"Great! This is the most perfect battleship, let the great and unworthy monarchy die! It's a perfect battleship, better than my Prestige! The Royal Navy should be equipped with such a warship! There is such a battleship, and the cruisers and battleships of the Royal Navy can be replaced! While Jericho was judging the Mainz-class armored cruisers in the North Sea, Sir Fischer, commander of the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet, was very excited that he had finally found the ideal armored cruiser!

Fisher was an outlier within the Royal Navy, an energetic, challenge-minded, pioneering and new thinker who was either suppressed or made a career out of the Royal Navy. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info And luckily, Sir Fisher belongs to the latter! And now that he is the commander of the Royal Navy's most powerful squadron, if nothing else, he will be promoted again to lead the Admiralty! And this is undoubtedly an opportunity for him to realize his ambitions!

Fisher didn't like battleships such as monarchy and dignity, he had his own ideas. "I don't think there is anyone in this world who can challenge the battleship formation of the Royal Navy head-on, and even the two naval powers combined cannot take advantage of the Imperial battleship formation! Our battleship formations were more than enough. And what the Imperial Navy lacked was the protection of sea transport lines, the ability to strike at opposing cruisers! ”

"The Royal Navy will face relatively few large-scale fleet battles in the future, on the one hand, because the opponent's strength is not enough, on the other hand, because the battleship formation is relatively dependent on ports and logistics, the only thing that can build a naval military system in the world is the Royal Navy, for other countries, not to mention whether their battleship formation can defeat the Royal Navy, it is a very difficult operation to simply throw it into the distance! Because they lack the support of the base! What is the use of a fleet that cannot compete in the oceans, no matter how strong? ”

"The cruisers that really deserve the attention of the Royal Navy are, although the Royal Navy is strong, but it needs to protect the sea lines of transport on a global scale, and the huge fleet is very limited by the vast sea area! The cruisers of the opposing side can find loopholes, and it must be noted that in order to encircle an attack ship, we often have to use up to several times the number of forces! This time it greatly weakened our superiority in troops, and even had an impact on the entire situation of the war. ”

Fisher had a very complete theory of his views, he carefully analysed history, and was keenly aware of the risks that might exist in the Royal Navy in the light of the wars that had taken place in recent years. When he learned that the first generation of the Mainz armored cruiser was slaughtered in the Far East, he predicted that this new type of cruiser would have a profound impact on naval warfare, and even radically proposed to stop all the cruisers built in Britain now and start building a new type of warship that is capable of rivaling Mainz!

However, the Admiralty at that time did not take Fisher's remarks too seriously, and the old cruisers were still being built, but in order to balance the influence of the German garrison in the Far East, two Centurion-class second-class battleships were deployed to the Far East, and Fisher's Mediterranean Fleet also obtained the successor model of the Centurion-class second-class battleship - the prestige-class second-class battleship, and after obtaining this battleship with a speed of 20 knots, equipped with 4 10-inch guns and a large number of 6-inch guns, the overjoyed Sir Fisher directly took it as his flagship!

It didn't take long for Fisher's prophecy to come true again, and in the US-Japan War that just ended last year, the Japanese fleet sent the huge US-Russian combined fleet to the bottom of the Sulu Sea in only half a day with 4 super armored cruisers ordered from Germany! This formidable presence, which was as fast as a cruiser and had firepower that even exceeded the firepower of a battleship, not only shocked the Americans, but also made the British see the imminent threat! And Fisher once illustrated the threat to the Royal Navy very vividly:

"It's strong, it's agile, he's everywhere, and you can't catch him, and you're always on guard against being bitten by the other side! It's like the old European knights facing the Mongol cavalry! The performance advantage of a single ship has been transformed into a strategic advantage, and the Imperial Navy is not ready to deal with it! ”

"And this nightmare existence is expanding rapidly, the Germans have begun to build new armored cruisers, and Russia has acquired more powerful warships from Germany, I can't help but ask our navy, where are our supercruisers?"

Fisher even privately consulted with his close friend ship designer in his personal capacity, and proposed the idea of designing a more powerful armored cruiser based on the warships of the German Navy. The Germans had 8 10-inch guns on the Mainz-class armored cruisers, and Fisher had 12 in his plans! (There is a more terrible plan in history than this one, which was intended to house 16 234mm guns!) ）

And this time, the performance of the German fleet in the English Channel caused the British to lose a small face, and the British finally began to decide to change their minds under the stimulus of all sides. The British began to use various channels to gather relevant information, and began to send notices to the major shipyards and ship design bureaus in the country.

"The Germans are here for us and it's a great opportunity! We can observe this class of warships for ourselves, and I am now beginning to look forward to the visit of the Germans, the ships of the Royal Navy are behind the times, and we should learn from the forerunners when necessary! Fisher wrote in his diary.

Details of the German visit to Malta were quickly sent to Fisher by telegram, and this time, probably as a gesture of goodwill to ease relations between the two sides, the already small visiting fleet was further reduced, with both battleships excluded and only two armored cruisers visiting. However, this does not affect Fisher's nature, because he is not very interested in those big guys in the first place!

"Your Royal Highness the Prince, this time we have exposed our most elite warship to our opponents, and some design ideas and ideas cannot be hidden at all, and I am afraid that our technological superiority will soon be wiped out." In recent days, Bol, Hipper, and other naval officers have told the prince more than once about their concerns.

"The performance of a battleship is not just external, if you just look at a layout and think you know everything about a battleship, you can only say that you are too superficial." The prince smiled slightly, pointed to the Mainz's twin main guns, and said. This kind of similar thinking has been around for a long time. The idea of relying on the main guns for the main firepower of battleships, and not on medium-caliber rapid-fire guns, to burn the deck appeared 2 years ago. So the warships of various countries began to be equipped with 2 main guns. We are just one step ahead, the British are not fools, they are not blind, sooner or later they will be able to take this step. ”

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