After crossing over, Xu Jie still vaguely remembered some of the posts he saw when he used to mix forums and post bars, except for the legendary ranking posts of the three European powerhouses (that is, the question of who is the strongest in the three European battleships of Richelieu, Veneto and Bismarck. In addition to the comparison posts of Yamato and Iowa, there is another type of post that is the most eye-catching, that is, the question of what kind of ship is good to use for breaking the tie at sea.

I remember that the tendency of the vast majority of people at that time was that the more fierce the ship, the better, basically the post can be from the very beginning of the light cruiser to the armored cruiser and battle cruiser, and even to the most fast battleship! Basically, they are holding the standard of at least being able to beat the opponent's capital ship to position their own broken battleship! The speed should be faster than others, the firepower should be fiercer than others, and the protection should be reasonable, in short, it is to develop in the direction of Gao Daquan.

But in reality? Are the ideal battleships really these powerful enough to serve as capital fleet warships? In reality, this is not the case. From ancient times to the present, in the battle of breaking diplomatic relations, the real and suitable battleships that can really recover their costs are never those real capital ships. If you don't believe me, you can look at the history and start with the era of sails.

The capital ships of the sail era are generally divided into three classes, namely first-class battleships equipped with nearly 100 guns of various kinds, second-class battleships are generally about 80 guns, and third-class battleships are generally more than 64 depending on the situation of each country. These are all capital ships, and no one has ever seen a full-time break with these warships. The pirate ships or other naval warships that were actually used to attack merchant ships were usually cruisers armed with about 50 guns. and even smaller ships (not counting the Anglo-Dutch attack on the Spanish convoy, of course.) This is already a battle between the capital ships of the Navy. Some even made do with a few cannons on the merchant ships. If you can beat it, you will grab it, and if you can't beat it, you will leave.

And what about the era of ironclads? The so-called warships designed by various countries are generally not large. The French cruisers before 1895 were 4,000 to 6,000 tons, and the British were anti-diplomatic warships. That's about 7,000 tons. For example, there are many Edgar classes that have been built. It wasn't until later that a country began to play cards out of the rules and built a 10,000-ton broken cruiser, which is the famous Rurik 1 cruiser in history, with a displacement of 10,000 tons and a long range of guns, which made him famous for a while!

But the end of this battleship was not good, in the far East, the Rurik was directly shot to death by the later Japanese patrolmen. ended his legendary life. Subsequently, the French and Americans did build a 10,000-ton armored cruiser. But it must be seen that by 1905, the dreadnoughts came out, and such a domesticated ship of more than 10,000 tons could no longer be regarded as a capital ship. That is, no matter how hot the heads of the French and Americans were, they never thought of using capital ships to break the belligerents. Cruisers have been doing breaking diplomatic relations and avant-garde reconnaissance since the days of sails. And the capital ship has never had a chance to break the relationship.

Of course, by the time of the 2nd World War. The German Scharnhorst-class battleships were considered by some to be broken battleships. This Xu Jie has no way to verify, but in fact, this battleship is also lackluster in breaking diplomatic relations, and can only be said to be average. In the nearly 60 days from January 22 to March 22, 1941, the two battleships of more than 30,000 tons destroyed and captured a total of 22 ships, with a total tonnage of 115,000 tons. This looks good, but there is another much smaller battleship, the battleship Xiuzhen named Admiral Scheer, which has a displacement of just over 10,000 tons. Across two oceans in 5 months of battles at sea. The journey was 46,000 nautical miles, and 17 ships were also sunk and captured. The total tonnage was the same as that achieved by the two Scharnhorst-class battleships. It is also 115,000 tons!

Judging from this comparison, in fact, small warships are not necessarily worse than large ships in terms of breaking the efficiency of communication. The Admiral Scheer is not the best, let's take a look at the battleships in history that although their combat effectiveness is not high, they have achieved a lot of results. During the First World War, the famous battleship, the Emden, was a small thing with a displacement of more than 4,000 tons, a speed of less than 23 knots, armed with 10 105 guns, and a cost of only 320,000 pounds. As a result, this battleship sank 16 transports, 1 cruiser and 1 destroyer, and caused losses of up to 5 million pounds to the Entente.

In the 2nd World War, the real surface of the battle was also achieved by those seemingly very ordinary warships, and the most brilliant results and the highest efficiency in the 2nd World War were only those auxiliary cruisers who were half-way monks and changed merchant ships into camouflaged attack ships. These auxiliary cruisers were basically merchant ships with a few guns, and a few seaplanes and then released. Historically, a total of 9 of these auxiliary cruisers were built, but because of these 9 warships, the Germans destroyed and captured 140 ships of various types, with a total tonnage of 800,000 tons!

Among them, the most fierce one is the Penguin attack ship, this little guy with a displacement of less than 8,000 tons, a total of 32 ships of the other side, with a total tonnage of more than 150,000 tons. And one of the most ferocious Cormorant raid ships actually died with the other side in the lottery with the Australian light cruiser. The most important feature of these raiding ships is that they use various means to camouflage themselves, they are equipped with sufficient materials, and sometimes change their appearance as needed to disguise themselves as other ships to escape the pursuit of their opponents. Moreover, in the whole process of the operation, the method of fighting to nourish the war was completely adopted, and it did not rely on the supply of the home port, and it was at sea for more than 600 days at most, and the voyage covered three oceans! This highly fluid style of play makes the opponent very uncomfortable.

Of course, the results of the submarine breaking in the first and second wars were also very brilliant, but the submarine breaking should first depend on the quality of the captain, in the second war, the Germans made thousands of submarines, of which more than 200 submarines did not destroy a single enemy ship in their lifetime, and the situation of returning empty-handed abounded. If you can get a record of German submarines, you will find that the results of German submarines are quite dependent on the top 40 captains, who probably account for more than 60% of the total results! (The author remembers that it was this number.) Not so sure)

Some people may ask, why is the efficiency of capital ships not as good at breaking diplomatic relations as light warships and camouflaged assault ships? The reason is simple, the capital ship is too glaring and too dependent on ports and logistics. In general, breaking diplomatic relations is an action taken by the inferior party. (The dominant side is directly blocked.) If you're sending a capital ship, you'll probably be targeted by a spy planted by the other side when you leave the port. As soon as the defender sees that the capital ships are gone, they will naturally go up to block you, and to a certain extent, whether the overseas warships can survive depends to a considerable extent on the attention of the other side.

At the beginning, the fact that the Admiral Schell and the Scharnhorst sisters could return alive was directly related to the lack of containment on the British side, otherwise if the British Empire was in a hurry, even if it was as strong as the Bismarck battleship, it would have collapsed. Another example is the Spey fleet in World War 1, when it began to wander around the Pacific Ocean, the pressure on the Spee fleet was not great, and it could even wait for other warships to arrive. But when they destroyed several British cruisers, the British Empire was very unhappy, and the consequences were serious. Send a war patrol directly to the South Atlantic to block you. Then the story is known, and the Spee fleet was completely smashed to smithereens by the overwhelmingly superior British fleet in just a few days.

The biggest advantage of camouflaged assault ships over submarines is that they are relatively fast and have a long endurance. As long as it is marine oil or even coal, it can be thrown into the boiler to burn, unlike submarines, which can only use diesel, and the underwater speed is very low. Camouflage raid ships can even disguise themselves as neutral ships to resupply ports in other countries. The ability to camouflage greatly reduces the probability of being discovered, and a small boat sailing on the sea, even if the other party gets the information, it may be ignored, on the one hand, because there is a lot of false information, and on the other hand, because the pressure is not very great, after all, is it a small boat. But when it is the last time, the other party will find that ants can also bite elephants to death! By the time attention was noticed, too many merchant ships had probably been lost.

The same is true of light cruisers, their own targets are small, it is not easy to attract attention, and it can also be changed, after all, the appearance of light cruisers in World War I is almost the same, if you are really caught, it is not very painful to lose one, Dönitz put forward the idea of tonnage warfare in World War 2. That is, how many transports the ship of the attacking side can sink before it sinks. Obviously, historically, the efficiency of large capital ships as ocean-going breakers is very average, because when facing merchant ships, whether it is a 6-inch gun or a 15-inch gun, there is not much difference. However, the 6-inch gun battleship faced the opponent's encirclement and suppression much less than the capital ship.

And there is also a problem of logistics, light cruisers and camouflage assault ships can almost provide supplies in one port, and a light cruiser in Germany even ran to Africa in World War I and is still alive, but there are not many ports that can supply a capital ship. And the same out of the Lu to rob, the cost of the capital ship is also much higher than that of the camouflaged assault ship. So no matter how you look at it, the best attack ships are light cruisers and auxiliary cruisers, and the capital ships or something should be forgotten.

However, for breaking diplomatic relations, the capital ship may be very ineffective in attacking merchant ships, but if you change the usage, it may play a very good role as a guerrilla force, although they are all mobile operations, but they must not be confused, the target of the attack ship is the merchant ship, the attack has a lot of randomness and lacks too careful planning. Guerrilla warfare, however, is different, in that the target is the enemy's fleet or port that is outside the main force, with a clear objective, a well-planned plan, and a reconnaissance and escort force. In fact, to some extent, after the start of World War II, the bombing of Japanese island bases and Tokyo by the American fleet when the Japanese fleet swept across the Far East should be counted as mobile operations.

And now Xu Jie's idea is, can these two cooperate with each other?

Thanks to the book friend zhouyu1976 for the tip~~~. (To be continued......)