Empire Conquest

Chapter 568 - 564: The Source of Confidence

The landing operation progressed smoothly, as anticipated.

Speaking of which, the greatest threat to the Landing Fleet and Landing Forces during the entire landing operation was actually the naval mines in the strait.

On the first day of the landing, three Landing Ships hit mines in the Mand Strait, but fortunately, they were only severely damaged and ultimately all struggled back to Socotra Island.

In the planning stage, the potential losses had already been taken into account, and the ammunition and materials transported to the front line were sure to have a significant redundancy.

The loss of three Landing Ships specially transporting combat materials meant about 1,500 tons of ammunition and several thousand tons of fuel for the Armored Forces were missing, but the problem was not too great.

In the following days, Landing Ships hit mines in the strait almost every day.

It wasn’t that the mine sweepers were not trying hard enough, but to reach the landing beach, the Landing Ships had to pass through minefields, where the Bulan Royal Navy had deployed a large number of drifting mines far from the main channel.

These mines were not very powerful, but they were extremely difficult to eliminate.

Most of the Landing Ships that hit mines were damaged by drifting mines, with only a few unlucky ones hitting anchor mines that the mine sweepers had not discovered.

Needless to say, the more than 40 mine sweepers involved in the landing operation were absolutely indispensable.

Without these 40 plus mine sweepers, not only would more Landing Ships have been lost, but the landing operation could very likely have ended in a disastrous defeat.

On November 10th, the day the landing operation began, in the hours before dawn, four of the 14 mine sweepers tasked with clearing the channels hit mines while attempting to remove detected drifting mines without preparation, venturing into dangerous waters.

All four mine sweepers sank, with hundreds of officers and soldiers killed or missing in action.

Fortunately, it was these mine sweepers’ efforts that allowed the clearance of a barely safe passage before daylight.

Otherwise, the Landing Fleet would have been completely unable to get the Marine Corps ashore.

Over the next few days, three more mine sweepers were lost.

According to incomplete statistics, before the end of the first phase of the landing operation, which is by November 18th, the 44 mine sweepers involved in the battle had discovered and cleared more than 1,400 naval mines, about 1,000 of which were in the sea area near the landing site, posing a significant threat to the landing vessels.

It can be said that it was these mine sweepers that opened up the landing sites, allowing the landing operation to move into the second phase.

In terms of combat efficiency, the Imperial Navy’s mine sweepers were undoubtedly very high.

The key lies in that the Imperial Navy possessed the best-performing mine sweepers in the world and the officers and soldiers with the most experience.

Before the outbreak of the war, the Imperial Navy designed and built several types of large mine sweepers, but due to budget constraints, only one or two ships of each type were built.

Actually, all these large mine sweepers were experimental in nature, their main value being to test and verify mine-sweeping equipment.

In addition, all the large mine sweepers were built to the standards of mother ships to ensure, that in wartime, they could support the operations of the small mine sweeper vessels.

In nature, they were similar to submarine support ships.

When the war came, all these large mine sweepers became "mother ships."

The mine sweepers participating in the frontline mine-sweeping tasks were much smaller, most being less than 500 tons and could only be considered mine sweepers.

What’s more, these mine sweepers were almost all made with wooden hulls.

It wasn’t that the Empire lacked enough steel, but rather that wood was better.

The reason is that the Imperial Navy had developed magnetic mines, and there was sufficient reason to believe that several of the main adversaries also had magnetic mines.

Wood lacks magnetism, therefore the probability of detonating magnetic mines was lower.

The inadequacy was that the mine sweepers had too little tonnage, not capable of open ocean warfare, and their operational range was also very limited, therefore requiring the support of a mother ship.

In intense minesweeping operations, the officers and soldiers of the mine sweepers would rotate onto the mother ship to rest and recuperate, to maintain their vigorous combat strength.

Bigger in tonnage, the mother ship could carry larger and heavier technical equipment, which the mine sweepers simply could not accommodate, or did not need to equip every one of them.

From this perspective, the main value of the mine sweeping mother ship was to act as a forward support platform for the mine sweepers.

Crucially, the Empire’s Navy possessed the world’s most advanced mine detection equipment.

That’s right, it was sonar, developed from ultrasonic detection devices.

Although during the war, sonar gained much wider application, and by the later stages became a weapon against submarines, even outfitting torpedoes with homing abilities, the Empire’s Navy initially invested in the development of sonar with the aim of finding an effective method to detect Bottom Mines and moored mines, as well as letting minesweeping ships discover naval mines at a safe distance in time to reduce minesweeping risks.

Most magnetic mines, which used magnetic-induction fuses, were either moored mines or Bottom Mines, hidden under the water’s surface.

Before sonar appeared, the only way to clear magnetic mines was for minesweeping ships to risk entering mine fields and detonate the mines by generating a strong magnetic field.

The Empire’s Navy once placed great importance on the speed of minesweeping vessels, constructing several that reached speeds up to 45 knots.

After testing, they found out that speed didn’t help at all.

The Empire’s Navy even considered using large airplanes to tow electromagnetic coils, flying over the mined areas, with the intention that the strong magnetic fields generated by the coils would detonate the magnetic mines.

As for the results, they too were unsatisfactory.

During testing, several transport planes were even crashed.

It wasn’t until sonar appeared that this problem was resolved.

Luckily, in this grand war, at least up to this point, the naval mines faced by the Empire’s Navy were not considered advanced, or, put it another way, there weren’t many advanced naval mines.

Up to now, whether it was at East Ocean or Fan Flame Ocean, the majority of the mines employed by the Alliance Group were old-fashioned mines that had been stored for over 20 years.

The reason was simple: during the last war, the Alliance Group produced far too many naval mines, and by the end of the war, many had not been used.

Moreover, the storage life of naval mines could reach several decades.

In sealed storage, even without periodic maintenance, naval mines could remain stable for 30 years, or even up to 50 years.

Many mines deployed during the last war, after more than 20 years, could still detonate normally and possessed immense power.

As a result, the Alliance Group did not produce many naval mines; the ones they deployed were from stockpiles.

Only in a few key maritime areas, such as outside Military Ports, did they deploy a small number of modern mines.

To put it another way, if they were all new mines, like Magnetic Bottom Mines, let alone 40 mine sweepers, even if twice as many, sending 120 over, might not be enough to clear more than 1,400 mines within 9 days, to create a landing area large enough for hundreds of ships to anchor.

Of course, from a tactical perspective, these minesweeping warships were the Empire Navy’s foundation of confidence.

From another angle, the garrison at Jibu Fortress definitely could not have imagined that the Empire’s Navy would deploy so many mine sweepers, forcibly opening safe passages in the Mand Strait. It was their blind confidence in their minefields that led Bulan’s Army to believe that the Imperial Army would not land north of the fortress.

The result was that in a short span of 9 days, the Empire’s Navy not only landed 2 Marine Divisions onshore, but elite assault forces had also advanced to the outskirts of Jibu Fortress.

Actually, just a few days prior, Bulan’s Army still believed that the northern landing operations were but a feint.

The reason being the Landing Ships that appeared there were not numerous, and they all seemed to hurry on their way.

By the time Bulan’s Army suddenly realized the situation, the Empire’s Marine Corps was already at the gates, with the main forces beginning to land.

Of course, the main force was the Army, not the Marine Corps.