After returning from the Lantern Festival State Banquet, Lin Tongshu buried himself in the room of the Navy Guest House to write excerpts.

Lin Tongshu did not have a residence in Nanjing, and in fact, except for a few high-ranking generals, most of the middle- and low-ranking naval officers did not live in Nanjing, but generally lived in Shanghai, and some lived in naval bases such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, or Qingdao.

Because Shanghai was the base camp of the Imperial Navy, it was not only home to the largest shipbuilding base in the Empire, but also had complete repair facilities to provide good maintenance for warships.

The headquarters of the First Fleet of the Imperial Navy was located here.

Lin Tongshu is now the director of the Academic Affairs Department of the Naval Academy, and at the same time, he is still the director of the Strategic Bureau of the Navy Department.

This refresher course is different from the original ordinary class, and the students of this refresher course are from active naval officers, and they are the best young naval officers.

After the Battle of the Pearl River Estuary in 1866, the top brass of the Navy deeply felt that the quality of middle and senior officers was low, otherwise, it would not have been a huge battle at the mouth of the Pearl River, and could only rely on the officers of the staff group to organize it, and let Lin Tongshu, a small lieutenant colonel, act as the actual commander.

Therefore, in the second half of 1866, preparations began within the navy for the training of senior officers, but it was naturally difficult to directly establish a naval university at the beginning.

For this reason, the Admiralty chose this plan, first adopting the method of opening advanced training courses to explore the teaching mode. After that, a formal naval university was established.

In this context, the Naval Officer Academy officially established a refresher course. However, although this refresher course is nominally part of the Naval Academy, it is in fact independent in all aspects.

Its cadets have since been selected from among the captains and colonels of the entire navy. Most of them are concentrated in the two levels of captain and major, but there are also some naval lieutenant colonels and even colonels, although it is recommended and selected, but in fact, it is not enough to have a recommendation, and the preparatory cadets have to pass a very strict examination, and the difficulty of the examination is much more difficult than the national examination in the national employee examination.

There were only 46 students in the first batch.

On the one hand, the officers and men who served as instructors were senior generals in the navy, and on the other hand, they were naval officers who had returned to China from studying in Britain headed by Lin Tongshu.

And Lin Tongshu surpassed many senior generals in one fell swoop and served as the chief instructor of this class with the rank of colonel, which is also funny. Many of the students in this refresher class are over thirty years old, and a few colonels are nearly forty years old, but these people are honest students of Lin Tongshu.

In Lin Tongshu, it seems that the seniority of the navy, and even the rank of the navy, can not cause him any obstacles, and when he was still a lieutenant colonel, he had already commanded a shocking and even influential naval battle at the mouth of the Pearl River, and more importantly. He also won the battle with the fleet, and on this basis, a large number of high-ranking admirals could only look up to him!

In the Navy Guest House, Lin Tongshu wrote by candlelight until more than two o'clock in the morning. However, although the time was late and the whole person was a little tired, there was a trace of excitement in his eyes.

Lin Tongshu's military rank is not high in the navy. Just a colonel, but something he touched. Even the work in charge is actually at the level of a general.

The director of the academic affairs department of the military academy has always been a person with the rank of major general before. At the same time, the director of the Naval Strategy Bureau, who had previously held the position of rear admiral, was already a lieutenant colonel.

Every day, he was busy planning naval development plans and perfecting some naval tactics, which most admirals did not have access to.

A series of strategies for the future development of the navy submitted to Lin Zhe within the navy were actually born out of Lin Tongshu's theoretical research.

Now, Lin Tongshu is further explaining to Lin Zhe the current and future naval strategies, and at the same time how the navy should develop in these strategies.

For example, the current naval strategy has two points, one is to pursue defeating the enemy fleet in a decisive battle near the coast and blockading the enemy fleet in the port, and the other is to attack the enemy's sea transportation lines.

The former demanded that the Imperial Navy have more and more powerful ironclads of the first rank, as well as more ships capable of participating in the decisive battle of the fleet.

The latter required the Imperial Navy to have one or more ocean-going assault ships capable of effectively threatening enemy escort ships.

The theory of naval warfare affects the overall strategic development of the navy, and the strategic development directly affects the design and specific composition of the navy's warships.

For example, the displacement of first-class ironclad ships reaches more than 10,000 tons, and the draft generally reaches more than 8.5 meters, and even those second-class ironclad ships or first-class cruisers generally have a draft of between six and eight meters.

The amount of draft directly determines which piers the battleship can moorth.

At present, although several of the Imperial Navy's major naval bases have relatively good ports, and their water depth is enough to meet the needs of large warships, the presence of ports does not mean that there are docks.

When the Navy decided to develop first-class ironclad ships, it had actually begun a large-scale expansion of the existing naval base, mainly by building deep-water berths and related maintenance facilities.

At present, the Qingdao Naval Base, the Shanghai Wusong Naval Base, and the Hong Kong Tsim Sha Tsui Naval Base have successively built deep-water berths and related infrastructure, with the simple purpose of berthing those warships that exceed 5,000 tons or even 10,000 tons in the future.

The design depth of these deep-water berths is more than 10 meters, which is enough to ensure the berthing of warships of 10,000 tons or even more than 20,000 tons in the future.

At the same time, in order to expand the scope of activities of the main fleet, it is inevitable to carry out relevant construction of some peripheral naval bases, especially colonial naval bases, such as the Cam Ranh Bay naval base in Vietnam, which has become the overseas base with the largest investment of the imperial navy in the past two years.

As for the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, thousands of kilometers away from the imperial mainland, construction was much slower. There were only a few small docks and associated supply facilities, but it was difficult to repair the battleship.

From the design of warships to the construction of infrastructure. These are all linked in one ring, and it is the strategic direction of the Navy that determines these details. Naval strategy, on the other hand, is directly determined by the doctrine of naval warfare.

At present, the naval theory advocated by the Imperial Navy is very ordinary, and it can even be said to be simple, that is, to control sea power!

Controlling sea power means that you can block the enemy's sea transportation lines and protect your own sea transportation lines.

And to do this, the Imperial Navy is prepared to take two steps, one is to block the enemy's fleet in the harbor, so that it will naturally control the sea dominance.

The second is if the enemy is too strong to force the enemy fleet to return to port by means such as a decisive battle. Then a direct attack on the enemy's sea transport lines.

And this series of tactical ideas is the direct reason for the design and construction of armored cruisers by the Imperial Navy!

When necessary, the armored cruiser can accompany the first-class ironclad ship to participate in the decisive battle of the fleet, and it is naturally best to be able to block the enemy fleet in the harbor, and if it does not, the armored cruiser will shoulder the heavy responsibility of attacking the enemy's sea transportation lines.

From this it can also be seen that the development of the Navy, the emergence and construction of various types of new warships. The original reason for this is not that a certain technology has made a breakthrough, nor that a designer has a flash in his head and then comes up with a design.

In fact, new warships are designed and built to adapt to the development of naval strategy.

For example. If the Imperial Navy learns from the French, what green-water strategy to play, and implements coastal defense tactics. Then the center of gravity will be inclined to the construction of coastal defense batteries and the construction of offshore ironclad ships. Small speedboats, rather than investing heavily in the construction of first-class ironclads and armored cruisers for ocean-going decisive battles.

After taking a sip of water. Lin Tongshu carefully checked the fold he wrote, and then imported it and sealed it.

The next morning, the letter was sent to the palace through the channels of the navy

Lin Zhe saw this fold at noon, the fold was written with a fountain pen, densely written with more than a dozen pages, and there were many data and charts.

Lin Zhe looked at it very carefully, and then he found that this Lin Tongshu's ambition was not small.

This excerpt is as it says that he expounds his suggestions for the development of the future navy, but it is better to directly give Lin Zhe a development plan.

In this development plan, he proposed to revise the plan on the basis of the first five-year plan, abolish all the plans for second-class ironclads and third-class ironclads, replace second-class ironclads with armored cruisers, and replace third-class ironclads with light cruisers.

Because the cost of both armored cruisers and light cruisers is cheaper than the original second- and third-class ironclad ships under the same tonnage, more warships can be built, and the tonnage can also be larger.

After all, even if it is an armored cruiser, its hull design is also a cruiser, which is essentially different from an ironclad ship, the same hull, the hull of a cruiser is much cheaper than the hull of an ironclad ship.

Otherwise, after the 70s, why did countries rise to build armored cruisers, because the combat effectiveness of this thing is comparable to the same tonnage ironclad at the same time, the cost is also slightly cheaper, of course, this is only the early stage, and after the development of armored cruisers in the later period, with the improvement of performance, the cost of the armored cruiser and later the battlecruiser of the same tonnage is not much cheaper than the ironclad ship or battleship, and sometimes even more expensive.

The second- and third-class ironclad ships were abolished, and all armored cruisers and light cruisers were built instead, and whether light cruisers were built as protective cruisers or unprotected cruisers depended on the specific situation.

At the same time, due to the great threat faced by the Imperial Navy, Lin Tongshu believed that the Imperial Navy needed to maintain at least six first-class ironclad ships, eight armored cruisers, and at least 16 light cruisers in order to ensure that the Empire would guarantee a minimum of sea supremacy in the Western Pacific and protect overseas interests in the future.

Six ironclads and eight armored cruisers, which is practically about the same as the previous five-year plan.

In the five-year plan, it is planned to build six first-class ironclads, eight second-class ironclads, twelve third-class ironclads, and ten fast cruisers.

In the case of first-class ironclad ships, it is basically impossible to get the change, and the navy now thinks that six is too little, and many people have already shouted that they want to maintain a fleet of eight first-class ironclad ships, but the cost of first-class ironclad ships is too huge, and the navy's funds are limited, and there is no more money in the first phase of the plan to build the seventh or even eighth warship.

However, unlike the first-class ironclad ships, the other types of ships are basically changing.

Since the plan was proposed, the second-class ironclad and third-class ironclad have been controversial, and since last year, the Navy has tacitly abandoned these two types of ships and turned directly to the construction of armored cruisers and unprotected cruisers.

Now Lin Tongshu hopes to formally revise the plan to determine the construction plan for armored cruisers and unprotected cruisers.

However, although the number of second-class ironclad ships originally planned is the same as the current armored cruisers, the tonnage of armored cruisers built by the Imperial Navy is generally large, the first is 7,500 tons, while the tonnage of the previous second-class ironclad ships is only four or five thousand tons, so although they are all eight, in fact, the entire cost is more than the original plan.

In this case, some other warship plans had to be cancelled, so Lin Tongshu's change proposal was to maintain the size of 16 light cruisers, and these 16 light cruisers would be responsible for the maintenance of overseas interests such as colonies, reconnaissance missions for fleet decisive battles, and peacetime cruises.

So when the time comes, these sixteen light cruisers will actually have to be distinguished in detail, such as fast cruisers that provide reconnaissance missions for the main fleet in a decisive battle, and unprotected cruisers that carry out ordinary cruising missions, and if necessary, some small-tonnage protective cruisers can also be built.

Due to the complexity of the classification of warships now, in the early years, the navy was directly divided according to tonnage, such as first-class ironclad ships, second-class ironclad ships, third-class ironclad ships, first-class cruisers, second-class cruisers, and third-class cruisers. But with the advent of armored cruisers, and then there were fast cruisers, unprotected cruisers, and so on in the Navy.

So now the names within the Navy are more confusing, such as armored cruisers, which are also first-class cruisers, and some people simply call them second-class ironclads.

In this report of Lin Tongshu, Lin Zhe can feel the confusion of the navy's classification of warships.

After reading this excerpt, Lin Zhe remembered some of the names of warships in later generations, and directly took the pieces of paper next to him, and then copied all the names of later generations.

The battleships used in the decisive battle were still called 'battleships' by their original names.

A cruiser that can go to the battle line, cooperate with the battleship in a decisive battle, and have an armored belt is called an armored cruiser.

As for the traditional unprotected cruisers and fast cruisers, cruisers were used.

Offshore ironclad ships, offshore gunboats, and river gunboats continue to use these names.

Lin Zhe's changes are actually to replace the original tonnage distinction and all kinds of messy first-class, second-class, and third-class with use distinction.

With this change, the internal name of the Navy is much simpler, and the main ocean-going fleet has only battleships, armored cruisers, and cruisers.

There are only three types of offshore inland river vessels: offshore ironclad ships, offshore gunboats, and inland river gunboats.

When Lin Zhe's self-modified warship classification was sent to the Admiralty, a group of admirals were a little surprised, they didn't expect His Majesty to care about these titles.

However, how to classify and call it is a trivial matter, as long as His Majesty supports the development of the navy

And they were not disappointed, and soon, Lin Tongshu's excerpt was passed on to the navy for discussion within the navy, and then the navy submitted a formal amendment to the first five-year plan. (To be continued.) )