Australian Storm 1876

  Chapter 704 is a different new battleship.

  Office of the Secretary of the Admiralty

"Bo Fang, this trip is too far, and my impression of this Nicholas II is also very vague. I only remember that he is a very proud tall white man, walking like a rooster is ridiculous, I am not at all I don't like him, and I don't want to go."

  Li Siyuan sat on the leather high chair behind the desk, tugged at the sleeve of General He Fang and pleaded, and shook it vigorously.

  If I don’t go, how can I do it?

  Although His Royal Highness is tall, he is still a juvenile love family.

Admiral He Fang deliberately raised his face and said, "His Royal Highness, this trip to Europe is not only an important trip to the royal family, but also very beneficial to your growth. It is the best opportunity to broaden your horizons and increase your knowledge. How can you say If you don’t go, why don’t you go? It’s not feasible."

   "Uncle Fang, please help me. I haven't seen my mother for half a year. It will take more than half a year to go. Whenever I think of not being able to perform filial piety under the knees of my father and queen, I feel sad."

"Don't make trouble, you are not an ignorant kid, you must know the truth of good men's ambitions." Admiral He Fang was entangled by Li Siyuan, and he glanced sternly at Lieutenant Colonel Jason Ardenne and Major Geng Chengen. .

The meaning of    is very clear; what are you two watching and doing, can't you fix the two of you if there is no way to take your Highness?

  Lieutenant Colonel Jason-Adenau and Major Geng Chengen looked at each other, and they could see the helplessness in each other's eyes;

  His Royal Highness is a middle-upper posture. He is still diligent and studious on weekdays, and he can endure hardships, but he is still young, and he has the occasional little temper when he meets the elders.

  Alas, I originally said that it was so good to order a 卯 and leave, but my Highness changed his mind and got entangled again.

  It’s not easy to talk about these royal children. They started teaching English vocabulary at the age of three and enlightened at the age of 5.

The courses studied are mainly based on Confucian classics. The intention is to lay a good foundation in Chinese. At the age of 6, increase etiquette, riding lessons, increase poetry and music at the age of 7, Chinese martial arts, increase English at the age of 8, archery, increase history, mathematics at the age of 9 Add history, geography at the age of 11, add German, European history, European literature...

  At the age of 14 now, in addition to daily service, I have to study more than a dozen homework, even when sailing on the sea. It’s really hard. Attaching to my family is just a normal expression of teenage emotions.

Going to Fusang Country to perform the Weishe sailing mission. It coincided with the hot weather in July. Daytime exposure made the thick iron plate hot on the top. Below is the power cabin and densely packed high-pressure steam pipes to bake. The temperature in the cabin is as high as 40℃. You can only fan the fan to cool down, and the sweat drips from morning to night, and you can imagine the taste.

After all, the Qinglong heavy cruiser is a combat ship, with less consideration for comfort, and the rules of the warship are extremely heavy. Even when sailing, it is not allowed to walk around. This is too difficult for a teenager, and it is a little afraid of difficulty. normal.

  Under the gaze of General He Fang, Lieutenant Colonel Jason Ardenne and Major Geng Chengen coaxed and dragged His Highness away.

   Strangely, after leaving the office door, Crown Prince Li Siyuan immediately habitually straightened his waist, appearing full of heroism, and no longer the previous lazy air.

  These royal children, all of them are good at making superficial articles.

  Admiral He Fang finally dealt with the departure of this little ancestor, and the office was quiet again. He sat down and opened the drawer, took out the memorial that had written half of his crimes, and continued to think about it.

  Long Yan's anger is not a joke. Since the entire cabinet was reprimanded by His Majesty, he has ordered a deep reflection, and everyone must write a memorial with sufficient depth, but it really baffled a large group of court officials.

  Where is really full of resentment towards the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kestner. If you, an old man, are incapable, give up your position to others and stop hurting us, okay?

  This memorial to guilty is very particular. I definitely can’t say that it’s corrupting the law or using power for personal gain. Doesn’t that mean seeking death by yourself?

  But it must be deep enough, if it is rejected and rewritten again, that would really be a loss for adults.

  Admiral He Fang is worthy of being a talented scholar, and after a long while, the memorial of swaying and asking for crimes has been written.

  Its main focus is that the implementation of naval construction is not firm enough and not persistent enough. If this affects the country’s major plans, it will be impossible to redeem it.

  At the same time, Admiral He Fang also carried private goods to play the country's heaviest weapon-the steam armored battleship should imitate the precedent of the Italian nation, not to pursue the construction of a large-scale battle fleet, but to pursue the performance advantage of a single ship.

Because in the foreseeable future, the Ocean Kingdom will not build a first-class steam armored battleship on a large scale, so it is necessary to build a ship that has a deterrent and influence far beyond that of a ship, in order to maximize the benefits of the kingdom. .

  A steam iron-clad battleship of the Ocean Kingdom set sail. Because a single battleship is powerful, a battleship of other countries (meaning Britain, France, and the United States) cannot deal with it. It pursues quality but cannot pursue quantity.

  Of course, the bizarre requirement that Italian battleships carry tens of thousands of army troops across the Mediterranean will not appear in the design of Ocean Kingdom battleships.

  This will also bring high construction costs, but after the navy receives high war indemnities, it has the confidence to develop such an expensive battleship.

  Preliminary planning is that the second two Metropolis-class battleships, the "Songjiang" and the "Melbourne", will be built with a displacement of more than 16,000 tons, equipped with one front and one rear, two twin-mounted 343 mm main guns, a total of four.

  Equipped with four double-mounted 234mm secondary main guns, a total of ten guns.

   is equipped with ten 152mm rapid-fire guns. Such a firepower configuration can form dense firepower. The 234mm secondary gun can effectively compensate for the low rate of fire of the 343mm large-caliber gun and form a powerful firepower coverage.

   To put it bluntly, this is a fire monster.

  The type of ship planned by Admiral He Fang, in fact, far exceeds the combat power of the "Red River Valley" class battleship, and the displacement has also been enlarged from 13,000 tons to 16,500 tons, which is far more powerful than the latter.

  The new battleship adopts a two-axle two-blade structure, three-expansion vertical boiler, a rated power of 18,800 horses, and a speed of 19 knots.

  If the above design targets are achieved, it will become the backbone of the Ocean Kingdom’s navy battleship, dominating the East Asia region from the west coast of the United States to the western Pacific, unmatched in the entire Pacific surrounding countries.

The construction of the two "Songjiang" and "Melbourne" has been completed, and the addition of two "Beilun" and "Tianquan" in the later period will enable 6 powerful battleships to be in service, enough to maintain Oceanic Kingdom's maritime military supremacy in the Pacific for 10 years .

  Realistically speaking

  Ocean Kingdom can be said to be a maritime military power in the Pacific region, but this is only a general among the dwarves. It is not easy to reach the Atlantic Ocean where monsters gather.

  Take the United Kingdom as an example;

Battleships that have been in service for less than 10 years include Sovereign-class battleships, Centurion-class battleships, Prestige-class battleships, Majesty-class battleships, and old-star battleships under construction. If you add the old ships that are still in service. The artillery battleship, the total number reached a staggering 52.

  The old star battleship plans to build 8 ships, and the subsequent Awesome-class battleships and Duncan-class battleships have also entered the project review stage, and the first class of new ships will be 8 ships.

  This is simply incomparable, it's too bullying.

Although the world’s naval powers such as France and Germany are not as wealthy as the United Kingdom, they have also put forward their own ambitious shipbuilding plans, which are far beyond the reach of Oceanic Kingdoms.

  So, Ocean Kingdom can only pursue quality.

The steam armored battleship has developed to this day. The first-class battleships of European and American countries basically have a displacement of between 11,000 tons and 13,000 tons, with 4 to 6 main guns, ranging from 343 mm to 305 mm in diameter, and there are also 281 weaker ones. The caliber of the main gun in millimeters.

The speed of    is basically between 14 and 16 knots, and the defense thickness of the main armor belt is between 285 mm and 450 mm.

from this angle

  Admiral He Fang’s new battleship construction plan has a high design index, far surpassing its peers, and it is also among the top navies in the world.

  In fact, naval construction is a very forward-looking planning project. It must have a certain cutting-edge vision, otherwise, in today's rapid technological development, the built warships will fall behind.

  Take the Russian Navy as an example;

  After uniting France and Germany to intervene forcefully and forcing Japan to withdraw from the three northeastern provinces, Tsarist Russia clearly realized that a head-to-head battle with Fuso in East Asia seemed inevitable.

  If you don’t remove this stinky and hard stone, you will not be able to occupy the rich three provinces of Northeast China and expand its power to the Jiaodong Peninsula. The "Yellow Russia Plan" will inevitably come to naught.

  Not only did the Tsarist Army begin active war preparations, specifically to accelerate the advancement of the Siberian Railway, but the Tsarist Navy also took specific actions, that is, actively participating in the arms race and using foreign shipyards to build warships.

  The cutting-edge "Shikishima" class battleship built by the Fuso Kingdom in the United Kingdom has an astonishing displacement of 14,650-14,850 tons. According to the amazing shipbuilding capabilities of the British shipyard, such a huge ship was launched in 4 to 5 months.

In other words, the Fuso "Shikishima"-class battleship and its follow-up plan for the Sixth and Sixth Fleet will be able to take shape and form combat effectiveness within 3 to 5 years. The speed is very fast, which will seriously threaten the safety of Vladivostok, an important port in the Russian Far East. , Tsarist Russia would never accept it.

  The shipyard of Tsarist Russia on the coast of the Black Sea is full of naval warships under construction. In addition to battleships, there are more than 30 cruisers and more destroyers planned, and it is simply unable to build a capital ship for the Far East.

   Therefore, it is imperative to turn to foreign shipyards. Tsarist Russia considers only two goals, one is the Ocean Kingdom and the other is the United States.

  The Naval Technical Committee (The NavalTechnicalCommittee, MTK for short) has done part of the basic work. First of all, from the winter of 1896 to the spring of 1897, a foreign shipyard was determined, and it was proposed to increase the displacement of the new battleship to 15,000 tons and the speed to 18 knots in order to fight against the new battleships of Fuso.

To put it bluntly, with the drastic improvement in ship power technology, the trend of building larger and larger steam armored battleships in the future is inevitable. The world’s naval powers are aiming at the development of battleships between 15,000 tons and 16,000 tons. There are no technical obstacles. The main reason is whether there is a need to spend huge amounts of money on development.

  The United Kingdom does not have it for the time being, but the Ocean Kingdom definitely has it, because the Fusang Kingdom around him is catching up, and the Tsarist Kingdom has not given way. The United States is also developing a large steam battle fleet, and the situation will be different every year.

   Resting on self-proclaim means falling behind, which is a very dangerous signal.

  (End of this chapter)