In late March, two Orr cruisers were bitten by the cruiser fleet of the Krul Kingdom Navy. After running for several days, they were unable to escape. Finally, after the coal was exhausted, they were forced to flee into the neutral Kingdom of Lieji.
The Kingdom of Lieji smiled and detained the two Luohai-class dome-armored cruisers in accordance with international common practice, and repatriated the crews of the above two ships.
Immediately afterwards, another Orr cruiser was surrounded, annihilated and sunk.
At this time, although the Orr Kingdom Navy still has two diplomatic cruisers overseas, it is estimated that they will not be able to sustain it alone for too long.
Facts have proved that using ordinary cruisers as break-up ships has low sustained combat capability and survivability.
Especially in the absence of overseas supply bases, it is difficult to continue to conduct break-up operations. Even if the Orr Kingdom's break-up ships are supplied by supply ships secretly provided by the Daheng Empire, it is difficult to obtain supplies.
The Orr Kingdom's navy achieved certain results in breaking diplomatic relations, sinking tens of thousands of tons of Krul Kingdom merchant ships, but the effect was still very limited.
This also attracted the attention of the navies of various countries. They realized that the engagement-breaking operation was effective, but specialized engagement-breaking ships were needed.
Breakthrough ships need higher speed, greater range and self-sustainability.
At the same time, this is also because the major naval powers pay great attention to the anti-trafficking operations. How to protect sea routes, protect merchant ships, block and encircle the enemy's sabotaging ships during wartime has become an important issue for all major naval powers.
Topic.
Whether it is the Navy of the Kingdom of Krul, the Navy of the Varia Empire, or even the Navy of the Daheng Empire, they have conducted in-depth research on the topic of breaking and countering the breaking of diplomatic relations.
Other countries don't know, but the conclusion drawn by the Daheng Empire is that the best way to counter-break diplomatic relations is to use the new Fengyang-class armored cruiser, which has high speed, comprehensive protection, and strong firepower. It can also serve as an ocean-going battleship.
The endurance is very good. This kind of ocean-going armored cruiser can not only serve as an avant-garde reconnaissance battleship and a high-speed formation battleship, but is also very suitable for encircling and suppressing enemy countries' break-up ships.
On the other hand, if this kind of armored cruiser can increase its endurance, it will also be extremely suitable as an engagement-breaking battleship.
They discovered that the armored cruiser had the potential to become an all-rounder.
However, in order to meet the diversity of missions, the tonnage of armored cruisers is getting larger and larger, and the price is also getting more and more expensive!
This is also a reality of naval development, that is, cruisers are becoming larger!
The armored cruisers of the Daheng Empire Navy are actually still classified as first-class cruisers. The displacement of its Fengyang-class armored cruisers has reached more than 10,000 tons, which is larger than the first-class battleships of other countries.
The first-class cruisers of other countries are actually similar. The armored cruisers of many countries have a tonnage of eight to nine thousand tons. The large number of first-class protected cruisers of the Kingdom of Krul are also big ones of seven to eight thousand tons.
The Orr War is still going on, but navies around the world have successively launched new naval construction!
Let's not talk about other countries, but let's talk about the Kingdom of Krul. A series of problems of their high-level naval team in the Orr War, especially the Battle of Ian and the problems exposed in the anti-diplomatic operations were analyzed in detail.
In the end, they came to several conclusions, and the conclusions they came to were surprisingly similar to the conclusions drawn by the Daheng Empire Navy after last summer's exercise!
First of all, the core conclusion is: close blockade no longer meets the needs of modern warfare!
The presence of shore defense artillery and torpedo boats, difficulties in supplying the blockade fleet, and insufficient self-sustainability all make close-range blockade increasingly unrealistic and will put the fleet in a huge crisis.
The future blockade should be based on long-distance blockade, just like what they are doing now in the Orr War, using a large number of cruisers and other small and medium-sized warships to carry out surveillance. After the enemy fleet goes to sea, the main fleet will be dispatched to carry out encirclement and suppression. In the naval battle
Destroy the opponent.
Based on this change in core theory, they came to several key conclusions. The first point is that low-freeboard warships can no longer meet the needs of war.
As for the open-air forts, although they are exposed to greater risks when confronting shore defense firepower, since they are no longer performing close-range blockade missions, there is no need to worry about facing condescending shore defense firepower. At the same time, the current technology is still
If an immature battleship with turrets will cause the center of gravity to be too high, open-air turrets are still the best choice.
This conclusion is the same as that of the Daheng Empire Navy. The Jingzhou-class battleship still uses open-air turrets based on the same considerations: it no longer performs close-range blockade missions, and all aspects of technology are not mature enough. Using turrets will cause the center of gravity to be too high.
The conclusion of high freeboard and open-air turret directly gave birth to the Jingzhou-class battleship.
Now the navy of the Kingdom of Krul is walking on the same path. They are determined to build a high-freeboard battleship.
In addition, the Krull Kingdom Navy also came to the conclusion that the existing small and medium-caliber naval guns have seriously insufficient firepower and cannot effectively fight against small and flexible high-speed torpedo boats.
In order to deal with those torpedo boats, the Krul Kingdom Navy needs more professional torpedo boat destroyers and small and medium-caliber naval guns with a higher rate of fire.
But there are no rapid-fire cannons in the Krul Kingdom's navy.
It is also impossible for them to study rapid-firing tube retractors many years in advance like the Daheng Empire and to apply them on the Jingzhou-class battleships.
They still need to re-research and develop, but they also have the technical basis of the Cole gun mount. The Cole gun mount is a gun mount that uses hydraulic retraction and gravity retraction. However, the gun barrel is still linked to the upper gunboat, and the artillery is retracted and retracted.
When entering, the gun barrel is connected to the gun carriage and moves back and forth together.
The Krul Kingdom Navy has given their Royal Arsenal a research and development order to improve the gun mount to increase the rate of fire. As for when the rapid-fire cannon will be available, it is unknown.
At least so far, they have no reference. Although the Daheng Empire has a rapid-fire cannon, it is still a top-secret project, and it has not been officially installed on the ship. Only a small amount has been tested. The outside world does not know that the Daheng Empire already has it.
Fire the rapid-firing cannon.
Except for rapid-fire guns, torpedo boat destroyers are relatively simple.
They are preparing to design and build more professional torpedo boat destroyers, requiring powerful artillery and higher speeds to drive away enemy torpedo boats and protect their own battleships.
At the same time, large lightning strike ships need to be able to move together with the main fleet and launch lightning strikes against enemy fleets, which requires ocean-going performance.
The warship design department of the Krull Kingdom Navy combined the two requirements into one, and finally proposed the concept of a torpedo boat destroyer.
This torpedo boat destroyer concept is completely consistent with the destroyer concept in the Daheng Empire Navy!