readx; On August 4, Chen Jingyun officially approved the war plan against Germany, and then the Nationalist Army quickly prepared to act, that is, on the same day, the German army invaded Belgium, so Britain officially declared war on the German army. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

As soon as Chen Jingyun, who had been waiting for Britain to declare war on Germany, received this news, he did not care that he had not yet joined the Entente, let alone that he was not an ally of the British, and formally submitted a request to the German ambassador to China, Xin Ci, for the redemption of the concessions in Qingdao, Tianjin, and Wuhan, and gave a reply within 24 hours.

This can be said to be the first time that China has openly and openly issued a war ultimatum to the great powers to reply within a time limit!

During this period, President Chen Jingyun of the Republic of China and British Minister to China Zhu Erdian had a conversation for several hours, and the details of the conversation between the two men were naturally impossible for outsiders to know, but as soon as the conversation ended, Chen Jingyun immediately ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to hold a press conference, and just a few hours later officially issued an announcement on the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Britain, and Britain officially recognized the Republic of China as the sole legitimate political axe of China and sent envoys to each other to establish formal diplomatic relations.

Behind this announcement of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Britain is a series of overt or covert exchanges of interests between China and Britain, Britain formally invited China to declare war on Germany, but this is not to invite China to join the Entente or form a Sino-British alliance similar to the British alliance, but only to maintain a limited alliance against Germany.

The Chinese Army will be responsible for the land attack on the Qingdao fortress, and the British will send at least 2,000 troops to join it, while the Chinese and British fleets will work together to blockade Jiaozhou Bay and shell the Qingdao fortress.

If the British army can also join in, in addition to being able to provide the army with important naval artillery fire support on the sea, more importantly, with the presence of more than 2,000 British soldiers, then I can't meddle in Qingdao without scrupulousness.

In order to obtain such cooperation conditions, China also paid a considerable price, first of all, to recognize a series of treaties signed with Britain during the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and to recognize the treaties signed between Britain and Beiyang Zhengaxe before July 1913, including a large loan for the aftermath, and the Chinese side demanded customs tariff autonomy was also rejected by the British, but for Chen Jingyun's sake, they said that the rate of customs duties could be agreed upon by China and other relevant right countries. That is to say, China cannot fully obtain tariff autonomy, but it does not mean that it will continue to follow the original one-size-fits-all, but can negotiate with other countries to adjust tariff rates within a certain range.

In fact, the recognition of the old treaties had always been a condition that Britain insisted on, and without these they could not have established diplomatic relations with the Nanking Republican Axe, and it was impossible to form a joint force with China to fight against Tsingtao.

On August 6, Germany rejected the war threat from China, a weak country in the Far East, and at 12 o'clock in the afternoon, Chen Jingyun officially declared war on Germany!

The troops that had already been prepared quickly took over the German concessions in Wuhan and Tianjin, while at the same time the Ministry of Finance organized personnel to accept German assets in China and re-nationalize the construction rights of the Canton-Hankou Railway. And these are secondary, and the eyes of the world have resisted Qingdao from the very beginning.

German power in Asia is not worth mentioning, but the Qingdao fortress is not so easy to fight.

Off the coast of Jiaozhou Bay, Vice Admiral Cheng Biguang, commander of the First Fleet of the Chinese Navy, personally sat on the Yanhuang and set it as his flagship.

"Nanjing has now officially declared war, and now the army and air force colleagues are ready to attack, and our navy cannot be left behind!" Cheng Biguang officially ordered: "I order all ships to immediately launch an artillery bombardment of Qingdao Fortress!" ”

With Cheng Biguang's formal order, the task force led by the two former dreadnought battleships Yanhuang and Huaxia began to bombard the Qingdao fortress with large-caliber naval guns, and for a time the cannon roared on the sea.

However, although the shelling had already begun, only the twelve-inch guns and the eight- and seven-inch guns on the two battleships and the eight-inch guns on the Huahang were able to participate in the shelling. Other small and medium-sized naval guns were unable to participate in the shelling due to their range.

However, after half an hour, Cheng Biguang, who personally commanded the ships to carry out the shelling, had a somewhat gloomy face, and Colonel Huang Pinghan, the captain of the Yanhuang who was standing next to Cheng Biguang, also had a worried face: "Commander, the effect of such an artillery bombardment is too poor, our ship has been shelling for half an hour, and then so far no shot has hit the target, do you see if you get closer!" ”

Cheng Biguang shook his head: "If we get closer, the enemy's coastal defense artillery will be able to threaten us!" ”

Cheng Biguang is telling the truth, because of the long distance, although the naval guns of the task force cannot pose much threat to the enemy's coastal defense batteries, but in the same way, because the German coastal defense artillery in Qingdao is far away, it cannot pose too much threat to the Chinese Navy, and if it is close to attack, it is true that the hit rate can increase very high and achieve great results, but the threat faced by the warships will naturally increase exponentially, and this threat is unacceptable to Cheng Biguang.

Cheng Biguang has served as the commander of the First Fleet since joining the Nationalist Navy, and with the expansion of the Chinese Navy, after a large number of American-made warships and these two battleships returned to China, Cheng Biguang was promoted to vice admiral, and Sa Zhenbing, who was the chief of the navy, was promoted to admiral. As the No. 2 person in the Chinese Navy today, Cheng Biguang knows very well that the strength of the Navy is still very weak, and now he is counting on two former dreadnought battleships to hold up a piece of the sky of the Chinese Navy, so he has no choice but to use warships and the enemy's coastal defense heavy artillery to bombard.

Because everyone knows that if naval artillery and coastal defense heavy artillery are bombarded, it will definitely be a loss for warships, and the value of warships is not comparable to those coastal defense heavy artillery, and a 10,000-ton warship is worth millions of dollars, which is enough to build many coastal defense batteries.

Moreover, now that the war had just begun, the Chinese navy was now tasked with continuing to blockade the German navy in Jiaozhou Bay while waiting for the arrival of the British navy. The British Navy's fleet in the Far East was much stronger than that of the Chinese Navy, and when the time came, naval artillery bombardment of the Qingdao fortress would be effective.

Now, even if the navy fired the first cannon and finished the battle, it did not force much effect, in fact, it could not force much effect, the German army had been operating in Qingdao for many years, and Qingdao had been built into a military fortress, and when building the fortress, it was more about facing the threat of the sea, so most of the forces were used on the coastal defense forts, but the forts facing the land direction were weaker.

In the Qingdao fortress, it can be roughly divided into coastal defense forts, land forts, and land fortresses. Among them, the land batteries are centered on the Bismarck Battery, the No. 12 Battery, and the Ilges North Battery, and are equipped with four 280 mm howitzers, two 210 mm cannons, three 150 mm howitzers, six 120 mm canons, and some other small and medium-caliber guns.

For example, the Taixi Town Fort has four 210-mm cannons, while the Cape Fort before the meeting is equipped with two 240-mm cannons and two 150-mm cannons. Interestingly, the artillery in the headland before this meeting was still the artillery ordered from Krupp in Germany in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which was originally equipped in the Dagukou Fort, and after the Gengzi Incident in 1900, the German army participated in the Eight-Nation Alliance, so these guns were plundered to Qingdao and equipped on the Cape Fort before the meeting.

Although most of the artillery under the German command in Qingdao are old models, the firing range and rate of fire are far inferior to today's mainstream heavy artillery, let alone the artillery on the capital ships of the navies of other countries. The coastal defense heavy artillery of various countries has never been the latest model, and it is generally dismantled from retired warships, for example, now, there are few countries that put the new naval guns on warships on the batteries as coastal defense heavy artillery use.

However, despite this, Cheng Biguang still did not venture too close, anyway, the firepower of his task force alone could not effectively suppress the German batteries in Qingdao, so it was better to wait for the British fleet to arrive and take his time.

In fact, if you really want to solve the battle, the navy will not play much of a role, and it will still be the army that really determines the victory! The navy can only give extremely limited support in the early stage, and even this support is far less powerful than that of the air force!

While the navy was intermittently bombing the Qingdao fortress, the Chinese Air Force airfield in Jiaozhou was lined up with rows of planes on the flat open space, and at first glance, there were dozens of planes.

In order to prepare for the Qingdao operation, the air force dispatched two fighter squadrons, one reconnaissance squadron and two bomber squadrons; of course, it is impossible for all of these planes to be parked at Jiaozhou Airport; in addition to one fighter squadron and two bomber squadrons stationed at Jiaozhou Airport, the remaining one fighter squadron and one reconnaissance aircraft squadron are deployed at Jimo Airport, and a naval torpedo bomber squadron is also stationed at Jimo Airport.

The total attack of six squadrons, up to nearly 100 planes gathered around Qingdao.

When Nanking officially declared war on Germany, the air force launched a long-prepared bombing operation, with both bombing squadrons attacking and fighter jets accompanying the escort. Although the Germans in Qingdao also had a few planes, they were all destroyed quickly after a few hits from the fighters of the Nationalist Air Force, and the bombers of the Nationalist Air Force flew over the fort of Qingdao Fortress to drop bombs.

When the bomber group of the Nationalist Air Force arrived over the German battery, the Germans still felt strange at first, because although the planes of the Nationalist Air Force also arrived over Qingdao every day, they were generally one or two, although the Germans knew that the Nationalist Air Force was carrying out reconnaissance activities, but there was no good way, so they could only raise some heavy machine guns and some small-caliber artillery to raise the anti-air defense, but the effect was very small. This time, when I saw dozens of Nationalist planes coming at once, and I was still wondering in my heart, the B3 bombers of the Nationalist Air Force had already begun to drop aerial bombs weighing 400 kilograms.

In order to carry out an effective bombing of the Qingdao fortress, the Nationalist Air Force specially prepared a heavy aerial bomb originally used by the Navy, and this kind of aerial bomb weighing up to 400 kilograms was prepared by the Navy's naval aviation unit to deal with the enemy's army, and now when it is used by the Air Force to deal with land batteries, the effect is actually good in the early stage, and the German army in Qingdao, which did not have much preparation, was destroyed by the Nationalist Air Force on the first day of the war with a 280-millimeter howitzer and two 120-millimeter cannons.

The bombing of the air force effectively suppressed the heavy artillery of the German army in Qingdao, and at the same time, the army also launched a formal offensive!