Battle of the Third Reich Chapter 533: Fight against the Gulf of Siam (Part 1)

Just five hours before Xu Jun talked about his "trap theory" to your subordinates in the command department, this farce-like war broke out on the ocean 50 kilometers west of Ko Chang Island in Siam. The largest and most intense surface combat. Lewen Novels.

Starting at two o’clock in the afternoon, the communications office of the Siam Naval Headquarters became extremely busy. After the French naval fleet dispatched information from Saigon, the Naval Headquarters immediately sent out to naval ships sailing in the Gulf of Siam. Got the alert for the upgrade of combat readiness.

The relationship between the Siamese navy and the army is actually not much different from that of Japan. Although it is not as extreme as the Japanese, the two generals usually have a fight at the conference table, and the soldiers fight in groups in the bar. Accidents like racks are not uncommon.

This time, the Siamese navy showed great dissatisfaction with the army’s presumptuous attacks. Not only was it because the army did it on their own without notifying them, but also because the Siamese navy was more self-aware and knew that it had a relationship with the French Far East fleet Confrontation is a dead end thing.

If half a year ago, the French Indochina fleet was left with a bunch of old and weak soldiers with no morale, the Siamese Navy still believed that it was certain to win by six points, but now the two battle cruises are stopped in Saigon. In the harbor, Siam's chances of winning at sea are not even left.

Although the reinforcements of the Japanese combined fleet have been contacted, before the Japanese fleet enters the Bangkok port, everything is still dependent on the Siamese navy itself and can only bite the bullet.

This time, I was put alive by the army's bastards. Looking at the reports of the ship attacked, Admiral Sin Komonavin, commander of the Royal Siam Navy, felt his heart writhed.

There are four busy commercial waterways in the Gulf of Siam. Every day there are countless Siamese transport ships shuttled to and from Southeast Asian seaports, transporting Siam’s largest export material, rice and vegetables, and transporting them back to domestic production resources that are lacking. The route is the window of the Kingdom of Siam to the outside world, even if it is called the lifeline of the kingdom.

But now on these routes, dozens of Siamese freighters have been attacked and sunk in just one hour. Most of them have only had time to send out a few sos codes and ship position coordinates, and don't even know what they were attacked.

Obviously there is a French assault ship in the Gulf of Siam, but knowing that the enemy is attacking its own ship, the Siamese navy cannot come up with any solution.

The Siamese navy is a standard yellow-water navy. Although the sea in the Gulf of Siam is very blue, it cannot change the cruel fact that the Siamese navy has no open sea combat power. The naval power they have is only enough to defend the country's territorial waters.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of territorial waters in countries around the world was confused. The British standard is that the range of three nautical miles from the coast belongs to the territorial waters, which happens to be the maximum range of the early front-bore guns. The French believe that all areas within sight are territorial seas, and they set the standard for territorial seas at 22 kilometers, which is about 12 nautical miles. Because Siam had many contacts with the British in the early days, it also adopted British standards. Dragon disciple

The Royal Siamese Navy can be regarded as a small and sophisticated modern navy among Asian countries, but in the face of the old European powers, they are only worthy of some offshore defenses.

At this time, Your Excellency Commander did not know that the coastal defense ship [Yekong River] had sunk, otherwise, myocardial infarction might occur on the spot. Regarding the attack on the route, the Siamese navy believes that it can do nothing. All they can do at present is to order the national ships in the sea area to immediately return to Bangkok Bay and concentrate as much as possible to shrink the defense area.

The navy believes that focusing on the ships in hand can still give the French a headache. As long as they insist on the arrival of the Japanese joint fleet, then they can wait for the truce with peace of mind.

No one at the senior level of the Siamese navy believes that Siam is capable of winning this war. They only want to retain the precious bones and blood of the navy as much as possible before the Bangkok government's surrender order is issued.

Because from the reports of some of the attacked ships, it looks like they had hit a mine laid by the French, so the Siamese Naval Command guessed that the French must be in the shallow sea area of ​​Siam and secretly laid some minefields. The target It is some ships of the Siamese Navy that like to sail along the coast.

The two Japanese-made [Thonburi]-class shallow-water gunboats cruising near Tatuo left their quiet berth after receiving the command from the headquarters and began to return to their home port of Sattahip Naval Base.

Along with the two strongest warships of the Siamese navy, there are six small lightning strike ships of the Dacha class purchased from Italy. This kind of 400 tons is fully loaded with three 76mm main guns. A small ship equipped with six torpedo tubes cannot be counted as a torpedo boat at all.

In the beginning, the situation looked good. The two heavy gunboats and the four lightning ships sailed to the southeast. They met with the remaining two lightning ships in the waters of Koh Chang in the southern part of Koh Chang Island. They were docked there. There are also two logistic transport ships of the Siamese Navy on the naval berth, and the Navy Command does not know why they have not notified them of the order to return.

So at that time, Lieutenant Colonel Luang Peng Weifengan, the captain of the [Thonburi], as the top commander of the formation, decided to take the two 800-ton offshore transport ships together. Perhaps Weifengan was out of compassion at the time and could not bear to abandon these two colleagues, but the facts proved that this was a fatal decision.

The highest speed of the [Thonburi] class was only 15.5 knots. Because of the two steam-powered transport ships, the speed of the formation further dropped to only eight knots. However, out of self-confidence in its own strength, Weifengan did not worry much about this voyage. Although the headquarters repeatedly called to warn against French attack ships, the lieutenant colonel believed that the firepower of this small fleet was sufficient to repel any French attacks. The ship’s attack.

Then he received an alert from the headquarters, asking him to be careful of the shallow water along the coast. The French might have dropped mines quietly. It happened that the draft of the two old-fashioned transport ships was relatively deep and they were unable to navigate freely in shallow waters, so the fleet simply chose a new route, bypassing Koh Chang Island from the west, and then followed the offshore route directly to the destination Sattahip base. My fief is an island

This route is about 30 kilometers away from the coast, and the average water depth is more than 70 meters. With the technology known at the time, it was impossible to deploy mines at this depth.

This small fleet has concentrated almost 70% of the Siamese Navy’s first-line combat ships, which can be said to be the capital accumulated by the Siamese Navy through two dynasties. Weifeng'an organized the fleet into four columns. The space between the ships was kept at one hundred and fifty meters, and the space 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, each with three lightning strike ships on both wings, followed by a transport ship each behind the shallow water gunboat. Because the old coal-fired steam boiler is used, the thick black smoke from the chimney of the transport ship is clearly visible from ten kilometers away.

Just after three o’clock in the afternoon, the [Thonburi] once again reported its position to the headquarters, and learned that the destroyer [King Phra Luan] had been dived by France fifty nautical miles southwest of Sattahip The news of the sinking of the boat attack ~ IndoMTL.com~ This information made Lieutenant Colonel Wei Feng'an nervous. His formation may be able to repel a destroyer-level surface ship attack, but it does not have any anti-submarine capabilities. The current voyage is only a quarter past, and at the current speed, it will take at least three hours to reach Sattahip. During these three hours, the fleet was threatened by submarine attacks at any time, because the coastal airport is currently being retaliated against by the French Air Force, and the fleet has also lost the possibility of obtaining **** support from the Air Force.

At 3:17 in the afternoon, the [Thonburi] ordered the formation to stop, and Wei Feng An was preparing to release a Siamese seaplane carried on the transport ship [Pagan Island].

This is a small biplane water reconnaissance aircraft specially ordered by Kawasaki Aircraft Factory for the Siamese Navy. The production number is ms-103s. Based on her, Kawasaki has also developed a Type 96 small seaplane. A small reconnaissance aircraft designed for use on large submarines of the Japanese Navy.

Because it is not equipped with a catapult, the aircraft can only be launched by a crane to lift the body to the surface of the water, and then rely on its own power to take off from the surface.

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

The Siamese glided for almost 1.5 kilometers, and finally left the water and began to climb smoothly. Lieutenant Manpeng looked down from the cockpit probe triumphantly, but he was taken aback by the sight in his eyes. You can see straight thunder trails in the sea, approaching the formation moored on the sea at high speed.

ps: After coding one chapter, there is another chapter in the evening, about nine o'clock.

Thank you for your support and understanding, I will continue to work hard. (To be continued.)