Thinking of the Verdun Some in World War I, Roque shuddered.

In fact, it cannot be blamed on the battlefield commanders for their rigid thinking and disregard for their lives, because it is really millions of troops crammed into a battle line dozens of kilometers long to fight, and there is basically no room for detours, so they can only adopt the most primitive tactics of crowds.

Because of the rise of southern Africa, the technology of this era is much better than that of another time and space, Nyasaland has been researching aircraft and armored vehicles for a long time, although there are no air forces and armored forces in southern Africa now, but Roque is also ready.

In another time and space, in the Battle of the Somme, tanks entered the battle for the first time, and that was on September 15, 1916.

The exploration of armored vehicles began a long time ago in Nyasaland, but unfortunately the armored vehicles did not catch up with the Boer War and have not yet proven their value on the battlefield.

Now the Nyasaland Tractor Plant has begun to study tanks and has come up with prototypes.

Because of Roque's guidance, the Nyasaland Tractor Plant immediately abandoned the over-the-shoulder track design, and the first tank it came up with was a light tank.

This light tank, called "Scout", is 5.5 meters long, 2.1 meters wide, 1.9 meters high, weighs 7.5 tons, has 25 mm frontal armor, is equipped with a 40 mm howitzer and a 7.7 mm general-purpose machine gun produced by the Nyasaland Arsenal, uses a 50 horsepower engine, a speed of 10-30 kilometers, a combat distance of 100 kilometers, and a crew of only two people.

In terms of performance, the performance of the "Scout" was similar to that of the Renault tank produced by France in 1917.

The difference is that the "Scout" pays more attention to the protection of the crew, and the armor in the driver's position and the commander's position is up to 40 mm thick, which can provide maximum protection for the driver and commander.

This does not seem necessary now, because before the tanks actually appeared on the battlefield, the countries of the world simply did not have weapons against tanks, so there was no need to think about the protection of the crew.

But Roque will not think so, the tanks of the British army appeared on the battlefield in another time and space, and the Germans quickly developed anti-tank rifles to counteract, so Roque had to take precautions, and thickening some steel plates would not increase the cost much, but it would create more trouble for the Germans and bring more advantages to the Nyasaland troops.

In addition to the "Scout", the Nyasaland Tractor Plant is also working on medium tanks and heavy tanks, the code name of the medium tank is named "Light Cavalry", and the code name of the heavy tank is naturally "Heavy Cavalry", but now the "Light Cavalry" is also under development, and no samples have appeared, and the "Heavy Cavalry" has just been established, and the research and development seems to be far away.

In fact, it is estimated that heavy tanks will not be used in the First World War, so the "heavy cavalry" project is clearly preparing for the future.

The appearance of the "Scouts" was destined to change the battlefield situation of the First World War, and if the troops of southern Africa appeared in the European theater, then it would become a nightmare for the German army.

In front of the tank, it was almost impossible for the Germans to inflict mass destruction on the attacking troops with trenches and heavy machine guns, and Roque did not take the initiative to disclose the specific performance of the tank to the British, and the test work of the tank was mainly carried out in the city of Milna in Rhodesia, and Nyasaland has now produced only twenty tanks for testing, and it will be further refined in the future until the final production is finalized and mass-produced.

On airplanes, Nyasaland has also made great progress.

In August last year, the Wright brothers of the United States successfully built a sixth aircraft, which finally attracted wide attention from the outside world, and in August Wilbur Wright performed more than 100 air shows in France, setting off an aviation boom in Europe; Orville Wright flew 55 laps around the Fort Meyer parade ground in the United States, flying for one hour straight.

Compared with the Wright brothers' planes, Nyasaland's planes are obviously more advanced in performance; in August last year, Nyasaland's planes had already completed the feat of flying for three hours in a row and with a range of more than 500 kilometers, and now Nyasaland's planes are even more advanced, and when the Wright brothers are still trying to find a way to install machine guns on the planes and find ways to sell them to the US War Department, the Nyasaland Aeronautical Research Institute has already begun to study aerial bombs.

The need for aerial bombs arose after the successful development of the Shooting Coordinator.

When the aircraft first appeared on the battlefield, its main role was to reconnoiter and observe, and if it wanted to attack ground targets, it could only use hand-thrown bombs, and the hit rate could be imagined.

The principle of the shooting coordinator is very simple, but it has a great effect, when the world war in another time and space has just broken out, in addition to a pilot, there must be a shooter on the plane, so that the aircraft can have a certain attack ability.

With the advent of the Shooting Coordinator, the pilot was able to attack the target while staging the aircraft, eliminating the position of the shooter on the aircraft, further reducing the weight, and naturally loading more bombs or more fuel to attack targets at a longer distance.

Nyasaland's aircraft, which can now carry five hundred kilograms of bombs, or auxiliary fuel tanks of the same weight to increase the combat radius, have far surpassed the Wright brothers, who were just starting out, in this concept.

Now in Nyasaland, people have become accustomed to the occasional whizzing of planes, so the government of Nyasaland has had to set up places such as Little Rock and Xuanji City as no-fly zones to stop the uncontrollable swagger of the pilots.

In Nyasaland, where there are already more than 200 test pilots, the Institute of Aeronautics has already crossed over to biplanes and begun to work on monoplanes, and if necessary, the formation of air forces in southern Africa at any time, which is far ahead of the rest of the world.

Roque's confidence is also here, with these advanced equipment, even if the troops in southern Africa go to Europe to participate in the war, they will not become cannon fodder consumed on the front line, but will stay in the safe rear to provide support to the front line.

Or, in a tank or armored vehicle, the attack will minimize the loss of troops.

As for the Entente forces -

Roque doesn't care how many people they die, this kind of thing is still a dead Taoist friend and not a poor Taoist.

Whether it is an airplane or a tank, it is an independent research in Nyasaland, and it has basically nothing to do with Xiao Si, so Xiao Si's attention is still focused on the profitable projects of farms, plantations, factories, and fishing companies.

Roque's focus is not here, as the demand for oil in southern Africa is increasing as more and more machinery products are available.

What should be emphasized here is that the vast majority of the world's natural resources are rich in reserves in southern Africa, but only oil, which is not much in southern Africa, and the only few oil fields are very difficult to exploit, at least with the current technical conditions.

Now the demand for oil in the world is not obvious, and the main oil producers are not Saudi Arabia or the United States, but the little-known Romania, as well as the Baku oil fields of the Russian Empire.

In Romania, the current oil refineries belong to the traditional powers of Britain and France, southern Africa cannot intervene, and the Baku oil fields of the Russian Empire are even more unreachable, but in addition to the Romanian and Baku oil fields, there are countless oil fields for Roque to choose from, and the Arabian Peninsula under the control of the Ottoman Empire has naturally become Roque's first choice.

Although the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in World War I, Britain has always supported the Ottoman Empire against Russia in several Russo-Turkish wars that have broken out, so the relationship between Britain and the Ottoman Empire is not bad, and even the forced occupation of Egypt by Britain did not trigger a war between Britain and the Ottoman Empire.

The purpose of the British forcible occupation of Egypt was the Suez Canal, which was very important for Britain but dispensable for the Ottoman Empire, which had no interests in Asia as Britain.

India during this period was really important to the British.

With the relationship between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, Roque's plan to find oil began in the Arabian Peninsula.

The first to set foot in the Arabian Peninsula were, of course, the RAND Bank and the Umbrella Company.

In June last year, RAND Bank opened its first branch in Cairo, and in just a few months, RAND Bank has six branches in Egypt, making it the strongest bank in Egypt.

More than the number of branches of the Imperial Bank in Egypt.

In fact, with the size of Egypt's economy, there is no need to set up so many banks, except for the branch in Cairo, the branches in Egypt basically have no business, and the reason for such fanfare is that the mercenaries of the umbrella company are sent to the Arabian Peninsula in the name of justice.

Otherwise, with only six branches, the total number of mercenaries would have exceeded 1,500.

The reason why Roque was able to send so many people to Egypt was mainly due to Ade.

Before Ade became the Commissioner for Southern Africa, Ade served as the chief executive of Egypt, and even though it was twenty years ago, Ade had a very good relationship with the current governor of Egypt, so Roque used Ade's influence in Egypt to smoothly expand the business of the umbrella company to Egypt.

Roque's ultimate goal is Kuwait.

At this time, Kuwait was only a small seaport inhabited by less than 3,000 people, because oil had not yet been discovered, so Kuwait did not receive any attention, and its presence in the Commonwealth was lower than that of southern Africa.

That's right, Kuwait was also a British colony at this time and belonged to the jurisdiction of the Governor of Egypt, but the Governor of Egypt obviously did not attach importance to Kuwait, and it is estimated that he did not know where Kuwait was and how big it was.

So Sidney Milner's reply to Roque was very casual: "Ten thousand pounds is already a lot, I have been to Kuwait Port, where in addition to sand or sand, even the fish tastes like sand, I really don't understand what you want to buy Kuwait for." ”

Roque would certainly not say that Kuwait's oil reserves account for one-tenth of the world's total oil reserves.

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