The Rise Of Australasia

Chapter 254: Chapter 233: The Second Generation Airship

Although Silvio Lonnie Rodlin came from a military background, he managed the small Emperor’s Power very well.

Currently, the factories and some important facilities in Portuguese Timor are in normal condition, and Silvio Lonnie Rodlin has only sent some soldiers for supervision and inspection.

As for the city of Dili, a rather strict martial law status has been adopted. Except for some shops selling grain, other shops are temporarily not allowed to open, and pedestrians are not allowed to linger on the streets for too much time.

Although this would restrict the freedom of the Portuguese, this is already the best outcome for them.

After all, disobedient Portuguese would be forcibly sent to major factories and mining districts, where they would be forcibly arranged as workers and miners.

After all, Australasia’s finances are not so affluent, and there are not enough funds to support these Portuguese.

It is worth mentioning that the captured Portuguese soldiers, after receiving good medical care for their injuries, would be sent to various mining districts in Australasia to compensate for the various medical resources used on them.

After all, if Portugal is not willing to redeem these Portuguese soldiers at high prices in the future, wouldn’t Australasia be making a loss?

Aside from Dili, Arthur also inspected the various defensive positions established by General Silvio Lonnie Rodlin with the help of manpower in these few days.

Since Portuguese Timor has a population of more than 300,000 indigenous peoples, there is no shortage of manpower in building these defensive positions.

These indigenous peoples are quite submissive. After Australasia successfully occupied Portuguese Timor, they very wisely and voluntarily expressed their allegiance to Australasia.

Of course, it is impossible for Australasia to trust these indigenous peoples. For Arthur and the Australasian Government, the only trustworthy ones are the Australasians.

Moreover, Australasia has a rather extreme racial policy domestically, and the White Australia plan is no joke.

In fact, Arthur could prevent this trend, but there is no need.

Although the racial policy of White Australia would make it impossible for Australasia to accept Asian immigrants, at this stage, European immigrants are the most useful for Australasia and are the foundation for maintaining Australasia’s unity.

As for the indigenous peoples and Asian immigrants within the country, apart from the population increase, their contribution to the development of Australasia is not significant.

At present, Europe is able to provide hundreds of thousands of immigrants for Australasia every year, and combined with the newborns within Australasia itself, the annual population increase is already a very huge number.

Arthur is very satisfied with the current situation in Portuguese Timor and, after admonishing General Silvio Lonnie Rodlin a few words, he returned to Australasia.

There has been no movement from Portugal so far, which means that Portugal must be preparing for a major move.

After all, if Portugal wants to back down, they would have already quietly contacted the Australasian Government.

The lack of movement now indicates that Portugal has not given up yet and may even be brewing a major action.

Arthur’s first move is to order military factories to produce a large amount of ammunition, including a large number of rifle and machine gun bullets, as well as various firearm shells.

For Arthur, there is also good news: the upcoming war is about to turn into a defensive battle, where firearms and machine guns will play a crucial role.

As a result, not only have military factories entered an overtime production mode, but transport fleets are also crazily delivering ammunition to the three occupied territories.

Of course, the main focus is on delivering ammunition and supplies to Portuguese India and Portuguese Timor. Both of these regions serve as barriers for the East Asian colonies, and the chances of Portuguese directly crossing these colonies and heading to East Asia are not high.

After the outbreak of the war, in addition to Europe’s attention, the United States also sent a telegram to Australasia, asking whether Australasia needs support in weapons and equipment.

As for the inquiry from the United States, Arthur naturally refused.

What a joke, at present, in terms of weapons and equipment of the army, Australasia can be said to be the world’s top, not inferior to Britain and Germany.

Although the United States is currently the most powerful industrial country, this is only in terms of scale.

If one were to talk about the advanced level of technology and the power of weapons, the United States simply cannot compare to the current British Empire and Germany.

Without absorbing a large number of talents and property resources from Europe, the United States is merely a nouveau riche country with a booming economy and industry, and its technological background is completely incomparable to the two strongest European nations, Britain and Germany.

In terms of the navy, the Ministry of Defense has also formulated some patrol plans to prevent Portugal from stealthily attacking Australasia’s native land.

Although Australasia’s naval strength could not match Portugal’s, they were still capable of retreating when facing a more powerful adversary.

Especially the newly launched small escort ships of Australasia, which generally had a speed of over 18 knots and could even reach 19 knots.

There were not many Portuguese navy ships that could reach this speed, and considering that they also had to escort their military, they naturally couldn’t pursue deeply.

Fortunately, Australasia currently had no shortage of various resources, so they organized a fleet to transport large amounts of supplies and food to Portuguese India, Portuguese Timor, and other regions.

Moreover, Portuguese Timor was very close to Australasia, while Portuguese India was adjacent to British India, so there was basically no need to worry about the logistic lines being cut off.

After various sectors in Australasia entered a tense preparatory period, the situation also ushered in a brief period of peace.

In September, Arthur received another piece of good news – the full opening of the Industrial Railway.

This important railway connecting the east and west of the Australian continent would become the bridge of communication between the two regions.

At the same time, with the opening of the Industrial Railway, the Northern Railway officially entered its construction cycle.

Due to the total mileage of the Northern Railway being no shorter than that of the Industrial Railway, it would take about eight years to build, and the total investment would exceed 40 million Australian dollars.

Although it was estimated to cost nearly 5 million Australian dollars per year, with the current financial situation in Australasia, it was completely affordable.

Furthermore, the previous construction of the Industrial Railway also required three to four million Australian dollars per year. Now that it was completed, there was only an additional expenditure of more than one million Australian dollars per year.

After attending the full opening celebration of the Industrial Railway, Arthur once again visited the Aerospace Laboratory.

Of course, this time the visit was not about airplanes but about the airships mentioned in the previous war report.

After all, Australasia’s war report mentioned the use of airships for aerial bombings, but if there were no airships in reality that could perform such bombings, it would be a bit comical.

Fortunately, although the development of airplanes was the primary focus of the Aerospace Laboratory, the research work on airships did not fall behind – only the progress was somewhat slower than that of the airplanes.

However, the current airship technology had already spawned a second-generation airship, the AU-2 Rigid Airship.

The second-generation airship was an improved version of the first generation, with some changes in appearance and a considerable increase in volume.

The second-generation airship was 132 meters long, 12 meters in diameter, and could accommodate approximately 13,000 cubic meters of hydrogen.

It was precisely because of the increase in volume and hydrogen capacity that the AU-2 airship’s payload increased to 11 tons, a full one ton more than its predecessor.

Though it seemed to have increased by only 10%, the range and stability of the airship had improved a lot, which mattered more to Arthur.

If the first-generation airship was considered a test version built by Zeppelin, then the second-generation AU-2 was already a stable version after being tested.

Although the possibility of accidents could not be ruled out entirely, the safety of the second-generation airship was much higher than its predecessor, so it could be used as a transportation tool in the civilian sector.

Currently, one of the advantages of airships over airplanes was their far greater load-bearing capacity.

Although airships could not match the speed of airplanes, their advantage in sheer carrying capacity made them highly competitive in transportation.

Of course, with these airships, it was entirely possible to meet the characteristics of high-altitude bombing. Just place some small shells on the airship and manually throw them out to perform high-altitude bombing.

Even specially designed machine guns could be installed on such airships, though stability would be left to fate.

Regardless, the AU-2 was capable of performing aerial bombings as described in the war report, so there was no need to fear the European nations’ scrutiny of Australasia’s airship technology.

Naturally, to make the major powers of Europe believe even more that Australasia’s huge advantages in the war were due to the use of airships for aerial bombings, the airships would have to be deployed in the upcoming war and achieve significant victories.

Fortunately, because of the enormous impact of airships in transportation, several were produced as soon as the second-generation airship was born. The Aerospace Laboratory currently had five second-generation airships, and the number was just enough to meet the needs of the next war.

Furthermore, since airships were much easier to control than airplanes, the Aerospace Laboratory had enough airship pilots to be deployed.

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