"The enemy situation is found in front of the port side, the distance is 30 chains, and the whole ship is on the first level of combat alert, ready for battle."

"Course 15 degrees south-southwest at a speed of 12 knots, order to accelerate to 15 knots, raise the battle flag, and the fleet is ready for battle."

"Each gun emplacement reports on readiness."

"Three rounds of warning shelling, ready for ...... Launch! ”

Entering the boundless Pacific Ocean, the "Tempest" warship formation sped at high speed, and the tall bow broke through the blue sea, galloping between the peaks and valleys of the waves, and began to nervously practice various tactics.

Let's be honest

In the vast Pacific Ocean, the ironclad cruiser "Tornado" had no rivals at all, and the only powerful British Royal Navy was an ally.

Regardless of whether this ally spends a lot of donkey eggs, his arrogant and arrogant temper is still dead, especially a mouth that is scathing and makes people want to tear it apart. But after all, they are allies, and they are the ones that dominate the relationship between the two sides.

Richard sat firmly in the only command position in the command tower, and did not interfere with the command of the fleet, but carefully experienced the ironclad battleship that represented the world's most advanced technology in the sixties of the 19th century, and felt really different.

Don't say anything else

Judging from the feeling of riding alone, this ironclad cruiser "Tornado" sails very steadily in the undulating waves, giving people a feeling of inner stability.

Due to the long hull, wider, large displacement and deeper draft, this ship will not have a feeling of being thrown up by the waves when sitting on it, and there is no small ship that swaying left and right, and the waves of 3~4 meters on the sea surface can not make any bumps at all, and can basically pass the steady crushing of the waves.

Due to the high structural strength, compact layout and many sealed cabins of the warship itself, there is no tremor and hollowness of large cruise ships when sailing on the sea, and from the perspective of riding experience and actual feelings, it gives people a kind of confidence without words.

In the future, the officers and men will be full of confidence in sailing in the deep sea and ocean, and they will not be shrouded in deep-sea phobia all the time.

The territory of the Tang Empire is extremely vast, so the ships required by the Royal Navy to be equipped will be ranked first in terms of large voyage, second in terms of firepower, and third in terms of speed, that is, it is only enough.

The main warships of the British Royal Navy are not very demanding because they undertake the task of global hegemony, and are often active in the windy Atlantic Ocean and the warm Mediterranean, as well as the British naval bases all over the world.

Among the three elements of the ship;

In the design of the British Royal Navy's capital ships, firepower ranks first, speed ranks second, and range ranks third.

It is precisely because of the high requirements for speed that the British Royal Navy has adopted the technical route of sail power and steam engine plus broadside paddle wheel.

As a result, the speed cannot be increased, and the cost is expensive and not easy to use.

The layout of the British new ships was extremely complex, with many equipment and small space, and the control interfered with each other, which made the British sailors complain.

The actual situation of each country is different, and the focus of the demand for warships is also different, which is not right or wrong, and only your own feet know whether it is comfortable or not.

The "Tornado" warship formation practiced some tactics on the sea surface, and the main and secondary guns in the front and rear successively carried out a series of actual combat drills, such as artillery bombardment training, combat coordination, and search and arrest, showing a fairly high level of ship operation.

His Majesty the Emperor gave a high evaluation to this.

After the entire warship formation exercise, it did not return to the port of Oak Bay until dusk, ending a full day of high-intensity and wonderful training.

It was late in the evening, and the sky was full of red clouds.

Emperor Richard and his entourage immediately stayed in the local temporary camp, and gave a banquet in the evening to reward the officers of the fleet who had performed well in today's actual combat training, as a sign of closeness.

There is another major issue for this visit to the Oak Bay military port; That is, to discuss the "Tornado" class ironclad cruisers and their subsequent development model schemes.

The "Tornado" class ironclad cruiser was originally a plan B, an alternative to the "7,800-ton Zhenwei ironclad cruiser plan" that His Majesty vetoed, and its range and firepower were greatly emasculated, and it was not the target ship expected by the Royal Navy.

After four and a half years from the approval to the construction of the Tornado-class ironclad cruiser until the first ship was completed and put into service, the No. 2 ship of this class, the Vicious Wind, has been launched and outfitted and will be able to be delivered to the Royal Navy by the end of the year.

The No. 3 ship "Bitter Wind" and the No. 4 ship "Hurricane" are both under construction to varying degrees, and it is expected that the launching equipment will be completed in the second half of next year.

A total of 6 ships of this class are built, and 4 are planned to be deployed in the Atlantic Fleet, stationed in New York Harbor, Hampton Harbor, and New Orleans Harbor to maintain the maritime military presence of the Tang Empire in the Atlantic.

The two ships are deployed in the Pacific Fleet and will be used as the main force of the Pacific Fleet, and the home port of San Francisco Bay (Note; including Oak Bay Harbor), Los Angeles and Seattle.

Next

On this basis, whether to develop a follow-up slightly improved ship type, or to pick up the former "7,800-ton Zhenwei ironclad cruiser plan" again, has become the primary concern of the Royal Navy.

Motivated by confidence in victory in the North American War, the Royal Navy generally preferred the latter.

After all, in the North American naval war, he had already tasted the kind of domineering position that dominated the seas, his horizons became broader, and his heart became wilder, and an ironclad cruiser of less than 5,000 tons could no longer satisfy the appetite of the royal admirals.

If possible

Who wouldn't want to control a capital ship that is more capable and powerful?

"I am well aware of the military's opinions, but the development of the Royal Navy is not an overnight matter, and we must not have the idea of quick success, nor should we have the extravagant hope of dominating the world's oceans because of the victory in the North American War.

That is neither realistic nor possible, because the Tang Empire does not have the possibility of challenging Britain's maritime supremacy, both in terms of economic resources and military aspects.

Moreover, self-restraint must be achieved.

You must know that on the side of the couch, how can you allow others to sleep soundly?

Any country that may endanger Britain's maritime hegemony will be listed as the most dangerous enemy by the British without hesitation, and they will use all means to suppress it, including the choice of war.

I believe that such serious consequences are not desirable for anyone to see, and they are harmful to the development of the empire. ”

Richard did not rudely veto the Royal Navy's plans for new ships, but taught his admirals a lesson in international geopolitics from the level of international politics and great power wrestling.

The outbreak of the first world war in the future was because the rapidly rising Germany could not see the situation clearly and brazenly launched an ambitious plan with the development of the "High Seas Fleet" as the core, which deeply pierced the sensitive bottom line of the British, thus completely detonating the arms race in Europe and eventually leading to the inevitable outbreak of war......

Since then

The Germans became the eternal enemy of the British, and from World War I to World War II, they were always the number one enemy in the minds of the British, and all kinds of ridicule and sarcasm followed.

What an evil Prussian, with a funny garlic nose, a beer with a pork sausage, an emotionless killing machine......

This continued until the British Empire slipped from the throne of world hegemony, and relations between the two sides gradually eased.

There is no problem with how the army develops, and the British are optimistic about its success.

If you want to develop the navy, it will touch the most sensitive bottom line nerve of the British, and the better the naval ships of the Tang Empire perform in the North American war, the more worried the British will be.

Doesn't that sound funny?

The fact is so nonsensical, the Tang Empire must ensure restraint in naval development. Or, to put it another way, it is necessary to wait for the level of the British Royal Navy ships to be improved before considering the development of new, more powerful capital ships.

The paranoid and stubborn old-fashioned school of the Royal Navy, which had been proven wrong after paying a heavy price for technological exploration, was quickly replaced by the innovative young voices of the Royal Navy.

Before the Battle of the North American Sea

The generally accepted gun installation method of the navies of the world is still inherited from the densely arranged gun door layout of the sail battleships, with 2~3 layers of gun decks to enhance the firepower more.

The results of the naval battle in North America have fully demonstrated the great superiority of the rotating turret layout, which has been accepted by the world's naval powers as one of the hallmark technical features of the new ironclad warship.

This is the case with the Tang Empire, the French Navy, and the British Royal Navy, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary and other countries have followed the trend and launched their own plans for the construction of rotating turret ironclad ships.

But how the artillery is arranged, this again appears a myriad of schemes.

The Tang-style layout is a classic scheme, which is mainly manifested in the design of the main guns in the front and rear of the hull, and the design of the secondary guns on the side of the ship, which is a safe scheme that has stood the test of war.

But in the UK

The design of the central gun house quickly came to the fore as the technical standard for the Royal Navy's new ironclad ships, and was already under fire at the Royal Portsmouth Naval Yard.

So why can't we adopt the artillery layout scheme that the Tang Empire has proven to be very effective?

Ultimately

It is still the arrogant maritime overlord in the heart of the British, although the Royal Navy of the Tang Empire has proved that this kind of artillery layout is reasonable, the strike power is extraordinary, and the artillery has fewer dead angles, which is conducive to giving full play to the advantages of the firepower of the whole ship.

But the British just didn't bother to adopt it, and had to hold back a "central artillery room" design plan to show the advanced and superior technology of the British Navy, which is really no one!

The so-called central gun room is the main naval gun equipped with the ship, all of which are set up in the armor protection belt of the ship's amidships.

The main naval guns of this era were all open-air turrets, and due to the backward level of hydraulic technology, there was no way to rotate the turret of several tens of tons as a whole, so only the main guns could be rotated in battle.

This happens repeatedly in international affairs, and the British are like that, but why not the French?

The glorious naval tradition and arrogant national pride made it impossible for Britain, France and other world naval powers to accept the excellence of the Royal Navy of the Tang Empire, so they each came up with some new plans for the layout of artillery.

France, for example, developed a scheme called diagonal artillery layout.

Name implies

That is, the four main naval guns are in pairs and twos, one group is located in the right front of the middle of the ship, and the other group is located in the left rear of the middle of the ship, forming an oblique diagonal layout, so that when the broadside shelling, the full firepower of the main ship guns can also be exerted.

As a matter of fact

This is also a kind of central artillery room layout scheme, but it is mixed with French wisdom and becomes a French thing.

The Prussian Navy also developed its own gun layout, and the Saxony-class ironclad ships adopted a forward open battery with a central gun house, with a rotatable open gun emcourse in the front and a gun house with four main guns in the rear.

This is equivalent to the adoption of half of the Tang layout and the British layout, and the evolution of their own German layout, while satisfying the strong national self-esteem, it also feels much more comfortable.

Back to the point

Richard looked at the admirals present with blazing eyes, and said warmly;

“……

Therefore, the next step in the development of naval ships is still to improve the "Tornado" class ironclad cruisers, and the direction of improvement is to further strengthen the performance of ocean-going navigation, further strengthen the performance of marine equipment and artillery, and give full play to their power.

Artillery should be fired more accurately and with more fierce firepower, turbines and boiler equipment should be made to be reliable and to improve performance, and officers and men of the navy should be strictly trained and their skills should be perfected.

Equipped with the same type of ironclad warship, the Royal Navy will react faster and more accurately than the enemy, have a higher level of ship control, a stronger desire to fight, and defeat the opponent with better military qualities.

"Train elite soldiers to win battles" should be the primary goal of the Royal Navy at present, and it should be maintained unremittingly. ”

Speaking of which

Richard habitually used the methods of the superiors, slapped and gave a sweet date, with a smile on his face, and said encouragingly; "The Royal Navy's proposal for new development has been approved, and we will continue to build six new ships on the basis of the Tornado-class, which will be gradually completed in three years.

So

It was expected that by the end of 1866, the Royal Navy would have 12 powerful ironclad cruisers as the main force, which would dominate the entire Americas and meet the needs of the Tang Empire's future maritime expansion. ”

"The ministers will abide by the holy will, and must uphold the purpose of "training elite soldiers and winning battles", and earnestly urge all naval soldiers to unite as one, defy hardships and dangers, and complete the sacred mission entrusted by His Majesty. Marshal Pan Hengchen's answer was unequivocal, and it was really loud.

"Great goodness." Richard nodded approvingly, and said to everyone; "The Army General Staff Headquarters has only been resting for a long time, and has begun to stir up the matter of the expedition to South America again, and the Navy has an unshirkable responsibility for this matter, and I have allowed the Navy to take over a whole field division from the War Department and reorganize it into a marine division to participate in the expedition to South America. The general staff headquarters of the army and navy can contact each other privately to discuss a perfect plan and submit it to the imperial court. ”

"Your Majesty, thank you!"

This suddenly threw out a big pie, which was about to smash the admirals in a daze, and the excited expression was uncontrollable. Everyone knows that opening up territory is the easiest way to establish meritorious deeds.

The fact that the Royal Navy was able to participate in the Argentine expedition was tantamount to taking food from the mouth of the army staff headquarters, which had always been stingy!

Without His Majesty's support, I wouldn't dare to think about it.

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