Empire Conquest

Chapter 498 - 494 Waiting for News

If there’s anything to be said, it’s that the intelligence issues of the Newland Navy were even more serious.

The reason was simple, the Newland Federation had never been able to establish a comprehensive, effective, and in-depth espionage network within the Liangxia Empire.

This was understandable, after all, the ethnic differences were too significant.

Of course, the Newland Intelligence Agency had always been working hard.

Before the outbreak of the great war, the Newland Intelligence Agency had recruited a large group of descendants of Eastern immigrants, most of whom were expatriates from Nanzhu Country.

After spending a vast amount of resources to train these individuals, they then tried every means to send them to the Liangxia Empire.

However, not long after the outbreak of the great war, the intelligence network formed by these intelligence personnel was eradicated in one fell swoop by the information security agency of the Liangxia Empire, with over ninety percent of the intelligence personnel going missing, and the intelligence network that the Newland Intelligence Agency had taken decades to build was wiped out in smoke.

It wasn’t until they officially entered the war, which was after the defeat of the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom, that the Newland Intelligence Agency finally figured out the problem.

A qualified intelligence officer not only needed to have a similar appearance but also had to be proficient in the culture and customs of the country they were infiltrating, in order to pass as a local.

In this respect, the Saiyi intelligence agency did a better job.

In fact, it was after the defeat of the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom that a large number of intelligence personnel fled to the Newland Federation, providing the Newland Intelligence Agency with more reliable intelligence leads.

However, it was far from being efficient.

No matter how much the Saiyi intelligence personnel boasted, at least so far, they had not provided the Newland Federation with much high-value intelligence of decisive importance.

On the contrary, it had cost a lot of money.

Because of this, the Newland Navy was also striving to improve its intelligence system, or rather, striving to seek and create means to obtain intelligence.

In the Navy, the main force for strategic reconnaissance missions were submarines.

Comparatively speaking, Spur was more willing to trust the Navy’s submarines.

While in the North Sunset Ocean, the main task of the Newland Navy was anti-submarine and escorting, in the East Ocean, the Newland Navy played another role.

When it came to breaking communication, the Newland Navy was very similar to the Tiaoman Navy.

Long before the outbreak of the great war, the Newland Navy had recognized the tremendous value of submarines in the East Ocean theatre of war and had placed great emphasis on ocean-going submarines.

The key was, the Newland Federation was one of the victorious nations of the last great war.

In developing submarines, in addition to adhering to the "Huacheng Treaty" and the "Luntai Treaty," it would not be as strictly limited as the Tiaoman Empire.

Geographically, due to the West East Ocean being densely dotted with islands and hosting dozens of major shipping lanes, while the eastern part had nearly no islands and only a few shipping lanes, it was more suitable for the Newland Navy, located on the east coast of the East Ocean, to send ocean-going submarines to the western part of the East Ocean for breaking communication missions.

That is why, before the outbreak of the great war, the Newland Navy possessed the largest submarine fleet in the East Ocean, and had almost all of its ocean-going submarines deployed in the West East Ocean.

According to the strategic plan of the Newland Navy, these submarines were the first line of defense.

After the outbreak of the war, the Newland Navy immediately increased the construction scale of submarines and broke the peacetime regulation, allowing numerous small shipyards to use the design drawings of large shipyards without paying royalties to directly build ocean-going submarines for the Navy.

Now, the ocean-going submarines of the Newland Navy had exceeded 100 vessels.

The Tiaoman Navy, which had always considered submarines as their main force, had less than 100 ocean-going submarines!

Importantly, these submarines were all in East Ocean, and most of them were on the West East Ocean side.

Although the top mission of the submarines was to disrupt communications, mainly appearing in West East Ocean and the Flame Sea to seek and attack the Liangxia Empire’s transport ships, and if possible, to stealthily attack large battleships without anti-submarine capabilities, all submarines had to concurrently execute reconnaissance tasks.

According to the order issued by the East Ocean Fleet Headquarter, upon encountering an enemy’s main battle ship, especially a carrier, the first thing to do was not to launch torpedoes, but to send a telegram. If they came across an enemy fleet, it was mandatory to report to the Fleet Headquarter after ascertaining the fleet’s size.

At any time, there were dozens of submarines operating in West East Ocean.

When arranging tasks, submarine commanders would explicitly request that during the deployment and return phases, a detour should be taken to the Liangxia Navy’s front-line bases, which meant circling near the main islands of the Volcanic Islands and North Ma Islands, as there might be a chance to catch and sink a fleet carrier.

Usually, in task planning, captains would reserve the fuel and supplies needed for the detour.

No matter what, for submarine captains, sinking a fleet carrier with a torpedo was undoubtedly a great honor.

For long-distance submarines with a cruising range exceeding 15,000 nautical miles and at least 90 days of endurance, running a few hundred extra nautical miles during their deployment and return was no big deal.

Of course, to encourage submarine captains to carry out reconnaissance missions, Nizi introduced a reward system.

For sinking one 10,000-ton large battleship, the entire crew could enjoy a 3-month paid leave, with a special plane to send them back to their homeland to reunite with their families. If a battleship was sunk, they could bask in a half-year paid leave, plus an additional bonus. If a carrier, even a small one, was sunk, from the captain down, up to half the officers could be allowed to retire early with full subsidies.

Of course, so far, no submarine officers had the chance to retire early, not even to get a half-year leave.

It wasn’t that the submarine officers weren’t trying hard enough or had bad luck, but that the Liangxia Navy took anti-submarine warfare very seriously.

In some ways, this was related to the Liangxia Navy’s lack of effective anti-submarine measures.

To avoid being ambushed by submarines, the Liangxia Navy could be said to stop at nothing. Most characteristic of this was the deployment of enough long-range patrol aircraft at all ports and anchorages, allowing the patrol aircraft to sortie relentlessly, setting up hundreds of kilometers of anti-submarine patrol areas.

Clearly, no submarine could navigate hundreds of kilometers underwater.

As for navigating on the surface at night, due to speed limitations, they couldn’t travel that far either.

Up to this point, of the dozens of submarines the Newland Navy had lost in West East Ocean, half were discovered and sunk on their way to the Liangxia military ports.

However, for Spur, he would definitely prefer to believe in the reconnaissance reports of the submarines.

Not to mention anything else, thus far, most of the reconnaissance information provided by the submarines was very accurate, far more reliable than the intelligence provided by spies.

Now, Spur and his team were waiting for the reconnaissance report from the submarines.

The reason was simple.

After returning to Treasure Harbor, Spur not only issued a warning but also went to persuade Nizi, urging him to issue an order to all submarines operating in West East Ocean as the Fleet Commander-in-chief. He directed submarines nearby, or those that could arrive in time with enough remaining fuel and supplies, to rush to the Volcanic Islands and closely monitor three anchorage points, and to immediately report upon discovery.

At the time, 11 submarines responded to this telegram, indicating that they were en route to the Volcanic Islands.

In addition, there were definitely some submarines in their return phase that had received the telegram, and perhaps some of them would reroute to the Volcanic Islands.

In short, there were more than a dozen submarines near the Volcanic Islands.

If everything went as expected, those submarines should be almost in position.

If the Liangxia Fleet had already deployed, they should soon receive a report from the submarines!