If the Royal Navy is compared to a cowhide, then this cowhide used to tightly wrap all the British spheres of interest, covering the Far East of Asia, covering the Mediterranean, and the core of the homeland.

However, after the two naval battles of the Norwegian Sea and Bergen, the British Royal Navy, which suffered heavy losses, even if it was to tear down the east wall and make up for the west wall, had the number of capital battleships in its hands plummeted, and it could no longer cover these key areas that represented the interests of the empire on which the sun never set.

From February 1940 onwards, Britain and Germany had completely reversed their naval supremacy in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea.

Relying on the advantage of being geographically stuck in Germany's neck, Britain was able to temporarily block Germany's direct access to the Guò sea route and overseas trade, but the absolute sea control of the Norwegian Sea and the North Sea at its doorstep had been lost at this time.

After the Battle of Bergen, the British Navy realized that in order to fight the two "demon ships", the six remaining battleships of the Royal Navy had to all be dispatched at the same time in order to remain "undefeated" in the "daytime" naval battle. As for the night artillery battle, it was unthinkable.

Under such circumstances, it would have been impossible for the British Navy to accomplish its strategic goal of blockading the German surface fleet in the Baltic Sea and preventing it from entering the Atlantic Ocean to break diplomatic relations. And the remnants of the six main battleships are all shrinking to the mainland, and the sea control in the Mediterranean is no longer needed? Asia doesn't care?

After the Battle of Bergen, the Royal Navy has been stabbed by the opponent, and no matter how much it is dismantled and repaired, no matter how much it "pulls", it can no longer cover the vast ocean from Asia to Africa to the mainland.

In order to cope with the crisis of sea supremacy in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea, the British had the idea of pulling the French navy into the water, and wanted the French to transfer several of their main battleships to the North Sea area, on the grounds that they would participate in the Norwegian war.

But not to mention whether the battleships designed for the bathtubs of the Mediterranean by the French were suitable for the harsh sea conditions of the North Sea, just thinking of the threat of the fleet of the Italians, the world enemy around them, the French who were bare after the First World War. said that he would not transfer those families to the North Sea. Under the good words of the British, they simply sent a few destroyers into Scapa Bay to go through the motions.

As for the specific performance of the two demon German ships, the British now have a preliminary judgment result.

After the Battle of Bergen, the battleship Nelson, which had suffered a lot of internal injuries, returned to the mainland for repairs, and the British technical department went on board to carefully examine the five wounds on the ship that had been hit by the German ship's main guns, so as to deduce the penetration ability of the opponent's guns.

However, the results of the examination. Shocking and desperate. With the exception of the unexpected ricocheting, the remaining four hits had a terrible breakdown effect. After the results of the test came out, British experts believed that the main armor belt on the Narr could not withstand the opponent's 16-inch naval guns of the same level at all.

And the thickness of the armor of the sister ships of Shane, in the artillery battle in the early morning of that time, the British Navy also had a preliminary impression. During the battle, the two ships were also hit by shells ranging from 14 to 16 inches fired by the British Navy many times, but judging from the feedback from the battlefield, the results in actual combat were very average. Those "old guns" with guns about 20 years old obviously can't gnaw at the thick skin of the German cutting-edge battleships.

The result was a collective frenzy across the Royal Navy. Because of the George V-class battleships that the Royal Navy had high hopes for. Originally designed to deal with the Shane sisters, the battleships of this class had only fourteen inches in calibre for their main guns.

Although the newly developed 14-inch guns were more powerful than the old guns of the same caliber, the results of the Battle of Bergen showed that even the 15-inch guns were obviously insufficient in the face of the opponent's thick armor, and the main guns of the unfinished George V-class lead ship, the Prince of Wales, had not yet been installed on the warship. It's already outdated.

The result of this was that the British regarded the Shane sisters as "battle cruisers" in the past.

1938 to 1939. A large number of cutting-edge German warships have been launched into service, which has aroused the vigilance of the British Navy. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain therefore demanded to speed up the construction of new ships in China, but due to the long-term peace, Britain's domestic shipbuilding capacity has deteriorated, and the development of new naval guns has dragged on, and technology has been lost.

When the performance of the Scharnhorst-class battleships surfaced. It caused quite a shock to the British Royal Navy. The British government, which had been saving its budget, was finally willing to spend real money to restore the ship's firepower design from 10 main guns to 12, and asked the shipbuilding department to build the ship as soon as possible to cope with the pressure of the Shane class.

However, after World War I, the shipbuilding industry of the British Empire shrank, and the capacity of artillery manufacturing and research and development also declined, and the loss of technology was even more serious. What's worse is that. The development of the new artillery was delayed and problems were piled up because of the lack of funds and confusion in the past. Compared with the Royal Navy before World War I, which led the development direction of the world's navies and was self-respecting, the Royal Navy before World War II was already the sun at four or five o'clock in the afternoon.

The most interesting thing about Britain during World War II is that as an old imperialist country, the basic scientific level of the British Empire was fully qualified to claim to be the first in the world during World War II, and it is difficult for others to criticize itself as the first in artillery manufacturing technology. The problem is that the brains of their superior guidance department are extremely strange.

At the time of World War I, the correctness of the big ships and huge guns had been proven, and it was generally accepted "common sense" that the caliber of the main guns of the battleships was as large as possible. However, ten years before the outbreak of World War II, the British Navy had a big brain, and invested its research energy and scientific research funds in the 14-inch main gun, but the development and tapping of the more powerful 16-inch main gun was delayed due to lack of funds.

It is true that the development of a new 14-inch gun for the George V class is powerful, surpassing all 14-inch guns of other countries in the same class, but the development process is also full of twists and turns, and even affects the service of capital ships. However, the structure of its quadruple main gun battery is too complicated, there are many problems, and the reliability during combat is extremely poor, and the whole thing is a wrong choice that outweighs the losses.

When the caliber of the main guns of the Shann-class battleships was learned by the British after the "magic reform", they felt the huge power of the Shann-class battleships, and the British remembered that it seemed that they needed to reconsider the issue of increasing the caliber of the main guns of the warships. However, it was the end of 1937, and the construction of the George V class had already begun, and a small half of the 14-inch barrels had been built.

The fourteen-inch guns of the four-in-one turret of the George V-class battleships could not be changed to a three-in-one sixteen-inch turret. It's not that it can't be developed. It's just that it requires more money and more time to wait for the development of new guns, neither of which the British Royal Navy has.

Who pays for the new guns? Before the war, the old men who managed the navy's military spending in Congress could not tolerate the navy's direct abandonment of the 14-inch guns? Despite the fact that Secretary of the Navy Churchill jumped up and down, shouting that the Navy needed a larger caliber of main guns. But because of a money word, I had to pinch my nose and continue to use the design of the 10-inch 4-inch main gun - at this time, the British government really had no choice, after 1938, the smell of war in the skies over Europe became stronger and stronger, if the George V class continued to stop the development of new main guns, then when will the new battleship be put into service?

Britain before the war in 1939 was very much like the Qing court before 1894. For more than ten years before the war, they desperately cut funding for scientific research and the navy, waiting for the war to reach the tip of their noses. I hurriedly spent a lot of money everywhere as Kaizi went crazy to purchase. I usually don't burn incense, and the thing that temporarily hugs my feet is to do a bunch of votes.

Historically, the Prince of Wales was not officially completed and put into service until March 1941, but the British Navy had absolute sea supremacy in the Atlantic, and it always blocked the German Navy's surface fleet at home, so it was unhurried to build new ships.

After the Battle of Norway, after realizing the shortcomings of their capital ships, the captains of the British were working in three shifts at full speed. The Prince of Wales will be commissioned many months earlier than in history.

The only problem was that at this time it wanted to replace its three four-inch guns with three four-inch guns of sixteen. It's too late.

In 1940, Churchill's visit to the United States, in addition to being like a "traitor" to the United States, was forced to "sell sovereignty" and agreed to a series of harsh conditions put forward by the United States in exchange for its support in terms of armaments and arms. The other is to ask the United States to help make a sixteen-inch gun.

In addition to signing extremely harsh conditions with the United States, the British Empire was also forced to open up most of the British Empire's high technology to the United States.

Later generations of military fans thought that there were many German science and technology leaders in World War II, and these people were usually called German and German stick army white in the eyes of old military fans.

There are also many military fans who think that the United States was the world's largest scientific and technological strength during World War II, but in fact. At that time, in terms of scientific and technological strength, the real first should be the United Kingdom, and in terms of scientific and technological capabilities, Britain was the country that climbed the highest scientific and technological tree in World War II. It is only due to the limited influence of its own national strength that it is unable to fully transform this scientific and technological capability into production capacity.

During World War II, in terms of aviation weapons, the most critical core engine, the best liquid-cooled engine, was the British Merlin engine and the subsequent enhanced version of the Griffin (also called Griffin) engine.

In terms of air-cooled engines, although the R series of American double wasp engines is also awesome, the same era of British Sab air-cooled engines are also better than them, and at the same time, relying on the traditional advantages of basic science, especially materials science, the cylinder weight of the British air-cooled engine with the same performance is a quarter lighter than that of the United States.

Although the best aviation machine gun is the American M2 machine gun, the best aviation machine gun is the British HISPANO (Sispanan) machine gun.

In terms of army artillery, the best anti-tank gun was the British 17-pounder gun, which used shell-piercing shells, and was the first country in the world to adopt such shells.

In terms of tank engines, the Meteor engine used in British tanks is also an excellent gasoline engine. Although it is not as good as the B2 diesel engine of the Soviet T34 in the same period, it is only inferior to the German and American tank gasoline engines in the same period.

Due to conceptual reasons, the British developed the best aero engine and aviation cannon, the title of the best fighter in World War II, but was later snatched away by the Mustang fighter that used the British engine - but in terms of combat performance, after the Spitfire 14, the fighting performance of the Spitfire fighter was above the Mustang, but the range was inferior.

And although Britain had the best tank guns of World War II, Britain's tanks of World War II also developed a bunch of bizarre products during World War II because of its bizarre infantry tank and cruiser tank ideas, until the end of the war. Only then did he develop the Captain 100 tank, which later made a big splash in the Middle East war, but the war was over in just a few days.

In terms of naval artillery, the rifling technology of large naval guns in the United States has always been a weak point. Because of the quality of the rifling, until the thirties, the firing accuracy of the US Navy naval guns was extremely problematic.

As for the radar and electronics side. British products can also keep pace with the United States.

In fact, before Britain and the United States signed the "Atlantic Charter," Britain's level of science and technology was generally higher than that of the United States, and the United States had few advantages.

The terrible thing about the United States is that it has weapons and equipment that can transform "high technology" into substance, and it has exploded with "massive" production capacity.

After the signing of the "Atlantic Charter", the British were forced to open up all the bezoar dog treasures in their homes and the technology accumulated over the past hundred years to the United States for the so-called "technology exchange". The United States, which has received a lot of subsidies in terms of capital and technology, has only caught up in great strides by relying on the superiority of its national strength.

And this plane. Because the British Navy was too badly defeated in the early stage. Similar to the situation of the Anglo-American "exchange of technology" after the Atlantic Charter, after the second visit to the United States in the Churchill War, it was brought forward. The British, who were cornered by Germany, were opened up to "exchange" with the United States by the accumulation of hundreds of years of wealth, whether it was wealth or technology.

On February 3, 1940, after more than ten days of negotiations, Churchill met US President Ghana in Washington. An agreement called the Anglo-American Washington Treaty was signed.

The content of the agreement is nothing more than a copy of Roosevelt's "robbery" of Churchill in another plane. It's just that it started more than a year early.

The agreement included that Britain would trade a bunch of small islands in North America for a total of 50 old destroyers in the hands of the United States, the youngest of whom was 18 years old. Compared with the antiques that the Japanese "toss" to the British, the Americans slaughtered people more ruthlessly.

At the same time, Britain agreed to fully open its colonial markets to the United States, promising in writing to allow "independent self-government" in Southeast Asia after the war. Implement the "open door policy" of the United States. On the Indian side, Britain agreed to open its market to the United States and implement the policy of "opening the door and sharing interests" advocated by the Americans.

And in exchange, the British were able to buy a "license" for two Nevada-class battleships sold by the Americans.

All in all, Churchill was in Washington. It was robbed by the president of Ghana, who was naked (crab) naked (crab). In the process, if it were not for the fact that their "Japanese allies" also infiltrated and revealed their desire to sell warships, the Americans' asking price would have been even higher.

In order to appease the Japanese and prevent Japan from stirring up in this US robbery of the "Sunset Empire," the US side privately gave Japan a commercial loan of $300 million to prevent it from "stirring in this deal."

The Japanese did not really want to sell the battleships to the British, and they were happy to see such a short-term weakening of the US Navy. However, the emperor listened to Li Huamei's proposal and pretended to be "Anglo-Japanese" friendly to bluff people, and not only succeeded in befriending the British, but also unexpectedly obtained a large loan from the United States, which accelerated the speed of domestic armaments.

At this time, neither Britain nor the United States realized that the "short and small country" in the west of the Taixi Ocean had strange bad intentions in their hearts.

According to the British assumption, after the two Nevada-class battleships joined the home fleet, they would finally be able to "equally" send two battleships into the Mediterranean, and cooperate with the French Navy to suppress the Italian Navy, which had recently begun to be a little on the move.

As for the Far East in Asia, the British Empire, which had no idea what had gone before, could no longer take care of so much. At present, Japan, the biggest threat in East Asia, seems to be very "well-behaved" these days. Not only did he "send charcoal in the snow" when the British Empire was in the most critical situation, but he also took the initiative to ask for the sale of battleships to help the British Empire lower the price of the Americans. If it weren't for the kindness of his "Japanese friends", Churchill would have been slaughtered even more ruthlessly by the President of Ghana when he was in Washington.

So far, both Britain and the United States have held that Japan is subject to the special form of East Asia, and that it has a "feud" relationship with China and the Soviet Union, and that in this war it can only lie down in East Asia as the little brother of Britain and the United States, just like in World War I. No one thought that this vicious dog in Japan would bite him back in the future.

Although Churchill succeeded in acquiring two battleships from the United States at great cost to fill the huge deficit in the strength of the home fleet, the ships had to join the British Navy at least after April, and the two months from February to March were the weakest months of the Royal Navy.

Lin Han and Hannah, who knew that they were taking advantage of the enemy's illness and wanted their lives, where could they give Britain a chance to take a breath and regain their blood?

After the Battle of Bergen, the German capital ships temporarily returned to China for overhaul, and the shipyard worked overtime overnight, and after 20 February, except for the cruiser Nuremberg, whose bow was torpedoed, the rest of the ships were restored to their best condition.

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