I don't know what it means to mention London's name as the capital of fog, but at this time the capital of fog is still a compliment, which can be understood as praising its many industrially developed factories.

However, the coal-scented fog is still somewhat irritating to the throat, so it also leads to a higher number of respiratory illnesses in London during the winter.

Admiral Fisher, who is in his sixties, is still a little unaccustomed to the smog in London.

As Admiral Fisher, who was the First Minister of the Sea and became the head of the Navy, this is not the time for me.

Although the British Imperial Navy is still in full swing, there are many hidden dangers.

First of all, externally, although the Russian Navy, one of the major calamities, has suffered devastating losses, so that it does not need to pay much attention to the Russian Navy. But the up-and-comers Germany and the United States were building their own warships on a large scale, and since the British Empire had set the standard of two powers, it had to be enforced.

So from 1902, the Edward VII class battleships, named after King Edward VII, began to be built on a large scale. At present, the British Empire has built five warships of this class, and two more have just been laid.

In addition to these two rising stars, what made Admiral Fisher even more dissatisfied was the backwardness of the British Empire in technology and concepts.

For example, as early as 1892, when he was still a colonel, he called for Britain to change the status quo of using coal as a power fuel for the navy, and to use new oil fuels. And it also details the various advantages of oil fuel, but what?

Twenty years later, the British Empire still uses coal as the fuel for warships. At most, the fuel is mixed into the coal to increase the point combustion efficiency.

With such slow efficiency, how could he, the new Admiral Fisher, not be worried. Look at the Italian Navy, the retirement of old warships, the sale of sale.

Although the Italian navy sold warships so ruthlessly that it almost disrupted the British Empire's layout in the Far East, its courage and keen insight into technology and warships were unmatched by the dull British Navy.

Not to mention anything else, its Turin-class battleships have led the trend of battleships in various countries, not to mention the current hot Dreadnought, which is a collection of various new technologies.

Not to mention the new technology, the Navy's revolutionary equipment radio communications, which were invented by the Italians and first used on warships. And so far, Italy's Marconi Telegraph Company is still the most advanced telegraph manufacturer in the world, and the radio instruments used by the navies of various countries are basically provided by it.

In addition to the epoch-making masterpiece of radio, the unified firing command instrument of the battleship was also first used by the Italians. According to the information he received, as early as the Sino-Japanese War, Italy used the unified firing command instrument to shoot more than three times the accuracy of Japanese warships. The day of the hit

The fleet was overwhelmed, and it could only obediently admit defeat.

Sometimes he would think that if it weren't for the small size of the Italian navy, Italy would have been a formidable enemy of the British Imperial Navy. However, since last year, the Italians have begun to expand their navy aggressively, and perhaps need to think more about the direction of the Mediterranean.

However, Filscher was not afraid of this kind of external strong enemy, he was even more afraid of the internal twilight of the navy.

You must know that there is such a group of people in the army of every country, who have fought for the country all their lives, are highly respected in the army, and influence the army with their words and deeds. However, these people are immersed in their own glorious era, cling to old-fashioned concepts, and sneering at many new technologies and new tactics, believing them to be flashy gadgets.

I'm sorry, but in the British Imperial Navy, Firsher thinks that there are a lot of such people, and if it weren't for these old stubborns with outdated ideas, how could the British Navy, which is in charge of the world's waterways, lag behind in the development of new technologies and warships.

"Admiral, this is the report of the statistical department."

The secretary handed a thick document to the old man who held the power of the British Empire's navy.

"Okay, finally here."

Filscher took the document and immediately flipped through it.

This document is a list of various types of warships that Felsher asked the Admiralty to count, and these warships have one characteristic, they were all built before the nineties, and they are all products of the times.

And since he was at the helm of the navy, he had to do something useful to the British Imperial Navy. As he had previously served as Second Sea Minister in 1902.

When he was Second Sea Lord, he did something very famous. That is, to break the class barrier between ordinary officers and engineer officers, to achieve a flat transfer of personnel between the two departments, so that officers can have a more comprehensive understanding of modern ships.

In the previous mainstream concept of the Royal Navy officer corps, the officers who stayed in the dirty marine engineering department all day long were synonymous with vulgar and uneducated "deflated three", "two slippers", and "hillbilly", and the horizontal transfer of officers in the surface department and the marine engineering department was simply unimaginable for a long time.

This move caused an uproar among a group of aristocratic naval officers, who criticized Fisher for "wantonly subverting the glorious traditions of the Royal Navy", but Fisher, who was in power, was unmoved and selectively ignored them.

Although Fisher was left after only one year as Second Sea Lord, his successor did not restore the "old system" of "officers in the ship department and the marine engine department" who did not get along with each other, so Fisher's personnel reform achieved initial success.

And after more than a year as commander of the home fleet at Portsmouth, he returned as First Minister of the Sea, more like a silent proclamation of the defeat of the conformist aristocratic officers.

And Admiral Felscher, who is now in power, flipped through this thick list, and on the last page, he also gave the number of these warships very intimately, a total of 154.

And these battleships have already been sentenced to death in the mind of Admiral Felscher, either they will be sold, or they will be sent to the shipyard for dismantling, there is no third way.

The cost saved by cutting these old warships was used for the construction of new ships.

Take the most popular dreadnoughts at the moment, Italy already has one (Dreadnought) ready to build four (Dante-class), Germany is ready to build four (Nassau-class, roughly the same as the Italian Dante-class, the two can be counted in one class), and the United States announced that it will build two (Mississippi class, but I heard that this class of battleship is a temporary change, and it also uses a three-expansion reciprocating steam engine, and the speed is not even 20 knots, which is considered a pseudo-dreadnought). There is no news from the French yet, so there is no need to talk about Japan and Russia. These two countries have just finished a war, and they simply don't have the money to mix together. You must know that with the emergence of dreadnoughts, the cost of new warships has been greatly increased.

After the advent of the epoch-making dreadnought, countries began to build such powerful battleships. And the British Empire, as the world's first, will certainly not ignore it, just last month, the British Empire announced that it would build eight dreadnought-class warships in 1905 and 1906.

To be built in 1905 was the dreadnought, known as the Bellerophon class, with a standard displacement of 19,100 tons, a length of 160.3 meters, a width of 25.2 meters, a draft of 8.3 meters, and five twin 10 305 mm guns (in a 212 layout). It adopts 18 mixed water-fired boilers (pure oil-fired boilers have not yet been developed), and the main engine is 2 sets / 4 shafts of Parsons direct drive steam turbines, with a maximum power of 28,000 horsepower and a speed of 22 knots.

Of course, for Admiral Filscher, the importance of the construction of new battleships for the British Imperial Navy was not much to say.

Just as he was about to continue his work, he heard a knock on the door.

"What's the matter?"

"Admiral, there is the latest information from Italy."

The secretary's words made Admiral Felscher's heart tighten, and the intelligence work of the Italian Navy was raised to the same level as the Germans after he took office. First, because of the large-scale construction of ships by the Italians, and secondly, Italy has always figured out the development trend of naval warships, and these two things alone deserve enough attention.

"Come on in."

As Admiral Filscher's words fell, an intelligence officer, led by his secretary, came to his desk.

The intelligence officer didn't talk nonsense either, and directly handed over a document. "Admiral, this is a new type of warship that we have just found out that the Italians are preparing to build, and this is the basic information we know."

Filscher took the information and flipped through it, and his expression became more and more solemn as he flipped through it.

"This is a problem."

What bothered Filscher was that the performance of the battleship on this information was a bit against the sky, equipped with 8 main guns of the same caliber as the new battleship, and the maximum armor was 250 mm, which was not bad. The most puzzling thing is that the ship has a speed of up to 26 knots.

As an old navy, of course, I know the importance of speed, which means that such a battleship has the speed of a cruiser, the firepower of a battleship, and the armor is not weak. And the tonnage is also limited to a little over 20,000 tons. He was eager to talk to his Italian colleagues about how they did it.

Of course, he also saw the threat of a warship, and if such a high-speed warship appeared on the transportation lines of the British Empire, it would be a disaster. The cruiser can't catch up, and the battleship can hit but can't. It would be an unspeakably bad thing for the British Empire to have a few more such ships in possession of such warships.

Sensing the trouble, Filscher immediately spoke to his secretary. "Immediately notify the various departments of the Navy to hold a meeting, we need to solve this new big trouble."