Dominate the Country

In the sixth month of the lunar calendar in the thirty-fourth year of Chengtian, the wind was bright and sunny. Two large ocean-going merchant ships under the British flag were sailing on the sea ten nautical miles away from the Port of Key West. Their sails were damaged and they needed to be repaired briefly. repair.

The Spanish warship outside the port did a rough inspection after boarding the ship, and then the two accompanying large British ocean-going merchant ships replenished some water, wine and fruit in Key West Port, and then stayed in the port openly. It's on the sea ten miles away.

The Spaniards had no doubt at all about the ownership of the two British merchant ships. The British on the deck and their skilled British accents made them easily believe in the identity of the merchant ships. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the last thing the Spaniards can offend now.

In the anti-French war on European soil, the Spanish could rely entirely on the British for their material needs and military expenditures.

After Arthur Wellesley's 10,000 troops landed in Portugal, the British successively mobilized 20,000 lobster soldiers to land in Portugal under the leadership of John Moore. Napoleon was under great pressure. He planned to recruit two more batches of 80,000 new soldiers each. Then put 200,000 battle-tested veterans

Troops were mobilized from Germany and Italy to reinforce Spain, and the various military camps in Germany and Italy were replenished with new troops.

Napoleon had just experienced the pain of the Spanish war.

But Napoleon's pain did not hinder the two British merchant ships. These crew members who are ‘working’ on the ship are really ‘working’. The salary is quite high. Not to mention the ordinary crew members, even Chen Han's domestic famous actors and actresses can't get as much salary as them for one performance.

Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo stood at the bow of the ship, his sharp eyes like an eagle watching every move on the deck. As a Criollo, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, who was of Spanish descent, had a deep hatred for the Spanish colonial government that could not be wiped away even by all the rivers and lakes.

He was once a hero of Spain, he bled and sweated for Spain, but Spain made him bleed and shed tears.

During the last Central and Western American War, a group of "defeated soldiers" who fled from Mexico City looted the Sotelo family's estate, and all his relatives died.

Moreover, the Sotelo family's estate is more than 200 miles away from Mexico City. The defeated soldiers fled so fast. Calvo Sotelo's servants rode back to report the news, but they couldn't walk as fast as the defeated soldiers. . This was an obvious loophole, but the local colonial government, police station and garrison turned a blind eye and concluded the case very rashly.

Calvo Sotelo should be grateful that his servant was a truly loyal servant, otherwise Calvo Sotelo would not have known immediately that all his family members had been killed. If he was really lucky enough to survive the war, Finally, some truths may have been lost to time.

His servant knew that Mexico City had fallen and that his master was either killed in battle or captured, and the possibility of death in battle was very high. But the man resolutely returned to Mexico City and was lucky enough to find Calvo Sotelo, who had just woken up from a coma. The sudden bad news almost destroyed Calvo Sotelo's mind, leaving him lying in bed and dying. But the desire for revenge kept Calvo Sotelo alive. He then became a trump card for Chen Han's activities in the Spanish colonies.

Now for this special operation targeting the Port of Key West, Calvo Sotelo is one of the two deputy commanders. He was deeply trusted by Chen Han and openly controlled the 'self-defense ability' of a merchant ship. The person who controls the 'self-defense capability' of another merchant ship is Jerome, the former French major naval officer recruited by the fleet headed to Europe led by Juvos.

The Spaniards would suspect a Frenchman on a British merchant ship, but they would never suspect a French nobleman on a British merchant ship. It has been twenty years since the Great Revolution, and there are not too many down-and-out French nobles like Jerome.

Dusk came, and the sea water was full. Under the setting sun, the waves jumped like naughty children, and there was a golden light on the water.

In the Key West port not far away, several white sails floated leisurely like a few snow-white feathers on the glittering sea of ​​water and sky.

Ye Tingyang emerged from the cabin of Aircraft Carrier 1 and waved his hand, "Get to work!"

The foreigners who were just busy showing off on the deck began real work. The upper deck on the port side was lifted piece by piece. It turned out that it was movable. The hooks of the heavy-duty crane on the ship were lowered one by one from the 'gaps' opened on the deck.

All this is easy to say, but very time-consuming to do. It was already seven o'clock when a cylinder that was three feet long and four feet high was lifted out of the cabin by a crane and put into the water from the middle section of the port side.

The setting sun has completely disappeared on the sea level, and the sky is still gray.

A strange cylinder the size of a shark floated near Aircraft Carrier No. 1. When the bright moon rose high and the cold moonlight spread over the sea, a second cylinder of the same size fell to the sea, and then the third and fourth...

Jerome stood on top of one of the cylinders with an excited look on his face. This was a submarine that was the work of the Chen Han Ship Research Institute. It is much more advanced than the Turtle built by David Bushnell of Yale University in Lighthouse Country.

This batch of submarines also uses artificial power for forward propulsion, and the speed is relatively slow. The underwater speed is less than two knots per hour, but the surface speed can reach three to five knots per hour. For artificial power, water flow and wind direction must be considered. But the most important thing about submarines is diving. They can sink ten meters and can dive for one and a half hours to two hours. If the snorkel is activated - this is designed based on the snorkel on the Turtle of the Lighthouse Country, and a movable air valve is used to prevent seawater from entering when diving. This device is called a snorkel, which enables the submarine to obtain oxygen underwater.

At the same time, the submarine is also equipped with a periscope, but this thing is different from the snorkel. When the periscope is raised underwater, it may leak.

The submarine has absorbed some good designs from the Lighthouse Country, or in this era, some designs can only be like this.

The entire submarine team consists of eight people, seven of whom are responsible for turning the hand-cranked crankshaft to drive the propeller to move the ship forward, and the eighth person is responsible for operating the submarine's steering and buoyancy. In addition, the submarine designed by Chen Han also has a real ballast tank, located at the bow and stern. The valve can be opened to allow water to flow in from the outside to sink the submarine, or a hand-cranked pump can be used to pump out the water in the tank to allow the submarine to float. In addition, the submarine has additional iron ballast, which is locked to the bottom of the hull with screws. When necessary, the crew can loosen the nuts exposed at the bottom of the cabin from the cabin to release the ballast to obtain additional buoyancy for emergency buoyancy.

The submarine's weapons are neither guide rod explosive packs nor torpedoes. There are two types of submarine weapons, one is a timed explosive barrel that sneaks in secretly, and the other is a heavy rocket that is openly armed. Just because of the load, the ammunition loading capacity of this submarine is very limited.

Four submarines were put down on a large ship, two "aircraft carriers", that is, a full eight submarines.

Jerome applied to follow, and Ye Tingyang agreed with his expression. As a former major officer of the French Navy, Jerome has been away from the sea for several years. After he returned to Asia from Europe, he first worked in Hyderabad, and later joined the Siamese navy, but within a few days he was sent to India again, and then to America. It was this operation that brought him back to the sea.

Jerome only saw submarines in the true sense after he came to the "aircraft carrier" fleet.

Chen Ming likes to tinker with some strange weapons, from airships in the sky to submarines in the sea, and steam warships, etc. Chen Ming has tinkered with them all. For example, submarines today are just large toys and have no practical value at all.

For example, if the two "aircraft carriers" do not send them to the port of Key West first, with the turtle speed of these submarines, it will take a long time for them to reach Key West from the Florida Peninsula.

Even if the Lighthouse Country first created the Turtle, they actually used submarines in actual combat for the first time in the South American War in history, and the Southern Army sank a warship of the Northern Army. But to wait for submarines to really show their power, we still have to wait until the First World War begins. It was truly glorious in World War II.

Chen Ming upgraded the submarine to "standardization" a hundred years in advance, and his purpose was nothing more than to sneak into the enemy's port quietly to carry out close-range killing. The gunpowder barrels were taken care of by the frogmen on the submarine, and the rockets were placed directly on the top of the submarine, forming a square, connected end to end, exactly four rockets.

Although the bomb load was pitifully small, eight submarines, if used well, would be enough to completely destroy Key West Harbor.

Just as the aircraft carrier was deployed from the Gulf of Mexico, Chen Han's American Fleet and a regiment of marines on the Florida Peninsula had also set out for the port of Miami, Michigan. Four hundred miles, or about one hundred nautical miles, according to the speed of the fleet, should have reached not far from Key Vista Island.

Tomorrow morning, no matter how effective the sneak attack tonight was, they would launch the most violent bombardment on Key West Island.

...

In Nanjing City, Chen Ming looked at the protest letter on the ground of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and laughed.

Protest from the Lighthouse Country? What is there to protest about the Lighthouse Country? Chen Han's army pointed southward at the big duck, but not westward at the Lighthouse Country? And is the protest of the Lighthouse Country now a protest?

For a weak country, the protest is nothing. This is not the time to pay attention to "humanity", and there is no United Nations for them to talk nonsense.

"Your Majesty, due to the war in Europe, a large number of Westerners have continued to immigrate to the Lighthouse Country in recent years, causing the latter's population to continue to surge, and now it has reached 6 million." Gao Yanming saw that Chen Ming didn't care, so he said.

The Lighthouse Country with a population of 6 million can mobilize at least 200,000 troops. If it is hostile to China and has a relationship with the Spaniards, it will also make Chen Han passive.

The Portuguese have "turned enemies into friends" with the Spaniards because of Chen Han's southward move. The people of the Lighthouse Country are not stupid, and of course they can feel the huge threat posed by Chen Han. They are showing their value, and they are probably testing something.

Now, the Lighthouse Country protests Chen Han's blockade of the Caribbean Sea, saying that this blockade has affected their normal trade. Chen Han's North American fleet not only inspected American merchant ships, but also detained more than one American merchant ship.

Although those American merchant ships were carrying military supplies, many of them were even arms.

Gao Yanming didn't know that a familiar feeling had already emerged in Chen Ming's heart at this time, and the more it lingered in his heart, the more Chen Ming wanted to laugh. The excuse and fact of the Lighthouse Country made him feel like the second war between the United States and Britain.