The Rise Of Australasia

Chapter 254: Chapter 233: The Second Generation Airship

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

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

As for the city of Dili, a rather strict martial law status has be adopted. Except for some shops selling grain, other shops are temporarily not allowed to op, 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, disobedit Portuguese would be forcibly st to major factories and mining districts, where they would be forcibly arranged as workers and miners.

After all, Australasia's finances are not so afflut, and there are not ough funds to support these Portuguese.

It is worth mtioning that the captured Portuguese soldiers, after receiving good medical care for their injuries, would be st to various mining districts in Australasia to compsate 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 defsive positions established by Geral Silvio Lonnie Rodlin with the help of manpower in these few days.

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

These indigous 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 indigous peoples. For Arthur and the Australasian Governmt, 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 prevt this trd, 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 indigous peoples and Asian immigrants within the country, apart from the population increase, their contribution to the developmt of Australasia is not significant.

At prest, 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 currt situation in Portuguese Timor and, after admonishing Geral Silvio Lonnie Rodlin a few words, he returned to Australasia.

There has be no movemt 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 Governmt.

The lack of movemt now indicates that Portugal has not giv up yet and may ev 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 defsive battle, where firearms and machine guns will play a crucial role.

As a result, not only have military factories tered 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 atttion, the United States also st a telegram to Australasia, asking whether Australasia needs support in weapons and equipmt.

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

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

Although the United States is currtly 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 currt British Empire and Germany.

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

In terms of the navy, the Ministry of Defse has also formulated some patrol plans to prevt Portugal from stealthily attacking Australasia's native land.

Although Australasia's naval strgth could not match Portugal's, they were still capable of retreating wh facing a more powerful adversary.

Especially the newly launched small escort ships of Australasia, which gerally had a speed of over 8 knots and could ev reach 9 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 currtly 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 adjact to British India, so there was basically no need to worry about the logistic lines being cut off.

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

In September, Arthur received another piece of good news - the full oping of the Industrial Railway.

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

At the same time, with the oping of the Industrial Railway, the Northern Railway officially tered 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 investmt would exceed 40 million Australian dollars.

Although it was estimated to cost nearly 5 million Australian dollars per year, with the currt 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 expditure of more than one million Australian dollars per year.

After attding the full oping 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 mtioned in the previous war report.

After all, Australasia's war report mtioned 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 developmt 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 currt airship technology had already spawned a second-geration airship, the AU- Rigid Airship.

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

The second-geration airship was 3 meters long, meters in diameter, and could accommodate approximately 3,000 cubic meters of hydrog.

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

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

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

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

Currtly, 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 tirely 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.

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

Regardless, the AU- 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 ev 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 ormous impact of airships in transportation, several were produced as soon as the second-geration airship was born. The Aerospace Laboratory currtly had five second-geration airships, and the number was just ough to meet the needs of the next war.

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