Chapter 1195: A Doctrine-Bound Navy (Seeking Monthly Tickets, Seeking Subscriptions)

"Major General, victory is ours for the taking!"

The speaker was David Jones, the "China expert" of the Dutch navy and commander of the battleship Zeeland.

His words were no idle boast — after receiving reports from the reconnaissance ships and from Fort Johor, he had confirmed the strength of the Ming fleet currently carrying out a landing operation in the Strait of Johor.

This fleet was not the main force of the Southern Ocean Fleet, but a landing task force — the Ming navy had grown increasingly large in scale, and its organization had become ever more complex. One level below the Navy Department of the Grand Marshal's Office were the regional fleets, divided into three: the Northern Ocean, Southern Ocean, and Eastern Ocean Fleets.

Of these, the Northern Ocean Fleet was responsible for guarding the "gateway of the realm" from the mouth of the Yangtze (inclusive) to the Liaodong Peninsula. It was a home-defense regional fleet — seemingly important, but in reality it possessed little actual strength.

The Southern Ocean Fleet was responsible for the vast region from south of the Yangtze mouth down to the islands of the Southern Seas. It was a main-force fleet tasked with maritime supremacy, and its strength was considerable.

The Eastern Ocean Fleet was of the same nature as the Southern Ocean Fleet — also a fleet for controlling maritime hegemony — chiefly responsible for sea power from east of Japan (inclusive) all the way to the New World. It, too, was formidable.

Below the three regional fleets were the two standing organizational units: the Coastal Defense Garrison Department (naval bases) and fleet squadrons. Of these, the fleet squadrons were responsible only for administration and training, and were not wartime operational command units.

In wartime or quasi-wartime conditions, the admiralty staffs of the three regional fleets would form task fleets — fleets temporarily assembled to carry out a specific mission. If that specific mission was a decisive battle, the task fleet was usually named "the X Ocean Main Fleet." If the specific mission was a landing, then the task fleet was "the X Ocean Landing Fleet."

If multiple task fleets were executing the same mission, numerical designations were used to distinguish them.

Thus, what now appeared in the Strait of Malacca was the Southern Ocean Landing Fleet — that is, a fleet subordinate to the Southern Ocean Fleet, executing a landing mission.

Under such a task fleet, no sub-squadrons named after specific mission titles were established; instead, the sub-squadrons were named by number.

That is, "Southern Ocean Landing Fleet, Squadron No. X" and the like.

Before David Jones left the Ming navy, he had served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the Navy Department and had directly participated in the establishment of the Ming navy's three great regional fleets, so he was thoroughly familiar with the Ming navy's organizational structure.

Moreover, he also knew very well the Ming navy's several standard regional-fleet combat patterns — although the Ming navy had been trained up by the Dutch, because their foundation was too poor, they had always lacked enough excellent officers and sailors, and so could not adapt to complex and chaotic missions.

Therefore, the Ming navy had always emphasized standardized warfare — that is, fighting by the book!

After studying naval battle cases from both the Ming itself and Europe, the Navy Department had summarized five major combat patterns: "decisive battle pattern," "convoy pattern," "landing pattern," "garrison pattern," and "counterattack pattern." For each pattern, it had formulated several corresponding formations and battle plans — and had even compiled these plans into books, issued directly into the hands of every naval captain, with a copy placed in the captain's cabin of every vessel!

If one forgot in the heat of battle due to excessive tension, one could study and apply it on the spot!

Such a command system existed only in the Ming among all the navies of the world.

And David Jones had a copy of this book in his own hands — he had participated in writing it, after all! How could it be kept from him?

So he knew exactly how the Ming navy fought a landing operation.

"Right now they should be deploying according to the landing pattern in the Battle Instructions. Apart from the landing squadron, there will be at most two combat squadrons." David Jones said to Tromp, "The formation our reconnaissance ships discovered in the waters west of Temasek Road should be one of those combat squadrons. East of Temasek Island, there should be another formation of similar size.

Our reconnaissance ships reported sighting one Yingtian Prefecture-class, so east of Temasek Island there will be another Yingtian Prefecture-class. Both formations will use the Yingtian Prefecture-class as lead ship and flagship, plus several converted 'Flying-class' vessels forming a line-of-battle formation for maneuvering.

As for the combat vessels in the Ming navy's landing formation, they should be centered on the prefecture-county-class hard-sail bombardment gun warships."

Tromp folded his arms and said thoughtfully, "If one of their combat squadrons spots three Parliament-class ships, will they flee?"

"No." David Jones shook his head. "The Ming navy claims to destroy the enemy on sight. The Battle Instructions contain very little about avoiding battle and retreating — of course, this is not because they are especially brave, but because their capital ships are relatively slow and would find it hard to escape pursuit by a superior enemy force."

By now the Ming shipbuilding industry could independently design and build soft-sail ships of the line, but their design level still lagged a notch behind England and the Netherlands. The bombardment gun ships of the line they designed and built had the characteristics of being "small and slow." The root cause was that they had not yet fully mastered soft-sail technology, so their designs were conservative, which kept ship speeds from rising, and therefore they dared not build ships of larger tonnage — because the larger they built them, the slower they became.

Tromp laughed. "That's good — we can first devour one of their squadrons, then go strike the second, and finally finish off their landing squadron! I believe that after this battle, the Chinese will know who the true overlord of the seas is!"

David Jones indeed understood the Ming navy extremely well!

His and Tromp's analysis had actually guessed the deployments of Shi Lang and Liu Guoxuan, the commander and deputy commander of the Southern Ocean Landing Fleet, almost to the letter!

At this moment, Shi Lang and Liu Guoxuan were each leading a combat squadron, patrolling the seas on the east and west sides of Temasek Island.

The composition of the two squadrons was completely identical: the flagship of each was a Yingtian Prefecture-class, followed by two Flying-class, then four Guard-class, and finally four Chiliarch Station-class. Such a formation comprised 11 combat vessels, plus several oared sailing ships performing reconnaissance and escort duties. The two formations together totaled 22 warships.

Among them, the Flying-class had undergone two refits. The first added swivel bombardment guns on the deck; the second was a comprehensive overhaul, removing all the cannons and then carrying out a major reconstruction of the two gun decks. The lower gun deck was sealed off, leaving only the upper gun deck, which was converted into gun compartments — that is, the open gun deck was rebuilt into individual compartments, each compartment housing two 15-catty cannons capable of firing explosive shells. A total of 12 gun compartments were built, for a total of 24 15-catty cannons. The heavy swivel bombardment guns originally mounted on the upper deck were completely removed in this major refit — because the people of the Ming Navy Shipbuilding Bureau still felt that all bombardment guns should be placed inside reinforced gun compartments to be at ease.

The Guard-class and Chiliarch Station-class were scaled-down versions of the Yingtian Prefecture-class.

Of these, the Guard-class were all named after guard units. They had a burden of five hundred tons, three masts, a flush deck, and one tier of 9 gun compartments, capable of carrying 18 15-catty cannons.

The Chiliarch Station-class were named after chiliarch stations. They had a burden of three hundred tons, two masts, a flush deck, and one tier of 5 gun compartments, capable of carrying 10 15-catty cannons.

Besides these four warship types, around Temasek Island there was also a prefecture-county-class hard-sail bombardment gun vessel — a bird-boat-type bombardment gun vessel with a burden of five hundred tons, one tier of 7 gun compartments, capable of carrying 14 15-catty cannons.

However, this prefecture-county-class generally did not participate in fleet decisive battles, but was used for convoy escort or landing support. Because the Southern Ocean Landing Fleet's primary mission was landing, it was equipped with quite a few prefecture-county-class vessels — as many as 24. Added to the 22 warships of the two combat squadrons, there were altogether 46 warships of relatively strong combat capability!

In terms of numbers alone, its strength far exceeded Tromp's fleet.

Although the East India Company had scraped together over a hundred armed merchantmen for Tromp, most of the armed merchantmen were too flimsy and difficult to fit with bombardment guns, and Batavia did not have that many bombardment guns available.

So in the end Tromp had selected only 18 of them for conversion, and together with the 14 new-style gunboats he had brought from Europe, that made a total of only 32 warships.

(End of Chapter)