My Italian

Remember [New] for a second,! I don't know why London is called the fog city, but at this time the fog city is still a compliment, which can be understood as praising its many industrially developed factories.

However, this coal-smelling fog 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 60s, is still a little unaccustomed to the smog in London.

As an Admiral Fisher, who served as the first minister of the sea and became the head of the navy, this is not the time for me.

Although the British Imperial Navy is still in full swing, it has many hidden dangers.

The first is externally, although the Russian navy, one of the major problems, has been devastated, so that it does not need to pay much attention to the Russian navy. However, the rising stars Germany and the United States are building their own warships. Since the British Empire has established a two-power standard, it must be implemented.

So from 1902, Edward VII-class battleships, 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 had their keels laid.

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 still a colonel, he called for the British to change the status quo of using coal as a power fuel for the navy, and to use a new type of oil fuel. And it details the various advantages of oil fuels, but what?

Twenty years later, the British Empire still uses coal as a power source for warships. At most, the fuel oil is mixed into the coal to increase the combustion efficiency.

Such a slow efficiency, how can he not worry about the new General Fisher. Look at the Italian Navy, the old warships are decommissioned, sold 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, their courage and keen insight into technology and warships were unmatched by the sinking British Imperial Navy.

If nothing else, its Turin-class battleships have led the trend of battleships in various countries, not to mention the current fiery Dreadnought, which is a masterpiece that integrates various new technologies.

Not to mention new technologies, the revolutionary equipment of the navy, 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 it basically provides the radio equipment used by the navies of various countries.

In addition to the epoch-making masterpiece of radio, the unified firing commander of the battleship was also first used by the Italians. According to the information he got, as early as the Sino-Japanese War, Italy used a unified firing commander to shoot Japanese warships with more than three times the accuracy. fight day

The fleet cannot be defeated, so we can only concede defeat obediently.

Sometimes he would think, if the Italian navy is not too small, then Italy must be a formidable enemy of the British Empire's navy. However, since last year, the Italians have begun to expand their navy aggressively, and they may need to think more about the direction of the Mediterranean.

However, this external strong enemy, Fisher is not afraid, he is more afraid of the dark atmosphere inside the navy.

You must know that there are such a group of people in the military of every country. They have worked hard for the country all their lives. They are highly respected in the military and influence the military with their words and deeds. But these people are all immersed in their glorious era, holding old-fashioned concepts, sneering at many new technologies and new tactics, thinking they are flashy gadgets.

I'm sorry, in the British Imperial Navy, there are many such people in Filscher's opinion. If it weren't for these old stubborn people with outdated ideas, as the British Navy in charge of the world's waterways, how could it have fallen behind others in the research and development of new technologies and warships.

"Admiral, this is the report of the statistics department."

The secretary handed a thick document to the old man in charge of the navy of the British Empire.

"Okay, finally got it."

Filscher took the document and read it immediately.

This document is a list of various warships that Filscher asked the Admiralty to count. These warships all have one characteristic. They were all built before the 1990s, and they are all products of the times.

And since he is at the helm of the navy, he must do something useful to the British Imperial Navy. Such as his previous appointment as Second Sea Lord in 1902.

He did a very famous thing when he was the Second Sea Lord. That is to break down the class gap between general officers and marine officers, to achieve the leveling of personnel between these two departments, and to enable officers to have a more comprehensive understanding of modern ships.

In the previous mainstream concept of the Royal Navy Officers Corps, officers who stayed in the dirty engine department all day long were the pronouns of the vulgar, uneducated "slaughter", "slippery boy" and "hicken". The level reversal of officers was simply unimaginable for a long time.

And this move caused an uproar among a group of aristocratic naval officers, who slammed Fisher for "willfully subverting the glorious tradition of the Royal Navy", but Fisher, who was in power, was unmoved at all, and all selective Ignored.

Although under the operation of these people with great energy and "power to listen to the sky", Fisher left after only one year as Second Sea Secretary, but his successor did not restore the "ship surface". The "old system" that the officers of the department and the engine department do not communicate with each other", so Fisher's personnel reform achieved initial success.

And after being commander of the Home Fleet at Portsmouth for more than a year, he is back as First Lord of the Seas, which is more of a silent announcement of the failure of those aristocratic officers who stick to the rules.

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

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

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

Take the most popular dreadnoughts for example, Italy already has one (Dreadnought) ready to build four (Dante), Germany is ready to build four (Nassau, roughly the same as the Italian Dante, two. can be counted in one class), the United States announced to build two (Mississippi class, but I heard that this class of warships is a temporary change, and also uses a three-expansion reciprocating steam engine, the speed is not even 20 knots, it is a pseudo-dreadnought ship ). No news from the French has come out, not to mention Japan and Russia. These two countries have just fought a war and have no money to mix it up. To know the appearance of dreadnoughts, the cost of new warships has been increased by a lot.

After the advent of the epoch-making dreadnoughts, all countries have begun to build such powerful battleships. As the world's largest 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.

To be built in 1905 is a dreadnought 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 twin-mounted 10-door 305 mm mains Cannon (in 212 layout). There are 18 mixed-fired water boilers (pure oil-fired boilers have not yet been developed), and the main engine is a Parsons-type direct-drive steam turbine with 2 sets/4 shafts, with a maximum power of 28,000 horsepower and a speed of 22 knots.

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

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

"What's up?"

"Admiral, there is the latest information from Italy."

The secretary's words made Admiral Filscher's heart tighten. The intelligence work of the Italian Navy was 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 has always been able to identify the development trend of naval warships. These two alone deserve enough attention.

"come on in."

As the words of Admiral Filscher fell, 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 we just detected that the Italians are going to build~www.NovelMTL.com~ This is the basic situation we know."

Filscher took over the information and read it, and his expression became more and more solemn as he read it.

"This is trouble."

What troubles Filscher is that the performance of the battleship is a little bit against the sky according to this information. 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 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, which means that such a battleship has the speed of a cruiser, the firepower of a battleship, and the armor is not weak. And the tonnage is still limited to a little over 20,000 tons. He would love to talk to his Italian colleagues about 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 catch up. It would be unspeakably bad for the British Empire if more than a few of these countries had such ships.

Feeling the troublesome nature 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."