In the face of the army's request, Chen Pengming also knew that the army's request could not be refused, after all, he couldn't really sit back and watch these Portuguese dismantle all the guns of the fleet and move them to the fortified Malacca castle.

In that case, when the army attacks the city, there will definitely be heavy casualties, and then the army top brass may be furious, and the government and the opposition will be turbulent, and I don't know how many people will join him regardless of the overall situation!

It is even very possible to expand the spearhead to the entire navy, saying that the navy is selfish and selfish, and then undermining the overall strategic situation of the navy!

After all, although the competition between the Imperial Army and Navy is fierce, His Majesty seems to be sitting back and watching the Army and Navy compete with each other, but this is all based on the condition that it does not affect the overall strategy of the Empire.

Today's Battle of Malacca is the first time since the founding of the Tang Dynasty that the army and navy have cooperated to carry out such a large-scale operation, this battle is not only a key battle for the empire to completely control the South Seas, but also to convey a message to the government and the opposition, that is, although the army and navy are competing and accumulating, they still take the overall situation into account, and at a critical moment, whether it is the army or the navy, they can put aside their prejudices and cooperate with each other for the global cause of the empire.

Regardless of the reason, this battle of Malacca has attracted the attention of the government and the opposition, and almost every few days, or when there is a relatively big change in the situation, there will be a special fast communication ship to transmit the news back to China.

In order to be able to establish a fast connection from Malacca to Jinling City, the Datang Navy and the Postal Department cooperated to establish a rapid communication channel from Jinling City to Malacca.

From Jinling City to Shanghai, this section of the information transmission will be carried out by train transporting letters, and since the large-scale use of trains, it has also replaced the urgent mail transmission business of the postal department to a certain extent.

After all, the speed of the train can reach 30 kilometers per hour, even if you count the time to add coal and water, but from Jinling City to Shanghai, that is, it is only one day, and this speed has been three times higher than three years ago!

This is not to triple the speed of trains, in fact, the speed of trains is still between 30 and 40 kilometers today.

In the case that the speed of the train cannot be increased temporarily, the railway company shortens the overall time by saving the time it takes to add coal and water.

To this end, they specially designed a larger-capacity coal and water carriage, so that the train can continue to run a longer distance without adding coal and water in the middle of the way, and at the same time, it is also to continuously improve the speed of coal and water in the railway station, and speed up the speed of coal and water filling of the train through a large number of mechanical equipment.

With such continuous improvement, the railway company as a whole has shortened the one-way time from Jinling City to Shanghai from the previous two days to one day.

In addition, today's railway company is still considering whether to adopt the way of night driving to further improve the speed and efficiency of train operation, but now the risk of night driving is too great and uncontrollable, so it is only considered and does not dare to really implement it.

After three years of continuous improvement, it is now the ultimate speed that can depart from Jinling City at dawn and arrive in Shanghai in the evening!

The increase in the speed of the train is also a great undertaking of the transportation task of the Post Division along the Jiangnan Railway, and the speed of running more than 300 kilometers in one day is faster than the 500 miles of the Post Division.

From Jinling City to Shanghai, news was delivered by train, and from Shanghai to Guangzhou, letters were transported by fast mail ships under the Postal Department.

From Guangzhou to Malacca, letters were transported through the navy's own fast communication ships.

Whether it is a fast mail ship of the postal department or a fast communication ship of the navy, in fact, they all refer to the same kind of ship, which is equipped with a steam engine and adopts a new type of sail clipping ship, this kind of ship can run more than 20 knots at the limit speed when the steam engine is turned on, and in the case of a tailwind, the limit speed can run more than 20 knots, even if it is an average speed, it can reach more than 15 knots.

In today's world, there is no ship that can go faster than it.

Of course, this kind of boat is also notoriously bumpy, and it is normal for ordinary people to lose half their lives.

By train and fast communication ships, the news of the Battle of Malacca can be transmitted back to China quickly, although it will have to be delayed for many days, but at least it will be much better than the previous months to get the news.

If he, Chen Pengming, messes around, ten days and half a month later, Jinling City will be able to know the news, and I'm afraid it won't be any better when the time comes.

In addition, although he Chen Pengming is an admiral and commander of the Indian Ocean Fleet, he is also the military affairs supervisor of India and other places in the South Seas, creating better landing and siege conditions for the army, which is his responsibility and the navy's responsibility that cannot be postponed.

Besides, being able to get the army to ask for the head of the navy is originally a very cool thing for the admirals!

Immediately, he just nodded and said: "Please rest assured that our navy is gathering a large number of troops in Malacca today, and naturally we will not let clowns like the Portuguese smoothly hinder the army's actions." ”

Immediately, Chen Pengming ordered a detachment to start approaching the port quickly and prepared to bombard the Portuguese fleet in the port.

At this time, he was not ready to rush directly into the port and fight with the Portuguese, he just wanted to contain the Portuguese.

Therefore, it was only the 2nd Mobile Squadron that carried out this task, which was a mobile fleet consisting of one cruiser and five frigates, which was not a large number, but it was enough for the Portuguese to dare not make any rash moves.

As the 2nd Mobile Squadron raised its sails and rushed into the harbor with black smoke, it began to bombard the Portuguese fleet in the harbor from a distance.

It is also announced that this battle of Malacca has officially begun!

Although the Datang Navy has successively installed steam engines on most of its capital ships, and converted the previous pure sail warships into sail warships, this has not affected the tactical development of the Datang Navy in recent years.

On the one hand, the time for using steam engine warships is still too short, even if it is counted from the nineteenth year of Xuanping, and now the twenty-second year of Xuanping is only three years, and during these three years, the navy has been refitting and testing the use of steam warships.

However, due to the short time and the fact that the power of today's steam engines is still not enough, most of the sail warships equipped with steam engines are actually difficult to rely on steam engines to sail at high speed alone.

Generally speaking, in order to obtain a relatively normal speed, it is still necessary to rely on sails, steam engines as auxiliaries, and use both sails to increase speed.

If the steam engine was used alone, most modified warships often had a speed of only about four or five knots, which was too slow even for modern naval operations.

The speed of pure sail warships is faster than this, even if it is only an average speed, it can reach about six or seven knots, and if it is a tailwind, it can even reach more than ten knots.

Because the current use of steam engine power by the Datang Navy is more used for auxiliary, for example, when the wind is downwind, when the sail is used as the main power, the steam engine is used to further increase the speed.

In addition, it is more important to use the power of the steam engine as the main power in the light breeze, no wind or simply the wrong wind direction to seize a more favorable wind direction and position.

This is the main application of steam engine power by the Datang Navy at present, as for relying solely on steam engine power for daily navigation and combat, at present, steam engine technology has not yet reached this level.

Even if it was newly built, the Jiangnan battleship, which was designed as a steel steam battleship from the beginning, would not work.

At the same time, there is a huge technical limitation that the current artillery technology is still stuck in the era of sail warships!

The naval guns equipped by the Datang Navy today are not much different from the naval guns equipped by the Portuguese and Spaniards, and they are all very typical front-loading smoothbore guns.

Although Datang relies on advanced steel technology and processing capacity, it has already used steel to forge artillery on a large scale, especially large-caliber naval guns that consume a lot of copper, and basically use iron cast artillery.

Only the army's nine-pound and five-pound field guns, in order to ensure the life of the barrel and other performance, continue to use bronze cast artillery.

However, this did not fundamentally change the performance of the artillery, and the current artillery, although the accuracy has improved compared to more than ten years ago, and its effective range is also higher, but it is extremely limited.

Five hundred meters, this is almost the limit of the naval artillery battle distance, more than this distance of artillery bombardment, basically will not produce any threat to the enemy's moving battleship, even a splash is basically impossible to splash the enemy.

Although there has been an innovation in artillery shells and the large-scale use of grenades has begun, this is also limited, at most it has increased the power of artillery shells, but in fact, the solid shells of large-caliber naval guns, chain shells, grapeshot shells and other traditional shells have a considerable lethality for wooden warships in these years.

The limitations of artillery technology and steam engines have also led to the fact that the tactics of the Tang Navy have not changed much in the past ten years, and they still rely on ships to form battle lines and attack enemy ships at a distance of about 300 meters with side guns.

And it is still difficult to completely sink the enemy ship, most of the time it relies on killing and injuring the enemy's living force and destroying the enemy's sail system, or simply letting the enemy ship ignite a fire to force the enemy ship to lose its combat effectiveness, as for the battle to completely sink the enemy ship through artillery strike, it is still quite difficult.