Chapter 562: Changing the Plan

  Chapter 550 Changing the Plan

The sudden bombardment came and went quickly, ending more than an hour before and after, leaving only a mess behind.

After making sure it was safe, Major General Özgür walked out of the command headquarters, looking at the rolling smoke rising all over the city, he hurriedly ordered, “Quickly organize manpower to put out the fire, the food and ammunition warehouses must be saved.”

The young officer accompanying him replied, “Yes, General!”

After saying that, he immediately ran forward to convey the order. During the bombardment just now, the telegraph and telephone lines that were exposed to the outside, were unfortunately damaged and had not yet been restored.

At this point, Major General Özgür had no illusions about keeping the enemy outside the country’s gates.

By relying on artillery to stop the enemy landing, the question was what about the enemy in the sky? Without addressing the threat overhead, they would have to be passive.

No matter how tightly defended a position is, if you give a wave overhead, it’s still going to collapse. Casualty figures are still being tallied, and Major General Özgürr no longer has the courage to face them.

Taking his beloved binoculars, he took a brief look at the battlefield, and knew that the losses were absolutely heavy.

In just over an hour, the zeppelin brigade had tilted hundreds of tons of bombs over their heads, and if you added in the naval artillery shells, the number would be even greater.

For the small port of Ava, this much ammunition was enough for a major demolition, not to mention the heavy damage to the port facilities and, crucially, the destruction of the fortifications.

Time passed, and in the evening the casualty report appeared in the hands of Rear Admiral Özgür, a thin piece of paper in his hands, which seemed to weigh a thousand pounds at the moment.

Strongly suppressed the uneasiness in his heart, Major General Özgür quickly browsed through the losses.

Artillery losses of more than half, 686 killed in action, 1468 wounded, 315 missing, most of the batteries have been devastated, the loss of one-fifth of the supplies, one-third of the buildings in the city suffered varying degrees of damage, civilian casualties of a number of ……

A regiment was lost in the fight, so don’t look at the number of wounded and think that you can recover in the future. In fact, with the medical conditions of the Ottoman army, the mortality rate of the wounded is usually not less than forty percent.

Simply put, it is to fight on their own. Luckily the wounds did not appear inflammation, pus, then pick up a life, or else listen to God’s fate.

“Battlefield ambulance”, where can the Sudanese government find so many medics? Even if there are medics, they don’t have enough medicine.

In this day and age, medicines are much more expensive than human lives. For example, penicillin, which can only be produced in laboratories, is dozens of times more expensive than the equivalent amount of gold on the market.

Influenced by chemical technology, it was impossible to realize large-scale industrialized production, and could only be produced on a small scale by manpower, with an annual output of less than 20,000 units.

This little production, Austria themselves are not enough to use. Inflows into the international market, naturally became sky-high prices. The black market has been speculated to 1,000 guilders / branch, or price, how can the Sudanese government provide soldiers to use?

Wounded on the battlefield, it’s better to expect **** blessing! Most of the soldiers are only able to carry out simple bandages, which also have to test the luck, basically follow whatever cloth there is to use.

If you’re not lucky, there’s no disinfected gauze, but a piece of clothing can be torn off to make do with what you’ve got. A bunch of big-headed soldiers don’t know that much specialized knowledge.

After reading the report, Major General Özgür let go of his hands, let the documents fall from his hands, and sat down on his butt, as if he had been drained of his soul.

After half a dozen hours of work, Major General Özgür slowly slowed down and sighed deeply, “Alas!”

Shaking his head, “Immediately send someone to report the situation we encountered to the top, requesting for reinforcements to be sent from the country, and reminding the country to be careful of the enemy’s airships.”

Airships have been around for many years, and because of their cost-effectiveness, they have little practical value and are rarely seen in life.

If he didn’t love to read newspapers, Major General Özgür probably wouldn’t even know it existed, let alone being used in war.

But this was all in the past, after this battle, airships would soon appear in the armies of various countries. The ability of everyone to learn in this area is still very strong.

The response, I’m sorry to say, is beyond the capabilities of Major General Özgür. I guess after a few more bombings, we might probably have learned our lesson.

……

Compared to the worried Ava defenders, the atmosphere in the Joint Command in Constantinople was much more enthusiastic, with the airship brigade just coming out of the woodwork with a big score to show for it.

Originally, they thought that it would take a heavy price to destroy the shore artillery fortifications in Ava, and the Russians were all set to start landing from nearby areas and fight their way over land.

That said, landing from the surrounding area is very simple, in fact, because of the geographical conditions, there is no excellent harbor, the ship simply can not dock, the Russians are ready to get on the raft.

There is no doubt that this approach is quite dangerous and requires taking human lives to fill. Austria had landing craft, but unfortunately, due to insufficient preparation, they were not sent to the Black Sea in time, which would have been no problem if they had landed from the Mediterranean coast.

Whether it was intentional or not, the question was left aside for the time being. Anyway, the landing craft could not come in a short time, but if the Russians could wait, they would have them after a while.

Such small boats could be produced by the small shipyards on the Danube. Without taking into account the service life of their use, they can be produced in two or three months of inferior quality, and in any case two or three landings will be no problem.

Now, well, the enemy’s shore artillery had been hit hard, so it was just a matter of going in hard. Even the pre-prepared feint plan was aborted as a result.

The Tsarist government urgently needed to capture the Black Sea Straits in order to secure this most important foreign trade route. In order to give a satisfactory answer to his country, Admiral Ivanov decided to make haste.

Before the Ottoman Empire reacted, it landed on Ava first. The battle plan formulated earlier was not completely null and void, only the implementation was greatly reduced.

For this kind of unauthorized tampering with the battle plan, ignoring the prior agreement between the two countries, the commander-in-chief of the allied forces, Arest, was very dissatisfied.

Although Arest was not from the army, the staff officers assigned to him by the Vienna government were all professionals.

Everyone saw at once the risk of changing the battle plan. According to the original plan, the enemy could be dragged down by landing in areas where the Ottoman forces were weak, implementing a scorched-earth strategy, and expelling the population into the interior.

There was no need to engage in bitter battles; the war could be won with constant sabotage. After changing the plan, the Russian army would have to fight the Ottomans.

The Russian army was full of confidence, but the Austrian military did not have so much confidence in them. District 150,000 Russian troops, to fight hundreds of thousands of Ottoman troops, after the loss of the sea of men tactics, gray animals, how strong the fighting force, we have no idea in the heart.

I have to say that the first impression is very important, from the beginning Arest thought that this Russian army fighting strength is limited. According to Austrian standards, the Russian army basically failed in all training.

……

Arest sternly reprimanded: “General Ivanov, this battle plan was jointly approved by both governments.

Prior to this, both of us have carefully evaluated and sifted through the many combat options to find the most suitable one.

According to this battle plan, both of our losses can be minimized, and with the smallest cost, we can win this war, which I think is the common pursuit of all of us.”

Ivanov shook his head, “No, Your Excellency the Commander. This battle plan is too conservative, it will take at least three to five months to strike on all sides to force the enemy to divide their forces and then attack Ava.

But this is based on the fact that the Ava garrison’s defense firepower is strong, causing big problems for the landing. Now that the enemy’s shore guns have been pretty much destroyed by us, it is perfectly possible to launch an attack at once.

Now that the Ottomans haven’t reacted yet, we can totally make a time gap, even if the enemy has gathered more troops, but we have air superiority.

Believe me, no army can keep fighting under the bombardment of airships, the rotten Ottoman Empire will be broken in a single stab.

There’s no point in arguing over these pointless issues. Victory is ours. General Arest, let’s forge our own glory together!”

Arest frowned and said in a serious tone, “General Ivanov, you are too optimistic. Airships are not invincible, and many special terrains, such as the jungle, make it difficult for airships to function.

If a big battle really breaks out, even if we can win, you will suffer heavy losses. The boys followed us to the war, we need to bring them back as much as possible.”

After a moment’s effort of silence, Ivanov still shook his head. Following the established battle plan and minimizing casualties as much as possible was as big as he wanted it to be.

But the problem was that the country couldn’t top it, the Black Sea Channel was cut off, and the Russian Empire’s foreign trade was hit hard. If the channel could not be opened as soon as possible, after the fall grain was in storage, that loss would be even greater.

The war had just broken out, and the Tsar’s government gave him three orders to speed up. War needs to serve politics, and soldiers must also consider the national interest.

Austria can let the war drag on, that is, the longer it drags on, the more Austria can gain from the Russian-Austrian trade. Relying on the profits brought by monopolizing the trade of half of the Russian Empire can almost erase the losses brought by the war, the Vienna government is naturally not in a hurry.

“Your Excellency the Commander, I still insist on changing the battle plan. This is St. Petersburg’s intention, the economic losses from the war are too great, the Russian Empire can no longer afford to delay.”

Arest wanted to say something, at this point, unless he strongly prevented it, for example: the Austrian transport ships and warships would not cooperate, then he could only convince St. Petersburg.

After a moment of contemplation, he spoke, “Alright, I will report back to Vienna, and if the General Staff agrees, we will cooperate with you.”

……

In the Vienna Palace, Franz, who had not yet had time to rejoice at the success of the zeppelin bombardment brigade, received the news of a “strategic battle” at the front.

He knew that the Russians wanted to open the Black Sea Straits, but he did not realize that the Tsarist government was so quick to lose its temper and did not even care about the casualties of its soldiers.

Well, it seems that the Tsarist government never cared about soldier casualties. It was a question that should never have been considered from the beginning.

Franz slapped his forehead, “What do you guys think, the Russians are in such a hurry to attack, should we say yes or no?”

Prime Minister Felix: “Your Majesty, it’s the same choice either way, but I personally tend to agree with the Russians’ choice.

This war is just a strategic fraud, victory or defeat is not that important. If we follow the original plan, we can say that we will win for sure, and it’s uncertain if Ottoman can even exist.

Now the Russians are willing to change their strategy, so let them. If the Russian front line suffers heavy losses, we can also take the opportunity to end this war.”

Come on, military simply don’t bother to think about it, it doesn’t even matter if you win or lose. This kind of salty strategy, if it was spread out, no one would probably believe it.

Perhaps when future generations studied this history, they would be able to unravel the truth by connecting all the dots. Of course, the likelihood of being led astray is still a bit greater.

Franz turned his attention to the military, he needed an answer from the military to fully weigh the pros and cons so he could make a decision.

Seemingly sensing Franz’s gaze, Minister of War Albrecht: “Your Majesty, after changing the battle plan, the Russians’ chances of winning the war in Asia Minor are greatly reduced, and even if they can win the war, they will still suffer heavy losses.

However, winning or losing the battle in Asia Minor does not affect our strategy in the Middle East.

The Sultan’s government can’t dare to risk increasing its troops in the Middle East now, and no one can guarantee that we won’t increase our troop commitment in Asia Minor.

In case the Russians lose the battle, or suffer heavy losses, we can all send out troops to feint at any time, and the Sultan’s government will not dare to act rashly.”

Franz: “Then tell Arest not to care what the Russians want to do, and let them fight as they please.”

As long as it doesn’t affect the Middle East strategy, Franz is fearless, the big deal is to send troops to give the Russians a good aftermath. It’s just a matter of money, and compared to the oil in the Middle East, it’s not even a matter.

……

Constantinople, after receiving Franz’s order, Arest gave up on continuing to fight and warned in a serious tone, “General Ivanov, you have to insist on landing from the Ava area first, and we agree.

But all the consequences resulting from this will be borne by yourselves. If the Ottoman Empire’s main force is attracted to the area, resulting in the next strategy not being able to continue, don’t blame me for not warning you.”

This was not a shirking of responsibility, but a reasonable dumping of the blame. Since the Russian army had changed the pre-negotiated battle plan without authorization, they naturally had to take responsibility for it.

By making things clear now, there could be a lot less bullshit in the future. Even if the Russian army suffers heavy losses, it can only swallow its tears.

Ivanov replied joyfully, “Don’t worry, Your Excellency the Commander. We and the Ottomans are old rivals, we know exactly how much strength they have, and nothing will go wrong.”

……

A new month is coming, Hai Yue is asking for monthly votes in advance, guaranteed monthly votes that everyone has, vote for the lovable, weak and helpless author!

Shouldn’t be late this time, there’s still a while to go before the 1st.

(End of chapter)