Among the three archipelagos of the Tang Empire, the Tonga Islands and the Hapai Islands are coral reef islands, with a flat terrain and an altitude of only about ten meters, making them only suitable for living and working.

Only the Wawawu Islands are volcanic islands and the highest terrain. Among them, Wawawu Island is the main island, with an altitude of about 500 meters in the northern volcanic group, which is the only commanding height of the Tang Empire. The Yanjing Fortress is located here, protecting the urban security of Yanjing downwards.

As one of the four cities of the Tang Empire, Yanjing had the highest military status. Zhang Meng concentrated all heavy industry and military industry in Yanjing, relying on the protection of the Yanjing Fortress.

The Wawawu Islands were the first place where Zhang Meng started to build. At this time, the urban prototype of Yanjing was basically seen. The highways cut the entire island into regular grids, the foundations of thousands of buildings in residential and commercial areas have been watered and piled, and the tropical forest where the industrial area is located has been cut down and cleaned up.

The fastest one is the Wawawu Island Fortress, which has now been renamed Yanjing Fortress. Yanjing Fortress is one of the military projects Zhang Meng focused on. Since Yanjing Fortress is above the volcanic group, the volcanic lava itself is extremely strong and is a natural protective shield to fight against sea and air attacks. There are countless volcanic caves inside, most of which can be directly passed through personnel and weapons and equipment, and the rest only needs to be dug.

Because there are many natural caves and high volcanic rock strength, the underground bunker fortifications of Yanjing Fortress can only be simply processed to meet the requirements of large fortress underground bunker fortifications of the same level abroad.

Four main turrets, twelve second-level turrets and six third-level turrets are set up in the upper part of the Yanjing Fortress, and about 200 fortress cannons are planned to be installed.

The second- and third-level turrets have begun to be built, but Zhang Meng of the main turret asked for a suspension of construction because he was still waiting for an opportunity, that is, the outbreak of the global economic crisis, when arms procurement was relatively easy and cheap.

Now that the world economic crisis has broken out, Zhang Meng’s opportunity has come.

In fact, Zhang Meng already had a goal in his mind. He knew that the most awesome fortress during World War II was not the household name Madino, nor the world-famous Singapore fortress, but the most practical Vladivostok fortress in the Soviet Union.

In Zhang Meng's view, practicality is the first priority. At present, the mainstream fortress artillery in various countries is almost all the German Krupp built large-caliber fortress artillery, with the reason being powerful. However, this fortress artillery performs mediocrely in actual combat, and the shooting world is the biggest obstacle.

During World War II, the main guns of the battleships were removed from the Vladivostok fortress in the Soviet Union and installed them on the fortress fortress. The firing boundary was wide, with 360 degrees rotating in all directions, and the elevation angle was between positive and negative 37 degrees. The Japanese Navy and Marine Corps ran away in a hurry, and corpses were everywhere.

What Zhang Meng was most worried about was that the Tang Empire would support the national army in the future to fight against Japan, which would result in crazy revenge from the Japanese army, so he had to prepare targeted defense measures instead of blindly worshiping the so-called Krupp cannon.

Zhang Meng has locked in a large-caliber artillery supply company, the Ghana Navy naval gun manufacturer under the French Mediterranean.

The most sensitive fortress used large-caliber artillery to entrust countries in Central America such as Ecuador as third-country intermediaries to import from the French Mediterranean Ghana arms company.

Of course, Zhang Meng's choice of the Ghana Arms Company in the Mediterranean of France also made overall considerations. The company provided a 406mm DK300 naval naval gun system with a triple equipped with 50 times the diameter of the 406mm DK300 naval gun system. The system was built as a mature naval gun system in the late stage of World War I. It was once planned to be installed on the Richelieu-class battleship by the French Navy. However, after World War I, France's national strength was severely weak, and the construction plan of the Richelieu-class battleship was repeatedly postponed. Seeing that the French Navy chose the Dunkirk-class battleship with a caliber of 350mm, it was forced to find overseas buyers. However, in the treaty era, there was no buyer of this large-caliber main gun at all. Moreover, the global economic crisis broke out and was about to rot in hand. Regardless of where the buyer came from, they immediately agreed when Zhang Meng sent someone to contact him.

Zhang Meng only spent 15 million US dollars to obtain four DK300 naval gun systems and the included 200 406mm shells. You should know that the cost of these four naval gun systems and shells is 20 million US dollars. Including the messy costs such as labor costs, the actual cost is around 23 million US dollars. If Ghana had not had the shortage of funds and urgently needed working capital, this price would definitely be impossible, and Zhang Meng would undoubtedly have taken a big advantage.

Deploying these four triple-mounted fifty-fold 406mm cannons on the four major high grounds of the Wawawu Island Fortress is equivalent to placing a never-sinking super fearless battleship on Wawawu Island. If it is at sea level, the maximum range of the DK300 gun will not exceed 40 kilometers, but when it is shot at a fortress with a height of more than 500 meters above sea level, its range will theoretically double, enough to cover the entire Wawawu Island and offshore area. In particular, this naval gun adopts a fifty-fold barrel design, and there is no roll and bump at sea, and its hit accuracy will be greatly improved. With its 500mm thick armor protection and 360-degree rotary shooting ability, if it relies on the reinforced concrete protective layer of the fortress, Zhang Meng believes that even the Japanese Yamato battleship ran over Desert would still beat it all over the ground!

The core interest area of ​​Wawawu Island is Yanjing in the south, and Yanjing is surrounded by the sea on three sides and is backed by the fortress, so the importance of the fortress is self-evident.

Because it is surrounded by the sea on three sides, the rotational performance of the fortress main gun is very important, which is also one of the main reasons why Zhang Meng chose the large-caliber naval gun as the fortress main gun.

In order to cooperate with the main fortress turret built with four triple 406mm giant cannons, the fortress turret also includes 8 240mm cannons, 16 152mm cannons, 20 80mm war defense cannons, 60 M2 heavy machine guns, and ten base ammunition.

Although Zhang Meng knew that it would be difficult to have a strong air threat in the Central Pacific region, he was still prepared to fight at least four aircraft carrier battle groups at the same time. Therefore, he equipped the fortress with high, medium and low altitude all-round anti-aircraft artillery, mainly 128mm, 88mm and 47mm anti-aircraft artillery, and built an air defense firepower network covering the entire Wawawu Island.

According to the design plan of the fortress engineer Riva hired by Zhang Meng, the entire Wawawu Island Fortress project was planned to be completed in June 1931, and at that time at least 2,300 people were required to support the normal operation of the fortress.

The entire Wawawu Island Fortress Plan requires $29 million, and the cost of weapons and equipment accounts for half of it. Zhang Meng’s most savvy is that he only paid a small deposit and adopted a cash-on-delivery settlement method. Although the intermediary would draw a certain commission, Zhang Meng believed that this was worth it and the risk was minimized.

Zhang Meng considered that if his actions on Wawau Island alarmed the great powers, and if the Japanese discovered that he was the culprit, they came to take revenge. Since the entire Wawau Islands did not have the ability to resist the powerful Japanese navy during the construction of the fortress, Zhang Meng bought five thousand mines from France in one breath, and laid densely in the 200 kilometers of waters around the Wawau Islands to prevent enemy ships from approaching, and opened several hidden new waterways separately.

At the same time, dense minefields are also arranged around the islands where Chang'an, Jinling and Daxing are located.
Chapter completed!