readx; As soon as the news spread that China had ordered up to 14 warships, including two former dreadnought battleships, it caused an uproar. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

On 2 April, after confirming that this news was not an April Fool's joke, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately made a strong reaction, saying: "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately lodged the most severe protest with the United States, accusing the United States of selling warships to China as a serious threat to the peace and stability of the Far East, and as the only civilized country in the Far East, it is responsible for maintaining the peace and stability of the Far East, so it demands that the United States immediately cancel this arms purchase."

Zhu Erdian, as always, stressed the important role of Britain in the Far East, and repeatedly stressed that Britain hopes that peace and stability will remain in the Far East and that China and the United States and Britain will work together for peace in the Far East. This speech is to brush up on the sense of existence at the same time, warning China and the United States that the three countries are honest, boss, I am watching from above, don't come out to make trouble if you have nothing to do.

However, behind this warning is Britain's powerlessness against the situation in the Far East, and with the further tension in Europe, Austria-Hungary, Germany, France, and Russia are now preparing for a full-scale war, and Britain has already put all its energy on the situation in Europe, and Britain has not had much energy to care about changes in the Far East except for verbal warnings.

As for countries like Germany and France, they are now preparing for war, and they will not react to China's purchase of two obsolete former dreadnoughts.

Britain only verbally objected, but did not take actual action, and said, "Ben expressed a strong protest, not only to the United States, but also to the Nanjing Republic of the Axe and Yanjing Beiyang Political Axe have sent a diplomatic protest letter, the United States and the Nanjing Republic of the Axe received a protest letter is good to say, but Yanjing's Beiyang Political Axe received this diplomatic protest is more funny, now everyone knows that the Chinese Navy is on the side of the Nanjing Republican Axe, although there is a Navy Department in the Beiyang Political Axe, but now there are only a few old-fashioned gunboats, Besides, no matter how the Beiyang political axe is, it can't control the Nanjing Republican political axe.

With the Nationalist Army's march into Shandong, Duan Qirui's original plan to rely on Jinan, Shandong for defensive operations was also declared bankrupt, because he found that only his own descendants, the 11th and 16th Divisions could not stop the menacing Nationalist Army, and the other Beiyang Army had already fled to the north.

Seeing that the Nationalist Army is about to march into Zhili, Beiyang Political Axe has the kung fu to take care of the affairs of the navy, and they are all planning for their personal future, and there are many people who have left the Tianjin Concession, and there are also people who plan to defect to the Nationalist Army.

This is not because the navy does not have the ability, but because it cannot support a large-scale war, let alone provoke the United States, what it will need to face at that time is not the two former dreadnought battleships, but the new battleships of the United States.

China and the United States have already met and will be met with diplomatic protests from Ben and Britain, otherwise they would not have kept it secret at the beginning, and did not publicly announce the news until the ship was delivered to China, and anyway, the ship would not have been able to hide it after it arrived in China.

So the two sides successfully completed the handover, and in order to accept the two battleships that were originally expected by the Chinese Admiralty, the First Battlefleet of the Chinese Navy was specially established by the First Fleet of the Chinese Navy, and two former dreadnought battleships newly named Yanhuang and Huaxia were incorporated into it.

Originally, a large group of naval generals supported the use of the names of the two previous ironclad ships of the Beiyang Naval Division, that is, the Zhenyuan Ship and the Dingyuan Ship, with the intention of not forgetting the shame of the First Sino-Japanese War. However, Chen Jingyun felt that these two names were too unlucky, and it was better to say that he was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War, and even the Zhenyuan ship was taken prisoner by himself, and he was only retired and dismantled from the navy two years ago, and now there are iron anchors and chains on display in Ueno Park in Tokyo. Chen Jingyun is not superstitious, but he always feels strange to use these two names to name the two former intrepid ships that he just bought with scrap iron prices, as if he is just to tell him: "Hurry up and have another Sino-Japanese War, and take these two ships back to prisoners."

Therefore, Chen Jingyun sternly rejected the names Zhenyuan and Dingyuan proposed by those admirals who were obsessed with the First Sino-Japanese Naval War, and then directly drafted two ship names, that is, Huaxia and Yanhuang. It uses the meaning of the people of China and the blood of Yanhuang.

Although the workload of delivering 14 warships at one time was extremely heavy, the Chinese Navy has already sent a large number of naval officers to the United States since the contract for the purchase of ships was signed; on the one hand, it is to study the navy, and on the other hand, it is also to familiarize itself with the surnames of the warships as soon as possible.

In addition to the officers, the Admiralty of ordinary sailors also began to recruit and train soldiers two years ago, and used the existing warships to train a large number of crews, and today, two years later, the Chinese Admiralty has prepared enough sailors and officers for this batch of warships.

Huang Pinghan was one of the many naval officers who accepted warships, and this person was already loyal to Chen Jingyun along with Yu Wentao when Chen Jingyun rebelled in Fuzhou, and was one of the captains of the three gunboats of the early Fuzhou fleet. He was then promoted to the rank of colonel and was expected to serve as the first captain of the heavy cruiser USS Xingshang a year earlier, after which Huang Pinghan was promoted to colonel and was expected to serve as the first captain of the heavy cruiser Xingshang.

However, due to temporary changes, it took only a few days for China and the United States to reach an agreement on the transfer of two former dreadnoughts, so Huang Pinghan was temporarily ordered to accept one of the dreadnoughts, the 'Yan Huang'. Although the American served as the captain of the ship before the official handover, he also accompanied the whole process and gained extremely valuable experience in commanding battleships from the American captain. When China and the United States officially handed over the battleship on 30 March, Colonel Huang Pinghan was appointed as the first captain of the Yanhuang battleship.

Standing in Cambridge, Huang Pinghan looked at the two huge twelve-inch gun barrels in the bow of the ship, and his heart was a little complicated, after a full twenty years, China finally once again had a battleship with more than 300 mm guns, although this was bought, although this battleship was outdated compared with the latest warships of other countries, but the shock brought by this giant cannon was incomparable to other warships, which was also the reason why Huang Pinghan did not hesitate to give up the position of captain of the Xingshang and became the captain of the Yanhuang, although the Xingshang was fast, The 55 times the power of the eight-inch guns equipped on it is not weak, and if a war really breaks out, the combat effectiveness of the two heavy cruisers will even exceed the combat effectiveness of the two former dreadnoughts. But the shock of these four twelve-inch naval guns was incomparable to that of the Xingshang, and as a lover of giant guns, he preferred to choose to be the captain of the Yanhuang.

Compared with Huang Pinghan's satisfaction with the Yanhuang, Cheng Biguang, as the commander of the First Fleet, had only returned to this batch of American-made warships for two days, and after reviewing these warships with Sa Zhenbing, he hurried back to Nanjing!

Then as soon as he returned to Nanjing, he threw out a five-year fleet development plan for Chen Jingyun!

In the face of the five-year development plan that ran out, Chen Jingyun threw it directly into the trash can without even looking at it, because he didn't need to read the content to know what to say, and there were a lot of other contents, but the key core was one point, that is, the funds for building ships, and they were all the kind of lions with big mouths, and they often had to order a few battleships, how many cruisers, and how many destroyers they had to order. I know on my toes that the Treasury can't come up with that much money.

In 1914, the Admiralty's military expenditure was as high as 6.5 million yuan, more than double last year's 3 million, and this did not include the shipbuilding plans for 1914 and 1915, which were of course not the large-scale plans put forward by the Admiralty, but only the plan to build two 1,000-ton destroyers on its own. At the same time as the American-made warships returned to China, a 400-ton destroyer built by the Jiangnan Shipyard for more than a year has been launched and put into service, this destroyer is a domestic version of the German-made destroyer, although the surname can be slightly different but not big, so it is the same level as the other five destroyers that returned to China last year, and it is classified into the first destroyer group, replacing the original Flying Eagle, and the Flying Eagle is incorporated into the Third Fleet to become a training ship.

With the successful construction of this small destroyer, Chen Jingyun plans to place new orders for Jiangnan Shipyard and Mawei Shipyard without mentioning it from the Admiralty, so that the two shipyards can continue to improve their technical capabilities. To this end, Chen Jingyun had already arranged a special fund of 3 million yuan for building ships in 1914, and next year, that is, in 1915, another 2 million yuan of special funds were prepared, and it was expected to build two 1,000-ton destroyers.

Due to the expansion of the size of the fleet, the total tonnage of the Chinese navy, regardless of the total number of new and old warships, has exceeded 100,000 tons, and if the naval defense and fortress units are added, the total strength of the navy has reached more than 20,000 people. The more than 20,000 people are at most the size of one division and one brigade compared to the army, but the annual military expenditure of this small-scale navy is as high as more than 6 million yuan. This price is only to maintain the normal operation of the fleet, and the cost of refits, overhauls, and newly purchased warships has not been counted.

In fact, to maintain a fleet of such a size, without a million a year, it is simply impossible to exert effective combat effectiveness, after all, the training of the fleet needs money, and in order to exert greater combat effectiveness, warships need to be regularly overhauled or even refitted, which is extremely expensive.

As for Chen Jingyun, although he has a lot of money on hand now, it has not reached the point where he can spend it indiscriminately, according to his ideas, anyway, the navy in the past few years is a period of cultivating talents and accumulating strength, and he does not expect the navy to bring him any results in the past few years. Therefore, he did not plan to invest in the navy on a large scale in the short term, and now his focus is still on the direction of the army!

Compared with the 6.5 million yuan military budget obtained by the Nationalist Army and Navy in 1914, the 1914 military budget of the Nationalist Army was the majority: the army's military budget of up to 100 million yuan was enough to make the group of people in the Admiralty eager to slaughter all the generals of the army. You must know that in the 1914 budget given by the Ministry of Finance, the traditional fiscal revenue in the areas ruled by the Nationalist Army was only 180 million yuan. The Army's military spending accounts for 55 percent.