There was only one Zhiyuan, and the warships subsequently produced by the Chinese were actually designed to explore the design style of Xiao Letian's dreadnought warships in his previous life!
Moreover, two important branches were born during the manufacturing process of ironclad ships, one is the battleship branch of the Shanzi series, and the other is the cruiser branch of the Water series!
Battleships are the strategic deterrent weapons of this era, and are the real reassurance of naval battles in decisive battles on the high seas. Among the several battleship naval battles recorded in human history, especially during World War I!
All war data proves the importance of survivability and firepower. Many battles are fought from morning to afternoon, and the flagship will not sink even if it is hit by dozens of bullets, and can still continue to fight!
Most of those directly sunk in naval battles were light cruisers, thinly armored dumplings!
Even earlier during the Sino-Japanese War, the survivability of heavy warships shocked the world. The Japanese tried every means to sink the two ships but they could not sink them!
What's the reason? The reason lies in the thickness of the armor!
Armor with a thickness of 200mm is already unimaginable, and armor with a thickness of more than 300mm has exceeded the limit of the power of ammunition explosions in this era!
In other words, in the era before depleted uranium bombs appeared, it was a luxury to hope that a cannonball could penetrate such armor. You could explode it to deform it or even dent it, but you would never be able to penetrate it!
With the current national strength of the Chinese, there is no problem in raising ten such heavy battleships. Then such battleships, combined with other cruisers and small naval craft, can be divided into two main battle sequences!
Now that there is no threat from the north, these two main battle fleets can all be placed in the south, that is, in the South China Sea and the Pacific area east of the Philippines!
These are the two walls on the sea. When the enemy comes, they can block it. Even a decisive battle on the high seas can hold back the enemy's main force. Once Britain invades, if it wants to deal with the Shanzi Fleet, it will have to double its firepower to defeat it. , otherwise it can only be a tie!
The heavily armored battleships can block the main British force, just drag a tie, and the water cruiser fleet behind them can show off its might!
The purpose of the cruiser is to break up the engagement! Use high speed to harass the enemy's rear. As long as the battleships hold back the enemy's main force, all other British colonies will become fragile eggs!
Cities, merchant ships, oil fields, mines, shipping routes... as long as there are valuable targets, they are all targeted by cruisers!
Moreover, the water series cruiser itself is not a very weak battleship. It only suffers when fighting against heavy battleships, but it still has great advantages against other battleships!
For example, in the Chinese northern seas, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the Western Pacific, a cruise fleet is enough to maintain maritime hegemony!
Because there is no opponent that can challenge the cruiser. Regardless of the thin armor of the water cruiser, it is also 200mm level armor, which is also not something that backward nations can break!
In fact, the strategic goal of the Chinese is very clear: Britain. All maritime forces have only one purpose: to block future British aggression and maintain maritime hegemony in the Pacific region!
Xiao Letian is not a fool. She will not compete with the British for maritime interests in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Xiao Letian is not that arrogant. A century-old navy is not a slogan, but a fact!
The Chinese background is still far behind, and the software and hardware capabilities are not good!
Therefore, Xiao Letian can only adopt a defensive strategy. I believe that the British side has obtained the specific parameters of these two design styles of warships through spies.
Through the design styles of these two battleships, Xiao Letian and the British elites quietly exchanged subtexts.
Xiao Letian's attitude is very clear, "I just want to hold on to the bottom line. The mountain-shaped heavy battleship has super strong defense but is very slow and has insufficient cruising range, so it can only fight on the mainland!"
"The battleship formation needs the support of many supply ports to effectively control the ocean. So based on the current port coverage radius of the Chinese, basically the Chinese can use the Strait of Malacca as the dividing line with the British!"
"Singapore, the lion city, is the dividing point between the two forces... Because of the mountain-shaped battleship, once it breaks through the Strait of Malacca, the supply problem will become a terminal illness!"
"Light cruisers can break diplomatic ties, but they can harass you and make you miserable, but they cannot effectively control the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean because they cannot engage in decisive battles with battleships on the high seas!"
"Look, I, Xiao Letian, have a very clear strategy! Just one sentence, I will not take the initiative to provoke you, Britain, but you also don't want to bully me unscrupulously!"
"As long as you enter my territory and the battleships block you, my cruiser wolf pack can drag down the maritime economy behind you, and it can drag it down until the two countries are financially bankrupt!"
"You, the British, are dragging me to death with the Chinese? Don't forget, Germany, France, and the United States are eyeing your position as the number one and boss in the world!"
"Are you really willing to consume the elite of your navy on my Chinese people? The precious surplus in your treasury? Think about it carefully, don't let the mantis stalk the cicada and the oriole behind!"
In fact, before these two finalized models, there were two experimental-level warships, but they were both light cruisers of about 4,000 tons. It was not until the appearance of the mountain-shaped and water-shaped models that Xiao Letai officially finalized these two warships as the final ones. model.
This incident caused a great sensation in the navy. Xiang Ying's home in Naha was almost destroyed by the navy's young men. Everyone hoped that Xiang Ying could persuade the head of state to change his decision!
It’s not that the characters mountain and water are bad, it’s just that you can’t make a final decision so easily!
It's just over 5,000 tons, which is far from enough. The Chinese need steel battleships of 8,000 tons, 10,000 tons or even 30,000 tons or more!
This is the obsession of the naval faction, because the sea is very interesting and has huge buoyancy. According to theory, as long as human metal crafting technology reaches the standard, you can create theoretically infinite ships.
Ships of ten thousand tons, one hundred thousand tons, or even one million tons!
And the larger the tonnage, the safer the ship and the better its resistance to wind and waves!
It's only over 5,000 tons and it's stopped? What if Britain produces 8,000 tons in the future? What should we do if we increase it to 10,000 tons?
Xiang Ying also had the same worries. He gathered everyone's opinions together and found a time to discuss it with Xiao Letian alone!
In the end, Xiao Letian laughed at him, "You guys! You really don't even know what to say. Did I say stop building ships?"
"What I stopped is the research and development of warships that produce coal-fired boiler power! This kind of warship that burns coal and uses reciprocating power units ends here!"
"No matter how rich we Chinese are, we cannot waste it on such a warship!"
"We will have better technology to produce better warships in the future! Reciprocating power units are not our future, the future is steam turbine units!"
"Our scientific researchers have already begun to take action. Are you still struggling with the blind expansion of such warships?"
"Not only that, burning coal is not the ultimate source of power for our Chinese people. Our goal is to vigorously utilize oil. Oil is the direction of future energy!"
