Berlin, Imperial Palace.

In the spacious and bright Kaiser's study, Wilhelm was standing straight up, a pair of gray eyes like a falcon staring at the exquisitely crafted model of a battleship on the long table in front of him, and he was silent. Next to him, Tirpitz, who had two large handfuls of Christmas beards, also showed great interest in the wooden model in front of him, but Qingying, who was familiar with history, glanced at it, and his attention was no longer on it.

"I can't believe that the British would come up with such a thing. Instead of having a large number of 234 mm guns like the previous Lord Nelson class, the new battleship was replaced with 305 mm guns of the same caliber as the main guns. Although its outfitting work had only just begun, and nothing was on deck, we could already assume that the ship would be armed with 10 uniform-caliber 45x 305mm guns. William's eyes flashed with a different color, and he said slowly.

Tirpitz nodded slightly, and said, "Although this fellow Fisher is arrogant and reckless, and has the same great hostility to my Germany as His Majesty the King, but for God's sake, I must admit that he is a brilliant reformer who saved the entire British Navy." He has a keen insight into the new changes in the navy brought about by the development of the times. Moreover, the concept of such an all-heavy artillery is not new, the Italian put forward this idea three years ago, and he himself proposed the construction of warships equipped with 254-mm guns of a uniform caliber. It is also reasonable that the British can build such a ship this time. ”

Qingying listened to it in her ears, and her mind couldn't help but turn over some memories that belonged to her previous life.

Time enters the 20th century. The situation at sea facing the UK is particularly severe. This is despite the fact that the speed of British shipbuilding has reached an all-time high. The average annual number of capital warships has exceeded 6 or more. However, in the face of the simultaneous efforts of five or six navies, including the United States, Germany, France, Russia, and Italy, Britain, whose industrial output value had fallen to less than 20% of the world's world, could no longer "rule the ocean" as it did in the middle of the 19th century. In order to salvage the British Navy's dwindling ability to control the seas, Fisher, as First Sea Lord, decided to take advantage of the current scientific and technological technology and the rapid development of naval warfare to build a new capital ship with comprehensive performance that could crush the existing warships, so that the British Navy could regain the supreme glory of half a century ago through quality improvement. After some exploration, the concept of "all-heavy artillery" from Italy came into his eyes.

In 1904, Fisher spearheaded a commission to explore the feasibility of equipping battleships with 10 305-mm guns of a uniform model and steam turbines that could operate at 21 knots for long periods of time. This scheme was the battleship Dreadnought. With the development of technology, the rate of fire, accuracy and power of the 305 mm heavy gun have been greatly improved, and the large-caliber artillery has become the mainstream again like the era of ironclad ships with "pyrotechnic powder racks and giant cannons" after 15 years of silence, and the black history of armored cruisers and rapid-fire guns dominating the battlefield no longer exists. One year later, the Intrepid had gone from a fantasy blueprint to a real practical drawing, and in ecstasy, Fisher tried his best to persuade Congress to temporarily increase the budget, and in October 1905 he started construction of the epoch-making battleship at the Portsmouth shipyard.

In addition to the 10 305mm L45 guns of the same class as the Lord Nelson, the greatest improvement of the Intrepid was the use of a steam turbine produced by Parsons as a power engine, which allowed the British to get rid of their slag reciprocating steam engine, which was far inferior to their German counterpart, and gave it a considerable increase in speed. In the case of a fifth more boiler than the Lord Nelson, which started construction in the same year and was almost the same in tonnage. The Dreadnought's power output was increased by nearly 40 percent, increasing its speed from 18 knots to almost 21 knots on par with armored cruisers. And it can sail stably at a speed of more than 20 knots for a long time. As for the so-called "miniaturization and watertightness of the cabin, significantly improving the buoyancy and anti-sinking performance of the reserve", Qingying could only laugh; The British battleship's underwater protection and anti-sinking capabilities were nothing short of a junk fighter, as exemplified by the sinking of the 23,000-ton super-dreadnought Daring by a 180-pound (less than 82 kg) cotton mine. It is important to know that the explosive power of the cotton wool is only half of that of TNT, which means that this mine is only equivalent to an explosion of about 40kg of TNT to sink the Daring, and the design value of the average large battleship to resist underwater blasting is at least 150kg of TNT or more!

Eager to use the commissioning of this epoch-making battleship to demonstrate the Royal Navy and the supreme majesty and unshakable hegemony of the world, Fisher mobilized a large number of skilled craftsmen and materials to build the warship, making the construction of the Intrepid extremely short. Construction began on October 2, 1905, and was launched only four months later on February 6, 1906, and was officially completed in December of the same year. Its appearance made all the warships in service and under construction in the world become goods that should be swept into the garbage heap in an instant; And Britain spared no effort to publicize that they had built such a powerful ship in such a short period of time, which also shocked the great powers in the world who were interested in getting involved in the seas, and had a new understanding of the strength of the British navy. Fisher's intentions were initially realized.

In the long run, however, Fisher's move was tantamount to sending the Royal Navy to the grave.

The reformer's original intention was to use the service of this new giant ship to widen the gap between the Royal Navy and the other powers, so as to strengthen Britain's maritime supremacy, but it turned out to be contrary to his vision. The basic core of the dreadnought, all-heavy guns, and steam turbines, which were merely advances in shipbuilding concepts, were not unattainable luxuries, and the latter also had Curtis-style steam turbines in the United States, which were not inferior to Parsons, and which were used in Japan in 1906 on the battleship "Aki". What's more, at the beginning of the 20th century, when the capital economy was operating at a high speed, even the steam turbines of British companies could be installed on German battleships, so what country could not buy steam turbines? Therefore, for those powers with a strong industrial foundation, there is no technical problem in building dreadnoughts.

And because the dreadnoughts have a huge advantage over the former dreadnoughts (which is also Fisher's original intention), the dreadnoughts are proud of the former dreadnoughts of the rest of the powers, and at the same time, the British Navy's own large group of dreadnoughts has been swept into the garbage heap in an instant. Originally, before this, the Royal Navy was proud of the superior strength of more than 50 former dreadnoughts, but the appearance of dreadnoughts made the original naval power pattern reshuffle instantly: the former dreadnoughts became irrelevant goods, and everyone stood on the same starting line to create dreadnoughts again, which was tantamount to a fatal blow to Britain, whose industrial economic strength accounted for a seriously shrunken proportion of the world's world!

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"Thankfully, I, Germany, began the construction of such all-heavy artillery battleships 2 and a half years ago. Although this is the result of the accidental collision of the characteristics of our main gun that are different from those of the great powers, its power has been fully demonstrated in countless previous shooting tests. There is no doubt that in the next construction of the Navy, we should also continue our previous path and vigorously develop this new type of battleship with unified caliber main guns. Tirpitz looked at the fine model in front of him and said with a slight smile, "Although this ship of the British is armed with 10 305-mm guns, only 8 of them are capable of firing at the same side due to the way they are arranged; At this point, our new battleships, which had their main guns diagonally arranged on their side, were much more clever than them. ”

Hearing Tirpitz's words, William's eyes showed doubt, and he asked: "Alfred, I remember that Congress approved a total of four new battleships, and the first two of them were already under construction at the end of 1903. How is their construction going now? ”

"At present, the two new battleships that were the first to be built have completed a small part of the outfitting work, and are expected to be completed by the arrival of tomorrow spring, and they will be named Deutschland and Hanover, respectively. The No. 3 ship has completed 95% of the hull construction and will be launched within one month, while the No. 4 ship will be launched until the end of this year. Speaking of this, Tirpitz glanced at Qingying with half dissatisfaction and half disgust, and then said, "According to the request of His Highness, we have made strict confidentiality measures for the construction of this class of ships, not only have we built a huge wooden shed around the slipway to block the view, but even the necessary launching ceremony for each warship has been canceled. It did keep out the foreign spies who came to spy on it, but it also caused me a lot of trouble in Congress to get money for the Navy; Your Highness, you must know that it is not enough to publicize the threat posed to us by the British Navy, and the people and parliamentarians must see the brilliant achievements of the Navy that make their blood boil, and then they will willingly give the green light to the funds needed for the development of the Navy! ”

Qing Ying could only laugh dryly when she heard this. The purpose of doing this was to avoid the butterfly effect caused by Germany's early construction of dreadnoughts, so that Britain's dreadnought construction time would be remembered in history, and Germany would have an advantage in the dreadnought race. However, now that the British dreadnoughts have also been launched, it is no longer necessary to continue to keep secrets; At this stage, it is time for Germany to make its voice heard. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the monthly ticket of the book friend Yin Yin Shancao and the reward of hugetiger~~