readx; The signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in October 1922 had a huge impact on the development of the world's navies, and the treaty set a limit of 35,000 tons on the tonnage of capital ships and a 16-inch caliber limit on the guns of capital ships. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

The cap of 35,000 tons on capital ships made China's battleships Yandi, Huangdi battleship, Kaga battleship, Amagi battlecruiser, and American battleship South Dakota the only battleships with more than 35,000 tons and 16-inch guns. As the boss of the empire, Britain will naturally not allow this kind of thing to happen, but the British advocate and support the establishment of a naval limitation treaty, so there is no way to limit the 35,000 tons of the British, but they require that they can continue to build two capital ships to fight against the new battleships of various countries, so according to the provisions of the treaty, Britain can start construction of two capital ships immediately after the treaty is signed, and the tonnage limit of a single ship is 40,000 tons.

Once these two battleships are completed, Britain will have battleships that can compete with the cutting-edge battleships of China, the United States, and other countries.

Although Britain became the only country that could build two 40,000-ton capital ships immediately after the signing of the treaty because of the influence of the British Empire, it can also be proved that Britain's national strength has been severely hit by the European war, otherwise according to Britain's consistent shipbuilding plan, Britain's new battleships would have been built in four or four during the war. The shrinking power of the country made it impossible for Britain to continue the policy of two powers, and even prevented Britain from building more battleships, which is the fundamental reason why Britain pushed for a treaty of naval limitation.

It was also because of the weakening of Britain's national strength that the British wished that other countries could not even build sampans, so that he did not have to build them himself, so he made an upper limit of 10,000 tons and eight-inch guns for the cruisers, and refused to admit that China's Huatai-class heavy cruisers and the Shiguang-class heavy cruisers under construction were auxiliary ships, and forcibly included these two classes of ships in the scope of capital ships, in order to restrict China from continuing to build cruisers with more than 15,000 tons of firepower and protection quite balanced. They were even more afraid that the Americans would follow suit, and that it would turn into an arms race between heavy cruisers, so the British simply set a limit of 10,000 tons of tonnage and 8 inches of naval guns in accordance with the standards of China's previous two 10,000-ton heavy cruisers and the Guying-class first-class cruiser that was already under construction.

It is precisely because of these restrictive standards that the treaty heavy cruiser will appear, which is impractical and expensive, and also made China's two Huatai-class heavy cruisers and two Shiguang-class heavy cruisers the only four heavy cruisers with balanced firepower and protection during the treaty period. In other words, if China's four heavy cruisers go head-to-head with the 10,000-ton heavy cruisers of Britain and the United States in the next few years, the eight-inch guns on the Chinese heavy cruisers and the five-inch secondary guns can easily cause fatal damage to the other side, while the opponent's eight-inch naval guns cannot inflict a fatal blow on these four heavy cruisers, and the 15,000-ton heavy cruiser designed according to the balance design of protecting its own main guns is not the kind of treaty heavy cruiser with only 10,000 tons.

Of course, this is also related to the different positioning of the use of heavy cruisers in various countries, saying that "the positioning of heavy cruisers is the flagship of the lightning fleet, and it is used to lead the lightning cruisers and lightning destroyers to carry out lightning operations, and the British thin-skinned heavy cruisers are purely used to patrol the colonies and protect the route." The heavy cruisers of the United States were limited by the fact that there were no more battle cruisers, and the offensive and initiative advocated by the US Navy, so they preferred firepower, and the firepower of ten eight-inch guns was one more than that of the four balanced heavy cruisers of China, and more than the six eight-inch main guns of the lightning heavy cruisers.

As for the positioning of China's heavy cruisers, it was also slowly changed, and at the beginning it was used as the main ship of the high-speed cruiser fleet, in other words, it was built to attack the sea lines of communication, so in the 1913 years, 29 such high-speed ships were built, and the firepower was only six naval guns.

With the development of the Chinese Navy, especially after the implementation of the second phase of the naval plan, aircraft carriers and battleships became the main force of the Chinese Navy, and the positioning of heavy cruisers began to change to the main force of the Guard Fleet, providing reconnaissance for the main fleet and serving as the main force of artillery warfare on the secondary front. Therefore, at this time, in addition to increasing firepower, the protection was also improved, and although the speed was relatively increased, it was only 32 knots, which was far less than the speed of 34.5 knots of the Furuhawk-class heavy cruiser under construction.

In the third phase of the naval development plan, the positioning of the heavy cruiser is still the main reconnaissance ship of the avant-garde fleet, and provides anti-aircraft fire for battleships and aircraft carriers, so the Shiguang-class heavy cruiser still maintains nine eight-inch main guns, and the protection is almost the same as the previous Huatai-class heavy cruiser, but more anti-aircraft firepower is used, and more importantly, the progress of power system technology around the world in recent years, the power unit has further increased the power, so that the speed reaches 34 knots. The reason for such a high speed is that China's two aircraft carriers that have just been commissioned and the two aircraft carriers under construction have a speed of more than 30 knots, and the new heavy cruisers used as the fleet's escort force and the avant-garde fleet must also have a higher speed than the aircraft carriers, otherwise how can we provide avant-garde reconnaissance for the aircraft carriers.

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It's just that China can't continue to build this kind of balanced heavy cruiser according to the treaty, so the Chinese Navy is worried about how to build the next generation of heavy cruisers.

In addition, due to the development of aircraft, the Chinese Navy has also equipped battleships and heavy cruisers and even light cruisers of more than 5,000 tons with seaplanes to improve their own aerial reconnaissance capabilities.

"Now the age of the Xingshang and Xingnan ships has been more than eight years, although the maintenance has been quite good in recent years, but due to the frequent use, the condition of each system is not very optimistic, and the construction of replacement ships must be put on the road!" Cheng Biguang is discussing with Sa Zhenbing the development of the future navy.

Sa Zhenbing also nodded: "A few years ago, we had few capital ships, and we could only use the Xingshang and Xingnan for training or other tasks. These two ships can be regarded as making great contributions to the revival of our navy! ”

After saying this, Sa Zhenbing pondered for a while and said: "As for the replacement ship plan of these two ships, it still needs to be carefully considered, now the third phase of the development plan has been interrupted, the two Yaodi-class battleships are gone, and more than 10,000 tons of warships cannot be built in the future, how the navy will develop in the future We still need a detailed plan, but just go to the president to build a ship, he will not approve it, and I don't have the face to mention it!" ”

The signing of the Washington Naval Treaty not only brought to naught the British and US Navy's plans for giant ships and cannons, but also interrupted the third phase of the Chinese Navy's development plan, and the 446th Fleet plan that the Chinese Navy was clamoring for by Sa Zhenbing and Cheng Biguang had already come to naught before it could be implemented. Some of the admirals in China called the 446th Fleet when compared with the 88th Fleet, but in fact, before the signing of the treaty, the 18th Fleet was no longer clamoring for the 88th Fleet, that is, 10 battleships and 8 battle cruisers that had been under 8 years old. However, after China's 446th Fleet plan fell through, the 18th Fleet of the Eighteenth Fleet also came to naught, and now it is the 95th Fleet, which has nine battleships above the level of dreadnought and above and five battle cruisers.

This 446 plan is the ambition of the Chinese Navy, and the two new heavy cruisers and two aircraft carriers in the plan are already under construction, but in the eyes of Sa Zhenbing and others, the two most important battleships have been forced to stop work, which makes the 446 fleet plan proposed by the Chinese Navy directly fail.

"In this case, I will discuss the design plan of the heavy cruiser after the treaty with the Secretary of the Ship, and then revise the original content of the third phase of the plan!" Cheng Biguang said.

Sa Zhenbing nodded: "Well, you are in charge of this plan, you have done well in the past few years, and I am also old, the hope of the Chinese Navy will be those young people sooner or later!" ”

Cheng Biguang was slightly stunned when he heard this, Sa Zhenbing is actually only sixty-three years old this year, this age is not too old for military and political bigwigs, it can even be said to be a normal age, whether it is in the army or politics, if there is no special opportunity, it is normal to climb all the way up, and it is normal to be in his sixties when he climbs to the position of admiral and chief of the navy. In fact, he Cheng Biguang is not much younger than Sa Zhenbing this year, he Cheng Biguang is also sixty-one this year, only two years younger than Sa Zhenbing.

Under normal circumstances, if these two people do not change much in physical condition, and are not in such bad health as Anwarin that they cannot handle government affairs, then they can still continue to work for another ten years. In the past few years, although there have been high-level resignations and retreats into the background in Nanjing's republican political axe, most of them are due to physical reasons. Anwarin, who started with Chen Jingyun, was already fifty-six years old when he rebelled in Fuzhou, and then Anwarin followed Chen Jingyun through the most brilliant decade of his life, not only serving as the powerful Minister of Finance for many years, but also further sitting on the position of President of the Government Council after 1915. And this position is already the highest position that a minister can climb in the era of the emperor or the current era when Chen Jingyun is a scholar, and one step further is Chen Jingyun's position. In the past few years, Anwarin's idea that he did not sit in the position under Chen Jingyun's ass is deceptive, but he has no hope in the end, the president of the Government Council has not finished his work, he has been hospitalized for several consecutive strokes, and by 1919, he had completely put down the regular work of the Government Council. When the second president chose to change the term in 1920, Anwarin also had no intention of competing and took the initiative to resign as president of the Government Council, and Chen Jingyun pushed him to retire.

There are many people like Anwarin in the middle [***] political leadership, and the national army system is young, but that refers to 1913, and mainly refers to the military, not to the political axe. In fact, the vast majority of people in the political axe are old bureaucrats over forty-five years old, and there are not many officials in high positions in their thirties like Xiang Ma Yinchu, and the other Anwarin, Hong Zitai, and even Zheng Zuyin are all sixty or seventy years old today, and these people can be regarded as the founding heroes, so although they are old, they still occupy positions one by one. And a large number of forty or fifty-year-old officials who have slowly risen from the middle level in the past ten years are still staying in the provincial capital or serving as directors and directors in the academy and department, if these old men who founded the country do not retreat, this group of forty or fifty-year-old officials in the prime of life is estimated to have to continue to wait for more than ten years to climb up, and when they climb up, they are all sixty or seventy, and if they are in power for two or ten years, it will be seventy or eighty. However, it is better to be able to come up at the age of 50 or so, and then retire before the age of 65 to 70 for more than ten years, so as to form a stable and sound system of power replacement.

The same situation also exists in the military, the army is much better, most of them are still very young, but the situation in the navy is much worse, a large number of admirals are in their sixties, and there are only a handful of rear admirals in the Chinese navy who are under the age of 50, most of them are over 50, and all those with the rank of lieutenant general are over 60 years old, except for Yu Wentao.

The problem of the aging of the military and political top ranks has slowly emerged, and for Chen Jingyun, the old man said that age is not the focus of the problem, the focus of the problem is: most of these old people have followed him all the way, and they have been in high positions for more than ten years, such as Sa Zhenbing, the chief of the navy, has been in office for ten years, and it is time to retire.