Chapter 27 Year-End

Among the Eight Pillars of the Empire, the descendant of the Great Country Maker, Zhao Chengxun, indeed stands out from the ordinary; a senior engineer at the Nanjiang Naval Ship Design Institute is by no means undeserving of his reputation.

After half an hour of conversation, Bai Zhizhan felt as if he had been enlightened, experiencing an epiphany. Many questions that had perplexed Bai Zhizhan were clarified by Zhao Yu with just a sentence, or at most a few. Moreover, Zhao Yu's insights and predictions about the direction of Navy development were highly original.

Take a simple example.

When Bai Zhizhan mentioned that neither seaplanes, which had begun to make their mark in naval battles, nor conventional take-off and landing aircraft, which all nations were eagerly developing, could carry bombs heavy enough to threaten large Battleships, let alone drop them accurately on targets. Due to payload capacity limitations, even without considering the accuracy of bombing, it was difficult for aircraft to threaten Battleships protected by thick armor.

In one sentence: if bombs can't blow up a Battleship, what's the use of the aircraft that carry and drop them?

Zhao Yu did not answer directly but instead gave an example.

Submarines.

Before the great war erupted, the Great Powers refused to believe that vessels of only a few hundred tons, without large-caliber naval guns, and that could only dive to avoid danger, would pose a threat to a maritime powerhouse or even influence the course of the war. Therefore, no country valued submarines before the war.

As a result, the Bulan Kingdom was almost driven to extinction by Tiaoman's Navy's dozens of submarines!

Some believe that if the Tiaoman Navy had taken submarines seriously earlier and used one-tenth of the resources of the Public Sea Fleet to develop them, doubling their number, the great war might have ended with the surrender of the Bulan Kingdom in its second year.

Alas, reality knows no ifs.

Additionally, the performance and tactical application of submarines advanced by leaps and bounds during the war, becoming rightfully Main Battle Ships.

By using submarines as an example, Zhao Yu was actually telling Bai Zhizhan that the development of technology is unpredictable for anyone; hence the issues Bai Zhizhan mentioned were not really issues. As long as there were technological breakthroughs and improvements in aircraft performance, it would inevitably change the face of naval warfare.

Does this need to be explained?

Stepping out of the building, the cold autumn wind blew in his face, and Bai Zhizhan immediately sobered up.

Zhao Yu was not only exceptionally intelligent but also quite persuasive.

So much talk, yet when summarized, it was almost all bluster, without a word hitting the mark—even the enlightening remarks did not qualify as especially foresighted. Either they had been already asserted by others or they were told in some new and novel way.

All of it was just old wine in new bottles!

To be objective, at best, it was akin to the clarity of a bystander.

Still discussing the role of aircraft.

Technological progress is inevitable, and all classic military theories acknowledge that tactics are driven by technology—there is a tactic for every technology. For instance, in the era of flintlock guns, soldiers had to stand shoulder to shoulder in a line. When the Maxim machine gun entered the stage of war, trenches and foxholes replaced the battle lines. Tanks, appearing in the latter stages of the war, could shatter defenses made up of trenches, barbed wire, and machine guns.

The same applies to naval battles.

From wooden shell Sailing Battleships to Ironclad Ships, then to the pre-Dreadnoughts propelled by steam engines and propellers, to the Dreadnoughts that dominated the seas during the war, and the sneaky attack submarines, as well as Destroyers that turned the tide of naval battles with torpedoes—all were without exception technological weapons.

With technological progress, new technological weapons will inevitably enter the stage of war.

By then, replacing Battleships and changing the face of naval warfare is an inevitable outcome.

It's evident that Zhao Yu did not impart much valuable information to Bai Zhizhan.

The only thing to acknowledge is that Zhao Yu possesses comprehensive systematic knowledge and far surpasses professional soldiers like Bai Zhizhan in understanding technological weapons.

Actually, this is exactly what Bai Zhizhan struggled to comprehend.

Zhao Yu had never been on a battlefield, let alone participated in combat, so how could he understand the trends of war and determine the direction of military development?

"Just guessing!?"

"Nonsense guesses hitting the mark now and then aren't that strange."

"However, many of Zhao Yu's predictions were actually trends in development, or at least Bai Zhizhan believed that they represented the methods of engagement for the next war."

"For example, Zhao Yu mentioned electronic technology."

"This was definitely cutting-edge, and for the time being, not known to the outside world in terms of military technology."

"It was only during these past two years that the Empire's Navy had discovered in practice that, under certain specific circumstances, radio stations could be interfered with by the electromagnetic waves they themselves emitted, especially shortwave radios. The Empire's Navy had established an organization to study this phenomenon and to explore its military applications."

"Zhao Yu not only accurately described the conditions under which radio communication would be interfered with but also proposed turning the interference into a detection tool, a concept the Empire Navy's research organization had only come up with a few months ago."

"How did Bai Zhizhan know this?"

"The research organization was affiliated with the Imperial Naval Academy and had recruited some cadets who were versed in communication to participate in the research. Bai Zhizhan was one of them."

"Before he left the Naval Academy to join the 21st Sub-fleet, the related research was just beginning, and it was still a long way from achieving substantial results."

"For Bai Zhizhan, the greatest gain from this in-depth conversation was actually to reinforce his previous convictions."

"Regardless of whether airplanes could replace battleships and become the dominant force on the future maritime battlefield, the Empire's Navy must reform if it wished to prevail over the Four Seas."

"To be objective, replacing Main Battle Ships with the Air Force seemed at least not too far-fetched."

"If no change were sought and brute strength continued to be the only strategy, even if one were to follow the example of enduring hardships for fifty years after the Nanjiang Port naval battle, it would be impossible to expect a different outcome."

"The next time a defeat occurred, fortune might not be as kind as now."

"In the following month, Bai Zhizhan led a secluded life, spending most of his time at the shipyard or the Naval Ship Design Institute, and also consulting a large volume of literature and documentation."

"He was both digesting the knowledge obtained from Zhao Yu and recharging himself."

"Though Bai Zhizhan had studied reconnaissance aviation and achieved excellent top grades, he didn't like the major and only seriously crammed a few days before exams. The key point was that as newly established majors, aviation and reconnaissance had relatively simple exam questions."

"Only after gaining a deeper understanding did Bai Zhizhan realize that he had wasted five years."

"Fortunately, it was not too late to catch up."

"This life, akin to returning to the Naval Academy, continued until the last day of the 78th year of the New Calendar."

"Because the next day was New Year's Day, the cook had specifically reminded him that there would be a dinner party in the evening, so Bai Zhizhan didn't go to the design institute and spent the afternoon in the shipyard archive. After sunset, he took a set of battleship design drawings he had borrowed and hurried to the brightly lit dining hall."

"The hall was crowded with people, yet there was no music playing; everyone was gathered together."

"What was going on?"

"Approaching, Bai Zhizhan saw that in the middle of the crowd, on a table, there was a radio. A technician from the shipyard was tuning the channels."

"Who brought this radio?"

"Bai Zhizhan had seen radios before; He Yongxing owned one. However, for the common people, a radio was definitely an uncommon luxury."

"In fact, radios had been popularized during the Great War."

"If radios were being used, it surely meant something very important was happening."