1855 United States Tycoon

It’s very interesting to say that the country that first responded to the German and British shipbuilding plans was not United States, but the lovely South American countries. For example, the cute crying Chinese.

Today, when we talk about the Crying Country, one can probably immediately think of the Weeping Country football with the dwarf tradition, such as the Polo King and the Coal Polo King. Except for football? Maybe I can think of the beef of the Weeping Country. In short, in most people's minds, Argentina is a third world country that plays football very well.

To say that this impression is actually good, modern Argentina can only be regarded as a so-called developing China, but Argentina was also lavish back then. Around 1890, due to the prosperity of the animal husbandry market, Argentina, with its vast and fertile Panzas grassland, began to prosper quickly. In 1890, the per capita GDP of Argentines was only about half that of United States. But ten years later, their per capita GDP surpassed France and Germany. Speaking of per capita income, sometimes it can be quite deceptive. For example, find an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean and establish a country about the size of the Knights of St. John’s Hospital. The citizens include people from Duck Mike from the Disney plane, Smaug from Middle-earth, and the guys from the Long River Gang from the real plane, such as Gangzhu gain weight, Xiangzhu Hongmiao, and Ma Zi bottle. Then the per capita income of this country must be as high as heaven-defying. It is estimated that there is no problem with killing Buffett, Bill Gates, and Li Ka-shing. However, this number as high as heaven-defying has nothing to do with being a baby bottle. At that time, the gap between the rich and the poor in Argentina was smaller than that of the United States in Europe. Such a per capita income was certainly higher than that in Germany and France at that time. So the average Argentine is exceptionally rich. So much so that there was a popular saying at that time, called "we have money like an Argentine".

When your house is poor and clanging and the thief enters at night, you have to say "Don’t scare the thief away, wait for him to find, if we find something valuable, we will take it back", go out. When you just close the door and don’t even hang one of the cheapest marble locks, you will feel at ease. But after you get a little richer and don’t hang a lock on the door, you’ll always have to worry about going out, and if you’re as rich as Smaug, you probably won’t be able to set up a private army guard at the door. Go to bed with peace of mind.

Because of the rapid wealth, Argentina at this time is now at home with money, but still using a wooden door with only a small padlock on the door. In addition, there are a lot of wars in South America. After Paraguay had some money, the Argentines were worried about being beaten up to almost subjugated the country (although there was also an Argentine one in the siege of Paraguay). Therefore, with the rapid economic development, Argentina also began to rapidly strengthen its own military power.

Two years ago, the Argentines bought a warship with a displacement of 20,000 tons and 10 12-inch guns from the United Kingdom. This move instantly made the Argentine Navy the undisputed number one in South America, and made all the warships in the hands of the navies of other countries in South America become vulnerable. In this way, other countries in South America can't stand it. So the Brazilian found United States and ordered the super battleship with a one-week turret from Scrooge.

To be honest, when the Brazilian set that strange performance index, there was no such mess of considerations that Scrooge had said to Tirpitz. The reason why they made such a freak, in fact, the most fundamental requirement is to make this thing look much better than the Argentine warship.

And to make the battleship look great, of course, the first stage needs more guns. So the Brazilians felt that their warships must have more cannons than the Argentines. So at the beginning, McDonald’s people proposed to install three pyramidal turrets on the bow and stern of the ship. In this way, there are 12 cannons, two more cannons than the Argentine warship. But who knows that the Brazilians are still unsatisfied. They feel that just two more guns are not enough, and four more guns are needed.

Since customers have such requirements, Morgan McDonald Shipyard must of course meet customer requirements as much as possible. So the warship with a one-week turret appeared.

Of course, the Argentines were not willing to show weakness, so they found the British again. However, in order to deal with the German shipbuilding plan, the British used all the berths that can be used to build battleships. Of course, there is still more. However, those slipways were not available, because the British had also received orders from the Japanese. Therefore, if the Argentines want to order a new warship in the UK, they must wait two or three years, and wait until the British have built a warship for Japan.

Argentina is naturally unwilling to wait like this, but the battleship is really the flower of high-tech in that era, and there are very few countries in the world that can manufacture this kind of thing. At present, the UK and United States can definitely make it, Germany can make it theoretically, and France and Italy should work hard. But Argentina can't wait for them to work hard slowly. Therefore, after the Argentine turned around, he found United States again, and in United States, only the Morgan McDonald Shipyard can do this business.

Recently, Argentina, which has a good economy, has been generous enough to spend money. In one breath, it placed an order for two battleships. As for the performance requirements, basically one sentence-better than the Brazilian.

For Scrooge, this is a saving, because it means that while designing a warship for the Germans, he can also take out the Argentine plan along the way. In Scrooge's view, it is enough to directly sell one of the two plans for the Germans to Argentina. Such a design plan can be bought twice with a small adjustment.

Of course, a dedicated team is responsible for the specific design plan, and now such a thing basically does not need Scrooge to come and do it himself.

In March 1899, the Morgan McDonald Shipyard's proposal was about to start bidding in Germany. Mr. Morgan's son, John Morgan Jr., and Donald went to Germany as the representative of the Morgan McDonald Shipyard. Now, the descendants of the two families have gradually grown up, and they can be alone.

One thing Morgan admires Scrooge quite a bit now is that the next generation of McDonald’s has more people. Donald and Greystone have grown up, and they also have a growing Little Brother Little Sister. In contrast, Mr. Morgan has only one son. Since the birth of this son, although Mr. Morgan has tried various methods, he has not been able to give birth to a second child. There is only one child, which is too dangerous. Sometimes Morgan would even wonder if one day when he was too old and needed to confess his last words to his son, would he take his son's hand like Henry VIII and tell him: "You remember , We must ask for a mother-in-law who can give birth to a few more sons!"

Generally speaking, for large countries, arms tendering is a matter, unless there is a big gap between their own domestic level and foreign countries, or the type of weapon is not important, otherwise, domestic production is always preferred. It is not so difficult to sell related weapons in a country that has its own production capacity. Because in addition to the good things, there are always a lot of political and economic considerations.

It's like after many years, the British wanted to build a new tank and chose a tank gun for this tank, so Hans Meow took the L-44 120 smoothbore gun for his Meow 2 tank to bid. As a result, although the performance of L-44 is very good, almost everything is better than Niuniu’s own maverick 120 rifled gun, but Niuniu still found an excuse for "not easy to use broken armor" (although it is broken The armor shells are basically useless now), but I still use my own maverick rifled gun.

However, for the McDonald Consortium, it is good to participate in this bidding and win the bid. Even if you do not win the bid, take this opportunity to show off the super battleship designed by yourself. On the one hand, it can increase the company’s reputation and attract Buyers from other countries, on the other hand, can also influence the direction of the entire world's armaments through this display.

When the plan was shown, Morgan McDonald's plan immediately caused a sensation among the Germans. In accordance with the requirements of the Germans, the United States people designed these two warships.

The first is a battlecruiser used for naval attacks. In the design of this warship, the United States people came up with several things that made the Germans shine.

The first is the power system of the ship. Under the premise of meeting the maximum speed of 26 knots, the United States people even claimed that the ship's range is as high as 11,000 nautical miles while cruising at a speed of 14 knots. Unlike the United Kingdom, Germany lacks overseas naval bases. The British have naval bases everywhere in the Atlantic, and there are docks that can provide supplies. Therefore, the requirements of the British navy's warships on the voyage can be relaxed. Anyway, they can't go far. There is a place to add water, fuel, ammunition, and all kinds of fresh fish, meat, and eggs.

In contrast, Germany is very hard pressed. There are only a limited number of ports available in the Atlantic Ocean, and it is easy to be targeted by the British and blocked in them. So I went to the ocean to find a place to refuel and water. I don’t know how difficult it is. As for the fresh fish, meat, and eggs, it’s even a dream. If you can't get out, you have to rely on your own battery life and then return to the German coast to refuel. Therefore, such a long voyage is really attractive to the Germans.

The second thing that makes the Germans shine is the United States claims that they have developed an artillery aiming and command system that can allow artillery to hit Ascension by a large margin at long range. In conjunction with the low-speed heavy bombs they developed for this kind of warship, it is very effective to strike the enemy's fragile horizontal armor.

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