In August 1906, a British Empire warship underwent sea trials. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

This should have been a very common trifle, after all, as the hegemon of the world, almost all the power of the empire on which the sun never sets is built on a huge naval fleet. Therefore, in order to maintain its strength, the British Imperial Navy built new warships every year, especially when the Germans on the European continent were now frequently provoking the Empire and advancing by leaps and bounds in the navy, and the British shipbuilders wielded the hammer even more powerfully.

But if this battleship is the famous Dreadnought in history, it is completely different.

This epoch-making battleship made all the warships on the sea in this era obsolete in an instant, and the Germans and French in the pit were miserable. Of course, the British dug a big hole at the same time and buried themselves in it, because they had the largest number of old warships in the world.

Anyway, the time has come for the cannon of the giant ship.

All countries with some ability began to study the Dreadnought, and began to design and build more Dreadnought-class battleships, especially the Germans, Britain's number one enemy. Only the U.S. Navy was pleasantly surprised to find that before the British Dreadnought was launched, a battleship with similar data had begun to be built in the dock of a shipyard in China, and what was even more surprising was that some people had borne part of the cost of building this battleship......

"To put it simply, the Admiralty has picked up a big bargain."

Sitting on the comfortable sofa at home, John said with a smile: "A battleship of the same class as Britain's newest Intrepid is covered by our shipyard for a considerable part of its cost, which is millions of dollars!" ”

"But Mr. Huntelaar isn't going to make a loss-making deal, is he?"

At the other end of the couch, a white man in his sixties asked rhetorically with a smile.

"Hehe......"

Just a simple smile, John was silent.

It has been some time since news of the Intrepid sea trials reached the United States, but the fact that Roosevelt did not send someone until today, and who was his most important helper, speaks volumes.

John, of course, knew that he had made a lot of money this time.

Although the shipbuilding capacity of the British and Germans cannot be compared, and it takes two years for his shipyard to build a battleship in a year, but he can successfully build the first American dreadnought-class battleship, and it is not the castrated version of history, which is enough. Paying millions of dollars may seem like a loss, but the benefits to the shipyard are self-evident to be able to get a lot of useful technology from the Admiralty and accumulate enough technical reserves during the construction process. Especially in this era when the United States is about to build naval warships on a large scale, the impact will be extremely far-reaching.

It's just that this kind of thing can't be explained to the person in front of you.

So after smiling, John quickly changed the subject and said lightly, "Mr. Taft, let's talk about the Army...... Mr. Secretary of the Army, you really don't see the importance of aircraft? The order for only twenty planes is less than one-third of the number of the French, which is probably a bit shabby, right? ”

"Hehe, it's been a lot of attempts."

Picking up his cup and taking a sip of his coffee, Mr. Taft casually fooled over.

With a slight frown, John didn't say anything more in the end. Although the flight over the English Channel made the Wright brothers' plane famous, and the three-and-a-half-hour flight at an altitude of 3,000 meters allowed the Europeans to see the great military value of the aircraft and to place orders one after another, the Americans still did not seem to be very interested in it.

As the homeland of the Wright brothers, the United States really does not pay enough attention to aircraft.

Even in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, the US Air Force was still synonymous with weakness, basically the most advanced aircraft were in Europe, and even the US military aircraft had to rely on Europeans to design. For example, the Flyer 9, which caused a sensation this time, received orders for 400 planes from Britain, France and Germany in just three months, with Germany buying 200 planes and the French at least, buying 75 planes, but the US Army only needed 20 planes, which is simply not worth mentioning......

This result undoubtedly disappointed John.

What the future holds for airplanes, no one knows better than John. So when the Wright brothers demonstrated the Aviator 9 to the world, John planned to sell the Fighting Falcon, which would cost him more than $10,000 each, and those profits would support the Huntelaar Aircraft Manufacturing Company to continue to research new aircraft and stay ahead of the curve. So John looked down on Americans in this year, and their attitude towards airplanes was really funny......

Merely......

After all, it was William Howard Taft sitting across from him, and John couldn't say much.

The future president of the United States, who is famous for his wide body and fatness, proposed the gold dollar policy after taking over from Roosevelt Sr., broke up Rockefeller's standard oil, and even changed Americans' aesthetics of body shape. After all, it was already 1906, and Roosevelt still had two years left in his term, and now that the Huntelaar consortium had chosen to invest in Taft, it had to maintain a good relationship with the other party.

The close relationship between the Huntelaar Arms Manufacturing Company and the War Department is the product of this investment.

So Taft didn't want to have an argument with John, so he smiled and said, "Mr. Huntelaar, let's continue to talk about the Navy...... I've heard that Mr. Roosevelt is interested in forming a large fleet to sail around the world, which is a good thing for your shipyard! ”

"Haha, maybe."

Speaking of John's own memories of the Great White Fleet, he finally couldn't help but be happy.

In 1906, John was at ease.

Taking advantage of the great opportunity of the American economy to burn and flourish, the various companies under the Huntelaar consortium flourished, or with ideas and technologies that were ahead of the times, such as automobile companies that used assembly lines and chemical companies that invented synthetic ammonia technology, or quietly accumulated heritage with John's abundant financial support, such as the aircraft companies that caused a sensation in Europe and then North America, and the weapons manufacturing companies and shipyards that cooperated with the War Department and the Admiralty.

But for many Americans, 1906 was not so pleasant.

Roosevelt even won the Nobel Prize in 1906 because of his success in mediating the Russo-Japanese War, but as the "last to learn" among the great powers, even though the United States had long been the world's largest economic aggregate and had won the war with Spain, it still could not gain enough respect -- Japan, which had just won the war, looked down on its neighbor on the other side of the Pacific.

No way, the United States, which has just been founded for many years, has not yet won enough respect.

So when the confrontation between the two countries in the Pacific is formed, it is a little uncomfortable. The Japanese feel that they have just beaten the Russians, what are you arrogant about the United States, which only dares to fight with the old, weak, sick and disabled Spain? Americans feel that they are a big country, with the largest economy in the world, and that they are also a predominantly white country.

At its busiest, an American school announced that it would quarantine Japanese students.

In addition to anti-American demonstrations, the government also violently protested, and the newspapers even roared that they would send an invincible Japanese fleet to the other side of the Pacific Ocean......

So there is a reason why the great powers do not look down on the Americans.

As the world's largest economic country today, the Japanese don't know how many streets they have left behind in terms of national strength and industrial strength, but the Americans from top to bottom are troubled by this, for fear that the Japanese, who had just won the Battle of Tsushima, would really be hot-headed and start a war with the United States on their arms.

Roosevelt, who was arrogant, suddenly had the idea of organizing an ocean-going fleet.

Americans don't dare to pat their chests on anything else, but there is no shortage of economic strength and industrial capacity. The economic crisis more than ten years ago hit them hard, but then there was more than ten years of super-rapid development: the United States at the turn of the century was the first in the world in terms of economic strength! And since Roosevelt was elected president, this absolute sea powerist has vigorously developed the navy, just throwing it to the financier John? Mr. Huntelaar's shipyard had orders for as many as four battleships, and the strength of the U.S. Navy was growing rapidly. In addition, in the docks of major shipyards, many warships are being built......

It is not for nothing that Navy Day in the United States is Roosevelt's birthday.

And it was this Great White Fleet, which was ridiculed by many later generations as the largest garbage removal in history, that made the Japanese and Europeans realize the huge shipbuilding potential of the Americans. And in this world, because of the appearance of John, it is likely that the first real American Dreadnought-class battleship will appear in the Great White Fleet, and its influence may be another matter......

……

Military novices, so pass by a little, if there is a mistake, don't take it seriously.

The next few days will be very busy, and I don't have time to touch the computer, so they are all released on a regular basis, two chapters a day. In addition, I looked at the past updates of this book today, and I was really embarrassed, so I made up my mind to change my mind and hit the full attendance award in November! (To be continued.) )