Christmas gifts, New Year's bells ring, and the great wheel of time rumbled into 1909. At this time, Germany is showing a roaring scene of prosperity; Its economic aggregate and the output value of its major industrial products continued to lag Britain far behind at an extremely fast speed, and there was also an explosive leap in science and technology.

However, for Tirpitz's risky fleet, there were signals from London that were not in favor of Germany.

According to the information obtained by the German intelligence department from all sides, because Britain could not form an ideal advantage over the German Navy in the number of capital ships, the Royal Navy could no longer guarantee the control of the North Sea in wartime; Under these circumstances, the British significantly accelerated the innovation of the quality and technical skills of their capital ships. The British military industry has begun to develop a 45 times diameter heavy gun with a caliber of 343 mm, and the firepower has been significantly improved by more than one grade compared with the previous 305 mm 50 times diameter naval gun; After improving the layout of the main gun, the Giant class, which has a broadside firepower of 8 343mm guns, has maintained the same tonnage and cost as the previous St. Vincent class!

Faced with this situation, the German Navy, which had been smooth sailing under the influence of Qing Ying, suddenly suffered pressure that had not been felt for more than ten years. Although the 305 mm L45 naval gun developed by the Austro-Hungarian Skoda military industry can be called an artifact and has a greater power than the British L50 gun of the same caliber, but when the British increased the caliber of the gun to 343 mm, its inherent disadvantage in caliber was suddenly reflected. The projectile weight of the Skoda 305-mm gun with heavy ammunition is only 450kg, while the shell weight of the British 343-mm heavy gun is at least 570kg. And due to the limitations of caliber. The Austro-Hungarian 305mm gun had very little room to increase its power; If you increase the length of the body. The price to be paid will be enormous. It will be difficult to guarantee both the life of the barrel and the dispersion of the artillery.

Although the Skoda naval gun still used a soft cap and an extremely sensitive British gun in terms of penetration depth, the single shot damage was an unavoidable hard wound. At the beginning of the 20th century, when large-caliber artillery technology was developing rapidly, battleships could only gain advantages and opportunities in naval warfare by equipping them with larger-caliber guns; If the German Navy clings to the 305 mm caliber as the German Navy did in history, then it will face a situation in which it will not be able to defeat the opponent's behemoth with strong armor and thick armor. In the Battle of Jutland in history, if the King-class in the High Seas Fleet could be equipped with 350 mm heavy guns, at least half of Rear Admiral Thomas's 4 Queen Elizabeth-class battleships would have been left!

Fortunately, because this plane has Qingying's guidance and guidance. The German Navy put its firepower in the same important position as the armor 15 years ago; After entering the era of dreadnoughts, the development of naval guns in the German military industry has also been effectively integrated with resources and improved in direction compared with history. In the selection of the main guns of the first generation of dreadnoughts, the German Navy directly chose the Austro-Hungarian ready-made artifact 305 mm K10 naval guns, and invested the manpower and material resources of the three main guns of Nassau, Moltke and Helgoland in the development of larger-caliber guns, and the research and development progress of its large-caliber naval guns has made a great leap compared with the same period in history. In 1908, the Krupp factory, which integrated Skoda's military technology, began to develop a 350 mm 42 times the diameter of the gun (according to the standards of the world, the length of the barrel of the German 350 mm gun was only L42).

And in the design and selection of new battleships. Qingying also put a lot of effort into it.

Immediately after the German Admiralty decided on the adoption of 350-mm guns on the new battleships, dozens of designs were sent from major naval shipyards: the number of main guns ranged from 8, 9, 10 to 12. The turret layout is also very strange with the different choices of triple and twin turrets. In the face of so many dazzling designs, Qingying considered for a long time, and finally chose the four-seat duplex, which seems to be an ordinary low-end poor and short dick, but is actually the most suitable design scheme for the German Navy that balances various needs.

From the perspective of the overall design field, the selection of four twin main guns can achieve the optimal layout of the hull weight and load-bearing arrangement. In the discussion stage of the plan before the construction of the Bavaria-class battleships, the German ship design minister Bruckner resolutely opposed the design plan of the five twin 350 mm main guns proposed by the Minister of Armaments, General Goodsa: because the muzzle storm of the central turret is very easy to damage the searchlights, ship-based boats and other auxiliary equipment, the five-turret layout is difficult to balance in terms of hull weight. This was evidenced by the Japanese Fuso-class battleships that followed it. In the end, the construction of the Bavarian class successfully proved the correctness of his advocacy of four twin main guns; Compared with the previous 5 twin main guns of the King class, the Bavarian class has greatly improved its fire protection, and the ratio of its hull structure weight to the weight of the whole ship has decreased from 31.4% to 29.5% (in fact, Bavaria's tonnage utilization rate also has great potential to be tapped), and the tonnage utilization rate has significantly increased by several steps!

Economically, the configuration of the four-seater duplex also helps to reduce the cost of construction. Although this choice ran counter to the idea of an appropriately large number of warships proposed by Qing Ying in the early years, in the context of the current Anglo-German shipbuilding competition, the number of battleships on the surface was more likely to cause psychological shock to the British than the low-key and high-end elites, and create enough momentum for Tirpitz's risky fleet. For the Royal Navy and the British public, the most important factor in measuring the strength of the two fleets was the number of dreadnoughts.

As for the problem that the fire density of the four twin-mounted main guns is slightly insufficient, in fact, there is no need to worry about this at all; With the fire control system of the German battleship keeping up with the times, 8 main guns were able to hit a satisfactory rate. In the historical Battle of Jutland, the battlecruiser De Fringer, which was also equipped with four twin main guns, was the brightest star in the entire naval battle: in the previous avant-garde battle with Betty's fleet, De Fringer hit 3 of 4 shots in one and a half salvos, and then 2 in the next round of 4 and a half salvos 2 seconds later, directly knocking out the Queen Mary on the opposite side. In the ensuing turn of the former enemy, its accurate artillery bombardment instantly killed Rear Admiral Hood's ship Invincible, and made enough money for his own shipbuilding.

Based on the above, the H-25 battleship after Helgoland was designed on the drawings (the German capital ships were named on the day they were launched, and they were previously only built by codename): in order to achieve mass production as much cost as possible, the new battleships almost completely followed the hulls of the Nassau-class and Helgoland-class, but with a slight increase in the square factor. The H-25 battleship has a standard displacement of 20,350 tons, a speed of 21 knots, and is equipped with four twin 350 mm L42 main guns and 12 single 150 mm L45 secondary guns, and has 5.2 meters high main armor up to 320 mm thick on the sides. In terms of underwater protection, the new battleship adopts an era-leading "air-liquid-air" compartment arrangement in the depth area of 5 meters, which can better absorb the underwater impact caused by torpedo explosions than the previous traditional "air-liquid" layout.

What impressed Tirpitz the most was that because the hull and a large number of parts were shared with the eight battleships built earlier, the estimated cost of the H-25 battleship was less than 37 million marks, which was almost no improvement from the 19,700-ton Nassau and Helgoland, and it was completely possible to achieve large-scale mass construction! In the face of the limited modification of seven decisive cruisers and two Scharnhorst-class quasi-combat cruisers, which led to higher costs, the Reichstag still approved the naval budget for the construction of three battleships of this class in 1909. Tirpitz was ready to organize the five new battleships that had been started into a detachment, one of which would serve as the general flagship of the entire High Seas Fleet.

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Having solved the problem of the battleship, Tirpitz immediately began to think about the planning of the battlecruiser. Since Germany did not start such high-speed ships in 1908, the High Seas Fleet was overtaken by the Royal Navy, which had three Invincible-class and three Indefatigable ships at high speed, and Tirpitz was desperate to regain an advantage over Britain in this regard. Thus, for the first time, Tirpitz did not limit the tonnage of the battle cruisers, but increased the firepower to the same 8 350-mm guns as the battleships in one fell swoop.

For Tirpitz's choice, Qingying expressed absolute support for him. Although the 305 mm guns on the German battleships were enough to penetrate the armor of the British battle cruisers, the 350 mm guns with thicker tubes were obviously more effective, given the angle of engagement and the damage of a single shot. In addition, due to the rapid increase in the firepower of the battleship, the new battle cruiser must sacrifice a certain aspect of performance under the condition of a certain cost; Armor was the foundation of German capital ships, so the only thing that could make a file was speed. In this way, the German battle cruiser could naturally develop towards the path of high-speed battleships, and had a survival and combat capability far superior to that of the battle cruiser on the intricate battlefield.

In order to form a formation with the previously started battle cruisers, the maximum speed of the new battle cruisers was limited to 25 knots; In order to reduce the weight of the power system and the space of the power compartment, all the boilers were replaced with small water-tube furnaces with kerosene mixed combustion, which made a great contribution to the control of tonnage and cost. Its tonnage is 4,000 tons larger than that of the H-25 battleship, and the cost has also increased to 43 million marks, but it has achieved a normal speed of 25 knots while the offensive and defensive performance is completely unchanged, which has reached the height of the ideal avant-garde ship in Qingying's mind! Qingying can't wait to see the spectacular scene of her chopping waves on the sea! (To be continued......)

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