"The new battleship of the British is indeed of the same type as the German class, and you have judged it accurately, and it is commendable, Alfred." Jochen smiled at Tirpitz.

"Thank you for your praise, and the young people in the General Staff will be happy to hear your majesty's praise." Tirpitz owes his gratitude: "But this is also thanks to the intelligence officers of the ND Bureau, who were able to penetrate the tentacles into the shipyards of the British, otherwise our speculation alone would still not be used as evidence, but we still can't know many details based on oral accounts alone." "There are no photos, and Tirpitz still has a little regret about not being able to see what the new battleship looks like for the British.

"There's no need to take the risk." Jochen waved his hand: "We can know what warships the British are building, it is enough to be able to speculate about her approximate performance, and it is not realistic for you to let our personnel take pictures on that occasion, there is no need to expose our entire intelligence line for a photo." ”

"Your Majesty, that's what you're talking about." Tirpitz nodded, and said with some mockery: "It's a pity that the British propaganda to mislead us with such fanfare has failed. ”

"Oh, did you say that propaganda poster?" Jochen also laughed: "Drawing the appearance of the Dreadnought is an upgraded version of the Lord Nelson-class battleship, and it looks decent, they also have a heart, but it's a pity that their hard work is in vain." ”

Listening to what Jochen said interestingly, Tirpitz also laughed happily: "But the British are so high-profile propaganda, if we don't have a German level, I'm afraid it's hard to say whether it will be affected by this, the British are still quite thorough, I'm afraid someone will still be fooled." ”

"But what the British want to see most is that we are deceived, and I think the most ruthless people who may be deceived by the British are the poor French, who have just returned to the right path of building capital ships, and are about to be led astray by the British." Jochen shook his head pretendly, then laughed with Tirpitz.

In order to catch up with the British and German navies and narrow the gap in the number of capital ships, the French began to build a total of 6 Dandong-class pre-dreadnoughts in 1906, and the Danton-class standard displacement exceeded 18,000 tons.

So the British were now using the Dreadnought to send their would-be allies' battleships to the garbage heap, and Jochen was overjoyed to think of that.

The laughter stopped, and Jochen asked, "Our people can get information about the Dreadnought, and the British must also want to get German-level information, so it's okay for us to keep it secret, right?" ”

"Please rest assured, our warships are built on a closed slipway, and you can't see the situation inside from the outside, and the construction workers have been strictly audited, and they are all old employees with many years of work experience in the shipyard, and because when we were in the national infrastructure construction before, most of the shipyards built staff dormitories for shipbuilders and lived in a unified manner, so the management of safety and security is also more convenient.

Moreover, the launching ceremony of each battleship was extremely low-key, except for a small number of naval personnel and ship builders, even other shipyard workers could not participate, and the outfitting work was carried out in a deeper dock in the shipyard, which is not easy to be observed, so I think it would be no problem to ensure that the battleship's intelligence is not leaked at least until the battleship sea trials.

And when it comes to sea trials, warships need to enter and leave the port frequently, and I'm afraid there is no way. Tirpitz replied.

"That's enough, sooner or later it's going to be exposed. Even if the sea trials can be kept secret, they can't last long. The Upper Austria, built at the STT shipyard, will be transferred to the North Sea by the time of the time, and what secrets will there be once sailed to the Mediterranean? Jochen waved his hand and said he could do it.

Then I picked up the report sent by the ND Bureau again, the content dictated by the intelligence officer was very short, and the approximate estimated length, width, draft, middle bow layout, four-oared and two-rudder were not unusual, and the real core content was the five huge turret seats on the hull deck.

"5 turret seats, 1 in the front and 2 in the rear, 1 on the left and 1 on the left and right, it is clear that the British prepared 5 turrets with twin 305 mm naval guns for their new battleship, which is amazing, isn't it?" Jochen said with a smile.

"However, the two turrets of this battleship, called the Dreadnought, are divided into the left and right sides, and in fact they can only use eight guns when firing on one side, and the guns are not as efficient as our German class, but they can put in 6 and 8 guns respectively when firing forward or backward, which is better than us, and these British Yankees have stolen a trick from us." Tirpitz said with some disdain.

Jochen smiled and nodded, he once again influenced the British warship design, yes, the turret located on the central axis of the hull was moved backwards in history, and the turret seat was raised, forming a backpack-like layout with the stern turret, thus making the Q turret become the X turret, thus greatly increasing the firing range, although it paid a certain price for the weight of the turret seat to rise, but in Jochen's opinion, it was cost-effective.

"However, in order to achieve this forward and backward fire projection, it is not a good idea to add a turret, and the increased forward and backward fire is also used when pursuing and escaping, and at this time both sides are sailing at full speed, and there is no hit rate at all. Instead of preparing to use a horizontal formation, what is the use of strengthening the forward firepower? Instead, it wastes tonnage. "Jochen doesn't care about the front and rear firepower at all, history proves that the longitudinal projection firepower of the battleship is basically useless, the central axis layout is orthodox, and the others are barbarians!

"Yes, Your Majesty." Tirpitz nodded, and then analyzed: "According to our patchwork intelligence, the overall performance of the Dreadnought should not be much different, except that the caliber of the main gun is slightly larger than that of the German class. ”

Based on the patchwork of information, the Navy General Staff knew that the Intrepid still used a three-expansion reciprocating steam engine, and the number of boilers prepared to determine the approximate output power, and the speed was about 20 knots or more, which was not much different from the German class.

Although it is a steam engine, but the output power is there, the maximum speed will not actually change much, the advantage of the steam turbine is not used to increase the speed, but the level of protection of the Dreadnought is much worse than that of the German class. German intelligence did not know, Jochen was clear, the 279 mm main armor belt, the height of the armor belt was also inferior to the 4.6 meters of the German class.

Moreover, the completeness of the protection system does not only depend on the thickness and width of the armor belt, but also some details are more in place under the guidance of Jochen. For example, during World War I, the arsenal was generally placed on top of the magazine, but compared with artillery shells, the propellant was a more sensitive and dangerous thing, and the ammunition magazine was relatively easy to penetrate and more dangerous. Therefore, the current German battleships are all arranged with the magazine on the top and the medicine magazine on the bottom, and the medicine magazine is on the bottom, which is closer to the bottom of the ship, so it is easier to inject water inward, so as to obtain higher survivability of the battleship.

In the Battle of Jutland, there was no ammunition detonation after the turret of the German battleship was penetrated, and the three battlecruisers of the British were all set off with big fireworks, which has been used by some people to talk about how safe the German battleship design was, in fact, this is also in exchange for a bloody lesson.

Previously, the Germans had not necessarily designed the ammunition lift channel in the turret much safer than the British, but the large cruiser Blucher was unlucky in the Battle of Dogel Sandbank, and the Germans learned the lesson of the eventual sinking and improved the ammunition lift channel inside the turret of all warships.

In particular, the linkage armored fire door that automatically closes after the ammunition is lifted is one of the great contributors to the fact that the German battleships did not set off fireworks like the British in the Battle of Jutland, and the British were completely beating the Germans in the early stage.

Therefore, the linkage fire door is now the standard configuration of warships with turrets in the German Navy, and the fact that propellants are not stacked inside the turret is also the most important point in the naval safety regulations.

With this, Jochen can be sure that the German-class stealth protection capability is far superior to that of the Dreadnought, and as for the underwater anti-torpedo system, the British in World War I are even more so.

On October 27, 1914, just a few months after the start of the war, the British Royal Navy's No. 4 ship of the King George V class (World War I), which was equipped with 10 doors of 343 mm and a standard displacement of 23,000 tons, was sunk by a mine with a charge of less than 90 kg on October 27, 1914, just a few months after the start of the war.

Moreover, the explosives in this mine are not standard TNT or the more powerful black sokin, but the old-fashioned fire wool explosives, which are only about half as powerful as TNT, which means that about 40KGTNT can abolish the underwater protection system of the British super-dreadnoughts.

The Audacity has become one of the big jokes in history, and "France hit the reef and died, and the Bold Thunder sank" (Note 1) became a joke used to mock the underwater protection system of the British and French naval warships.

On the contrary, the underwater mine protection system of the German class can be said to be the best that the Germans can achieve at this stage and under the existing tonnage limitations.

In the process of the German Navy's research on high-performance hygrothermal power direct-sailing torpedoes, the research work on the anti-torpedo system of warships has been carried out simultaneously. In addition to using decommissioned warships to collect a number of targets, the Navy even built physical models of some structures according to the defense system of the warships themselves for underwater defense tests.

Therefore, the underwater mine protection system of the German class is designed according to the standard of defending against more than 5 450 mm hygrothermal power direct-sailing torpedoes, which is the best result that the Germans can do now. The underwater part of the hull is completely eliminated, and the design of the watertight door between the watertight compartments can also greatly improve the survivability of the battleship after entering the water.

So Jochen didn't have any sense of urgency about the appearance of the dreadnought, and the only problem was not to fall behind in the next ship-building race.

But since the British wanted to deceive people, it was better for the Germans to have a bit of showmanship, so Jochen smiled evilly and asked, "Then what is the plan of the General Staff of the Navy next?" The British acted on a play with such enthusiasm, and it would be a little too ungraceful for us not to cooperate. ”R1152