As the last country to have a territorial dispute with the Chinese Empire, Britain was undoubtedly the next potential enemy of the Chinese Empire.

The dignitaries of both countries seem to understand this, so the two sides continue peace talks on the surface, but secretly engage in an arms race, responding to all possible surnames.

At the beginning of May, Britain transferred 120,000 troops and 250 artillery pieces from India, Australia, Singapore, and Canada to Hong Kong Island, cooperating with the original 30,000 garrisons and 120 coastal fortress guns on Hong Kong Island to strengthen its defense.

At the same time, the British Admiralty transferred fifteen battleships and sixteen cruisers of the Indian Ocean Fleet to the Singapore Fortress to form a new Asian Fleet with seven battleships and eight cruisers of the Asian Fleet stationed in Singapore, with the commander-in-chief being Field Marshal Algernon? McLennan? Sir Lyons, a former military adviser to the Pacific Fleet of the Imperial Chinese Navy, knew a lot about the Pacific Fleet, so the British Admiralty chose him to be the commander of the Asian Fleet.

As the world's largest naval power, Britain has 42 battleships and 72 cruisers as its main ships, as well as hundreds of large number of auxiliary ships.

On the other hand, the Imperial Chinese Navy, although the total tonnage of the navy has reached the second place in the world, the main combat ships in the real sense are only far behind the British Navy.

This is manifested in the fact that the main combat ships of the Imperial Chinese Navy have 24 battleships, 4 ironclad ships, 17 large armored cruisers, and 23 armored cruisers, among which the only ones that can compete with the capital ships of the British Navy in the real sense are actually the 99 capital ships of the Pacific Fleet, that is, nine battleships, nine large armored cruisers, and nine armored cruisers, which can be said to be too far behind.

In order to regain the territories occupied by the British, the Supreme Command of the Chinese Empire unanimously agreed that it was impossible for the British authorities to return them, and that the Chinese Empire must be based on force in order to regain the lost territory. Faced with the threat of the British Empire's powerful maritime power, the Imperial Chinese Navy had to catch up and close the gap.

Therefore, after receiving the edict of Emperor Wang Chenhao, the Admiralty of the Chinese Empire obtained from the Imperial Diet an additional 200 million dragon coins for naval shipbuilding funds passed by the Third Naval Enlargement Act. The Admiralty then planned to build nine battleships, nine large armored cruisers, nine armored cruisers, as well as one hundred Han-class attack submarines, one hundred hunting destroyers, twenty large supply ships, twenty troop carriers, and twenty tugboats in the next three years.

Since the Imperial Chinese Navy took the lead in completing the new concept warship and went through a series of successful sea trials, the definition of the new concept warship of the Imperial Chinese Navy also changed.

According to the suggestion of Emperor Wang Chenhao, the battleships to be built in the future will be based on the Shenbow-type battleships, the large armored cruisers built will be based on the Daji type, and the medium-sized armored cruisers will be based on the Haiqi class. Due to the use of steam turbines and the rapid development of the speed of battleships, the medium armored cruiser seemed to be outdated, and before the tonnage of the high-speed destroyer could not reach the standard of the cruiser, a light cruiser was needed to fill the gap between the two as a transitional model.

Thus, with the approval of Emperor Wang Chenhao, the Admiralty redefined the type of combat ship of the Imperial Chinese Navy. Division of capital ships: Divine bow battleships with a main gun caliber of more than 305 mm and subsequent upgraded battleships are classified as first-class battleships, and former Shenbow-type battleships are classified as second-class battleships. Daji-type battleships with main guns lower than 305 mm and higher than 203 mm, as well as their subsequent upgrades, are classified as heavy cruisers, Daji-type battleships with main guns of 203 mm or less, Daji-type battleships with main guns higher than 152 mm are defined as light cruisers, and battleships with main guns of 152 mm or less are defined as hunting ships.

The battleship Shengong [BB-28] joined the Home Fleet of the Imperial Chinese Navy in April 1903 and served as its flagship. Wei Han of the General Administration of Naval Ships determined in detail the parameters of the battleship Shengong and made modifications to some defects and deficiencies, and then submitted a plan for the expansion of the new ship in accordance with the requirements of the Admiralty.

As for the battleships, after entering the era of the Divine Bow Ship, its naming rules have also changed. The capital ships will be named after the emperors of the Chinese dynasties, and the combat capabilities of the capital ships will be divided according to the emperor's personal ability and merit criteria.

The battleships submitted by Wei Han were classified as the Xia Dynasty class or the Emperor Qi class, and the nine Shengong battleships were named the nine emperors of the Xia Dynasty, namely the Emperor Qi [BB-29], the Taikang [BB-30], the Zhongkang [BB-31], the Emperor Xiang [BB-32], the Emperor Shu [BB-33], the Emperor Huai [BB-34], the Emperor Mang [BB-35], the Emperor Gao [BB-36], and the Yinjia [BB-37].

The technical specifications of the Xia Dynasty-class battleships are based on the Shengong class, with only slight technical improvements, and the changes are not very large. The design displacement was 21,000 tons, of which the weight of the armor was slightly reduced, since the 280 mm thick Chinese special steel was enough to cope with the British 305 mm shells. Therefore, the reduction of the thickness of the total weight of the armor is reduced to 5600 tons, and the tonnage saved increases the weight of the main gun, because the extension of the main gun has increased from the original 40 times to 45 times, the weight of the gun increases, the firepower is more fierce, and the penetration is stronger.

The firepower system is four twin-mounted 305 mm 45 times extended main guns, and the secondary guns are upgraded from the original 76 mm to 88 mm 50 times extended, with a longer range and stronger lethality, with a number of 36 guns, four more than the original, which can effectively hit approaching enemy destroyers and torpedo boats.

In terms of speed, it adopts Parsons steam turbine unit, four-axis propulsion, 25061-27407 horsepower, and a speed of 22 knots.

In general, the Xia Dynasty-class battleship differs from the Divine Bow battleship only by the second triangular mast. Because simpler lifeboat handling was required in peacetime, this triangular mast was moved to a more desirable position. In terms of internal design, the nine Xia Dynasty-class battleships and the Shengong battleship are all similar designs, but the flaws have been made up for in the details. These include:1. The foremast is placed in front of the front chimney. It allowed the observer to avoid the thick black smoke of the ship and have a better view. 2。 The 76-mm secondary gun was upgraded to an 88-mm secondary gun, and the 3-inch secondary gun on the Divine Bow proved to be too lethal to deal with high-speed torpedo boats. 3。 The hull curve has been further optimized. The hull has been further lengthened and the flying scissor bow has been further optimized to allow for heavier hulls without slowing down. 4. More complete underwater protection. The longitudinal bulkhead of the Xia Dynasty-class battleship was increased from one inch to two inches on the Shengong. 5. It further increases the coal loading, which can have better endurance and global delivery capacity. This was also forced by the British, because the Chinese Imperial Navy did not want to be blocked at home to fight, and hoped that once the war started, the war would be burned to the British, so that the strong endurance became a prominent factor.

In addition, with the practical application of steam turbine technology, Wang Chenhao added the concept of battlecruisers, that is, under the comprehensive heavy armor protection of battleships, they were changed to focus on protection and appropriately reduce armor, in exchange for the high speed of cruisers, and the combination of the two is called battlecruisers.

Heavy cruisers and light cruisers are the types of ships that provide flank fire support to the main battleships in the decisive battle of the fleet, but the current enemy is the British Navy, so it is necessary to develop the navy for the surname, and Wang Chenhao believes that Britain's Achilles' heel is that Britain is overly dependent on sea communications. Although Wang Chenhao planned to use submarines to break the engagement, he knew that submarines were afraid of destroyers, so he needed to provide a kind of ocean-going cruiser that could protect submarine operations and carry out maritime operations, and could easily defeat the British Navy.

In fact, as early as the Chinese Empire began to build the Shengong-class battleship, Wang Chenhao summoned Wei Han, director of the General Administration of Ships, and others, and put forward the idea of a battle cruiser, and in the next nearly three years, Wei Han and his team began to develop the relevant work of the battle cruiser.

When the Imperial Chinese Navy's new concept battleship Shengong was successful after half a year of sea trials, Wei Han had already come up with his battle cruiser concept blueprint.

The Battlecruiser, as the name suggests, is an ideal battleship, a new concept battleship that combines firepower, speed and armor.

In July 1903, while the construction of nine Xia Dynasty-class battleships was under construction, under the leadership of Wei Han, the chief of the Chinese Imperial Naval Ship, the Imperial Chinese Navy Ship Design Committee proposed a battleship design scheme for the "Ideal Broken Engagement Cruiser", which was designed to combine the firepower of the Shenbow-type battleship with the speed of the cruiser. It is used as a strategic mobile force to complete the rapid deployment and strategic support tasks of the sub-fleets stationed abroad. Carry out a disruptive operation against the supply line of life at sea on which Britain depends.

The specific requirements are: displacement of more than 20,000 tons, installation of 8 305 mm 45 times diameter high-power main guns, maximum speed of 26 knots, armor protection is slightly thicker than the current large armored cruisers of the Chinese Empire, and it does not have to reach the protection level of the battleship Shenbow. At the same time, in order to increase the speed, the comprehensive heavy armor protection was canceled and replaced with the protection of key parts.

In the report submitted by Wei Han, the first battle cruiser of the Chinese Empire was described as follows: "Equipped with eight 12-inch guns, this class of battleships can hunt down and destroy any kind of enemy cruiser, and when encountering a more powerful opponent, it will get rid of the opponent's entanglement with a high speed of 26 knots. ”

The Admiralty of the Chinese Empire, considering that it was not too sure of the British naval battle, responded to the call of the Imperial Emperor Wang Chenhao to attack the warring lords behind enemy lines.

Therefore, this new type of warship, which combines firepower and speed, can be used as a flagship to lead its own reconnaissance detachment to break through the warning barrier composed of enemy light ships and carry out forcible reconnaissance. Secondly, it acts as the forward and rear guard of the battlefleet, and covers its flanks, expanding the results or covering support if necessary. Lead your cruiser fleet again to capture and destroy enemy stray or sporadic ships.

Wang Chenhao particularly emphasized that the battle cruisers of the Chinese Empire were not used as the main decisive battle of the fleet with battleships as the combat object, but were designed to strike at all kinds of ships below the level of large armored cruisers. Because of the excessive pursuit of speed superiority, the battlecruiser deliberately reduced its protection ability to cause a fatal weakness, so Wang Chenhao especially emphasized that the battle cruiser of the Imperial Chinese Navy was only the role of a guerrilla leader behind enemy lines, and it was resolutely not allowed to PK with the enemy's battleships.

It was precisely because of Wang Chenhao's special order that the imperial naval generals did not dare to resist the order to PK the battleship in the future battle against the enemy, thus preserving their strength and becoming a ghost killer on the ocean.

The Admiralty was particularly fond of this battle cruiser, and immediately classified it as the Western Zhou class, and the nine battle cruisers were named Zhou Wuwang [CN-BBC-1], Zhou Chengwang [CN-BBC-2], Zhou Kangwang [CN-BBC-3], Zhou Zhaowang [CN-BBC-4], Zhou Muwang [CN-BBC-5], Zhou Yiwang [CN-BBC-6], Zhou Xiaowang [CN-BBC-7], Zhou Liwang [CN-BBC-8], Zhou Xuanwang [ cn-bbc-9】。

The Western Zhou-class battle cruisers adopted a long bow ship type, and in order to gain speed, the hull was more slender. With a displacement of 20,000 tons, the hull has 6 boiler compartments to accommodate the 34 steam boilers necessary to maintain high propulsion power (18 steam boilers were installed on the battleship Shengong built at the same time), and is designed for a speed of 27 knots. It is equipped with a 12-inch caliber main gun and 4 twin gun turrets with a 45-fold extension. Unified central axis arrangement, since the defensive armor was only slightly stronger than that of large armored cruisers, the thickness of the main armor coverage was 254 mm, which could not withstand the attack of large-caliber artillery fire of the battleship class.

In order to prevent the ammunition depot from being damaged by enemy artillery fire because of the thin armor, the Xizhou-class battle patrol specially strengthened the protection of the ammunition depot, which is the only place in the whole ship to be protected by 280 mm special steel, which can resist the direct hit of the enemy's 305 mm shells without detonation, which greatly ensures the survivability of the battle patrol.

It can be said that once the nine Western Zhou-class battlecruisers are completed and put into service, they will greatly threaten Britain's sea life supply lines, and with a large number of Han-class submarines ambushing in the Atlantic, it is enough to cut off and severely damage Britain's sea supply lines.

The Imperial Chinese Navy was very interested in this, but for the sake of secrecy, it was declared to be a Xia Dynasty-class battleship. However, the cost of the Western Zhou-class battlecruisers was also much higher than that of the Xia-class battleships, with a Xia-class battleship costing more than 7 million dragon coins, while a Western Zhou-class battlecruiser cost 10.8 million dragon coins.

When the Admiralty's report was typed, the members of Congress made an uproar for a long time, and finally it was only the Emperor Wang Chenhao who came forward to settle the matter and passed it.

Nine battleships and nine battlecruisers started construction almost at the same time, and the slipways of the major naval shipyards of the Chinese Empire were instantly crowded, and the tonnage and capacity of the civilian shipyards were not enough to support the construction of heavy cruisers, so the heavy cruiser project of the Imperial Navy was forced to be suspended, and the light cruiser project could indeed start building the hull in the civilian shipyard, and then send it back to the naval shipyard for installation of fire systems and outfitting after launching.

Since the Imperial Chinese Navy has already begun to build 27-knots Western Zhou-class battlecruisers, in the case of future development, there may be faster 29-knots battleships, and at the same time, compared with the rapid high-speed trend of the Chinese Imperial Destroyer itself, the speed of about 25 knots of the reconnaissance cruisers (which can be classified as protective cruisers) that serve as the flagship mission of each destroyer detachment is obviously outdated, and the widening speed gap will definitely affect the coordinated operations in the future.

According to the special instructions of Wang Chenhao, the emperor of the Chinese Empire, the lead ship of the fleet of destroyers with a new level of high speed was put on the design agenda, and the Admiralty set up a "cruiser committee" for this purpose. At this time, two design ideas were put before the commissioners: one was the large 37-knot hunting ship, the greatest and only advantage of which was its high speed, which naturally won the favor of most of the officers of the Admiralty; The second is a new type of cruiser, which is certainly not as exaggerated as the previous one in terms of speed, but has advantages in terms of protection, speed, and firepower compared with existing reconnaissance cruisers.

Due to the weak firepower of the destroyers, the Minister of the Admiralty, Deng Shichang, and most of the committee members supported the construction of light cruisers, and the committee finally adopted the latter idea, and the Fengxian-class light cruisers came into being.

In the past, reconnaissance cruisers or protection cruisers could not take into account both speed and protection due to technical limitations, and could only cover a layer of arched armor above the engine room, ammunition depot and other vital parts, so they were also called "dome clippers". The Fengxian class, on the other hand, took advantage of technological developments and was able to increase its speed while adopting the same armor belt layout as the much larger tonnage Haiqi class, with vertical armor and outboard panels integrated into one, which not only saved weight, but also strengthened protection. When the construction plan for the Fairy-class was submitted to the Admiralty meeting for a vote, Deng Shichang classified them as light cruisers, emphasizing that the Fairy-class was the lightest warship with an armor belt layout at the time.

This protection design also had a significant impact on the design of light cruisers and destroyers in various countries in various countries in the future. Due to the repeated increase in the weight of the Fengxian class for attack and defense when designed, its final speed could only reach 28.5 knots, which is naturally a considerable improvement compared to the reconnaissance cruiser, but it is still not forward-looking in the face of the tide of high-speed hunting ships.

The Fengxian class has a displacement of 3,750 tons, a full load displacement of 4,400 tons, and is powered by 8 oil-fired boilers, 40,000 horsepower steam turbines, four-axle propulsion, and 28.8 knots.

On top of the protection, the armor belt was 3 inches (at the thickest) - 1 inch (at the thinnest), and the conning tower and ammunition depot were both 6 inches.

In terms of armament, the armament of each ship of the Fengxian class is slightly different, taking the lead ship Fengxian as an example: two 152 mm 45 times rapid-fire guns at the bow and tail of the hull, six 88 mm 50 times rapid-fire guns are arranged on both sides, one 47 mm 50 times anti-aircraft gun, and two twin 21-inch water torpedo tubes.

Instead of using kerosene hybrids, the Fairy-class light cruisers directly used the oil-fired boilers of the hunting ships, which was a major step forward and provided experience for the Navy to fully replace oil-fired boilers on battleships and battlecruisers.

In terms of armament, there is an additional anti-aircraft gun, because the aviation of the Chinese Empire has made rapid progress, and the navy is equipped with water reconnaissance aircraft, considering that the enemy may also be equipped with water reconnaissance aircraft in the future, so the navy's air combat range has been improved. Carrying anti-aircraft guns on the Fairy-class was only one of the Admiralty's plans to test sea-to-air defense, and the initial purpose was only to knock out the opponent's water reconnaissance planes.

Of course, after the ships were put into service three years later, they were respectively refitted to carry aircraft, tow balloons, add mine-laying tracks, and strengthen their sea-to-air firepower.

In short, the Phoenix-class light cruiser is still a successful warship, and for some time to come, it will still have advanced capabilities.

(To be continued)