The Imperial Navy's first-class battlecruiser was controversial and attracted attention before its birth.

As we all know, the "battle cruiser" is actually a kind of battleship that the legendary Fisher made in exchange for speed after he became the first sea lord, according to the actual situation, to be precise, the strategic needs of the Royal Navy of Bran.

In Fisher's words, speed is the best defense.

In fact, for a long period of time, the outside world misunderstood such a powerful warship.

Because the cost is ridiculously high, the armor protection is very bad, and the survivability is also questionable, if the application is submitted according to the normal process, it will definitely not get the grant, so when applying for the grant, Fisher played a little trick and classified it as a capital ship according to the tonnage.

Now, everything makes sense.

Although the cost is still frighteningly high, almost twice that of the battleships of the same period, this is an all-round capital ship that can not only chase the enemy in the depths of the ocean, but also line up to fight the enemy's battleships. So what's the point of being a little more expensive?

It can be seen that most people did not recognize the essence of the battle cruiser.

Even if the word "battle" is added in front, its essence is still a cruiser, so strictly speaking, it is nothing more than an oversized cruiser.

In fact, this is also the original intention of Fisher to develop the battlecruiser.

Create a super cruiser that can defeat any kind of warship except battleships, deal with enemy cruisers, protect the long and scattered sea routes of the Bran Kingdom in the Sunset Ocean and the Fanyan Ocean, and use it as an assault ship if you engage a strong enemy.

Used as a capital ship?

It's just a publicity stunt.

It was in recognition of this, or rather the recognition of the essence of the battlecruiser, for which in the first years the Imperial Navy had no interest in the slightest.

The reason is simple: the Empire does not have such long shipping routes to protect, and the Empire is not very dependent on shipping, and has never had a strategic plan to block and cut off the shipping routes of other countries, let alone defeat enemy countries in this way.

Don't forget, the Liangxia Empire was a power on land and sea.

In addition, the history of the Liang Xia Empire cannot be ignored.

Although it is an old empire with a long history, the Liangxia Empire is a very typical emerging power in terms of the time of its rise. Strictly speaking, after the constitutional reform, the Liangxia Empire basically reached the level of a great power. In the year when the Bran Kingdom built the battle cruisers, more than thirty years had passed since the constitutional reform. In just three generations, the "hegemony" of the Liangxia Empire is not solid at all.

Compared with the Western powers, the overseas interests of the Liang Xia Empire had a more significant feature: they were concentrated in the Guia region around the Yanhai Sea and the remote areas around the Fanyan Ocean.

In addition, the Liangxia Empire mainly cooperated with other established empires hostile to the Western powers through alliances and other ways to obtain, preserve, and expand its own interests.

The most typical is the all-round partnership with the There Empire.

It is precisely in this way that in the main area of activity, the core sphere of influence, the Imperial Navy can easily obtain the basic means of maintaining sea power, such as fortress-class naval bases.

The extensive and closely connected overseas bases became a major feature of the Imperial Navy's external expansion.

So, is there a need to worry about protecting shipping lanes?

The answer is clearly no.

For a long time, what the Imperial Navy did was to build fortified naval bases in the major overseas territories, and station a local fleet strong enough to ensure that it could provide security and support for the powerful main fleet in times of war.

Relying on these bases is enough to protect the overseas interests of the empire.

Moreover, from an economic point of view, these so-called "overseas interests" are actually burdens in the process of achieving political, security, and diplomatic goals.

To put it bluntly, it's more about giving than getting.

In this way, in times of war, the Empire should abandon these burdens, and how can there be any reason to spend huge sums of money to build warships to protect them?

As a result, the Imperial Navy waited patiently for several years.

In the intervening years, the Royal Navy has built three Invincible and three Indefatigable classes, and the design of a third type of battlecruiser, the Lion-class, has begun. After completing the construction of the last large armored cruiser, the buran Royal Navy's sworn enemy, the rapidly rising Terman Navy, also started the construction of three battle cruisers of two classes in just two years. At that time, there was an intelligence reality, because of the contradictions between economy and trade, and the narrow imperial state that was separated from the empire was moved by the plan, and planned to spend a lot of money to order battle cruisers from the Bran Kingdom to protect two shipping routes with a length of more than 10,000 kilometers.

Actually, the key is the last one.

The intelligence that the Imperial State intended to purchase battle cruisers really stimulated the Imperial Navy.

No matter what, you can't be compared to the former subject country!

At the beginning of the 69th year of the Imperial New Calendar, in late February after the Spring Festival, the two houses of the Imperial Council passed a special budget to provide the Navy with a special allocation of 1.5 million gold dollars in that fiscal year, and the Navy Command issued a tender to officially start the design of the battle cruiser codenamed "Type A and Class B". If it can be completed within the fiscal year, $3.5 million will be allocated to start construction.

It can be seen that this is really in a hurry!

In fact, this is also related to the general background at that time.

Although not many people were willing to talk about war, by the beginning of the 69th year of the Imperial New Calendar, not many doubted the preciousness of peace.

A series of international events, especially the two major groups, the alliance group dominated by the Bran Kingdom, the Locke Republic and the Luosha Empire, and the Entente group with the Liangxia Empire, the Juman Empire and the Thell Empire as the core, were basically fixed, and a major war was certainly inevitable.

If we don't strengthen our armaments, when will we have to wait?

Fortunately, the Imperial Navy was prepared.

Although the Imperial Navy was not interested in battlecruisers, it was interested in "fast capital ships", or rather had an appetite.

The key is that if we can effectively protect the shipping routes, we may be able to turn "negative equity" into "positive equity".

For this reason, when the Bran Kingdom and other powers were building battle cruisers in a bold way, the Imperial Navy had been funding several large-scale ship design institutes to study whether there was a possibility of building a "protective fast capital ship" and what technical difficulties existed.

The result of the study is that it can definitely be built, and the key is that the Imperial Navy may not be able to afford it.

As a result, from 64 to 69 years of the new calendar, it took five years of research, but no results were found that could be accepted by the navy.

In fact, it was during these five years that the Imperial Navy completed the accumulation of technology.

Although the technology of the time could not build the ideal fast battleship of the Imperial Navy, the emergence of new equipment and technologies such as the advanced power system composed of oil-fired boilers and steam turbines, the large-caliber naval guns with 350 mm 45 times the diameter of the barrel, and the surface carburized armor steel provided great help for the construction of battle cruisers, and also allowed the Imperial Navy to join this arms race from a very high starting point.

Back then, something very important happened.

Just a few months after the Imperial Navy received the grant, the construction of the lead ship of the Royal Navy's Third Rank Battlecruiser, the famous "Lion", was laid at the Devonport Naval Shipyard. Almost in the same month, the Imperial Navy received blueprints for the Lion class sent by intelligence agencies.

Compared with the previous two stages, namely the "Invincible" class and the "Indefatigable" class, the most striking feature of the "Lion" class is that the four twin gun turrets are all arranged along the center line of the battleship, which effectively improves the sideboard firepower and enhances the stability when firing.

However, it is not perfect.

In order to improve the survivability after being hit by a bullet and avoid the destruction of the entire power system by a single shell, the "Lion" class placed the third main gun turret between the No. 2 and No. 3 chimneys, separated the front and rear boiler compartments with the main gun ammunition magazine, and set up a transverse partition in this part.

Is such a design useful?

The answer is clearly no!

It was in this way that the Imperial Ship Design Institute summarized the shortcomings of the "Lion" class in advance, and then began to design the first type of battlecruiser of the Imperial Navy.

Because the time was quite tight, at the end of that year, the Imperial Navy hastily completed the bidding process and chose the plan of the Assassin Ship Design Institute. After perfecting the detailed design, the Imperial Navy approved the complete plan submitted by the Assassin Ship Design Institute at the beginning of February of the 70th year of the new calendar, to be precise, before the Spring Festival. After that, according to the agreement made at the time of bidding, the construction contract for the purchase of one ship was signed with the Zhuzhou Shipyard and the Puzhou Shipyard respectively.

Because of its experimental nature, there are many uncertainties, so only two ships were built.

Compared with the "Lion" class, the most striking feature of the ship is the adoption of the "2 plus 2" main gun turret layout, which moves the third main gun turret located in the middle of the hull to the aft. In order to make full use of the hull with a length of more than 200 meters, and to control the height of the center of gravity of the battleship, it was only necessary to widen the distance between the two stern main gun turrets and place both turrets on the bow deck.

The most direct effect of this is that because they are blocked by the No. 4 turret, the two main guns of the No. 3 turret cannot fire directly behind them, in fact, they cannot fire directly. Even a leap shot would interfere with the scope on the top of the turret of the No. 4 main gun.

In fact, this design feature also proves that the ship did not refer to the "Tiger", and the actual situation is exactly the opposite.

Spurred on by the arms race, and the Imperial Navy had made it clear that more battle cruisers would be built, both battlecruisers were launched at the end of that year, and were completed at the same time on April 30, 71 A.D., and delivered to the Imperial Navy on the same day.

At that time, when naming the two battleships, there was also a small episode.

According to tradition, the main ships of the Imperial Navy were given the name of the ship by the emperor, and generally used the name of the emperor, or the title and name of an important member of the imperial family, or the martyr who made significant contributions to the empire, or the famous person in history, and these names had a distinct royal color.

Are these two battleships capital ships?

At that time, the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Navy did not ask for the name of the ship.

In this way, it should be classified as a cruiser, according to the nomenclature of the cruiser, that is, after the name of a large city with a population of more than a million.

However, this simply does not make sense.

At the time of construction, the Imperial Navy applied for funding according to the standard of capital ships, and the two houses of the debate also allocated funds according to the standard of capital ships.

Now, what makes sense is a cruiser?

Journalists who never think it's trivial will certainly not care how huge these two warships are, and the people who get the news through the newspaper will certainly not go to the field.

As a result, the Imperial Navy Command issued temporary regulations for the naming of battleships, naming battlecruisers after the main rivers in the Empire.

Undoubtedly, the first to be used must have been the Ji River, which flowed from the outskirts of the imperial capital and was connected to the moat.

According to the principle of alternating between the north and the south, the second river used the southern part of the empire to flow through the most provinces, that is, the Guijiang River.

For these two warships, the Imperial Navy was quite satisfied.

Key features

Standard displacement: 27500 tons

Full load displacement: 32500 tons

Overall length: 215.5 meters

Waterline length: 205 m

Breadth: 28.2 meters

Draft: 8.5 m

Capacity: 880 people

impetus

Boilers: 24 oil-fired boilers

Main engine: 4 steam turbines

Power: 90000 shaft horsepower

Propulsion: 4 axles and 4 oars

Speed: 29 knots

Fuel oil: 3500 tons

Endurance: 5000 nm/12 knots

Armament

Main guns: 8 x 350 mm/L45 (4×2)

Secondary guns: 16 x 130mm/L35 (16×1)

Anti-aircraft guns: 4 x 100 mm / L40 type (4×1)

Protection

Main armor belt: 250~100 mm

Armored compartment: 120~80 mm

Deck: 75~50mm

Turret: 250 mm (frontal)

Turret: 200~100 mm

Command tower: 250~200 mm

The main performance indicators have comprehensively surpassed the "lion" level!

It is precisely in this way that after the commissioning of the "Jihe" and "Guijiang", the Imperial Navy suddenly had the most powerful battle cruisers in the world!

The strength of the "Jihe" class, in the final analysis, is actually the first to use oil-fired boilers.

However, the "Jihe" class was not perfect, for example, the layout of the two main gun turrets at the stern of the ship was criticized, and there were 45 times the diameter of the 350 mm naval gun, which was outdated at that time. It is precisely in this way that in the year of the launch of the "Jihe" class, the Imperial Navy started the design of the next class of battle cruisers, and clearly mentioned that the shortcomings of the "Jihe" class must be solved.

Interestingly, the Reich hesitated for two years about whether to build more battlecruisers.

It was also during this period that the two "Jihe" class ships formed combat effectiveness, and in two fleet exercises and daily patrols in overseas territories, they showed capabilities that no other warship possessed, which can be said to be a perfect combination of speed and firepower.

As for protection, who cares in peacetime?

It was the outstanding performance of the "Jihe" class that made the Imperial Navy realize the value of battle cruisers.