Chapter 117 Overseas Inspection (4)

After a preliminary inspection of the terrain here, the members of the Military and Police Department generally believed that it is best to pray that no hostile forces will launch a large-scale attack from the sea in the future. Once this happens, the coastal terrain here will make it difficult for defensive forces to take action.

It is simply a nightmare for one side. It is certainly unlikely that the Crossing Group will send heavy troops to station overseas in the foreseeable future. In view of these circumstances, the Crossing Group needs to carefully consider what attitude it should take towards the current Annan regime.

Of course, the inspection team will not make a conclusion just after looking at this place. In fact, Hongji’s mining area is very large, and there are far more places where freight terminals can be built, and many specific geographical environments

It is difficult to tell the advantages and disadvantages just from the map. You must conduct on-site inspections in person to get the most intuitive feeling.

When the expedition team contacted the base camp through the radio that night, they learned good news. The first trial-produced steam engine had been installed in the Tiandu Iron Mine and passed the trial operation. Due to limitations of the processing technology, the thermal conversion efficiency of this steam engine

and stable working hours are still at a relatively low level, but the investment in mechanical power undoubtedly means that the production efficiency of the Cross Group will reach a new level.

This news made the expedition team members rejoice, but it also brought a lot of pressure. The putting into use of steam engines means that the demand for fuel will increase rapidly, and whether there is a stable coal input channel will most likely become a constraint for the crossing group.

The bottleneck of development speed. From this perspective, the success or failure of the expedition team will directly affect the future development route of the Cross Group.

Early the next morning, the expedition team, who were full of energy after resting, left the anchorage of the previous night and slowly headed west along the coastline. Because the information on each mining site is relatively detailed, the task of the mining exploration team is relatively simple.

, then just go ashore and collect ore samples from the places marked on the map. The real difficulty of this expedition is to find a port location that satisfies all parties. Although there are later data as a reference, the Executive Committee

The final choice must still be made based on the conclusions of the on-site investigation.

The main task of the expedition team today is to find the next port suitable for development. The selection of this location needs to comprehensively consider the local coastal water depth, water environment, distance from the mining site and the difficulty of land transportation, etc., and of course

Including the difficulty of military defense, which the Military and Police Department attaches great importance to.

The location of this mining area is actually a huge peninsula that extends into the sea. Opposite it is another peninsula. The tips of the two peninsulas are less than a kilometer apart, and the two peninsulas are surrounded by

The fan-shaped bay is the focus area of ​​today’s investigation.

This fan-shaped bay is actually an outlet shared by several rivers, so the coast is almost entirely covered with large tidal flats. The expedition team tried to go around to the inland side of the peninsula, which contains coal mines, to see if there are any coastal areas here.

Suitable for mowing large freight docks.

After arriving at the other end of the peninsula, the expedition team docked the ship and sent out team members to survey and sample the land conditions here. What made the mineral exploration team happy was that there were no signs of human exploitation at all.

This means that the possibility of attracting hostile forces to covet will be greatly reduced. But at the same time, they also discovered another depressing reality - this place is completely deserted. If the Executive Committee wants to control this place,

If coal mines are to be mined on a large scale, how to introduce local immigrants will still be a difficult problem to deal with.

After inspecting along the way, there were several locations that seemed suitable for building docks, but they were successively rejected by the Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Military and Police. The reason of the Ministry of Shipping was that these places were either too far away from the planned mining sites.

It will cause considerable trouble for future logistics and transportation. Otherwise, the area is within the mouth of the river, and the water depth and width of the water are very limited. It is not suitable for freight terminals where a large number of heavy cargo ships will frequently enter and exit in the future.

This is also due to the fact that there are some contradictions in the previous orders issued by the Executive Committee. On the one hand, it requires a "long-term perspective" when investigating the location of the terminal, and the scale of cargo transportation in five or even ten years must be fully taken into account.

On the other hand, they appear to be eager for quick success and require the future terminal address to be "as close as possible to the mining point" to reduce the amount of engineering required to open up land transportation channels in the early stage. It is no wonder that several alternative locations along the way have been selected by the Ministry of Shipping

He was shot.

The reasons given by the Military and Police Department are similar to those rejected the day before. The places inspected today basically belong to the coastal plain terrain. The fact that there is no danger to defend is enough for the Military and Police Department to reject these places. According to

According to the opinion after internal discussion within the Military and Police Department, these places today are not even as good as the anchorage where we spent the night yesterday. At least there are several commanding heights out of the port that can be used to build fortifications. And the coastal plains we visited today

If a war breaks out in the area, there is no way to defend it. Should we let the miners dig trenches along the coastline?

The commissioner of the Ministry of Agriculture was very satisfied with these places. In his opinion, these alluvial plains near the mouths of rivers and seas have fertile soil and are very suitable for growing food crops on a large scale. However, this view was quickly refuted by others.

——The Red River Delta, one of the largest grain-producing areas in Vietnam, is just a few dozen nautical miles to the west. The conditions and scale of grain cultivation there are quite amazing both in this era and hundreds of years later. If the Crossing Group wants to

To reach that level, I'm afraid we have to wait until all the coastal plains on the west coast of Hainan Island are reclaimed to grow food. When setting up a base in such a place, there is basically no need to consider the problem of food shortage. Moreover, this is an overseas base, and the manpower is always available.

The problem is, the executive committee probably wants to turn everyone here into a miner, so how can it allocate manpower to engage in agricultural development?

Seeing that it was already afternoon, the members of the expedition team became less interested because they had not been able to find a suitable target. Upon seeing this, Wang Tom simply ordered to stop today's expedition and organized the members to go on a wild hunt before dark

Activity.

The members immediately cheered after hearing the news, and some even shouted the slogan "The King is wise". After all, most of the members are young people in their twenties and thirties, and they are naturally very interested in activities such as hunting. However, it is limited to traveling through the former country.

Due to the conditions, not many people have real hunting experience, so it is not a simple matter to temporarily organize a wild hunting.

Wang Tom asked Old Morgan and Bearded Johnson to stay and guard the ship. Although they had hunting experience, their Chinese skills were limited and they were probably not good enough to serve as instructors. Then the remaining fifteen people were divided into three groups, consisting of several

An experienced person will lead the team separately.

As for the weapons used for hunting, Wang Tom would not be bold enough to let a group of rookies start shooting with guns. He took out two compound bows and an MP9 military crossbow from the cabin of the "Speed" and distributed them to three teams.

Several items are his personal collection, and this is the first time he has shown them after traveling through time.

There are quite a lot of knowledgeable people among the members. Xie Chun, who was very knowledgeable, took the bow and shouted: "HOYT's carbon spider! This is a rare good thing in China." Then he grabbed another bow and clicked his tongue.

He kept saying: "Chill-R produced by Matthews, rich man, please be my friend!"

Tom Wang smiled and said, "You also like to play with bows and arrows?"

Xie Chun shook his head and said: "I can't say that I like it, I just know a little bit about it. I have played it in the archery hall before, but this is my first time hunting in the wild."

Tom Wang said: "Then give it a try, these two bows are 70 pounds."

Xie Chun said in shock: "There are no 70-pound bows in the archery hall. I remember that if it exceeds 60 pounds, it will be banned from the competition. I have only played with 50-pound bows before."

Roger next to him interjected: "We always play with 70-pound bows. Be careful, don't get too far up to your waist."

After hearing this, Xie Chun was naturally dissatisfied. He put on the finger guard handed over by Wang Tom, took a deep breath, and pulled hard. He couldn't pull the bow open the first time. He tried again, but the bow could barely be pulled open.

, but Xie Chun's face was already red from holding back, and it seemed that he had almost reached his limit.

Roger shook his head and said: "You'd better go for a crossbow. A 70-pound bow is not suitable for you. Even if you can draw it, you won't be able to shoot a few times. It will be difficult for you to hit the target."

The MP9 military crossbow that Wang Tom took out was not a fake. It was a weapons-grade crossbow used by special forces. In addition to being equipped with an optical sight, the crossbow also had thickened steel wires and eight-wheel force-splitting pulleys.

The range and power of the crossbow are much greater than that of ordinary hunting crossbows, with an effective range of more than 150 meters. When hunting wild animals, the crossbow arrows can directly break the bones of animals instead of being blocked by the bones, making the crossbow very powerful.

Wang Tom didn't want to waste the limited bullets and let these rookies get addicted to hunting, so he designated three cold weapons as the main weapons for hunting. Of course, maybe the use of cold weapons would make this hunting more interesting, after all.

This kind of weapon can make the sport of hunting feel more back to nature.

In addition to all personnel carrying walkie-talkies to report directions at any time, Wang Tom also asked everyone to take off their camouflage jackets and only wear conspicuous white T-shirts on their upper bodies. This was done to avoid confusion among members due to blurred vision in the woods.

Of course, for safety reasons, the military and police members assigned to the three groups are equipped with four guns, two long and two short, respectively. However, unless there is a situation that endangers the lives of the members, the gunmen will shoot.
Chapter completed!