Chapter 491 Pacific Great Change

@@@@@@@ Summer Palace.

On the free grass on the shore of Kunming Lake, the horizontal net separates it into two pieces. A milky white ball shuttles back and forth on the net, and the contact between the crackling racket and the ball is endless.

"Ouch!"

After just a few rounds, Li Enfu waved his hand and handed the tennis racket to the bodyguard beside him. He smiled and said, "No, I'm old. In the past, when I was in the United States, I didn't feel tired all afternoon."

"Ha ha, sir, you are only fifty-one, right? This is not old. Zuo Zongtang was more than 60 years old when he recovered Xinjiang, so you were in your prime. Li Mo smiled and withdrew from the tennis court that was just completed not long ago. The two hot-eyed princesses immediately occupied the court and began to fight.

"Retired." Li Enfu looked at Li Mo and said with a smile, "Your Majesty, I have retired."

"Real is it? Why don't I know? Da Zhuang, do you know?" Li Mo smiled and asked Du Dazhuang knowingly. The poor big man had to shake his head hard.

"All right, Your Majesty, let me know if you have any orders." Li Enfu hurriedly apologized and played with his mouth. There was no one in the world who could be comparable to Emperor Li.

"Ha ha, Mr. Li, what you said is wrong, as if I were forcing you." Emperor Li turned his head and looked at the two deer-like daughters running back and forth in the field, revealing the fox's tail: "Actually, I've been alone recently, so I want to invite you out of the mountain to be a royal advisor."

"Royal Advisor?"

"Yes, it's very easy to play chess and play ball with me, and then go to the theater!" Emperor Li didn't blink his eyes.

"It's strange!" Li Enfu smiled bitterly, but he really had nothing to do at home. On the contrary, he was annoyed by the old officials, so he was not pretentious and said, "Then Enfu will take your money in the future?"

"Well, I promise you will become a millionaire within ten years."

"Haha."

While joking, the two watched the two princesses play ball. The warm sun sprinkled on their bodies, warm and indescribable comfort, and the topic then turned to Italy and Osman, which were still fighting.

"It hasn't been long since I fought." Li Mo picked up the teacup and took a sip. He got up and walked to the lake with Li Enfu. As he walked, he said, "Yesterday, I got the information that after Serbia and Bulgaria had signed an alliance in March, Greece also joined in it yesterday. I heard that they were lobbying Negoro (now Montenegro), so Muhammad V Representatives have been sent to Britain, France and Germany to ask them to mediate.

"So, Osman is going to cut meat again?"

"There is no way to cut meat. The Balkans are too important to them. What can there be in North Africa? And don't forget that Britain controls Egypt. Even if he wants to fight, he can't send troops at all. After winning a small battle, the navy is afraid of going out to be retaliated by the Italians. It's no wonder that there is no peace.

Li Enfu nodded. The Balkans are indeed too important to the Ottomans. For Italy, if the Ottomans can be forced to cede the whole Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, then the loss of hundreds of aircraft and two battleships is nothing.

"So our North African eagle is coming back, right?" Li Enfu smiled. During this period, European newspapers publicized this army, and even Xinhua was affected. In the past few months, the number of young people who flew to flight schools in various places in China has more than tripled. However, as Italy occupies an absolute advantage, their space is getting smaller and smaller, so they will only stay. Become a prisoner of Italy.

"Yes," Li Mo nodded: "Feng Qi has negotiated with the Italians to withdraw 100 old planes in exchange for them. Now the ship should have arrived in Benghazi."

"Now for them, Long Guozhang, Le Fei and Xue Muhua have quarreled, and they have made trouble with Chen Ping a few days ago."

"Falce? Why!"

"It's not that I like their experience. Long Guozhang and Le Fei insist that their navy should be divided into half, but Xue Muhua said that the personnel were selected according to five to one at the beginning, so they should also be allocated according to this proportion when they come back."

"Ha ha, a bunch of bastards." Li Enfu laughed and scolded.

"Good scolding. It's indeed a bunch of bastards. They are all idle and have nothing to do." Li Enfu's laughter and scolding made Li Mo laugh and continued, "But they won't be idle for long."

"How long will you be idle?" Li Enfu was surprised and thought of Li Mo's reference to the Balkans just now, isn't it? He hurriedly asked, "Your Majesty, you don't want to go to the Balkans, do you?"

Li Mo didn't expect that Li En was full of conjecture, so he burst into laughter.

Laughter made Li Enfu confused, but in fact, he can't be blamed. As a former prime minister, he knows about Li Mo's help to Osman, but it's not a trivial matter to say that Xinhua is going to be involved in the Balkans! The battle between Italy and Osman is just a small dish, but the taste of the small dish has caused boos all over Europe. If you go to the most chaotic place in Europe, it will be full of cannonballs.

Judging from the current situation, the Balkans will definitely be noisy. If you don't go there, how can you explain that the navy and air force are not idle? In Li Enfu's frown, Li Mo waved to Du Dazhuang to bring the latest confidential information he received and handed it to him, "Look at it."

Li Enfu took the information and looked at it twice. His face was full of surprise. He asked in surprise, "Your Majesty, have these news been confirmed?"

"The Intelligence Department and the Security Bureau have been asked to do everything." Li Mo said.

"No, it doesn't make sense? Now Britain is at its peak. After Fisher returned to the Admiralty, he has readjusted his previous changing strategy and began to suppress Germany with all his strength. He also publicly claimed that Germany would build a battleship, and Britain would build two ships to suppress this. How could he suddenly make such a major decision? Li Enfu asked hurriedly, and his face was a little falled.

"That's not easy." Li Mo turned his head and happened to see Long Guozhang coming happily, so he curled his lips at him: "Oh, it's not because of this man."

Seeing that Li Mo and Li Enfu turned around, Long Guozhang trotted all the way with a smile and said, "Your Majesty is auspicious, Mr. Li, you look much younger!"

"Bah!" Li Enfu laughed and scolded, "I think you are full of spring breeze. What happy things have happened?"

"What else can he do!" Li Mo scolded angrily, "The first two Orion-class battleships in Britain were delivered. Before the stool of the world's first throne was stabilized, he pulled the Hebei, which was delivered last month, to the South China Sea to act, and deliberately chose it at the gate of Singapore!"

"You say, isn't this looking for trouble!"

"Your Majesty, how can you say that? Britain has built four Orion, three centurion, and four Iron Dukes in three consecutive years. They are all big guys. We just received the first one.

"You bastard, the biggest one is only 30,000 tons, and you drive 35,000 tons! Didn't you make trouble for me!" Seeing that Long Guozhang was still pouting, Emperor Li, who was full of depression by the information just now, immediately spit.

"Tut", Li Enfu seemed to feel that it was not lively enough. He squinted his eyes next to him and laughed, "I told you. A few days ago, I read the newspaper that Britain came to protest again. I wondered that it was a North African thing. I didn't expect that you provoked Lao Long!"

After Emperor Li scolded him, his anger was much smoother, but Britain was too pitiful. In three years, he started to work on eleven 13.5-inch battleships in a row. As a result, he began to enjoy the joy now, and he was beaten with a stuffy stick, because Xinhua's Hebei-class battleships were equipped with 14 inches, and It took another three months to increase the 45x body tube to 50 times before delivery!

The dumbest person is that the British naval guns are equipped with five double guns, while the Hebei class is equipped with four double equipped with four doors, two more super-large-caliber naval guns! Isn't it going to anger Churchill!

"Your Majesty, don't worry, I described the construction of the last four ships as cruisers, and also released information confusion." Long Guozhang seemed to be a little proud of his little tricks, but he didn't expect Li Mo to roll his eyes even more. Cruiser? Fortunately, this guy can come up with it!

Forget it. Anyway, since the warship is hungry, it won't be hidden for a long time. He changed the topic and asked, " By the way, what's the matter with you coming this time?"

"Yes!" Long Guozhang rubbed his hands, immediately took out a thick design material, and handed it to Li Mo: "Your Majesty, the design department has figured out what you asked for a year ago."

After the three of them found a place to sit down, Li Mo looked at the design materials carefully.

A year ago, when Li Mo learned that the United States had built six Pensa-class heavy cruisers, he had always wanted to deal with them. Xinhua completely gave up the heavy cruise after the Dalian class. Although the four Dalian-class ships performed well in the naval battle of Xibilo Island, they had begun to fall behind because of the tonnage and gun caliber, and And because of a major breakthrough in power, Li Mo turned to build the Yanjing class.

The Yanjing level is a major attempt by Li Mo to the fast battleship. Although the speed and firepower have met the requirements, the armor has not been satisfactory. The main armor belt is too narrow and the horizontal armor is too thin, all of which limit the Yanjing class to take another step forward.

So when it was difficult for the power to go further, Li Mo chose to reduce the speed and build the Hebei level.

The Hebei class is a battleship that he is personally satisfied with. It is basically similar to that of the Yanjing class. It also adopts a triangular mast. In addition, four symmetrical rockers have been added underwater for the first time, making the airworthiness more perfect.

The standard data of 31,500 tons and a full load of 35,300 tons is even larger than the Queen Elizabeth class to be built by the United Kingdom. Of course, this does not mean that Xinhua's shipbuilding level is high. On the contrary, Xinhua and the United Kingdom are not the same order of magnitude in terms of tonnage utilization. It's even worse than Germany.

The Hebei class is more carefully built in terms of firepower. After giving up the long-tailed building and adopting the central bridge building, the whole ship looks more compact. The naval gun has a bow-backed layout. There are four three-door 356mm/L50 naval guns, each with 100 bullets, all of which adopt electroslag refining and internal chrome plating technology. There are 84 liners, the muzzle velocity is 835M/S, and the maximum range is 32,000 meters. When firing heavy-duty 680 kg armor-piercing shells, the penetration depth reaches 17,000 meters/356 mm and 25,000 meters/254 mm respectively, and the speed also reaches 1.7 pieces per minute. It can be said that it is power or through The depth of A is only a little lower than the British Queen Elizabeth-class 15-inch gun that is about to start construction, but stronger than the same-caliber gun of the New York-class gun that the United States is about to be equipped with.

Six double 130mm/L47 rapid-fire guns, eight single 76mm high-level dual-purpose naval guns, eight four-link 37mm rapid-fire machine guns, and twelve double 12.7mm large viper machine guns constitute a complete close-range defense.

At the same time, when the aircraft was loaded on the capital ship all over the world, Xinhua took the initiative to completely withdraw the main ship on the aircraft, because the naval battle of Xibilu Island and subsequent research found that the large-caliber naval gun was launched with too much vibration, and it was easy for the aircraft to be damaged when staying on the warship, and the aircraft could not take off and land during the war. It's chicken ribs, so it's better to send a special light patrol to release the plane on the side for reconnaissance.

The protection has also been full of twists and turns. The layout of the small watertight cabin in Germany and the key protection concept at the beginning of the Yanjing class have been continued. The 330mm main armor belt with an 11° tilt arrangement extends underwater for the first time, with a width of 5.8 meters, which initially solves the problem of near-missile loss. The front of the turret and the conning tower are 350. Mm, 305 mm at the top of the turret and turret, 152 mm of armor in the secondary parts of the stern, 180 mm above the water line, and the most important horizontal armor is 127 to 180 mm, of which the main part is welded with 60 mm of carburized steel like the Yanjing class.

In the face of the increasing threat of underwater torpedoes, Li Mo also put forward higher requirements to withstand at least three spear type 2 torpedoes used by Xinhua to hit directly without sinking.

This is a great test. The charge of Spear Type 2 is as high as 300 kilograms of TNT. Not to mention three, one is unlucky and can't live.

For this reason, McKinson modified the underwater compartment part again to increase the reserve buoyancy, but it still could not solve the problem. Just when everyone was in a hurry, a young Xinhua designer proposed that another layer could be added to the structure of the two-layer bottom of the ship of the Yanjing class, using a three-layer composite bottom of the ship, plus a 127mm protective wall. The design plan also won the design award of that year.

The underwater part of the weight gain also led to an excessive tonnage. The design department had to return to China to adjust the armor layout. At this time, Li Mo gave the box layout of the "armor enclosure" pioneered by the North Carolina class in later generations, which made the armor protection more concentrated and saved a thousand tons of weight before finally reaching the standard.

But even so, the unprecedented total weight of 13,000 tons of armor has been reduced to 25 knots. In order to improve the endurance, the design department even came up with a way to replace part of the pressure tank water with heavy oil, so that the endurance finally reached 22 knots/6000 nautical miles, 12 knots/1 Tactical requirements of 5000 nautical miles.

The Hebei class can be said to be a first-class battleship that Li Mo is basically satisfied with, so after learning that the development of larger caliber naval guns did not meet expectations, he chose to continue to build four such battleships.

Although the Hebei class is very strong, the weakening of speed has caused Li Mo's dream of a fast battleship to come to an abrupt end. Especially recently, there has been intelligence that British steam turbine technology has also achieved preliminary results. It is said that Fisher has considered forcibly installing steam turbines on the Queen Elizabeth class. Try to increase the speed to 22 knots!

The technology and manufacturing capabilities of the old European empire began to erep on Xinhua's huge advantages in power little by little. Although they are also stepping up their research on the new generation of power, after all, they are an industrial country for hundreds of years, and the foundation is much stronger than Xinhua. There is no comparable precision manufacturing ability at all, otherwise it will be popular. If the force is equal, the tonnage will not be 2,000 tons higher than that of the Queen Elizabeth class.

You should know that in order to train the current group of skilled workers, Xinhua has spent five or six years, resulting in Li Mo having a golden finger, and the processing and manufacturing capacity cannot be reached. For Europe and the United States, people do not need to consider this problem at all, so as long as a breakthrough is made in technology, it can be manufactured quickly.

From now on, the advantage is still in his own hands. It will take at least four years for Europe to raise more than 30,000 tons of battleships to the first level of 25 knots, so there is no problem for the Hebei class against the Queen Elizabeth class, and what he is most worried about is that the steam turbine technology will be installed on the battlecruisers, once that happens. In Europe, there will be a large number of war patrols that can reach a speed of about 25 knots.

The relationship between Britain and the United States has begun to undergo extraordinary subtle changes, so Li Mo handed over the new design task to McKinson a year ago, restarting the design and research of the fast battleship, and strive to suppress all the capital ships of various countries in speed!

But the problem is that he is now determined, because Adel has sent him a telegram not long ago. The first single-wing 650-horsepower all-aluminum fighter can be tested in July at the latest. Although the horsepower barely meets the requirements, the naval reform has been initially dawned. Is it to concentrate resources to build aircraft carriers or continue? What about the construction of the second-generation fast battleship?

Li Mo pulled back his eyes from the design materials and glanced at Li Enfu and Long Guozhang.

Long Guozhang tried his best to insist on building such a fast battleship first. Although Li Mo once explained to him the great power of the aircraft carrier, he is also convinced, but at present, the world is still the world of warships.

There are two problems. One is that the current aircraft carrier design scheme taken out by the design department is impossible to achieve a minimum endurance of 15 knots/10,000 nautical miles for fast battleships, which is a serious shortage for the Xinhua Navy, which needs to defend the vast seas and needs to arrive quickly.

In addition, the aircraft's lack of horsepower leads to limited ammunition carrying capacity. 650 horsepower aircraft can only hang about 300 kilograms of bombs at most, and the two are not as good as a 356 mm shell. Once they encounter a tough battle or support on the other side, dozens of aircraft are not used at all. Even if three or four aircraft carriers are sent, they are not as good as A Hebei-class battleship has a strong delivery capability.

For Li Enfu, he doesn't know much about naval warfare. Judging from the number of capital ships currently owned by Xinhua, he left the three Duke-classes that are semi-retired in Lushun, including a total of 20 heavy patrols and reconstructions. It is basically enough for defense, but the attack seems to be insufficient.

Originally, the attack did not need to be considered for the time being, but the information just now suddenly changed the situation, so he immediately said, "Your Majesty, do you want to build these battleships? I think we should first find out whether the information just now is true!"

"Intelligence? What information?" Long Guozhang asked quickly.

Li Mo nodded and asked Du Dazhuang to give the information to Long Guozhang, saying, "I just received it. Britain learned from Germany and mortgaged a large number of Pacific colonial islands, including the Gilbert Islands, Samoa, Fiji Islands and Vanuatu, to the United States in exchange for a loan of 2 billion US dollars."

"What!"

Long Guozhang suddenly stood up with the intelligence in his arms.

As the commander-in-chief of the navy, he is not a reckless Beiyang tube more than a decade ago. These years of experience have already developed a pair of elite eyes.

Gilbert Islands, Samoa Islands, Fiji Islands and Vanuatu are all extremely important strategic support points in the southwest Pacific. After Xinhua took over Micronesia and Marshall Islands and occupied Nauru, it has been coveted these places, but those are all British colonies, so I didn't dare to mess around.

But I didn't expect that the United Kingdom has mortgaged these areas to the United States now, which means that the United States has officially reached into the core of the Pacific Ocean. The most important thing is that if Britain and the United States jointly land in Australia, plus Australia's original human resources, then the Pacific advantage that Xinhua has painstakingly created for more than ten years will be thorough. The bottom disappears!

Looking at the shocked Long Guozhang, Li Mo couldn't help smiling bitterly. It took him 20 years. From a 12-year-old child to 30 years old, he created a huge Pacific defense circle, but he almost lost it all because of a deal!

Is this God playing tricks on himself?

The arrogant Britain actually exchanged these extremely important strategic support points in the Southwest Pacific for the United States. Is it really because the United Kingdom is short of money?!

No!

Li Mo knows better than anyone that these islands and regions that were not taken over by the United States until after World War I were given to the United States in advance because of their own appearance.

The rapid rise of Xinhua in the Pacific Ocean has attracted strong uneasiness in Britain. If this uneasiness is still worrying before, it has now turned into a real worry because it has to deal with Germany with all its strength.

Britain is not afraid that Xinhua will enter Europe, because as long as it strangs Malacca and closes the Suez Canal, it is unlikely that Xinhua will threaten the British mainland anyway. This is also the main reason why Britain is so afraid of the rise of Germany on its doorstep, but not too much about Xinhua.

If you are not afraid, it does not mean that you can relax your vigilance. Britain's interests in the Pacific are still very extensive, especially Australia. The previous Australian crisis is not over yet. The Chinese Self-Defense Forces in Northwest Australia are still in a state of confrontation with the Australian army. In addition, the European war is almost inevitable now, which leads to Britain is more worried that once they go to war with Germany, Australia will be quickly occupied by Xinhua.

That's why Britain deliberately put the ambitious United States into the southwest Pacific to contain the Xinhua Empire.

This is like the tricks played in Africa and India when the British Empire disintegrated, deliberately complicated the division of power, and then forced the struggle between religion and land for decades!

It can be said that the biggest hooligan in later generations is the United States, and the biggest bastard is Britain, because it was the British retreat that deliberately left countless conflicts, which led to various conflicts all over the world later!

Obviously, Britain sent an unmistakable signal! Either watch it obediently, or you have to defeat the United States first!

"Your Majesty, Mr. Li, Commander Long."

Duan Fei, who came in a hurry, broke the almost frozen atmosphere in the gazebo and handed the information he had just received to Li Mo: "This is just received. Britain transferred seven cruisers, including the tireless-class battlecruisers Australia and New Zealand, to Australia. In addition, the Indian intelligence station also found six this morning. Nelson-class battleships have entered the naval base in Delhi one after another!"

"Made!"

Li Mo gritted his white teeth fiercely!

(to be continued)