"The more you build, the worse the pit!"

"Since America is so good, then dig another huge pit and kill him!"

When Li Weiguo thought of this, he suddenly had a new plan.

Soon, Wei Han and others from the General Administration of Shipbuilding, Lin Jiyun from the Admiralty and others were called to come.

"This is the design concept of the supercruiser, you guys take a look, prepare, this is the hole we have dug for the United States and the entire Western world!"

Dig a pit again?

When everyone heard this, they immediately became excited, and hurriedly stepped forward to discuss around a new warship design drawing.

"It doesn't look any different from the Dreadnought-class battleships currently in service with the Imperial Navy!"

"All are 305 mm guns of a unified caliber, or larger 330 and 343 calibers!"

"There's a note next to this, and the speed is -- it's 28 knots?"

"How is it possible to have such a high speed?"

"Ahh Armor protection must have been sacrificed! ”

Sure enough, everyone quickly saw the armor protection of this new battleship, which was only 150 mm.

"Your Majesty, this armor is also too thin, although it has obtained extremely high speed, it seems to be a little worthless, and it is easy to be sunk in a duel with a battleship!"

"Who said there was going to be a showdown with the battleship?"

Li Weiguo was immediately happy and explained: "This is called a super cruiser, or a battlecruiser, and its combat goal is to hunt and kill the armored cruisers, dome cruisers, and unprotected cruisers that are currently commonly equipped in European and American countries. ”

Lin Jiyun suddenly became excited and said, "What Your Majesty said is very true! At present, there are too many cruisers in the entire European and American world, especially the British Empire, which still maintains more than 100 cruisers of various types. Although the Imperial Navy currently has heavy cruisers, it will be difficult to sink them if the opponent is fully armored and has a speed of more than 20 knots, and wants to escape. ”

It is a fact that for a battleship, when both sides are within 20 knots, the side with a speed lead of 3 knots can easily crush the other. But if both sides are speeding more than 20 knots, even if the speed is 3 knots ahead, the other side can definitely escape without a fight. 20 knots is a key node at the intersection of quantitative and qualitative changes in sea speed, and warships below 20 knots are slower to move when tactically evading and are easy to hit. However, when the 20-knots are broken, there will be a qualitative change, and the tactical evasion action will be timely, and it will be easy to avoid the shells fired by the enemy ships, and it will be easy to escape.

Li Weiguo nodded and said, "That's right!" From now on, warships of all levels of the Imperial Navy will have to reformulate their opponents! Our destroyers are mainly used to strike unprotected targets such as enemy gunboats and fish and ray speedboats. Our light cruisers are designed to strike targets below enemy frigates. Our heavy cruisers are designed to strike targets below the enemy's unprotected cruisers. Our battlecruisers are used to strike targets below the enemy's armored cruisers. As for our battleships, they were still aimed at enemy battleships. The Admiralty should attach great importance to this point, convene a special meeting, and sternly demand that commanders at all levels be made. ”

Lin Jiyun immediately received the order.

However, Li Weiguo once again emphasized: "At present, many naval officers, in order to improve the firepower of their fleets, often ignore this problem. For example, the commander of the battlefleet, in order to increase the number of artillery firepower, even incorporated armored cruisers and heavy cruisers into the battlefleet for engagement, this is complete nonsense, and it must be strictly restrained in the future! ”

A question was repeated twice in a row by Li Weiguo, which was enough to arouse the military's great attention, Lin Jiyun immediately wiped the cold sweat on his forehead and remembered it profoundly.

In fact, what Li Weiguo is talking about is a common problem in the navy, when a warship is designed, it is very targeted, but when it is actually used, the commander of a fleet often hopes that the firepower of his fleet will be as great as possible in actual combat, so he will concentrate all kinds of warships to fight a melee.

This is a fatal problem, now that the Imperial Chinese Navy is strong and has not suffered defeats, this problem is not obvious, once there is a naval battle such as Midway, it will be a fatal blow.

Since Li Weiguo took out the battlecruiser, then he naturally understood the advantages and disadvantages of the battlecruiser.

Battlecruisers are cruisers that are used to hunt down enemy nations or wounded battleships, but in actual combat, battlecruisers are rarely able to act alone as they were designed to be. For the most part, the commander of a fleet always wants the more firepower of his fleet as much as possible. The idea of adding the guns of a battlecruiser to one's own fleet was very tempting, so the battlecruiser was always sent to battleship battles and was also used as a spearhead (because it was fast).

But in fact, the battlecruiser is only a "functional battleship", a strategic strike force, which plays a huge role in breaking the engagement. Their armor simply could not withstand the guns of battleships, as was evident in the Battle of Jutland.

Therefore, Li Weiguo must strictly tell the commanders of the navy at all levels that they must never allow a battlecruiser to be used as a battleship to fight in a group, after all, the cost of a battlecruiser is much higher than that of a battleship of the same class, and it cannot withstand the toss.

"Also, this matter should be kept secret, and the commander himself should know about it, and don't let the commanders of other countries know about it."

"Your Majesty thinks that in the event of a war, other countries will incorporate the battle cruisers into the capital ships for a decisive battle, so that they will suffer a big loss?"

Li Weiguo nodded, this was his purpose.

"We'll start construction of four ships first, and the General Administration of Ships and the Admiralty will discuss it together and draw up a plan, and I'll greet the council."

Lin Jiyun was suddenly excited, as long as he added warships to the navy, he would do so.

A month later, the Imperial Assembly of China approved the 3985 Supplementary Defense Budget for the Jianyuan Dynasty, temporarily adding four Yunzi battlecruisers, based on the design of the Dreadnought-class battleships, with armor protection reduced to 150 mm, and the saved displacement was used to install boilers and chimneys in order to achieve a speed of at least 27 knots.

In order for the European and American powers to follow suit and drag the navies of the world's major powers into the water, the Chinese Empire took the initiative to disclose the performance indicators and combat missions of the battlecruisers this time.

As soon as the news came out, the navies of the major powers of time were dumbfounded.

Just as when the Chinese Empire announced the completion of the first Dreadnought battleship, it instantly made the former Dreadnought battleships in service and under construction in the navies of all countries around the world obsolete and turned into scrap metal.

Now, the Chinese Empire has once again announced the construction of battlecruisers, and its combat mission is to directly kill all the armored cruisers of all countries at present, as well as all kinds of warships below the cruiser, and cooperate with the main fleet in a decisive battle.

You must know how crazy the Zhongning-class armored cruiser of the Chinese Empire was back then, and it once became an international star warship, attracting the navies of Europe and the United States to rush to build it. In particular, countries with underdeveloped funds, such as Tsarist Russia, Japan, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Turkey and other countries, have built a large number of armored cruisers to replace the main battleships and cruisers.

Now that the battle cruiser program of the Chinese Empire has been released, a large number of armored cruisers of these countries have become obsolete, and it is really grief-stricken.

Similarly, in the past five or six years, the British Empire, France, Germany, the United States and other countries have also increased their efforts to build armored cruisers, especially the British Empire, in order to maintain the vanity of its world maritime hegemony, still maintains the global projection of naval power, of which the scale of cruisers accounts for more than 200, of which armored cruisers are as high as 100.

When the British Navy built armored cruisers on a large scale, it also hoped to participate in the decisive battle of the main force of the fleet, but now the dream was directly shattered by the battle cruisers of the Chinese Empire.

The British Navy is quite painful, and there are also countries such as the United States and Japan, which are also extremely sad.

"Your Excellency, Prime Minister, let's curse the damned Chinese Empire together!"

Downing Street, British Prime Minister's Office, the newly appointed Coalition Prime Minister William was invited to speak by phone with US President Grant.

"Yes! Mr. President Grant! The Chinese Empire is indeed damned! Once the Chinese Empire builds battle cruisers, all our current and ongoing armored cruisers will be scrap metal! ”

"I wonder what your country's response plan is? I've been arguing on my side! There are those who are in favor of the construction of battlecruisers, and there are those who are against, and I would like to hear the attitude of the naval side of your country. ”

William sighed and said, "Mr. President, I'm afraid I can't make up my mind like this!" Admiral Fisher said that this is probably another trap dug by the Chinese Empire, and we must be cautious! ”

Grant asked curiously, "What did Fisher say?" ”

Fisher, as the sea secretary of the British Empire, has recently attracted more and more attention, mainly the entire British, American, and Japanese bloc, which relies on Fisher in terms of dreadnought battleships, so Fisher's attitude is very important.

"Fisher said that there is a problem with the data information released by the Chinese Empire! On the one hand, the so-called Yunzi battlecruiser of the Chinese Empire had the same overall design as the Dreadnought-class battleships, with the only change being the weakening of armor protection in exchange for a speed of more than 27 knots. ”

"There is a contradiction in this, which is manifested in the weakening of armor protection, at least the protection capacity of the cruiser, that is, 150 mm is the lowest, at most three or four thousand tons of armor weight can be saved, even if all is used to increase boiler and steam engine equipment, it is difficult to reach 27 knots, according to our analysis, at most 212 knots."

"In this way, even if the main gun of the battlecruiser exceeds 305 mm, it can easily sink any current armored cruiser. However, our armored cruisers generally have a speed of more than 24 knots, and they can completely avoid engaging battlecruisers. Our battleships, in turn, could destroy battlecruisers in one fell swoop with armor protection. ”

"Therefore, Fisher's opinion is that the battle cruiser concept developed by the Chinese Empire is a chicken rib, and the purpose is to trap us, let us follow the trend and build, wasting money and resources, as well as valuable strategic time."

However, Fisher also said that the Imperial Chinese Navy has always had a killer feature, and the cost of four battlecruisers is as high as 12 million yuan, which is an average of 1 million yuan more than the dreadnought-class battleships. And the most expensive place is obviously the boiler power system, which shows that the increase in the appropriation of the Chinese Empire is absolutely all used to increase the speed of the battlecruisers. Looking at it this way, it is very likely that the Chinese Empire has mastered a new power technology that rapidly increases the speed of the ship, so it is possible to reach a speed of 27 knots! ”

Grant over there was silent, apparently consuming the information before making a judgment.

Three minutes later, Grant picked up the phone again.

"The experts on our side also think it makes sense! Judging from the performance of the Chinese Empire's previous wars, they have always liked to leave killer weapons. Your navy has suffered more than once in terms of speed, and there has not been a time when it has been reported that the warships of the Chinese Empire are inferior to ours, and as a result, when the war really starts, the warships of the Chinese Empire will surpass ours by a large margin. From this point of view, the Chinese Empire did master a more advanced power system technology. ”

"Alright! I agree with your judgment! So what is Mr. President going to do? ”

"We must not be careless, no matter what the Chinese Empire is having, we must rather believe it than not, so we decided to build 4 battlecruisers. However, we have limited technical capabilities, and we would like to invite His Excellency Fisher to come to the United States to help, but I wonder what the Prime Minister wants. ”

William hesitated for a moment, Fisher is a baby, send him to the United States? I'm really a little worried.

"We also decided to try to build a battlecruiser first, so Fisher doesn't have time to go right now. But don't worry, once we overcome the problem, we will definitely share the design drawings and technical data with your country. ”

The two old foxes ended their conversation. Grant's side failed to trick Fisher into going to the United States as he wished, but William's side agreed to build a battlecruiser to try, but William was short of money, so he wanted to rob the bank?

William suddenly smiled bitterly, and said that there was suffering.

Britain and the United States began to develop battlecruisers almost at the same time, after all, the United States had already mastered the technology of building Queen Mary-class battleships, and only needed to reduce armor and increase boilers to complete battlecruisers, so there was no need to wait for the results of the British research to come out.

Japan obviously has no money, but it can send technicians to learn from Britain and the United States, and when it has money in the future, it will build it itself, and everything will fall into place.

The British Navy, under the auspices of Fisher, began construction of only one battlecruiser for testing. At the same time, Fisher also intensified his research on new power systems and strive for breakthroughs.

The United States had strong ambitions and directly started the construction of 4 battlecruisers, named the Lexington class. Modeled after the Indiana-class battleship, it has a displacement of about 25,000 tons, is equipped with 12 305 mm 50 times the diameter main guns, and has a speed of about 24 knots.

This was the first time that the U.S. Navy had built a battle cruiser with its own ideas, and it was manifested in the use of American-made 305 mm 50x diameter guns. This kind of artillery is completely British technology, and the United States accepts it all, but it has not found that the 50 times diameter wire winding main gun has problems in actual combat, and the British themselves do not use it, and in order to make American money, they naturally cannot mention it, so that the United States becomes a victim.

In addition, the German Empire and the French Empire were not far behind, and embarked on battlecruiser projects one after another. However, the German Empire had an advantage over France and could turn to the Chinese Empire for technical help.

And the Chinese Empire is also hesitating whether to sell the steam turbine system to the German Empire, after all, it is impossible for the German Empire to transfer the steam turbine technology to the United Kingdom, and at the same time the Chinese Empire also wants to make money! Nowadays, a large number of European and American countries want the Chinese Empire to help build dreadnought battleships and battle cruisers, and the Chinese Empire has always been in the secrecy of steam turbine technology, so it did not agree, and virtually lost orders for dozens of warships.

This incident has always been a matter of concern to the Chinese Imperial military, which is seeking the best of both worlds.

And Li Weiguo's attitude was also a little relaxed, after all, he also knew that the British would develop a steam turbine system sooner or later, and at present, the British Empire is under the high pressure of the Chinese Empire, and it is very likely that the steam turbine technology will be realized ahead of schedule. Once the British also have steam turbine technology, it is unlikely that many Western countries will be able to ask the Chinese Empire to help build warships, which will cause unnecessary losses of hundreds of millions of yuan.

Therefore, Li Weiguo has also been hesitating recently, but has not yet made a decision. (To be continued.) )