If it is understandable that the Russians continue to improve and produce the Azov-type armored cruiser, then the French's actions may have confused the world. The French decided to produce an armored cruiser similar to the Azov-type.

They don't seek top-notch firepower and protection, but only seek a higher cost-effectiveness and greater cruising power.

Long before the emergence of the Azov Sea-type armored cruiser, the French did not give up the development of cruisers when they updated a large number of battleships. Although the idea of ​​​​a green water navy no longer has a big market in France, but after seeing the Italian naval battle in the Sino-Japanese War,

The armored cruiser produced by the People's Liberation Army can kill everyone.

Finally, the French felt that even in Europe, where there are many strong opponents, armored cruisers cannot be used in decisive battles. However, relying on France's colonies around the world, once a war breaks out, they will launch a cruise war on a global scale specifically to attack the seas of hostile countries.

Transportation lines are also a good idea.

The idea was settled, but the French had difficulties again when it came to issues such as ship type selection. The French naturally looked down on small ships of 4,000 to 5,000 tons. Such small tonnage simply could not meet France's requirements for endurance and battleship combat effectiveness.

"Such a small ship is suitable for maintaining security in the colonies and is not suitable for fighting on the ocean." The French Minister of the Navy flatly rejected the proposal of miniaturizing the patrol.

It is certain that the cruise ship will be larger, but how big is suitable? This is a question worth thinking about, especially for the cruise ship that breaks the rules. Under the conditions of ensuring the sea trial performance and voyage, it is certainly impossible to be like Italy for the Mediterranean bathtub.

Like warships designed offshore, they pile up armor and artillery as hard as they can. This directly results in a single-ship duel without any advantages.

Since it is certain that you cannot beat your opponent, you must at least ensure that you can outrun your opponent. In order to prevent the tonnage from increasing, the power increases, and the weight of the power system increases, which further requires more power. More water is added.

Due to the situation of adding too much water, the French limited the tonnage of new warships to around 7,000 tons.

It is basically impossible to have comprehensive and excellent performance at this tonnage, so the French rationally set several requirements for the new cruiser. First, the speed must be as fast as possible. The speed below 21 knots is

Absolutely not considered. Second, the standard of armor protection is sufficient, taking into account the situation in the Sino-Japanese War. Even the 6-inch main armor is enough to resist the British 9.2-inch gun, so the French

People require that the main armor belt is 6 inches, but the armor height must be sufficient. And the upper armor must extend to the gun emplacement. The third is firepower. Since it is a destroyer, the firepower only needs to be able to deal with the opponent's 4000-ton dome-armored cruiser and

Merchant ships are enough, so the requirements for firepower are quite low, just 2 7.6-inch guns and 8 6.4-inch guns. Just like that, a new low-priced dedicated combat warship is released!

This new type of warship is so targeted. Looking at the world, who else in the world's navy is worthy of challenging the French besides the British Empire? In terms of tonnage, the Russians are the third in the world. They are allies with the French.

Relations. The fourth in the world is Italy.

The Mediterranean is also a potential enemy for the French. But in the bathtub of the Mediterranean, the French do not need to build such warships that specialize in breaking diplomatic relations. Even if they are enemies with Italy, they still need to build warships for decisive battles. So Italy

People say they are not stressed.

But the British are Alexander! This thing is clearly preparing to start another war and attack the British transportation lines. Considering where Mao Zi is going to install a patrol. If France and Russia join forces, they will simultaneously launch a series of attacks on the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.

In the case of a cruise war, even if the British Empire could trap the French and Russian main fleets in the port, the various diplomatic-breaking cruisers and camouflaged cruisers running around in the ocean would

Foreign ships were enough to give the British Empire a headache! So the British decided to also start building 10,000-ton armored cruisers. This type of ship is equipped with twin 9.2-inch main guns at the front and rear, and 12 6-inch guns are arranged on the side strings. The main armor thickness is 7

The mass-produced nearly 10,000-ton armored cruiser with a power of 18,000 horsepower and a speed of 20 knots and a coal load of about 1,500 tons was finally recognized by the British.

And this is just the beginning. The French and Russians may really intend to compete with the British on maritime issues, or use a joint approach to force the British to make some concessions. Just when the British decided to build a new

When the 10,000-ton-class armored cruiser was used to deal with France's new traffic-breaking cruiser and Russia's mass-produced version of the Azov-type cruiser, the French decided to follow the Russians' pace and began to build an armored cruiser leader similar to Rurik!

The new armored cruiser leader built by the Russians in France has given the French new ideas. In the eyes of the French, this expensive battleship is definitely worth the money. First of all, this kind of battleship can be used in fleet decisive battles.

The caliber of the gun may be slightly lower than that of the battleship, but it is enough to suppress the armored cruiser that serves as the avant-garde in the British fleet. It can also be used as a battleship when necessary. Secondly, as a battleship to break up the engagement, although

It is not cost-effective to use such an expensive battleship to break the relationship, but the greatest significance of this kind of cruiser leader is to intimidate. Except for the battleship, all battleships are not its opponents, and the speed of the battleship is too slow. The speed does not need to be too high, 20

The knot is enough, and the idea is exactly the same as the Pisa. However, the firepower and protection are appropriately weakened, and the remaining weight is used to enhance the range and trial performance.

As a result, the British really can't sit still. It is foreseeable that once the French and Russian armored cruisers are launched in large numbers, these various ocean-going cruisers, which are faster and stronger than the strongest, will scatter on the ocean.

This is a huge threat to the UK, which relies heavily on maritime transportation.

In fact, there is no good way to attack guerrilla ships at sea. The British principle is that once the situation becomes tense, they should track any potentially hostile warships cruising on the high seas, and once the war officially begins, they will cooperate with the supporting warships to destroy them.

But the prerequisite for this kind of tracking is that you can keep up with them!

And without this prerequisite, it would be really difficult to catch the high-speed armored cruisers scurrying around in the ocean. What's even more frightening is that France has colonies all over the world. If someone nests in a port, then

If there are some mines outside, what should you do? Keep waiting?! There are coastal defense guns up there, and the small fleet doesn't dare to touch them. If you go back, it will be in vain!

Faced with this situation, the British Navy immediately began to study countermeasures. As the research deepened, they found that their difficulties were not only in responding to countermeasures, but also in terms of technology. The British also encountered serious bottlenecks. First of all,

The first problem is the speed problem. When using vertical steam engines, the current speed of large warships reaching 22 knots is basically the limit. If the shipyard continues to increase power, then the speed caused by the increase in power will

The improvement effect will be more and more

Small, (the so-called law of diminishing marginal returns) Relatively speaking, the power-to-weight ratio of the power system of large battleships is much smaller than that of small battleships, because a considerable part of the power weight of large battleships is used in places such as transmission shafts that cannot generate direct power, (

The drive shafts of large battleships are much longer than those of small battleships, which is understandable.) So in the end, the designers found themselves adding n boilers, which led to the embarrassing situation that the power and tonnage of the battleships increased significantly at the same time, but the speed remained unchanged.

The second is ship-based weapons. Since the advent of hardened armor, it is no longer a fantasy to use less than 10 inches of armor to resist the most powerful artillery. After testing by major naval powers, under the current circumstances, 12-inch artillery shells are basically

It will be unable to penetrate the 8-inch hardened armor. When a 300+kg heavy shell hits the target at a speed of more than 700 meters,

When the 8-inch hardened armor is attached, what happens is that the projectile either shatters or is ejected! How embarrassing is this for the artillery!! And in this case, as for the picric acid high-explosive bomb, when dealing with a warship with a large protective area

The effect is relatively limited. The side strings are basically not penetrated and cannot be burned. They can only light the building. After they go back to put out the fire and repair it, they are a good guy again!

Although there are many reasons, the war still has to be fought. In order to break the thin but very strong turtle shell on the opponent's warship as much as possible, the consensus of all countries is to install larger caliber guns as much as possible! Introduction

Since the 12-inch artillery was basically the limit of turretization at that time, it was very difficult to research larger-caliber artillery. Even if it came out, it would change due to the speed of fire and other aspects.

It's too flashy. So all countries can only work on 12-inch, 11-inch and 10-inch guns! To deal with the 6-inch hardened guns of ordinary cruisers, don't even think about it if you don't have 10-inch or above guns. To deal with the 8-inch or above hardened guns, 12-inch guns can't be used.

It can't be knocked open! And if there are more main guns, the number of secondary guns will be reduced. How to balance the firepower has become a very important issue! Therefore, the British are also very angry when it comes to firepower matching!

The last problem is fire control. Since the British equipped their battleships with rangefinders, naval officers and soldiers finally got rid of the original method of using sextants to measure distances and then fighting against the gun table! In conjunction with the rangefinder

With the sighting device on the instrument and artillery, the warship can finally engage in battle at a distance of 3km! But

The hit rate is still pitifully low. If you want to improve the hit rate, the first way is to increase the hit rate as much as possible, and the second way is to increase the shooting speed. When the latter can hardly be improved in a short period of time, then

How to improve the hit rate, especially the main gun hit rate, is a question worth thinking about.

So to sum up, the British suddenly discovered that facing these technical problems cannot be solved by the current Royal Navy based on the original technical system! Therefore, in this case, the reform and innovation of naval technology are called for

Then it came out! And in this world, not only the British, the French, the Italians and the Germans have discovered the bottleneck of the current naval development, so a big debate and innovation gradually kicked off!
Chapter completed!