After settling the fate of the German Far East Fleet in the war, Qingying could begin to prescribe the right medicine and start to solve Tirpitz and Wilhelm II's dream of a world navy.

First of all, the German Far Eastern Fleet needed ocean-going warships of the first rank with strong combat effectiveness. If the performance is too superior, then the German Navy's investment in this area will be greatly increased, which will undoubtedly hurt the speed of building the home-owned risk fleet; If this type of battleship was too weak, it could not play a role in forcing the British battlecruisers to sortie, and the Far Eastern Fleet lost a large part of its significance in the war.

In this position, the performance of the capital ships of the German Far East Fleet must be better than in history: because the gap in the number of dreadnoughts between Britain and Germany was sharply narrowed by the early rush of the Qing Ying, and the possibility of Britain sending battle cruisers from the Grand Fleet to meet the enemy in order to prevent its own doorstep from being smashed by the anvil of the German High Seas Fleet will be even less likely than in history. If the Scharnhorst-class patrol is still built according to historical indicators, in order to ensure that the North Sea war situation has almost no advantage, it is very likely that Britain will not send a battle patrol, but choose to let the Minotaur class equipped with 4 9.2-inch (234mm) main guns and 10 7.5-inch (190mm) secondary guns to search and meet the enemy!

After many trade-offs, in March 1902, a ship with superior performance was finally sketched out by Qingying on the drawings.

It was clear that only if the New Scharnhorst-class had the ability to outperform all British armored cruisers in a head-to-head engagement, the British Admiralty would be forced to send battle cruisers to destroy them, thus creating a decisive opportunity for the German High Seas Fleet. Therefore. German designers have given this class of ships considerable offensive and defensive capabilities: it is armed with three twin 11.1-inch (283mm) L45 main guns and 10 single-mounted 5.9-inch (150mm) L45 secondary guns. It takes into account the power of a single shot and the hit rate of naval combat; The broadside had a large area of 180 mm armor. It can steadily resist the bombardment of the British patrol 9.2-inch main gun. With the advantage of main gun fire and armor protection, the ship was fully capable of defeating the British in a battle with the latter; Even if the invincible is on the battlefield, its disadvantages in terms of rate of fire, shells, protection, and damage management are also likely to be ignited by ships of this class!

In terms of seaworthiness and endurance, the new Schahn also abandoned the previous slamming of German capital ships. Since the Far East Fleet's scope of activity is the Pacific and Indian Oceans, where the wind is high and the waves are high and the supply is lacking, its requirements for seaworthiness and endurance are very different from those of the main ships of the High Seas Fleet fighting at home. In this case, the German designers also had to change their usual design style and began to work on places beyond the triad of these battleships. With a freeboard bow of 7.5 metres when fully loaded, the New Schaan has considerable seafaring performance at a cruising speed of 10 knots. Its range reached 7,500 nautical miles.

However, speed is its shortcoming. It is impossible for a warship to be perfect in all aspects, and the one-sided pursuit of tall design will only greatly increase the cost of the warship, which is completely contrary to Qingying's original intention of building a containment Far East fleet. At the insistence of Qing Ying, the German designers significantly reduced the speed of the new Shane from the historical 23.5 knots to 20.5 knots, which was on the same level as the Italian Margaret-class battleships. Thanks to the reduction in speed, the standard displacement of the ship was controlled within 13,000 tons, and the cost was only 1.15 million pounds, which is only about 50,000 pounds more expensive than Shane, which has not been dug for warships in history!

Although New Shane was flawed in speed and could not reasonably play its desired role in the thousand-mile diversion into the Persian Gulf and the subsequent attack on the Allied convoys, the reality was nevertheless. The maximum speed does not mean much for such a large ocean-going ship. Due to the difficulty of ensuring an effective supply of coal in the vast ocean, the attack ships on all sides had to flee for their lives. It is almost impossible to drive the power unit to full power: it is important to know that the utilization rate of coal at high speed is not at the same level as the cruising speed! If you sail at full power, you won't need to connect more fuel tanks and you will directly see the bottom; Instead of putting a lot of weight into the speed that will inevitably be overtaken by the War Patrol, it is better to strengthen its offensive and defensive capabilities in order to directly annihilate the opponent in a head-on encounter!

In May 1902, two 13,000-ton ocean-going cruisers designed for the Far East Fleet were keeled at the Bromforth shipyard, and since no new battleships were started in the same year, the construction of the two ships progressed quickly, and they were completed and commissioned on the eve of 1905, joining the Far East Fleet's operational sequence. As Qing Ying had expected, Britain only expressed concern about this kind of alternative patrol with obvious heavy firepower and light speed, but did not produce a big reaction. Historically, Japan had also started construction of a large Tsukuba-class cruiser equipped with battleship-class main gun firepower and a speed of just over 20 knots at the same time, but Fisher, who was immersed in a police chase with the French patrol, scoffed at this barbarian ship without speed.

A year later, with the advent of the 21-knotted dreadnought, the 20.5 knots that had barely been used in the new Shanna became obsolete, and a power modification was inevitable in order to prevent the value of the ocean-going cruiser from rapidly losing value. For this class of ships, which carried the core of Germany's world policy in the Far East, both Wilhelm and Tirpitz hoped to spend a large-scale power modification to increase its speed to about 25 knots in one fell swoop; However, for the sake of saving money, Qingying still insisted on giving up the large-scale modification of the boiler pipe line of the power system, and only replaced it with a German imitation of the Curtiss steam turbine. According to the calculations of the designers, the speed of the ship after the replacement of the main engine will exceed 22 knots; Due to the low vibration rate after switching to steam turbines, New Shane was able to run faster than the historically mechanically worn-out Spee fleet.

In the field of light ships, Qingying also made a lot of efforts. Since the task of forcing the division of the British Grand Fleet had already been carried out by two new Shane armed with six 11-inch guns, the objective of the German Far East Fleet was only to strike at the Allied sea lines in the Indian Ocean; The light cruisers in the High Seas Fleet, whose main purpose was to fight dogs in the North Sea, were obviously not suitable for the Indian Ocean battlefield half a world away. After some thought, Qingying also gave the performance characteristics that a light cruiser of the Far Eastern Fleet needs to have.

In the offensive and defensive areas, the class ships are armed with 2 150 mm guns and 8 105 mm guns, and the waterline has a 60 mm thick light armor; The reason why Qing Ying equipped this kind of warship with far more firepower and protection than needed to break the diplomatic relationship was also to contain the British fleet, so that it would send more elite cruisers to the Indian Ocean to escort merchant ships. Because of the inevitable need to balance freeboard and fuel reserves, this ocean-going ship was also lower than its counterparts in the High Seas Fleet, with small water-tube boilers and steam turbines at only 24 knots. The Far East light cruiser had a standard displacement of 3,800 tons and a range of 6,000 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots, and the price of 350,000 pounds was still affordable for the German Navy; In view of this, Qingying also equipped it with 2 ships, so that it could supplement the parts that were difficult for the New Shane to take care of.

In addition to the four surface ships of this size, submarines, a new weapon, are even more indispensable. As a maritime presence that was almost inexplicable during World War I, Qingying obviously wanted to equip the German Far East Fleet with several such fresh ships. Since submarines can dive underwater to take refuge in stormy weather, they have a considerable range with the support of diesel engines to break diplomatic missions; In this case, the submarines listed by the Far Eastern Fleet could be of the same type as those of the German mainland. Therefore, with a direct wave of his hand, Tirpitz assigned a whole submarine detachment to the sequence of the Far Eastern Fleet. The 12 submarines belonging to this detachment were all standard products developed by the Qingyingninghagen shipyard in 1906: they had an underwater displacement of 550 tons, a speed of 12 knots on the water, three 450-mm torpedo tubes, and a range of more than 6,000 nautical miles. If they can be used well, they will not only be able to cause major damage to the Indian Ocean shipping lines of the Entente countries, but can even use torpedoes to sink tens of millions of capital warships.

In a sense, submarines play an even higher role in the Indian Ocean than surface ships: although the latter have a greater viewing distance and are more likely to spot enemy merchant ships than submarines, there is a golden area of water in the Indian Ocean that is full of Allied merchant ships - the Red Sea lanes! This area is in the shape of an elongated strip, and there is a great density of merchant ships; If German submarines could set up an ambush in this area, then the Allied merchant ships would enter the wolf's den of German submarines one after another, like blind lambs. For submarines that lack reconnaissance capabilities, the Red Sea, which is closed and narrow but busy with cargo, is undoubtedly an excellent area for hunting!

Two large cruisers, two light cruisers and 12 submarines formed the core of the German Far East Fleet. Although its lineup of surface ships has shrunk slightly compared to history, it can definitely play a huge role far beyond history; Qing Ying could already foresee the tragic situation of the Entente bloc in the Indian Ocean, which was hit hard and helpless. (To be continued......)