they calculated the losses, they still felt that they had made a profit.
This time, the destroyers of the Tang Army came over again. Obviously they had not learned their lesson, and they still felt unconvinced by Mirage's suicide attack.
"Let the 13th team be dispatched! If the enemy turns around, then pull back!" Mirage Haiping finally issued the order to fight.
Although he didn't know the purpose of the Tang army, he had no way to explain it to the Mirage Emperor if he allowed the opponent's two destroyers to easily harass the coastline.
In addition, he didn't think the loss of a few speedboats was painful: the worst case scenario would be the loss of hundreds of people and a dozen speedboats. He even lost his main fleet, and he was still so far behind?
In fact, he did leave one caution: he did not dispatch the first ten teams. The combat personnel of the speedboat formation in the front were more professional and loyal, and their combat effectiveness was much higher than those in the back.
If the troops with lower numbers were sent out, it wouldn't matter if they suffered losses, and it would also train newbies, so Mirage selected the 13th team with lower numbers.
"Yes!" The officer immediately walked to the phone, grabbed the receiver, answered the call of Team 13, and issued the order to dispatch.
Soon, after receiving a series of reports from the coastal defense posts and confirming the course coordinates of the Tang Army's fleet, the commander of Team 13 released 20 speedboats of various sizes and rushed towards the two destroyers of the Tang Army.
The two Tang Army destroyers still maintained their course and advanced rapidly along the coastline.
