I don't know why London is called the city of fog, but the city of fog is still a commendatory term at this time, which can be understood as a compliment for its industrially developed factories.

However, this kind of coal-smelling fog still irritates the throat somewhat, so this also leads to more people suffering from respiratory diseases in London in winter.

Admiral Fisher, in his sixties, is still a little unaccustomed to the smog in London.

As Admiral Fisher, who served as the first minister of the sea and became the head of the navy, it can be said that the time is not waiting for me.

Although the British Empire Navy is still in full swing, there are many hidden dangers.

First of all, externally, although the Russian Navy, one of the major problems, has been devastated and severely damaged, so that it does not need to pay too much attention to the Russian Navy. But the rising star Germany and the United States are building their own warships aggressively. Since the British Empire has formulated the two-power standard, it must be implemented.

So starting in 1902, the Edward VII-class battleship named after King Edward VII began to be built on a large scale. At present, the British Empire has built five warships of this class, and two more have just laid their keels.

In addition to these two rising stars, Admiral Fisher was even more dissatisfied with the backwardness of the British Empire in technology and concepts.

For example, as early as 1892, when he was a colonel, he called for the British to change the status quo of the navy using coal as a power fuel and to use a new type of oil fuel. And it also details the various advantages of oil fuel, but what?

Twenty years on, the British Empire still uses coal to power its warships. The most is to mix fuel oil into coal to increase the combustion efficiency.

Such a slow efficiency, how can he, the new General Fisher, not be worried. Take a look at the Italian Navy, the retired old warships, and the ones for sale.

Although the warships sold by the Italian Navy were too ruthless and almost disrupted the layout of the British Empire in the Far East, their courage and keen insight into technology and warships were unmatched by the stagnant British Empire Navy.

Among other things, its Turin-class battleship has led the trend of battleships in various countries, not to mention the current hot Dreadnought, which is a collection of various new technologies and is a masterpiece.

Not to mention new technologies, the navy's revolutionary equipment, radio communication, was invented by the Italians and first used on warships. And so far, the Marconi Telegraph Company in Italy is still the most advanced telegraph manufacturer in the world, and the radio equipment used by the navies of various countries is basically provided by it.

In addition to the epoch-making masterpiece of radio, the unified firing director of the battleship was also first used by the Italians. According to the news he got, as early as the Japanese-Ching War period, Italy used the unified shooting director to shoot more than three times the accuracy of Japanese warships. hit day

The fleet was defeated and could only obediently 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 Navy. However, since last year, the Italians have begun to expand their navy aggressively. Perhaps they need to think more about the direction of the Mediterranean Sea.

However, Fisher is not afraid of such a powerful external enemy, he is even more afraid of the stagnation within the navy.

You must know that there are such 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. But these people are immersed in their glorious era, holding old ideas, and scoffing at many new technologies and new tactics, thinking they are flashy gadgets.

I'm sorry, but in the British Empire Navy, Fisher thinks there are many people like this. If it weren't for these old stubborn people with outdated ideas, how could the British Navy, which is in charge of the world's waterways, fall behind in the development of new technologies and warships?

"Admiral, this is the 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 brought it."

Fisher took the document and immediately started to read it.

This document is a list of all kinds of warships that Fisher asked the Ministry of the Navy to make statistics on. These warships all have a characteristic, they were all built before the 1990s, and they are all products that are behind the times.

And since he is at the helm of the navy, he must do something useful to the British Empire Navy. Such as he had previously served as Second Sea Lord in 1902.

When he was Second Sea Lord, he did a very famous thing. That is to break the class barrier between general officers and engineering officers, realize the balance of personnel between these two departments, and enable officers to have a more comprehensive understanding of modern ships.

In the mainstream concept of the British Royal Navy Officer Corps before, the officers who stayed in the dirty engine department all day long were synonymous with vulgar and uneducated "babes", "two-shoes" and "hillies". The level swap of officers was simply unimaginable for a long time.

This move caused an uproar among a group of aristocratic naval officers, who criticized Fisher for "recklessly subverting the glorious tradition of the Royal Navy." Ignore it.

Although behind the scenes of these powerful and "powerful" people, Fisher only served as the Second Sea Lord for one year and then packed up and left, but the successor did not restore the "ship surface". Therefore, Fisher's personnel reform has achieved initial success.

And after more than a year in Portsmouth as Commander of the Home Fleet, his return as First Lord of the Sea was more like a silent announcement of the failure of those conservative noble officers.

Admiral Fisher, who is now in power, read through this thick list, and on the last page, he also gave the number of these warships very intimately, a total of 154 ships.

And these warships have already been sentenced to death in Admiral Fisher's mind. Either they will be sold, or they will be sent to the shipyard for dismantling. There is no third way to go.

The cost saved by cutting down these old warships will be used in the construction of new ships.

Take the most popular dreadnought ship as an example, Italy already has one (Dreadnought) and plans to build four (Dante class), Germany plans to build four (Nassau class, which is roughly the same as the Italian Dante class, two Those can be counted in one class), the United States announced that it will build two ships (Mississippi class, but I heard that this class of warships is temporarily modified, and also uses a triple-expansion reciprocating steam engine, and the speed does not even exceed 20 knots. ). There is no news from the French, so there is no need to talk about Japan and Russia. These two countries have just finished a war, and there is no money to mix it up. We must know that with the emergence of dreadnoughts, the cost of new warships has been greatly increased.

After the advent of the epoch-making dreadnoughts, all countries began to build such powerful battleships one after another. As the world's number one British Empire, of course, it will not ignore it. Just last month, the British Empire announced that it would build eight Dreadnought-class warships within two years of 1905 and 1906.

What will be built in 1905 is a dreadnought ship known as the Bellerophon class. The ship has 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 is equipped with five double-mounted 10-door 305mm main Cannon (using 212 layout). 18 mixed-fired water boilers are used (pure oil-fired boilers have not yet been developed), the main engine is Parsons direct-drive steam turbines with 2 sets/4 shafts, the maximum power is 28,000 horsepower, and the speed is 22 knots.

Of course, for Admiral Fisher, there is not much to say about the importance of the construction of new battleships to the British Empire Navy.

Just as he was about to continue his work, he heard a knock on the door.

"What's up?"

"Admiral, we have the latest information from Italy."

The secretary's words made Admiral Fischer's heart tighten. The intelligence work of the Italian Navy has been raised to the same level as Germany's after he took office. One is because of the large-scale shipbuilding of the Italians, and the other is that Italy always grasps the development trend of naval warships. These two alone deserve enough attention.

"come on in."

Following Admiral Fisher's words, an intelligence officer led by the secretary came to his desk.

The intelligence officer didn't talk nonsense, and handed over a document directly. "Admiral, this is a new type of warship that the Italians are planning to build. This is the basic situation we know."

Fisher took the information and began to read it, and his expression became more and more dignified as he read it~lightnovelpub.net~ This is troublesome. "

What troubled Fisher was because the performance of the battleship in this information was a bit out of date. It was equipped with 8 main guns of the same caliber as the new battleship, and the maximum armor was 250 mm. These were not bad. The most puzzling thing is that the ship has a speed of up to 26 knots.

As an old navy, of course he knows the importance of speed. This means that such a warship has the speed of a cruiser, the firepower of a battleship, and its armor is not too weak. And the tonnage is still limited to a little over 20,000 tons. He would love to talk to his Italian colleagues how they did it.

Of course, he also saw the threat of a warship. If such a high-speed warship appeared on the transportation line of the British Empire, it would be a disaster. Cruisers can't catch up, but battleships can fight but can't catch up. It would be an unspeakable bad thing for the British Empire if a few more such countries possessed such warships.

Feeling the troublesomeness of the matter, Fisher immediately spoke to the secretary. "Immediately notify the various departments of the Navy for a meeting. We need to solve this new big trouble."

Please remember the first domain name of this book: . :