"Gentlemen, we have been discussing for 4 months, and we have also conducted a lot of arguments and discussions on the design of our capital ship for the 1905~1906 fiscal year, and the original vague shadow has now become a clear pattern, and now we are finally able to make her really real!" Fisher stood in the conference room excited.

"Today, our special commission will become a full-fledged design committee, and the first official task I give you is to design a battleship with a speed of 21 knots and an armored cruiser with a speed of 25 knots, both of which must be armed with uniform large-caliber naval guns!"

Fisher had been waiting for this day for too long, and the bureaucracy within the Royal Navy was protracted and inefficient, which made Fisher unbearable, and for two years, two whole years, he had been waving the flag within the Navy two years ago, hoping that the Royal Navy would build a new battleship that could not be beaten.

In 1902, the Royal Navy designer Diddleman also believed that a new type of battleship should be built that could be unmatched by foreign navies in terms of displacement and firepower, but because Dideman did not have a clear understanding of such a battleship at this time, such a call was not taken seriously by anyone.

A year later, however, the Italians' publication of Fisher's vague ideal battleship was finally presented in the form of clear pictures.

The Italians painted a wonderful picture of this new type of battleship that no one with a brain could refuse: "The new battleship will be equipped with 12-inch naval guns without the secondary turrets, and it will be able to quickly approach the enemy with the speed of an armored cruiser, and then hit at least one large-caliber shell in the opponent's waterline armor before the enemy's only four naval guns of the same caliber can give us a lucky blow, which will be enough to kill."

The heavy armor of the whole body is able to withstand the blows of the enemy's medium-caliber naval guns. Able to concentrate fire on one enemy ship, destroy it, quickly shift fire to attack another, and then hit the third ship unscathed. ”

Such a scene was a perfect recreation of what Fisher longed to see, and the Royal Navy was not without its own supporters at a time.

In the same year, the Royal Navy's shipbuilding superintendent Watts and his assistant Narbes agreed with the Italians' design and proposed to build a battleship with 12-inch guns to replace the previous mixed-caliber battleships.

More importantly, the advantages of all-heavy artillery are not limited to the field of design. Naval in-house gunpowder trials are also proving the advantages of this design.

Jochen's method of continuous aim and shooting, which was plagiarized by the Royal Navy as a naval cadet at Keele, was eventually invented by Colonel Percy Scott of the Royal Navy, and it still worked well and was popularized within the Royal Navy.

However, this aiming method was not suitable for the 12-inch naval guns commonly used in the Royal Navy, because the naval guns were too heavy and could only be aimed at an adjustable angle using hydraulic equipment (the German Navy at that time mainly used the lighter 260mm naval guns, so it was slightly easier to solve this problem technically). ）

Therefore, people of insight within the Royal Navy began to study the question of how the 12-inch naval gun could improve the accuracy of hitting.

Harding, an artillery officer of the Royal Marine Corps, proposed in a magazine published in 1901 that the process of firing a salvo of naval guns, confirmation of the landing point, correction of the artillery, and the second salvo should be handed over to a person or department not affiliated with any artillery, so as to determine the determination of the firing elements by the centralized artillery command system and issue the order to fire in a unified manner.

This is the first time that the concept of fire control has appeared inside the British Royal Navy. And in the same year that Watts proposed the construction of a unified all-heavy gun, Harding published a series of articles on fire control in the magazine.

The Royal Navy immediately appointed two commissions to test the concept on the battleships Victory and Solemnity, which was the first time that the Royal Navy conducted a formal test of fire control, and the results were given to Harding himself, who had been transferred to the Naval Ordnance Bureau by this time, to evaluate.

The conclusions drawn were heartening to Fisher, since the design of his all-heavy gun battleship was strongly supported by the results of the assessment.

The 12-inch naval gun was difficult to aim continuously. It was possible to fire only at the maximum amplitude of the roll, so it was necessary to increase the accuracy of the guns by firing a salvo of the guò guns, and the number of 4 guns was obviously difficult to satisfy the hit rate.

The test also concluded that the 6-inch naval gun was far inferior to the 12-inch naval gun in terms of fire control applications. Because the 6-inch naval gun was too fast, a large number of water columns splashed in the target area would make it difficult to identify the distance between the landing area and the target, and at the same time, it would be difficult to determine which shot caused the water column, which brought great trouble to the command of the fire control officer.

Although the 12-inch naval gun had a slower rate of fire, the landing point was clearly visible, and Harding clearly wrote in the report: "The 12-inch naval gun is easier to hit and shoot than the 6-inch naval gun." Although the 6-inch naval gun can form dense fire within 4,000 yards, its shells are only one-fifth of the power of the 12-inch naval gun, and the lower trajectory of the 12-inch naval gun also reduces the flight time of the shells. Makes artillery corrections more rapid. ”

Such a report was obviously a shot in the arm for Fisher, who was full of confidence that with the ideas of the Naval Shipbuilding Director and the report of the Naval Ordnance Bureau, his opinion would be taken seriously, but in 1903 there was still no movement from the top of the Admiralty.

Having lost patience with the Admiralty, Fisher began to decide to ditch the Admiralty and take matters into his own. And it was from this that the Special Commission of the Navy was formed, and Fisher persuaded the Count of Selborn. Seven experienced naval officers and a team of technical experts formed the informal committee, helping Fisher paint a picture of the new warship in his mind.

And the progress of the special commission, Fisher, did not even submit any official report to the Admiralty. Fisher had already made up his mind, as he had said to Rear Admiral Sir Robert Absnot: "The Admiralty is full of 'old ladies,' and they will buy their noses into the pile of papers, thinking about how wide the ribbon can be." And turning a blind eye to reality. You think I'm going to write everything I know in a report like a fool? When I'm in charge, I'm going to have a drastic change in the Admiralty, and I'll kill whoever dares to stand in the way! ”

Now that Fisher has finally become the First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, he can kick out anyone who stands in his way.

As a result of the discussions in the previous four months, the design of the new warship has become very clear. The so-called reorganization into a formal design committee and the issuance of design orders were just a formality, and Fisher was sure that the committee would produce the design sketches within two months, and the design details would be completed within six months.

And what makes Fisher even happier is that it seems that even God is helping him, and the Royal Navy has made a breakthrough in the field of naval gun targeting. The Vickers BVIII turret, equipped with the new high-speed high-low and direction engines, allows the 12-inch gun to continuously aim, further improving the accuracy of its fire, which is simply tailor-made for its own warship.

Fisher believes that the emergence of these two new warships will completely open up the gap between the Royal Navy and other countries in naval technology!

What Fisher didn't know, however, was that on the other side of the Atlantic. A dispute is raging in the Admiralty of another emerging power.

"It doesn't make any sense at all!" Washington, a shipbuilding expert in the US Navy? Irwin? Chambers fired at the design of the 16,000-ton battleship designed by the Naval Construction and Maintenance Bureau: "4 12-inch first-class guns and 8 10-inch second-class main guns, the design of such a battleship is worthless!" 1 12-inch naval gun can top 2 10-inch naval guns!

And these secondary main gun turrets need to be placed on the side of the ship, which not only requires a wider hull to accommodate the huge diameter turret seat, but also affects the tensile strength of the hull! This thing is nothing compared to the design proposed by the General Council of the Admiralty last year! ”

Chambers was an advocate of the U.S. Navy's unified all-heavy gunboat design, and in June 1903 he submitted a design proposal to the Naval Warfare College, which concluded in a summer meeting that a new battleship equipped with 12 12-inch guns (Note 1) would have the same combined combat strength as three old battleships.

Thus, in October 1903 the United States Navy General Committee proposed a research project and design requirements for an all-heavy naval gun battleship, however as in the United Kingdom. The opinion of the General Council was ignored by the Secretary of the Navy, the Naval Construction Committee, the Naval Construction and Maintenance Bureau.

At this time, the Naval Construction and Maintenance Bureau, which had completed the Connecticut-class and was in the process of designing the Mississippi class, only came up with the design of this battleship that was severely criticized by Chambers based on the conclusion that the 8-inch second-class main gun was no longer enough to cause enough damage to most newly built battleships at the Naval Combat College meeting.

"At a distance of 3000 yards, even a 10-inch naval gun is not guaranteed to penetrate the battleship's main armor belt! And this distance increased to more than 8000 yards. 10-inch naval guns are even less likely to cause any damage to the battleship! How long are you going to hold on to these 10-inch things?! ”

Chambers's conclusion was based on the judgment of the U.S. Naval Operations Committee on the damage effect of naval guns on the increase in the combat distance of warships, and under this judgment, the demand for 12-inch naval guns was very high within the U.S. Navy, and in the face of the rigidity of the Naval Construction and Maintenance Bureau, Chambers was eager to find all the 12-inch naval gun parties to drown these guys with saliva.

"And don't forget, the congressionally approved tonnage cap is 16,000 tons! At such tonnage. It is simply impossible to equip the broadside with 8 10-inch secondary guns! (Unfinished pending renewals of recommended votes and monthly passes.) )

PS: Note 1: The original design of the Americans was still a diamond-shaped arrangement of 6 main turrets. That is, the layout of the Nassau class and the Helgoland class, and considering that the Hanoi class of the Japanese is also arranged in this way, it seems that although this arrangement is inefficient, there is nothing too worth complaining about at that time, and the British have been grasping the layout of the Nassau class after the war and complaining is really ill-intentioned.