Chapter 5 Everyone thinks the end is the Thames (I)

At 6 a.m., the ancient and modern London finally woke up in the fog. The Irish vagabond packed up the newspaper and started a day's begging life. The tram shaking the bell, took away the workers standing on the platform of the mottled old streets, and began to implement a two-shift factory. Several army soldiers with rifles patrolled the streets, embellishing London with the atmosphere of war, while the lives of the rich remained unchanged. They had just woken up, dressed in silk pajamas, and watched the newspaper with only the news of victory in their milk.

The army and police blocked the Liverpool Station. This was called the Liverpool Railway Station, which had just been completed in 1874 and won the reputation of "London's most elegant station". A large number of fronts and wrists were temporarily requisitioned by the government, and light artillery and boxes of ammunition were carried onto the cargo compartment. The young soldier carried Lee Enfield rifles and carried heavy luggage and walked onto the car. Passengers who were anxious to travel could only pump in the square outside the station, anxiously waiting for the end of military control.

The content of military control does not include preventing trains entering the station from getting off passengers. The rumbling train stopped at Liverpool Station, and the dusty Japanese shipbuilding supervisor Kiriki Fujimoto packed up the information and documents in his hand, picked up his luggage bag, and got off with the surging crowd.

As soon as he got off the train, Kiriki Fujimoto was shocked because the huge train station was filled with British soldiers wearing tangled serge uniforms, light and heavy weapons, ammunition and other supplies. They occupied almost all the accesses of Liverpool Station, providing only a platform for passing trains to disembark and add water and coal.

Although Kisaho Fujimoto is not a professional soldier, every citizen of the island country far away from the Asian continent has some innate intelligence talent. Kisaho Fujimoto wanted to stop and observe the mental state and training level of the soldiers of the allied soldiers who had fallen apart, but he couldn't stop because the crowded crowd was always pushing him forward.

At the fork in and out of the station, passengers heading south from Scotland met the army soldiers who were about to advance north unexpectedly, and then passed by. In just a moment, it was enough, because Fujimoto Kirihisa had already drawn interesting things from the age, equipment and mental state of these soldiers.

"It seems that the European war has reached the moment when the bayonet is getting better. If we continue to fight, Europe will damage its vitality."

With difficulty moving out of the station, Kirikiho Fujimoto put down his luggage bag and looked for his old friend among the crowd outside the station.

The simplest thing to find out the "hereth" with yellow skin and dark eyes in the white world. However, Kirifuka Fujimoto just turned his body slightly and found his old friend, Yukichi Shinozawa, a naval officer in London.

Yukiichi Shinozawa's familiar Japanese naval uniform made Kisaki Fujimoto who was wandering overseas feel a different mood. Fujimoto suddenly missed the hometown Myoliji Temple and his sweet wife.

In Europe, no matter how wealth and wealth you have, as long as you have yellow skin and dark eyes, you will never want to enter the white world. Europe is so arrogant. Even if you can't take care of yourself, even if you have something to ask for, Europe will never change the contempt they have penetrated into their bones.

"Kun Shinozawa, the situation is not good." Fujimoto Kikuo handed his luggage to Shinozawa Yukiichi, and bent down to take the passenger seat, while introducing his experiences going south. "Along the way, I saw no less than twelve military vehicles heading north, which shows that the British shifted their center of gravity to the local area rather than the continental battlefield."

"Kun Fujimoto, I saw the diplomats from my neighbor's house outside the Liverpool station." The later pioneer of naval invasion of China, General Yuichi Shinozawa, the former Japanese Naval Aviation Headquarters, was just an unknown major at this time. He did not continue the topic of Fujimoto Kisaho, but started the car and drove the car out of the crowded station.

"Oh?" Fujimoto Kikuo, who was sitting in the passenger seat, frowned unconsciously and asked, "Is it Lucian?"

In Japan, anti-Russia sentiment was quite common. Although the Empire defeated the huge Lucia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, a treaty at Portsmouth Port lost all the money Japan, as the victorious party.

"It's not Lucian, but Chinese diplomat Gu Wei-jun." Yuki Yanze pointed to the cigarette box on the bridge of the Ford car and frowned: "After the seven-month European war, even if the British Empire is rich and powerful, it cannot withstand the destruction of the war. If you guess correctly, the hungry British people are attracted by China's huge human resources. They want to pick up China to participate in the war!"

"China joins the war?!" The matches that approached the cigarette were extinguished. Fujimoto Kikuo clamped the cigarette and shouted: "We must stop all this, which will affect our expansion of interests in China."

As early as the era of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the Japanese shogunate formulated a mainland policy with North Korea as a springboard. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan was "unwilling to be willing to be in the island country" and Yama Prefecture Aritomo further developed and improved the mainland policies proposed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and others, advocating to take North Korea first, Taiwan and Northeast Inner Mongolia as the springboard of the mainland, gradually eroding China, and conquering the world with Chinese resources.

Unfortunately, Japan's rise was the transition period of the European and American powers to imperialism. Every step of Japan's expansion was threatened by the great powers. In 1914, the European war broke out, and European powers had no time to look east. The United States was insufficient in the Pacific region. This was a godsend opportunity for Japan to expand its interests in China. Once China joins the war, the expansion plan will inevitably have additional resistance.

"Kun Fujimoto, we no longer have the capital to start a war." Yukihiro Yanzawa pressed the horn of the car and said angrily: "The damn army and the incompetent Second Fleet have wasted too much time in Jiaozhou Bay. Britain and France have become alert to us. Even if the Indian Ocean war is tight, the strength of the Chinese fleet located in Hong Kong has not declined but increased."

After the outbreak of the European war, Japan could not wait to declare war on Germany and sent a large number of troops, the Second Fleet and the First Southern Detachment to Germany's colonies in the Far East. Qingdao and Jiaozhou Bay are Germany's most valuable territory in the Far East. Despite the fact of financial difficulties, Japan sent out including the Army's 18th Division, the 24th Strengthening Infantry Brigade, 2 field artillery gangs, 4 siege heavy artillery brigades, and 2 **engineering brigades, a total of 50,000 people, landing in Shandong under the cover of 72 naval ships and 1 heavy artillery brigade. Germany and Austria

The Hungarian Empire only had two aircraft in Qingdao, 125 artillery pieces, 47 machine guns, 17 warships, including armored cruisers, and more than 10,000 officers and soldiers. He flatly refused the request of Britain to send the First Fleet to encircle the Spedong Asian Fleet, and just sent the Southern Detachment composed of old-fashioned warships to perfunctorily. Even the Southern Detachment, which was better than nothing, had a simple purpose. At least a small piece of barren land in Papua was out north of the equator, and almost all German colonies in the Pacific were taken over by the Japanese.

The Battle of Qingdao lasted for more than two months, defeating the Qing Dynasty and Lucia in succession, and getting the last ticket to the great powers, the Great Japanese Empire was killed and injured in front of the tightly defended Qingdao Fortress, with a total of 5,621 officers and soldiers killed, and lost a second-class old-fashioned coastal defense ship and four other ships. Although the Empire occupied Jiaozhou Bay, it also exhausted the empire's finances and limited support from the Allies.

Faced with tight military spending, highly vigilant allies and the United States, coupled with the rise of domestic constitutionalists, Japan eventually stopped its pace of military expansion.

"Kun Shinozawa, at least we have extended our tentacles to North China, and we are still winners." Fujimoto Kirihisao sighed, then shifting the topic to the issues he was concerned about.

"Summarizing the Battle of Dogel and the Battle of Skaglak Strait, examining the shipbuilding industry in the wartime state of Britain took up too much energy, and I didn't even have time to pay attention to the performance of the Second Fleet in the War against Germany. In the Battle of Skaglak Strait, the Germans creatively used wrenches as weapons for aircraft attacks on ships, and named it the 'Decisive Wrench'. Shinozawa-kun, it is said that our Wakamyeon Maru seaplane mothership also participated in the War against Germany. How did it perform?"

Before inspecting Europe, the young Kirifuka Fujimoto was proud. He did not deny that there was a gap between his country and the world's first-class maritime power, but he firmly believed that the empire built with two Hanoi-class crossbow-class battleships (Japan's name for dreadnoughts), two King Kong-class, two Tsukuba-class and two Sadma-class cruise warships (Japan's name for combat patrol) were not as far away from Europe as imagined.

In the winter of 1914, Kirifuka Fujimoto arrived in the UK. When he obtained first-hand information on the Doger Sands Battle from the Portsmouth Shipyard, Fujimoto was shocked. It should be noted that the Doger Sands Battle, which was just the "peak battle of battle cruisers", concentrated three super crossbow-class battleships, ten cruisers and a quasi-cruising warship with performance exceeding the Tsukuba-class. Kirifuka Fujimoto finally realized the profound industrial heritage of European powers.

In March 1915, the largest naval battle in human history broke out. In the North Sea, more than fifty main battleships set up formation games, which was more than the sum of other maritime power crossbow-class warships. The battle lasted from sunset to the next morning, with melee, night war, chaos war, torpedo war and great battle lines. Almost all naval battle forms in the Steam Age appeared in this protracted decisive battle.

The best commander, the most powerful sailor, the tightest calculations, the most efficient damage to the pipe, the jaw-dropping numbers of nine main battleships, and the bloodlines that thrilled! The proud Fujimoto Kirisaki finally realized what the real navy is and what the real naval battle is!

Kikuo Fujimoto realized that Japan, which lacked resources and lacked industrial heritage, would find it difficult to defeat the European Navy, which was struggling to fight with all its strength. This genius designer who designed the Fujiseki-class destroyer, the highest-level treaty cruiser and the Aolong aircraft carrier in his previous life, and conducted extensive research and experiments on emerging technologies such as welding and large marine diesel engines, began to think about how to effectively shorten the gap between the Japanese Navy and Europe.

"Waomyamaru?" When he thought of the seaplane mothership that had become the smashed laughing stock of the Nagashu family, Yuki Shinozawa turned his nose up and insisted that he was reluctant to say more than one word. "Fujimoto, I have no intention of belittling the value of the aircraft in reconnaissance, but please don't ask too much!"

The only one who could make Yukiichi Shinozawa so angry was that it was the 6,000-ton merchant ship intercepted in the Russo-Japanese War and converted into a 6,000-ton merchant ship carrying four French Falman seaplane motherships.

After declaring war on Germany, Wakamura Maru was involved in the Qingdao war. The four seaplanes he carried threw 190 bombs at the German positions, setting a precedent for air-to-ground attacks from the sea in the history of human war.

The honor is there, but the efficiency is terrible. Four aircraft carried 8-inch or 12-inch simple bombs modified from naval artillery shells, dispatched 49 times in the war, dropped 190 bombs, hitting the target...8. The result was that they sank a few-ton motorboat near the German S-90 torpedo boat that once sank a 3,000-ton second-class old coastal defense ship Gao Qianhui.

Fujimoto Kirihisao's slightly anticipated eyes dimmed. Yukishishita didn't want his colleagues to feel uncomfortable, so he took the initiative to change the topic.

"Fujimoto, do you know why the embassy called you from the far-off Scapa Bay?"

Kirihisao Fujimoto shook his head. Two days ago, the Japanese Embassy in the UK suddenly sent a telegram to Scarpa Bay, asking Fujimoto to return to London as soon as possible to discuss important matters, but never told him what was going on.

"Three days ago, British Navy Secretary Belford suddenly visited the embassy and asked if the empire had the possibility of selling or renting one or two King Kong-class cruisers..."

"Sell or rent a King Kong-class cruiser warship?!" It is related to the Empire's first-class treasure - the King Kong-class warship. Fujimoto Kisao was surprised to jump out of the passenger seat. Fujimoto Kisao also wanted to ask the reason for this matter. At this time, the car had already entered the embassy of the Great Japanese Empire where the menstrual flag was flying.

"Kun Shinozawa, Fujimoto..." Inoue Yukisuke, who has served as the Japanese ambassador to the United Kingdom since 1913, seemed to have been wandering in front of the embassy for a long time. As soon as the car driven by Yukiichi Shinozawa stopped, Yukisuke Inoue came closer and stuffed a confidential information into Yukiichi Shinozawa's hand.

"The Battle of Vlair between Austria and Britain, the Thessalonika between France and Ottoman, the Second Battle of Harrich Port between Britain and Germany, and the maritime situation in Europe has become a mess!"

Inoue Kazunosuke nodded and indicated that Kisaho Fujimoto also had the authority to read confidential information, so Kisaho Fujimoto took the thin telegram from Yuki Shinozawa and glanced at it quickly.

From the Mediterranean to the Hokkaido, three consecutive small-scale naval battles were enough to shock the world. The heavy-faced ambassador Mr. Konosuke Inoue seemed to have made up his mind to carry out Ishipotian to the end in London at 6:34 am on April 28, 1915.

"In addition, there is intelligence that another large-scale naval battle between Britain and Germany is in the process of brewing!"
Chapter completed!