Battle of the Third Reich

Just five hours before Xu Jun talked about his "trap theory" with his subordinates, he was the largest in this slapstick war broke out on the ocean 50 kilometers west of Siam Pavilion. It is also the most intense surface battle.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, the communications department of the Siam Naval Command became extremely busy. After intelligence from the French naval fleet from Saigon came, the Naval Command immediately sent combat readiness to naval vessels sailing in the Gulf of Siam Upgrade alert.

To say that the relationship between the Siamese navy and the army is actually not much different from that of Japan. Although they are not as extreme as the Japanese, the generals of the two generals fight at the conference table, and the soldiers fight in groups in the bar. Accidents are often uncommon.

This time the Siamese navy showed great dissatisfaction with the army’s arrogant attack, not only because the army did it without notifying them, but also because the Siamese navy had more self-knowledge and knew that it was a confrontation with the French Far East Fleet. A matter of self-defeating.

To say that if half a year ago, the French Indochina fleet had only a bunch of old and weak soldiers with no morale, the Siamese Navy still believed that it had a six-point victory, but now the two battle patrols are stopped in Saigon Port, Siam has no chance of winning at sea.

Although the reinforcements of the Japanese joint fleet have been contacted, before the Japanese fleet enters the port of Bangkok, everything still has to rely on the Siam Navy itself, and can only bite the bullet and die.

This time it was considered to be alive by the army of bastards. Looking at a report of the attack on the ship, Admiral Sing Komonavin, commander of the Royal Siamese Navy, felt his heart twisted.

There are four busy commercial waterways in the Gulf of Siam, and there are countless Siamese transport ships every day to and from various seaports in Southeast Asia, delivering the largest export materials of Siam, rice and vegetables, back to the lack of domestic production resources, these routes are Siam The kingdom's window to the outside world, even if it is called the lifeline of the kingdom, cannot be overstated.

But now on these routes, within just an hour, dozens of Siamese cargo ships have been sunk and most of them have only had time to send out a few SOS codes and ship position coordinates. They don't even know what was attacked.

Obviously there are French assault ships in the Gulf of Siam, but knowing that the enemy is attacking their own ships, the Siamese Navy cannot come up with any solution.

The Siamese Navy is a standard yellow water navy. Although the water in the Gulf of Siam is very blue, it cannot change the cruel fact that the Siamese Navy does not have the combat power of the distant sea. Their naval strength is only enough to defend the national territorial sea.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of territorial waters in various countries around the world was confusing. The British standard is that it belongs to the territorial sea within three nautical miles from the coastline, which is exactly the maximum range of the early forebore gun. The French believe that all territorial seas are within the visual range. They set the standard of the territorial sea to 22 kilometers, which is about 12 nautical miles. Siamese used British standards because of its early contact with the British.

The Royal Siamese Navy is considered to be a small and sophisticated modern navy among Asian countries, but in front of the veteran European powers, they are only worthy of some coastal defense battles.

At this time, your commander did not know that the Haiphong ship [Yugonghe] had sunk, otherwise myocardial infarction might occur on the spot. For the attack on the route, the Siamese navy believed that it was powerless. All they could do at present was to order the domestic ships in the sea area to return to Bangkok Bay immediately, and concentrate their strength to shrink the defense zone as much as possible.

The navy believes that the concentration of the ships in its hands can still give the French a headache. As long as it insists on the arrival of the Japanese joint fleet, it can safely wait for the truce.

No one at the top of the Siamese Navy believes that Siamese has the ability to win this war. They now only want to retain the precious blood of the Navy as much as possible before the Bangkok government surrenders orders.

Because from the reports of some of the ships attacked, it looked like they had hit mines laid by the French, so the Siam Naval Command guessed that the French must have laid some minefields in the shallow sea area of ​​Siam, and the target was Siam. Some of the navy's ships like to sail along the coast.

Two Japanese-style [Thunburi] class shallow water gunboats cruising near Dalang, after receiving command from the command, left their quiet berth and began to return to the home port of Sattahip Naval Base.

Along with the two strongest warships of the Siamese Navy, there were also six small-scale lightning strike ships purchased from Italy. This kind of full-load 400 tons was equipped with three 76-millimeter main guns and was equipped with six Small warships with torpedo tubes cannot be considered torpedo boats.

At first, the situation looked pretty good. Two heavy artillery ships with four lightning strike ships headed southeast first. They would join the remaining two lightning strike ships in the waters of Koh Chang Island in the south of Koh Chang Island. They were docked on that naval berth There are also two logistic carriers of the Siamese Navy, and the Naval Command does not know why they did not notify them of the return order.

At that time, Captain Luang Peng Weifengan, the captain of Thonburi, as the highest commander of the formation, decided to take the two 800-ton offshore transport ships together. Wei Fengan may have been out of guilty contempt at the time and could not bear to abandon these two colleagues, but the facts finally proved that this was a fatal decision.

[Thonburi] class has a maximum speed of only 15.5 knots, because to take care of the two steam-powered transport ships, the formation's speed has been further reduced to only eight knots. However, out of confidence in his own strength, Wei Fengan did not have much worry about this voyage. Although the headquarters repeatedly called to warn of the French attack ship, the lieutenant colonel believed that the firepower of this small fleet was enough to repel any French attack. Offensive.

Then he received a warning from the headquarters, letting him be careful of the shallow waters along the coast, the French may have quietly dropped mines. The draughts of the two old-fashioned transport ships were too deep to navigate freely in shallow waters, so the fleet simply chose a new route, bypassing Koh Chang Island from the west, and then going directly to the destination of Sattahip along the offshore route.

This route was about 30 kilometers away from the coast, with an average water depth of more than 70 meters. With the technology known at the time, it was impossible to deploy mines in such a deep sea area.

This small fleet gathered almost 70% of the first-line combat ships of the Siamese Navy, which can be said to be the old capital accumulated by the Siamese Navy after two generations of dynasties. Weifeng'an organized the fleet into four columns. The distance between the left and right sides of the ship was kept at 150 meters, and the distance between the front and back was 200 meters, forming a rectangular array with a width of one kilometer.

[Thonburi] and [Ayutthaya Ayutthaya] sailed side by side at the center of the front of the queue, with three lightning strikes on each wing, followed by a transport ship behind the shallow water gunship. Because the old coal-fired steam boiler is used, the black smoke from the chimney of the transport ship is clearly visible ten kilometers away.

Just after three in the afternoon, the [Thunburi] reported its position to the headquarters again, and learned that the destroyer [Puan Luan] had been sunk by a French submarine at 50 nautical miles southwest of Sattahip. News.

This message made Lieutenant Colonel Weifengan nervous. His formation may be able to repel the destroyer-level surface ship attack, but he did not have any anti-submarine capabilities. The current voyage has only passed a quarter, and at the current speed, it will take at least three hours to reach Sattahip. Within these three hours, the fleet was threatened by submarine attacks at any time, because the coastal airport was currently being retaliated against by the French Air Force, and the fleet also lost the possibility of obtaining **** support from the Air Force.

At 3:17 in the afternoon, [Thong Buri] ordered the formation to stop advancing, and Wei Fung An was ready to release a Siamese seaplane carried on the transport ship [Pagan Island].

This is a two-wing small water reconnaissance aircraft specially designed for the Siamese Navy by the Kawasaki Aircraft Manufacturing Plant. The production number is MS-103S. On the basis of her, Kawasaki has also developed the 96-type small seaplane, which is a special Small reconnaissance aircraft for use by the Japanese Navy's large submarines.

Because there is no catapult, the plane can only be lifted to the surface by crane, and then it can take off from the surface by its own power.

The weather on that day was very good, and the sea was also very calm. Lieutenant Manpeng, Siam Naval Air Force, started the engine. Under the watch of hundreds of fellow soldiers in the formation, he began to glide at high speed against the sea breeze.

The Siamese ran for almost 1.5 kilometers, and finally left the water and began to climb up smoothly. Lieutenant Manpeng glanced down from the cockpit probe, and the scene he saw surprised him, and he could see the sea water from the air. Straight thunder trails are approaching at high speed towards the formations anchored in the sea.

PS: After finishing the chapter, there is another chapter at night, probably around nine o'clock.

Thank you for your support and consideration, I will continue to work hard.