I don’t know why London was called the Fog City. However, at this time, Fog City was still a complimentary term. It can be understood as praising its industrial development and numerous factories.
However, this heavy fog with the smell of coal is still somewhat irritating to the throat, so this also leads to more people suffering from respiratory diseases in London in winter.
Admiral Fisher, who is in his sixties, is still a little unaccustomed to the smog in London.
As Admiral Fisher, who served as First Minister of Sea Affairs and became the head of the Navy, time was not waiting for me at this time.
Although the British Empire's navy is still at its peak, it has many hidden dangers.
First of all, externally, although the Russian Navy, one of the major dangers, has suffered devastating losses, it does not need to pay too much attention to the Russian Navy. However, the rising stars Germany and the United States are building their own warships, and the British
Since the empire has formulated the two-power standard, it must be implemented.
So starting in 1902, the Edward VII-class battleships, named after King Edward VII, began to be built on a large scale. Currently, the British Empire has built five battleships of this class, and two more have just laid down their keels.
In addition to these two rising stars, Admiral Fisher was even more dissatisfied with the British Empire's backwardness in technology and concepts.
For example, as early as 1892, when he was still a colonel, he called for the British navy to change the current situation of using coal as power fuel and should use new oil fuel. And he also explained in detail the various advantages of oil fuel, but what?
Twenty years have passed, and the British Empire still uses coal as the power fuel for warships. The most is to mix fuel into coal to increase the combustion efficiency.
How can the new Admiral Fisher not be worried about such slow efficiency? Look at the Italian Navy, old battleships are being decommissioned and sold.
Although the warships sold by the Italian Navy were too ruthless and almost disrupted the layout of the British Empire in the Far East, its courage and keen insight into technology and warships were unmatched by the sluggish British Empire Navy.
Among other things, its Turin-class battleship has led the trend of battleships in various countries, not to mention the currently popular Dreadnought, which is a masterpiece that integrates various new technologies.
Not to mention new technologies, the navy's revolutionary equipment for radio communications was invented by Italians and first used on battleships. And so far, Italy's Marconi Telegraph Company is still the most advanced telegraph machine in the world.
Manufacturer, radio instruments used by navies of various countries are basically provided by it.
In addition to the epoch-making masterpiece of radio, the unified firing director of battleships was also first used by the Italians. According to the news he received, as early as the Sino-Japanese War, Italy used the unified firing director to shoot three times the number of Japanese warships.
The above accuracy. The day of shooting
Our fleet is completely defeated, so we have no choice but to admit defeat.
Sometimes he would think that if the Italian navy was not too small, then Italy would definitely be a powerful enemy of the British Empire's navy. However, since last year, the Italians have begun to expand their navy significantly. Perhaps they need to expand their navy in the direction of the Mediterranean.
, also need to think more about it.
However, Fisher was not afraid of such strong external enemies. He was more afraid of the sluggishness within the navy.
You must know that there is a group of people in the military of every country. They have fought for the country all their lives, are highly respected in the military, and influence the military with their words and deeds. However, these people are immersed in their own glorious era and hold the same old beliefs.
concept, scorning many new technologies and new tactics, thinking they are flashy gadgets.
I'm sorry, there are many people like this in the British Empire Navy. 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, fall behind the rest in the research and development of new technologies and warships?
"Admiral, this is a report from the statistics department."
The secretary handed a thick document to the old man in charge of the British Empire's navy.
"Okay, finally I got it."
Fisher took the document and immediately began to read it.
This document is a list of various warships that Fisher asked the Navy Department to conduct statistics. These warships have one characteristic. They were all built before the 1990s and are products that lag behind the times.
Since he is the helmsman of the navy, he must do things that are useful to the British Empire's navy. For example, he served as the Second Sea Lord in 1902.
When he was the Second Sea Lord, he did a very famous thing. That was to break the class barrier between ordinary officers and engineering officers, and achieve the equalization of personnel between the two departments, so that the officers could be more capable.
Get a comprehensive understanding of modern warships.
In the past, the mainstream concept of the British Royal Navy officer corps was that officers who stayed in the dirty engine department all day long were vulgar, uneducated "fools", "sluts", synonymous with "country bumpkins", and those in the ship surface department and the engine department
A horizontal transfer of officers was simply unimaginable for a long time.
This move caused an uproar among a group of naval officers with aristocratic backgrounds. They all criticized Fisher for "wantonly subverting the glorious tradition of the Royal Navy." However, Fisher, who was in control of the power, was not moved at all and acted selectively.
Ignore it.
Although under the control of these powerful and powerful people, Fisher only served as Second Sea Lord for one year before packing up and leaving, but his successor did not restore the "ship surface".
There was an "old system" in which officers in the department and the engineering department had no contact with each other. Therefore, Fisher's personnel reform achieved initial success.
Moreover, after serving as Commander of the Home Fleet in Portsmouth for more than a year, he returned as First Lord of the Sea. This was more like a silent declaration of the failure of those aristocratic officers who were stuck in the rules.
Admiral Fisher, who is now in charge of the power, read through this thick list, and on the last page, he very thoughtfully gave the number of these warships, a total of 154.
And these warships have already been sentenced to death in Admiral Fisher's mind. They will either be sold or sent to the shipyard for dismantling. There is no third way.
The money saved by cutting off these old warships will be used in the construction of new ships.
Take the most popular dreadnoughts as an example. Italy already has one (Dreadnaught) and is preparing to build four (Dante-class), and Germany is preparing to build four (Nassau-class). It is roughly the same as the Italian Dante-class, with two
can be counted in one class), the United States announced that it will build two (Mississippi class, but I heard that this class of battleships
It was a temporary modification, and it also used a three-expansion reciprocating steam engine. Its speed did not even exceed 20 knots, so it was considered a pseudo-dreadnought.) There was no news from the French, let alone Japan and Russia. These two countries had just finished a war.
There was no money to join in this war. You must know that the emergence of dreadnoughts has greatly increased the cost of new warships.
After the advent of the epoch-making Dreadnought, all countries have begun to build this powerful battleship. As the world's number one, the British Empire will certainly not ignore it. Just last month, the British Empire announced that it would build this powerful battleship within the two years of 1905 and 1906.
, building eight Dreadnought-class battleships.
The dreadnought ship called the Bellerophon class was to be built in 1905. The ship had a standard displacement of 19,100 tons, a length of 160.3 meters, a width of 25.2 meters, and a draft of 8.3 meters. It was equipped with five twin 10-door 305mm main guns.
Cannon (adopting 212 layout). It uses 18 mixed-fired water boilers (pure oil-fired boilers have not yet been developed). The main engine is a Parsons direct-drive steam turbine with 2 sets/4 shafts. The maximum power is 28,000 horsepower and the speed is 22 knots.
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Of course, for Admiral Fisher, the importance of the construction of new battleships to the British Empire Navy cannot be overemphasized.
Just when he was about to continue working, he heard a knock on the door.
"What's up?"
"Admiral, we have the latest information from Italy."
The secretary's words made Admiral Felscher feel nervous. After he took office, the intelligence work of the Italian Navy was raised to the same level as that of Germany. Firstly, it was because of the large-scale shipbuilding of the Italians; secondly, Italy
Every time, the development trend of naval warships is accurately grasped. These two aspects alone deserve enough attention.
"Come in quickly."
As General Fisher finished speaking, an intelligence officer led by his secretary came to his desk.
The intelligence officer didn't waste any time and handed over a document directly. "Admiral, this is a new type of warship that we have just discovered that the Italians are planning to build. This is the basic information we understand."
Fisher took the information and started to read it, and his expression became more and more solemn as he read it.
"This is trouble."
What troubles Fisher is that the performance of the battleship in this information is a bit unbelievable. It is equipped with 8 main guns of the same caliber as the new battleship, and the maximum armor is 250 mm. These are not bad. The most confusing thing is
What's more, the ship has a speed of up to 26 knots.
As an old navy man, of course he knows the importance of speed. This means that such a battleship has the speed of a cruiser, the firepower of a battleship, and is not weak in armor. Moreover, the tonnage is limited to just over 20,000 tons. He
I really want to talk to my Italian colleagues about how they achieve this.
Of course, he also saw the threat of a warship. If such a high-speed warship appeared on the British Empire's transportation line, it would be a disaster. A cruiser could catch up but couldn't beat it, and a battleship could catch it but couldn't catch it.
.If a few more countries like this owned such warships, it would be an unspeakably bad thing for the British Empire.
After feeling the troublesomeness of the matter, Felscher immediately spoke to his secretary. "Immediately notify all departments of the Navy to hold a meeting. We need to solve this new big trouble."
