Chapter 554: To Each His Own Needs

It's too busy at the end of the year, and the update is a little slow, please forgive me!

*******

In the dead of night, the windows were claustrophobic, and Natsuki lay flat on the soft bed, sometimes with his eyes open motionlessly, sometimes blinking his eyelids continuously, as if in a state of concentrated thinking. Pen | fun | pavilion www. biquge。 infoThis is a bedroom in Buckingham Palace, the classical European style decoration is full of grace and luxury, the new bedding exudes a faint smell, and the air is faintly left with the unique smell of romance.

The attitude of the British upper class and the general public cleared Natsuki's last concerns about this marriage, and he and Charlotte could finally stay together reasonably and legally. Such a newlywed trip should be very sweet, but after all, he is not in charge of an industrial country like Britain and Germany, which has risen to the peak, Ireland's thriving industrial economy is actually very fragile, and it is still facing many difficulties and obstacles.

Since the establishment of the Kingdom of Ireland, the rapid development of the national economy has relied on two major driving forces, one is to rely on infrastructure construction to stimulate domestic demand, and the other is to rely on key industries such as shipbuilding and shipping to attract investment and earn foreign exchange. After more than three years of rapid growth, infrastructure construction has initially met the needs of Ireland's domestic economic and social development, while the development of Ireland's shipbuilding industry has gradually reached a bottleneck period, and the primary obstacle restricting its further expansion and economic status is the lack of international competitiveness. To put it simply, I can build, many European and American countries can be made, on the quality is not as good as Germany, on the efficiency is not as good as the United States, on the technology is not as good as the United Kingdom, pre-sales and after-sales service is not much different from each country, only by low profits and short period of strategy is difficult to firmly occupy the market. In order to maintain the prosperity of the shipbuilding industry, Ireland actively undertook foreign shipbuilding orders and rapidly expanded its ocean-going merchant fleet in the form of government-private partnerships. By the end of 1918, Ireland had more than 200 large and medium-sized freighters, with a total registered tonnage of 1.1 million tons, ranking seventh in Europe and tenth in the world. The huge merchant fleet has brought convenience to Ireland's economy and trade, but the emerging Irish shipping industry still has many deficiencies in terms of personnel, capital, management, etc., and the operational efficiency in the short term is inversely proportional to the size of the merchant fleet.

In this case, expanding the scale of military shipbuilding facilities and obtaining more ship orders will not only help to maintain the vitality of the Irish shipbuilding industry, but also improve the economic benefits of shipbuilding enterprises, attract people to reinvest in the shipbuilding industry, and make the Irish shipbuilding industry make great progress through a virtuous circle. At present, there are three standard aircraft carriers built in Ireland, two belonging to the German Navy and one belonging to the Irish Navy, and the cost of these three aircraft carriers is equivalent to 15 10,000-ton ocean-going freighters with first-class performance, supporting more than 4,000 workers in two large shipyards, and the driving force of the extension industry is even more incalculable.

However, stimulated by the cooperation between the United States and Britain, the current construction plan of the German Navy is to concentrate on building a large super-dreadnought fleet, and the investment in aircraft carriers and cruisers has been reduced. After the commissioning of the heavy aircraft carrier "Ruprecht", which was converted from the original British "Tiger" battle cruiser, the German Navy already has four combat aircraft carriers converted from battleships and five auxiliary aircraft carriers converted from merchant ships, and the need for new standard aircraft carriers is not so urgent. Since it was not possible to determine the efficiency ratio of the new aircraft carrier to the new battleship, the German Admiralty deliberately slowed down the construction of the aircraft carrier and waited until the standard aircraft carriers 1 and 2 had been in service for a period of time before deciding whether to place additional orders. As for the standard heavy cruisers, due to the shipbuilding budget and the number of large military docks in Ireland, they can only be implemented slowly at a rate of one per year.

If the order with the United Kingdom to build two aircraft carriers slightly exceeds the standard class, it is just in time for the expansion of the Irish military shipbuilding facilities. At the initial intended price of the British Navy, a profit of £400,000 to £500,000 each would allow the Irish Navy to have sufficient funds to build two standard light cruisers to replace the aging light cruisers in service, or to equip the Irish Army with a standard armoured training regiment, which Ireland needs to further improve its defence capabilities.

The Kingdom of Ireland was founded by a declaration of independence and freedom, and pursued independence politically and diplomatically, but the acceptance of the British shipbuilding order could not be achieved by the decision of the King, the Cabinet and the Parliament of Ireland, and it still had to overcome many difficulties from the idea to reality. There will certainly be opposition in Ireland, not only from German officials and officers, but also from many of the Irish who hate Britain and do not want their own shipyards to build powerful warships for the British Navy, and the opposition and even pressure from Germany and other allied countries is understandable. The foundation of the Irish monarchy and regime is based on the support and assistance of allied countries, and if the German government weakens its aid to Ireland and then makes some financial and economic stumbles, it is difficult to say that the political situation in Ireland will not be shaken, and these are all things that Natsuki, as the king of Ireland, must consider.

With this reverie, Natsuki could hardly sleep at night, but in the following days, the itinerary arranged by the British side was relatively relaxed, and he had enough time and energy to think about how to deal with the relationship between the parties. During this time, he and Charlotte visited Hill Manor in Watford again, where they were warmly welcomed by the local people. After two days at Hill Manor, he returned to London for a second meeting with Prince Louis of Battenberg, and this time in addition to the senior British general from the German royal family, there were several heads of the Royal Navy - Arthur James Balfour, the current British Admiralty, Baron Roslyn Weems, the First Sea Lord, Sir Eustace Tennison Dynecott, the Director of the Shipbuilding Bureau, and Lord Fisher, the British Navy Elder and current Chairman of the Government's Invention and Research Council.

Prince Louis was a direct member of the family of Battenburg, a small German state, but instead of serving in his country's armed forces, he became a British citizen at the age of 14 and chose to serve in the Royal Navy, where he rose through the ranks. However, this has little to do with his wife, who is the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and has risen from a young trainee to a colonel of the Royal Navy, an assistant chief of naval intelligence, and a staff officer in the chamberlain, and he has learned entirely on his own merits, so Churchill later commented that he was "a real child of the Royal Navy" and that "the deck of a British warship is his home". Before the war, Prince Louis had been promoted to the rank of admiral of the British Royal Navy, served as the Chief of Staff of the British Navy and the First Secretary of State of the Sea, and cooperated with the Minister of the Navy Churchill to mobilize the fleet and deploy operations at the beginning of the war, but with the disastrous defeat of the British main fleet in Jutland, the ugliness of the British people was high, in order to take into account the overall situation, Prince Louis took the initiative to submit his resignation to Churchill, and then withdrew from the active service of the Navy, until the end of the war, he accepted the appointment, Re-engaged in naval affairs as Senior Strategic Advisor to the Royal Navy.

At the previous meeting, Prince Louis had bluntly stated, "This is the cooperation of each to take what it needs." It was this sentence that made Natsuki determined to facilitate this groundbreaking cooperation. In a personal letter to Kaiser Wilhelm II, he wrote: Unlike traditional battleships, aircraft carriers did not have solid armor and powerful artillery, and when carrier-based aircraft were ineffective, they were only equivalent to larger cruisers, and an ordinary battleship or submarine was enough to sink them. In the past 20 years, the performance and structure of aircraft carriers built by different countries have been similar, and the tactical resourcefulness of commanders, the combat quality of pilots, and even the efficiency of damage management are still the keys to determining the outcome of a battle. Therefore, it did not matter whether the British Navy bought American-made aircraft carriers or Irish-built aircraft carriers, if war broke out again between Britain and Germany, the German Navy would have to show the courage, wisdom and will of the Battle of Jutland if it wanted to win a more brilliant victory. At a time when the British Navy is repeatedly comparing the advantages and disadvantages of American-made aircraft carriers with those of the United States, we believe that if we can bring the pace of development of the British Navy under our control through cooperation with the United Kingdom, it will be of considerable positive significance for us to continue to maintain our technological superiority in ships.

In a letter to German Prime Minister Batemann and Navy Chief Tirpitz, Natsuki also stated the same point, but because these letters were sent to Germany in a confidential way by hand, Natsuki had not yet received a reply from the Kaiser and others, and it was inconvenient to express his attitude to the high-ranking officials of the British Navy. The second meeting between the two sides was more about technology and cost - on the British side, Lord Fisher, who was basically the creator of dreadnoughts and battlecruisers, played the leading role, and Natsuki, as the de facto leader of the Irish ship research and development department, was known as the "Hohenzollern genius" and "father of aircraft carriers", and it was enough to make a comprehensive response without the presence of national technical officials.

As early as the end of the war, the British Navy converted several seaplane carriers from decommissioned warships and civilian ships, but they did not play much of a role. The British Navy's first real aircraft carrier did not join the combat sequence until two years after the war, that is, in 1917, but the old ship was not very successful, and two carrier-based aircraft take-off and landing accidents occurred in succession, which made the British Navy's top brass lose patience with the independent research and development of aircraft carriers in the short term. Based on the close cooperation between Britain and the United States, the first brand new aircraft carrier built and put into service by the US Navy has already appeared on the figure of British officers, but the US aircraft carrier is also moving forward in exploration, and its technical maturity and practicality are still far from the standard aircraft carriers built in Ireland, and since the Spanish-American War, the US Navy has not been baptized by war, and the research and development of military technology lacks the support of actual combat, which is also the concern of the English, who pursue practicality.

(End of chapter)