My Italy

With the arrival of 1904, the noisy world still had not calmed down. The war in the Far East is still continuing, and it is getting bigger and bigger.

However, a major change occurred on the battlefield at this time. The Japanese army captured the Lushun Fortress. At the cost of 74,000 casualties, the Japanese army finally conquered this strategic point.

Speaking of conquering this key point, it was thanks to the Japanese army that they pulled up the 280 mm caliber howitzers from the domestic shore defense. In order to allow these heavy artillery to exert their power, the Japanese army also specially built a circular railway track, and these hard-earned coastal defense heavy artillery also took so much trouble to support, and their power was extraordinary, in the shelling of Highland 203. Destroy its strong fortifications one by one. In addition to heavy artillery, the base camp also transferred the only active division remaining in the mainland, the 7th Division reorganized from the Tuntian Army, to Lushun.

From December 25, 1903 to January 6, 1904, after 11 days of fierce attack, the Russian army on Highland 203 was finally eliminated, and the Japanese army captured the high ground. According to subsequent statistics, after the Japanese army conquered Highland 203, only one living Russian soldier was found.

After occupying Highland 203, the Japanese army took the initiative on the battlefield in Lushun.

Then the Japanese army brought their heavy siege artillery to Highland 203, and then they used heavy artillery to bombard the Russian warships in the port and Russian military facilities in the city. The combined fleet outside the port also strictly blocked the remaining Russian fleets in order to prevent them from escaping. open sea. The First Pacific Fleet, which is trapped in an isolated port, is now blind. Even a famous general like Makanov has no choice.

Subsequently, the only remaining ships of the Russian Pacific Fleet, the Poltava and Nicholas I, were sunk by Japanese heavy artillery.

Then, the Japanese army moved forward step by step, like pushing a lot of bone rice cards, first conquering a series of Russian fortresses, and then occupying more and more urban areas of Lushun.

On January 11, 1904, Stessel led tens of thousands of defeated soldiers and surrendered to the Japanese army. In addition to conquering the Port Arthur Fortress, the Japanese army also had an unexpected surprise. Two ships, the Crown Prince and the Victory, which were being repaired in the dock, were captured by the Japanese army.

Faced with this unexpected surprise, Togo Heihachiro was naturally overjoyed. After watching the two warships being repaired overnight, he immediately sent a report to the base camp, requesting that enough shipyard workers be dispatched from home to repair the two Lushun ships immediately. A great gift from the defenders.

When news of the fall of Port Arthur Fortress came out, the Russian Second Pacific Fleet as reinforcement was still in the Indian Ocean. The Second Pacific Fleet sailing around the Cape of Good Hope was plagued by disasters. Not to mention the difficulty of sailing around the African continent, because the German profiteers were all talk but no practice and could not guarantee timely supply. The Tsarist Russian fleet had to load as much coal as possible.

The Russian sailors filled the deck, engine room, officer cabin, and even the bathroom with coal bags. The warship was filled with dust, like a coal kiln, and many sailors suffered from respiratory diseases. When passing through tropical areas, the Russian navy also closed the ventilation ducts, which increased the number of people who fell ill from coal dumping (unfortunately).

In addition, since no one could sleep in the cabin, the Russian sailors had to sleep outside the cabin. The problem was that there was coal everywhere outside the cabin, and the unlucky sailors had to sleep on coal bags. This group of unlucky people who eat and sleep around coal have to sprinkle coal evenly into the boiler every day, and extinguish the fire and clean the boiler every three or four hours. Due to the huge coal dumping work, Tsarist Russia’s Second Pacific Fleet even set a world record of adding 120 tons of coal in one hour.

After finally being lucky enough to complete a long-awaited docking for repairs, the nearly collapsed sailors flocked to ask for leave and went ashore, squandering the few military pay on taverns, prostitutes and gambling. This also means that no one will clean up the algae, seaweed and other debris wrapped around the ship, let alone conduct training. The commander, Lieutenant General Roger Stevinsky, temporarily resigned due to mental failure, but hoped to resume sailing on January 14, 1904.

During this period, the Russian army's logistics department lived up to expectations and caused a lot of trouble. Due to chaotic management, supply ships came from the mainland loaded with artillery shells that the fleet did not need at all. There are even special ships that deliver a bunch of winter military uniforms to the officers and soldiers living under the scorching African sun, putting the fleet in a situation where even military uniforms are not enough.

In addition, the fleet's radio equipment was mainly provided by the Germans. Once the engineers leave, they will become scrap metal due to frequent failures. The power system of a refrigerated ship also failed, causing hundreds of tons of fresh meat in stock to spoil, forcing officers and soldiers to purchase local food at high prices.

Unfortunately, the news of Port Arthur's fall at this time made His Majesty the Tsar furious, and then the Admiralty understood it and gave him a new problem at the right time. In order to increase their chances of winning the decisive battle against Japan, they organized the Third Pacific Fleet in an extravagant manner. As a result, 3 battleships and 1 coastal defense battleship were transferred to the Indian Ocean. Therefore, Roger Stevinsky was asked to stay in Madagascar and wait for reinforcements to arrive before he could hit the road again.

But soon afterwards, the French colonial authorities, who did not want the Russian fleet to stay longer, came to drive them away.

Faced with such a situation, Roger Stevinsky could only drive the battleship away with the reluctant naval officers and soldiers of the Second Pacific Fleet.

So after some bad repairs, the Second Pacific Fleet continued to head towards the distant Pacific Ocean.

Lieutenant General Roger Stevinsky also recovered from his mental breakdown and began intensive fleet training work.

Although the entire army was short of food and clothing and morale collapsed, the grumpy coach did not take any effective measures to remedy the situation. Instead, he patrolled back and forth on the flagship every day, checking how the soldiers folded their quilts and whether their subordinates were neatly dressed, and turned a blind eye to the officers' beating and scolding of the soldiers. Then he dived into the office and corrected the spelling errors in the report like a Chinese teacher.

Such hard-core education also quickly yielded results. Four officers and soldiers were hospitalized due to mental illness, 28 people were choked by the flying coal ash and contracted tuberculosis, and many more people lost their combat effectiveness due to tropical diseases. The occasional suicide by jumping into the sea is a true portrayal of this painful expedition.

Even the warship carrying this vulnerable group was overwhelmed by no one to clear the aquatic vegetation from the bottom of the ship and serious overloading problems. The average speed of the fleet has dropped to a very dangerous 7.5 knots.

Fortunately, Germany extended a hand of friendship at this time and was willing to open the Port of Manila to it, so they only needed to cross the Indian Ocean, pass through the Strait of Malacca, and sail in the South China Sea for a while, then they would get a chance to repair.