Interestingly, the first countries to react to the shipbuilding plans of Germany and Britain were not the United States, but the lovely South American countries. For example, the cute weeping countryman.

In our day, when it comes to the Crying Country, probably the one that immediately comes to mind is the Crying Country Football with a special dwarf tradition, such as the Polo King, the Briquette King and the like. What about football other than football? Maybe you can also think of beef from the Crying Country. In short, most people have the impression that Argentina is a third world country that plays football very well.

If you want to say that this impression is actually not bad, modern Argentina can indeed only be regarded as a so-called developing country, but Argentina was also arrogant back then. Around 1890, Argentina began to become richer with its vast and fertile Pansas prairie because of the boom in the livestock market, and in 1890 the per capita GDP of Argentines was about half that of the United States, but ten years later, their per capita GDP surpassed that of France and Germany. Speaking of per capita income, sometimes it's actually quite deceitful, for example, find a small island in the Pacific Ocean and set up a country about the size of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John's Hospitallers, whose citizens include McDuck from the Disney plane and Smaug from Middle-earth and the gang of the Long River Gang from the real plane, such as the gang leader Fatten, the incense master Red Meow, and the horse boy bottle. Then the per capita income of this country must be so high that it is against the sky, and it is estimated that there is no problem at all in killing Buffett, Bill Gates, Li Ka-shing or anything. However, this sky-high number has nothing to do with the bottles of the horse. At that time, the gap between the rich and the poor in Argentina was smaller than that of European and American countries, and the per capita income was certainly more per capita than that of Germany and France at that time. So the average Argentine is extraordinarily wealthy. So much so that at that time, there was a popular saying called "rich like an Argentine".

When you have a poor jingle in your house, and the thief has to fight at night with the idea of "don't scare the thief away, wait for him to find it, and if we find something valuable, we will snatch it back", you will also feel very relieved when you go out just to cover the door and not even hang the cheapest bullet lock. But when you get a little richer, you will have to worry about going out without a lock on the door, and if you are rich like Smaug, you probably won't be able to sleep peacefully with a private army guard.

Because of the rapid wealth, Argentina at this time was in a state where the family had money, but it was still using a wooden door, and there was only a small padlock on the door. In addition, there are a lot of wars in South America. When Paraguay had some money, the fact that it was beaten to the point of almost extinction also worried Argentines (although Argentina also had a part in the original siege of Paraguay). Therefore, with the rapid development of the economy, Argentina has also begun to rapidly strengthen its military power.

Two years ago, the Argentines bought from Britain a battleship with a displacement of 20,000 tons and 10 12-inch guns. This move immediately made the Argentine Navy the undisputed number one in South America, and made all the warships in the hands of the navies of other South American countries become fragile waste. In this way, of course, the rest of South America can't stand it. So the Brazilians approached the United States and ordered the super-battleship with a week's turret from Scrooge.

Honestly, when the Brazilians set that strange performance metric, they didn't have the same messy considerations that Scrooge had told Tirpitz about. The most fundamental requirement for them to come up with such a freak was to make it look much more powerful than the Argentine ships.

And to make the battleship look powerful, of course, the first important thing is to have more guns. So the Brazilians felt that their warships must have more artillery than the Argentines. So at first, MacDonald's men offered to install three turrets in the bow and stern of the ship. As a result, there were 12 cannons, two more than the Argentine battleships. But who knows that the Brazilians are still not satisfied, they feel that just two more cannons are not enough, and they need four more cannons anyway.

Since the customer has such a request, Morgan MacDonald Shipyard must also meet the customer's request as much as possible. So the warship, which had a turret for a week, appeared.

Of course, the Argentines did not want to show weakness, so they found the British again, but the British, in order to deal with the German shipbuilding plan, used almost all the slipways that could build battleships, of course, there were still left, but those slipways were not empty, because the British also received orders from the Japanese. So, if the Argentines were to order new warships from the British, they would have to wait two or three years until the British had built warships for Japan.

Argentina naturally did not want to wait like this, but the battleship was really a high-tech flower in that era, and there were very few countries in the whole world that could make such things. At present, Britain and the United States can certainly build it, Germany can theoretically build it, and France and Italy should be able to make it with some effort. But Argentina can't wait for them to work slowly. So, after going around in circles, the Argentines came to the United States, and in the United States, only the Morgan MacDonald shipyard could do it.

Argentina, which has a good economy recently, has been generous enough to spend money, and in one breath, it placed an order for two battleships, and as for the performance requirements, it is basically one sentence - it is better than the one of the Brazilians.

For Scrooge, this was a relief, because it meant that the Argentine plan could be taken out at the same time as the Germans could design the battleship. In Scrooge's opinion, it was enough to sell one of the two proposals for the Germans directly to Argentina, and such a design could be bought twice with a few minor adjustments.

Of course, there is a dedicated team responsible for the specific design plan, and now there is basically no need for Scrooge to do such things himself.

In March 1899, the Morgan-MacDonald shipyard proposal was about to begin bidding in Germany. Mr. Morgan's son, John Morgan Jr., together with Donald, traveled to Germany as a representative of the Morgan-MacDonald shipyard. Now, the descendants of the two families have gradually grown up and can take charge of themselves.

One thing Morgan admires Scrooge is that there are more people in the next generation of the MacDonalds, Donald and Greystone have grown up, and they have younger siblings who are growing up. In contrast, Mr. Morgan has only one son, and since the birth of this son, although Mr. Morgan has tried all kinds of methods, he has not been able to produce a second child. With only one child, it's just too dangerous. Sometimes, Morgan even wonders that one day, when he is too old to give his last words to his son, will he be like Henry VIII, take his son's hand and explain to him: "You remember, you must ask a mother-in-law who can have children, and give birth to more sons!" ”

Generally speaking, for large countries, such a thing as weapons bidding, unless the gap between their own domestic level and foreign countries is too large, or that kind of weapon is irrelevant, it is always domestic production priority. It is not ordinarily difficult to market relevant weapons in a country that has its own corresponding production capacity. Because in addition to the good things, there are always a lot of political and economic considerations.

It's like many years later, the British want to build a new tank, to choose a tank gun for this tank, so Hansmeow took the L-44 120 smoothbore gun used in his own Meow 2 tank to bid, the result is that although the performance of L-44 is very good, almost everything is better than Niu Niu's own maverick 120 rifled gun, but Niu Niu still found an excuse that "it is not convenient to use armor fragmentation shells" (although armor fragmentation shells are basically useless now), Or used its own maverick rifled gun.

However, for the MacDonald consortium, it is good to participate in this bidding and win the bid, even if it does not win the bid, take this opportunity to show off the super battleship of its own design, on the one hand, it can also increase the company's reputation and attract buyers from other countries, and on the other hand, it can also affect the direction of the entire world's armaments through this kind of display.

When the proposal was presented, Morgan MacDonald's proposal immediately caused a sensation among the Germans. At the request of the Germans, the Americans designed two such warships.

The first was a battle cruiser for naval assaults. In the design of this warship, the Americans came up with several things that caught the eyes of the Germans.

The first is the power system of this ship, on the premise of satisfying the maximum speed of 26 knots, the Americans even claimed that the range of this ship was as high as 11,000 nautical miles under the condition of cruising at a speed of 14 knots. Unlike the British, Germany lacks overseas naval bases, and the British have naval bases everywhere in the Atlantic, and they all have docks that can provide supplies, so the requirements of the British Navy's warships on the voyage can be relaxed, anyway, they can't go far to have places to add water, refuel, ammunition, and all kinds of fresh fish, meat, poultry and eggs.

Germany, by contrast, was very struggling, with only a limited number of available ports in the Atlantic, and it was easy to be caught up and blocked by the British. So I ran to the ocean, I don't know how difficult it is to find a place to refuel and water, as for what fresh fish, meat, poultry and eggs, it is even more of a dream. If you don't get out well, you have to rely on your endurance and then return to the coast of Germany to refuel. Therefore, such a large voyage is too attractive for the Germans.

The second thing that caught the Germans' eye was that the Americans claimed that they had developed an artillery aiming command system that would greatly improve the accuracy of artillery at long distances. Combined with the low-velocity heavy ammunition they developed for this type of warship, it is very effective against the enemy's fragile horizontal armor.