The night breeze blows, the stars twinkle, and the golden incandescent light illuminates the entire Imperial Palace in Berlin.

In the Kaiser's exclusive study, Qingying and Tirpitz were sitting opposite each other in a slightly bowed position, the fireplace blazing, and the warmth was warm. A short time later, William entered through the side door behind the bookcase, waved his hand to excuse Tirpitz from saluting, and sat down straight in front of the main seat.

"Your Majesty, I came here overnight today to let you review the new cruiser design!" Tirpitz said with a little excitement, and the two beards comparable to Santa Claus also trembled slightly: "During the implementation period of the first naval law, the amount of ships built was greatly tight because the navy had to bear the cost of the second expansion of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal; In order to improve the combat effectiveness of the main fleet as much as possible, we had to make a large armored cruiser into a decisive battle cruiser capable of carrying out the decisive battle of the fleet, so that a strange thing such as a combat torpedo tower was derived. Well, Your Highness, don't look at me like that, it can indeed play an unparalleled role in the decisive battle of the fleet. ”

Seeing that the murderous gaze in Qingyingxing's eyes gradually faded, Tirpitz coughed and continued: "For this reason, we have lost a lot of the characteristics that belong to cruisers, including speed and seafaring ability, which greatly limits their use. Now, however, the situation has finally changed in favor of others. After the completion of the canal, the navy will no longer have to bear the huge cost of more than 30 million marks per year; With the rapid economic development of Germany in recent years, we already have the confidence and strength to develop large armored cruisers. The two Scharnhorst-class ships built exclusively for the Far Eastern Fleet last year are just the first step in our small test; How could one of the great families of armored cruisers be without the accession of the German Reich to it? ”

William looked approving, nodded and said, "Very good." Alfred, tell me about your plan. ”

"The role of the armored cruiser is to serve as the reconnaissance force of the main fleet, to destroy or drive away the enemy's reconnaissance fleet, and then to transmit the intelligence of the enemy fleet to the capital ship group in the rear. Therefore, such a ship must have sufficient speed and the strength to defeat the enemy reconnaissance fleet head-on. At present, the imaginary enemies of our German Navy are France and Britain, so when designing new ships, we must understand their existing military strength and the performance parameters of individual warships. Without thinking, Tirpitz told William about the most fundamental role and concept of the patrol.

"The French Navy has 17 cruisers of various types in service or under construction, the best of which is the Gambetta-class armored cruiser, which they started construction three years ago: it has a design displacement of 12,351 tons, a design speed of 22.5 knots, four 7.6-inch main guns and 16 6.4-inch secondary guns, and 6-inch thick armor on the waterline. The British Navy has as many as 40 large cruisers in service or under construction, and the most powerful cruisers are slightly better than the French: the Drake-class that was commissioned last year has a design displacement of 14,150 tons, a speed of 23 knots, two 9.2-inch main guns and 16 six-inch secondary guns, and the thickness of the waterline armor is also 6 inches. Tirpitz said without hesitation the core cruising capabilities of Britain and France, and then said with a slight smile, "Since the warships of these two countries are policemen and rogue criminals, their great endurance will inevitably make the combat capability of their warships with low tonnage utilization even weaker." Despite their large number of warships, their ability to engage head-on is limited; All we need to do is build a good fleet of good ships and we can easily defeat their cruisers! ”

Tirpitz opened the leather bag in his hand, took out a few drawings and put them in front of William's desk, and said: "Since the frontal combat effectiveness of the British and French patrols is relatively low, it is easy for the Empire to build warships with superior combat power to them, so we have two completely different ideas. First, our loading patrol can defeat the enemy's loading patrol, and we don't have to build the ship too big; Another idea is that it needs to be given the ability to conduct a fleet final battle on top of this, and build a new large decisive battle loadout. ”

"The plan that His Majesty sees now is a patrol designed for the purpose of only defeating the same type of ships in Britain and France: its standing displacement is 9,300 tons, the design speed is 23 knots, it is equipped with four 240 mm L42 main guns and 12 150 mm secondary guns that are the same as those of the Scharnhorst class that started a year ago, and the waterline has a large area of 150 mm Krupp secondary hardened armor. As the German Navy's future war zone would remain limited to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, the ship retained the battleship's low-freeboard long-bow ship and reduced its range to 3,000 nautical miles per 12 knots. This had the advantage of limiting the cost of the ship to 16 million marks, enough for the navy to build in batches. Tirpitz glanced at him, and then introduced to the Emperor, "It is worth mentioning that now that our counting of artillery barrels has been incorporated into the world trend, and the length of the chamber is no longer taken into account, this 240 mm gun is a real 42 times the diameter: it can suddenly accelerate a 190kg shell to 780 m/s and rain shells at the target with a rate of fire of more than 3.5 rounds per minute." Even in the face of the British Drake class, which is 5,000 tons larger than it, it can still win without suspense! ”

William looked at the drawing in front of him, and his beard gradually turned up like a right angle; He rubbed his hand lightly over the smooth design paper and said softly, "Good ship." To be able to reduce tonnage and cost to this extent, the designers of the Admiralty are really very different from 10 years ago. As far as I know, although the 13,550-ton Black Prince class, which Britain started construction last year, is equipped with 6 234-mm guns and 10 152-mm guns, the 6 main guns are arranged in a hexagonal shape in 6 single-mounted turrets, and only 4 main guns can be used on one side. To Tirpitz's surprise, William slowly shook his head and said, "However, this ship should be sold abroad as an export ship." ”

Tirpitz was stunned and said, "But this is an armored cruiser with an excellent design?" ”

William said lightly: "The reason why I want to give up this design is not because the technical content of its design is not high, but because its design concept has a serious deviation. According to the concept of appropriate size of warships, the cost performance of such ships is obviously not as good as that of warships with larger tonnage; However, once the tonnage is enlarged, there will be a situation where the cost of loading and patrolling is the same as that of battleships, but the combat capability is far from being reached. Since the number of warships of the German Navy was certainly inferior to that of the British, it was undoubtedly a great waste to throw a large amount of money on ordinary cruisers who were useless in a decisive battle, so it was necessary to let the large armored cruisers of the avant-garde fleet have the strength of a decisive battle, like a high-speed battleship. ”

Hearing William's words, Qingying was immediately moved to tears, after his previous efforts, this concept founded by William in history is more deeply rooted in his heart, and this idea is obviously extremely creative and prescient from the perspective of later generations! He nodded slightly, and then agreed: "In addition, there is another disadvantage. The single ship advantage of this ship over the British and French patrols of the same type is not too obvious, and the number of British and French patrols is too much; This means that we need to build a large number of such 16 million marks to save the situation, and this number needs to be at least 12 or more. Therefore, we need to build fast ships that must not only be able to completely crush all current armored cruisers, but also have the ability to conduct a fleet decisive battle. By this standard, the firepower of 4 240 mm guns and the 150 mm thick armor were clearly too bad. ”

"Since His Majesty and His Highness both think that the second design idea is correct, then please skip the previous designs." Tirpitz painfully retrieved the drawings that he had worked so, and then flipped the bottom one in front of him, "This design is a new plan that takes into account the decisive battle of the fleet. With a standard displacement of 15,200 tons and a speed of 23 knots without fuel, six 283 mm L47 guns identical to those of battleships were enough to tear anything floating on the surface of the sea to shreds, and 250 mm of main armor could withstand 12-inch shells with caps attached to them, although such shells were not currently available in the navies of the great powers. However, this ship is much more expensive than the previous design, and the cost of a single ship will exceed 28 million marks, which is only one step away from the cost of our new battleship of 31.5 million marks. ”

Qingying's body moved slightly, and he leaned his head in front of William's main table, and when he saw the magnificent battleship on the drawing, he couldn't help but feel a little surprised in his heart. The 3 main turrets are arranged along the central axis, 1 in front and 2 in the rear, and are carried in the stern with the help of a 2-meter-high long bowhouse; Ten 150 mm secondary guns lined the bow on either side of the tower, protected by additional armor. Strictly speaking, this cargo is an out-and-out high-speed battleship!

Do you want to use this design?

For ordinary people, there must be no doubt that this design will be adopted: the 332kg 11-inch shells smashing into the bodies of those armored cruisers are like a one-sided slaughter like a hammer picking eggs, and the 10-inch armor belt and 23 knots of speed are enough to allow it to freely choose whether to fight or leave in battle. However, Qingying has always been a representative of madness, otherwise he would not have come up with such a thing as a combat torpedo tower that does not give people a way to live; Now this modest design, how can he be satisfied?

Qingying chuckled a few times, and then met the puzzled gazes of William and Tirpitz.