Since last year, when the Japanese seized the territory of the Heilongjiang River valley and caused a bad relationship between China and Japan, Yang Chao has promoted a large-scale shipbuilding program. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

At that time, it was decided to expand the size of the navy to 12 capital battleships and 80 large and small cruisers, and to expand the size of the navy to the same level as Japan, and these ships are now under construction in the three major shipyards in Shandong.

But then the Japanese announced their double plan, a huge plan to build 24 dreadnoughts, and the emperor called for donations for this reason, and began to eat only one meal, but this emperor was not the other emperor, and the appeal of the foolish emperor Taisho was more than 800 miles behind the Meiji emperor, and the already poor Japanese people rarely responded.

After the business delegation arrived in the United States, it was mainly the Admiralty that negotiated with the Americans, and they proposed to the United States an order for the construction of 12 new battleships, 80 cruisers, and 50 submarines, which would suddenly double the size of the Chinese Navy.

These 12 dreadnoughts were built with the British newest Elizabeth-class battleship as the target, and the standard displacement of the Elizabeth battleship was nearly 28,000 tons, exceeding the 10,000 tons of the earliest Dreadnought, which the British claimed was a super-dreadnought-class battleship.

This class of battleships can reach a speed of 25 knots, 4 knots faster than the 21 knots of the Dreadnought class, with a cruising range of 8,600 nautical miles and a cruising speed of 12.5 knots. It is equipped with 8 twin 380 mm guns, 12 150 mm secondary guns, 2 76 mm guns, 4 533 mm torpedo tubes, and 40 mm and 20 mm anti-aircraft guns.

The broadside armor was up to 350 mm, and the total weight of the armor was 8000 tons.

Carrying a crew of 900 people.

It was the undisputed most powerful armament of our time, but the cost was also quite staggering, with the Elizabeth costing 2.6 million pounds, or $13 million, and the Americans quoting 10 million, which was a bargain price for mass construction.

The battleship, together with the huge cruisers and submarines, cost a total of $300 million.

This is Yang Chao's return to the Americans for joining the Sino-American and German alliance, this money will be paid with the money Yang Chao sold the airship, the foreign exchange is worth 2 billion US dollars, only 1 billion yuan is exchanged for gold deposited in the Yangzi Bank vault, and the rest is exchanged for pound sterling banknotes, which are deposited in the Standard Chartered Bank in London to guarantee the gold dollar notes of the Yangzi Bank.

Although Yang Chao still did not agree to their investment plan, in fact, the Americans are not very at ease with investment, after all, the Germans are crazy in their opinion, they don't know that the Germans are looking at the face of a thousand tons of gold, and the Americans do not have the gold given by Yang Chao, so they are not so fat, if the US dollar of 10 billion marks is invested in China, the Americans are still very worried about the collapse of the dollar.

However, the Americans were not at ease with only 300 million US dollars in warship orders, but Yang Chao did not give the Americans a chance for the time being on the grounds that China's industrial investment was already saturated, but he compensated with the construction of railways.

The Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway was opened to traffic in March, and this is still because of the impact of the Xinhai Revolution, otherwise it would have been opened to traffic last year.

After the opening of the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway, Zhan Tianyou immediately began the construction of the Sichuan-Han Railway, but the construction of the railway is too difficult, Zhan Tianyou's initial design is to be completed in ten years, Yang Chao can not wait for ten years, after several discussions, finally gave up a large number of tunnels, and switched to the Swiss alpine railway system, using heavy climbing locomotives, through the steep winding mountain railway.

In this way, the length of the original 3,000-kilometer Sichuan-Han Railway increased by 500 kilometers, but the cost was reduced, and the key was that the construction speed was reduced to 4 to 5 years, and it was expected to be opened to traffic in 1916.

However, the cost of this railway is extremely expensive, almost more than three times that of the Jinghan Railway, with a total cost of more than 150 million taels of silver, equivalent to 100 million US dollars.

At the same time, with the opening of the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway and the Beijing-Hanzhou Railway, it is necessary to build the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, so that it can go directly from Beijing to Guangzhou without stopping and reversing by ship.

The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge is not yet in China's engineering capacity to be built, especially when Yang Chao asked to reserve at least 50,000 tons of sea vessels to pass through, Zhan Tianyou believes that even if he mobilizes the most powerful capabilities to tackle the fortifications, he will not be able to win it in a short time. So the bridge, which cost $30 million, was also handed over to an American company.

The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge and the Sichuan-Han Railway Bridge attacked the city, and the total cost also exceeded 100 million, so that the Americans ate another 200 million yuan of benefits, plus the construction of warships, a total of 500 million US dollars, which satisfied their appetite, but American businessmen still have dissatisfaction, because the Germans can be worth more than 2 billion US dollars.

But the U.S. banking syndicate is satisfied, Rockefeller and Morgan are satisfied, and the U.S. government is relieved, and this can be temporarily explained.

After the Chinese Navy's shipbuilding program in the United States was revealed, the world became a sensation again.

At this time, the British were the undisputed first in the ranking of the world's navies, with a naval strength of 200,000, 62 large battleships, and a total tonnage of 2.4 million tons; The second place is Germany, with a navy of 80,000 people, 44 large battleships, and a total tonnage of 1.2 million tons; 37 third battleships of the United States, with a gross tonnage of 1 million tons; fourth, 32 ships in France, with a total tonnage of 950,000 tons; fifth, 12 ships in Japan, 600,000 tons; sixth Italy, 17 ships and 400,000 tons; The eighth was Austria-Hungary, 8 ships and 260,000 tons.

The Navy of the Republic of China, with 6 battleships and 340,000 tons, ranked seventh behind Italy and before Austria-Hungary.

But the difference is that the warships of the Republic of China Navy were all newly built in the past two years after the First Sino-Japanese Naval War, and no one will compare the dreadnoughts of the Republic of China with the old 10,000-ton battleships of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But the seventh place Republic of China Navy began to expand, before already building 6 dreadnoughts, and related warships, according to last year's construction plan, when all warships equipped with the army, the Chinese Navy will reach 700,000 tons, but this time ordered warships in the United States, the Chinese have doubled the size of the future, and in a few years it will reach about 1.5 million tons.

The first to be stimulated was Japan, which also revised its shipbuilding plan, changing the original 24 dreadnoughts to 48 ships, and still insisted on the Oriental double plan with China.

However, the British dared to play with the Germans because they had a family background of several hundred years and a vast colony, but Japan had to play with China like this, but it was very difficult.

Because the Japanese have to earn every stitch and thread by themselves, and their iron ore and coal have to be imported, relying on those female textile workers?

In order to carry out such a huge shipbuilding program, the Japanese government even began to levy a special tax on the people of the whole country, each person had to pay an extra yen per year.

It is planned to complete the shipbuilding program in five years, and by then Japan will have a huge fleet of 48 battleships with a total tonnage of 1.5 million tons.

At this scale, the Japanese Navy will surpass the United States by 1 million tons, and can rank among the top three in the world.

However, Japan does not only have a navy, but the ruling Yama Prefecture Youpeng clique, in the final analysis, still represents the interests of the army, and they are very uncomfortable when they look at the large amount of resources invested in the navy, but they know in their hearts that if the navy cannot defeat China, it will be very dangerous to Japan, the island country, so they grit their teeth and carry out a costly naval arms race, but the army is not willing to see the expansion of naval power, so the army must also increase its armaments, and for the army, the enhancement of armaments is nothing more than increasing the strength of troops and equipping more artillery at the same time.

Therefore, the Japanese army decided to expand the current 1 million personnel to 1.5 million people, and purchased 20,000 artillery pieces of various types, which is almost the largest army strength in the world in peacetime, more than Germany's 800,000 troops.

In Asia, there are Japan and China, and in Europe, Britain and Germany.

Britain also continued to insist on its double plan, and the size of their current navy was indeed two hundred for the Germans, with a naval strength of 200,000 versus 80,000, a large warship of 62 versus 44, and a total tonnage of 2.4 million tons versus 1.2 million tons.

Yang Chao only placed a $300 million order for warships in the United States, while the British's latest naval allocation this year is 300 million pounds, equivalent to $1.5 billion; Germany allocated 4 billion marks in-for-tat, which is equivalent to 1 billion dollars, but the Germans thought that their shipbuilding costs were lower, because the wages of workers and the price of steel were lower than those of the British, and the cost of their warships was at least one-third lower than that of the British, so the two sides were still equal.

It is the crazy naval competition between Britain and Germany, their shipyards are full of oil, and the slipways are stuffed with naval orders, otherwise seeing China ordering warships from the United States, it is estimated that these two countries should jump out again, make trouble with the Chinese government, and definitely grab some of it.

Germany built one, Britain built two, and the two countries were not short of money, so the competition was shipbuilding capacity.

However, Britain's shipbuilding capacity is not twice that of Germany, and after the fall of Bismarck, the Germans began to desperately support their domestic shipbuilding capacity, and there are 8 backbone shipyards in the navy, and many of Germany's large-scale heavy industry enterprises have invested in shipyards, such as Krupp, who invested in the construction of a Germania shipyard, and all the submarines in Germany were built by this shipyard.

What Yang Chao didn't know was that the Sino-Japanese competition he promoted, and the naval competition between the Germans and the British because of his gold, had doubled the size of the navy in World War I, which meant that the naval battle would be more intense.

In October, when the Chinese navy led by Sa Zhenbing returned to the port of Arthur, Yang Chao immediately launched the next round of operations, and began to make a big noise in the country, setting off a wave of public opinion demanding that the government recover the lost territory in the northeast. (To be continued.) )