When Edward VII decided to visit France to re-establish the continental balance of power by wooing France, his confidant Fisher was also busy maintaining the British Royal Navy's combat effectiveness.

"Dismantling the Royal Navy?! No way! Absolutely not! Fisher, are you crazy? "Although he has left the position of First Sea Lord, Walter still has enough weight in the Royal Navy? Admiral Cole asked in astonishment as he looked at Fisher's proposal.

Admiral Cole was equally stunned by a number of senior generals, including several members of the Admiralty Commission, who were equally dumbfounded by the plan's crazy plan to eliminate 278 ships.

"Do you know what your plan is? Nearly two-thirds of the Royal Navy's ships are being cut off by you with a piece of paper?! Do you want to ruin the Royal Navy?! Cole lashed.

In the face of his predecessor's rebuke, Fisher seemed unhurried, he stood there, looked around at everyone present, and then said impassionedly: "Ladies and gentlemen, don't hold on to the ideas of more than 100 years ago, the current naval battle is not the era of Trafalgar, and the era when the 40-year-old old ship of the Victory was still considered a top warship at that time is gone forever!"

Look at our Navy's roster of reserve ships, what's in it?! Look, the Sovereign that started construction in 1866? This thing is 40 years old, right? And we actually spent a lot of money to modify her in 1897, but even then she was still armed with a breech gun! And such battleships equipped with breech guns are now as many as 38 in the sequence of the Royal Navy!

What are you going to do with these old things?! In the event of war, will they be reinstated? What fleet commander would add to his fleet a veteran ship with a huge difference in speed, protection, firepower, and even range? They can't even get out of the battle line! If I were the commander of the fleet, I would immediately send this burden away, so as not to drag down the operation of the entire fleet!

And more importantly, in order to maintain such ships, we spend 100,000 pounds per ship a year! And they also occupy berths in the Navy! For such ships to be kept, do you think they are gold? Can you keep your value at home? Will never go out of style?

And those useless small ships are even more vulnerable, and letting them go to the battlefield not only does not play a role. It would also cost us a lot of trained personnel!

The 278 ships I have eliminated are all Class II ships in the Royal Navy, and most of them are completely obsolete, and only some of them are not obsolete but will be obsolete in the short term, and a few are still in combat effectiveness for a short time. Some of them can be converted to auxiliary use, and the rest will be dismantled or sold, and they must all be removed from the Royal Navy sequence!

The core strength of the future Royal Navy is 130 ships of the first class with reliable combat effectiveness. Only by concentrating all our energy and resources on these ships can we effectively maintain our combat effectiveness! ”

It's not a day or two since he was dissatisfied with these old-fashioned and tattered Fisher, as early as three years ago, he had attacked the Royal Navy's small ships all over the country and demanded that all them be eliminated, but Fisher, who was only the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet at the time, did not get the Admiralty's notice, and now he finally got the opportunity to sweep all these things into the garbage heap.

"But our colonies will lose their security! Even with the world's most powerful and fastest armored cruiser fleet on the other side of the telegraph line, it was no match for a small gunboat parked outside the consulate window when the colony needed a navy! Some of the aristocratic generals, who were already dissatisfied with the new naval officer training system proposed by Fisher two years earlier, objected.

For this kind of person, Fisher never thought about communicating well, and immediately pushed back unceremoniously: "We have to first find out that the Royal Navy is not a policeman!" Our mission is to defeat our enemies at sea, not to maintain law and order! This kind of thing you have to ask a retired officer to command a merchant ship with machine guns to do! ”

"But the consequence of this is that our maritime lifeline is in danger because of the lack of ship protection." Although it was also believed that it would be detrimental to the Royal Navy that the navy could not show itself in the colonies at all times, Admiral Cole, who knew that Fisher had the support of the Earl of Sellborn, tried to oppose Fisher's plan with the threat to the navy.

Cole's words are also the opinion of many people in the Navy. However, Fisher retorted mercilessly: "Is it up to the old ships that can't beat or catch up to protect our lifeline?" Do these small gunboats and old cruisers have even the slightest resistance in the face of the enemy's newer ships? Only by relying on the powerful main formation of the Royal Navy can the enemy's broken ships be completely wiped out! ”

Perhaps fed up with the entanglement of dissenting dissenting people, Fisher decided to put an end to what seemed to him an unnutritious argument: "Gentlemen, I am today informing you of my plans, and not asking for your opinion!" My proposal has been approved by the Earl of Selborn, and it is certain that it will be the plan for the future construction of the Royal Navy!

The plan was to maintain the Royal Navy's minimum operational effectiveness and prepare for war while making significant cuts. It will be implemented as a whole, and it will solve our most basic and closely related problems. Any change will bring the whole plan to its core! ”

This is Fisher's usual style, using the approval of his superiors to suppress the dissent of colleagues and subordinates. Fisher's 34 articles, 13 tabulations, and 9 appendices, entitled "The Navy's Imperatives," were devoted with great energy and enthusiasm, detailing and predicting the problems that the Navy might have in the present and in the next 20 years, and proposing solutions.

This is the accumulation of his outstanding talents and decades of experience in the Navy, and he will never allow anyone to oppose it.

At the heart of the plan was the aim of cutting funding while maintaining the fighting power of the Royal Navy, allowing him to gain the support of the Admiralty-Minister, the Cabinet, the Prime Minister, the King and Parliament. Naturally, he has the confidence to be tough.

However, it was this toughness that made Fisher as many enemies in the navy as he would be his supporters.

However, the scale of cutting 278 ships at once was somewhat appalling, so even some of the Admiralty committee who supported Fisher to reduce the burden on the Navy said that this was too harsh, so they built to keep some of the older battleships in the second grade to continue as second-line reserve ships, and to keep some newer second-class cruisers as supplements to the armored cruisers.

Fisher said that this issue could be further discussed. But on the other hand, due to the drastic reduction of reserve ships, another aspect of the problem has also arisen, that is, what to do with the personnel on the ship.

"Since 1889, we have had fewer and fewer opportunities for fleet reserve ships to go to sea for training, and if these old ships are going to go to sea, then the personnel on the ships are all temporarily equipped, they come from the naval school, the reserve forces, these people do not have enough skilled skills, not only can not form combat effectiveness, but also need to draw manpower from the active ships to train them.

And the size of our navy is too bloated, and now the number of officers and men in the Royal Navy is 131,100! Every year we pay £11.89 million for this! That's enough for us to build 10 battleships!

Therefore, the personnel of the navy must also be reduced, and the personnel on those ships that have been dismantled and sold must be completely reduced, and the personnel of the ships that have been retained as auxiliary ships must be reduced by three-fifths, and only the captain, the commanding and technical officers of the various departments, the military doctors, the financial officers, and the experienced gunners, observers, and mechanics must be retained.

The huge number of stokers and ammunition soldiers were not needed, and they could be filled by personnel drawn from the reserves and military academies in wartime. In this way, not only will the problem of bloated personnel be reduced, but the core backbone personnel will maintain the limited combat effectiveness of the ship and quickly restore its combat level in wartime. ”

There was basically no opposition to this plan, after all, the number of personnel was reduced, the expenditure of funds was reduced, and the various units did not need to be seconded from time to time, but the combat effectiveness of the reserve ships of the Royal Navy was not greatly reduced.

The high-ranking officials and lords will not care that the work intensity of the personnel who have been left behind has been greatly increased, and the number of people has decreased, but there is still so much work, and the difficulty of maintaining and operating a large ship with only two-fifths of the personnel can be imagined, especially the work in the engine room, which requires a large number of manpower, and the officers and men there will not have a good time in the future.

However, with the unanimous praise of the high-level, the subtle opposition and doubts are just a small pebble thrown into the sea, which cannot bring a wave.

Of course, Fisher's efforts were all aimed at his ultimate goal, which was to save unnecessary naval expenditures and then invest more in the Royal Navy's technological innovations, which, once completed, would allow the Royal Navy to maintain global sea supremacy with a fleet of technology and efficiency unmatched by all its opponents if the country's economic conditions were acceptable.

These technologies include a series of supporting systems such as naval guns, power, sighting, and fire control, and the combination of these systems is a unified heavy artillery battleship that Fisher dreams of. (To be continued......)