"Gentlemen, I want to say that the Royal Navy is never afraid of any challenges!"

Facing the aggressive neutral journalist, the nominal commander-in-chief of the Royal Navy, the gentle John Jelico handed the stage to the young man. David Betty stood on the rostrum of the Navy headquarters conference room and talked to reporters from all over the world: [..com]

"Under the 'wartime emergency plan', Britain will build three new battleships, which can be predicted to be stronger than the German Saxon class!"

After a brief silence, British journalists and civilian officials at the Navy headquarters cheered, neutral journalists were in high spirits, and the intelligence personnel of the Allied Powers who were infiltrated into the venue were shocked. Multiple emotions gathered in the old and dilapidated Navy headquarters building, and the reinforced concrete building trembled in an instant.

Even the thick door panel could not stop the hustle and bustle outside. Winston Churchill picked up the golden pen and made a heavy fork on the first page of the note book. Then he turned a new page and a line of beautiful inscriptions came into view.

"In 1915, the keyword - strike back!"

****

"In response to three German Saxon-class battleships, at the last moment of 1914, the British Empire brazenly announced the construction of three unprecedented fast battleships code-named Hood.

This is a super battleship full of German warship style. Its design displacement is 410 million tons, 22 oil-fired boilers and 4 steam engines, 4-axis drive, 144,000 horsepower, a maximum speed of 29 knots, and is equipped with 4 seats and 16-inch main guns. In response to the painful experience of Dogel Shazhou, the Hood-class battleship defense armor has been strengthened, the thickness of the main armor of the waterline belt has been increased to 13.8 inches, and the coverage area has also been expanded. The front defense armor of the turret has been increased to 15 inches, but the endurance has been reduced to a pitiful 5,100 nautical miles.

Verse 14.”

——Excerpt from "The Battle of the Rice Flag"

At the end of 1914, the cold in the northern hemisphere became increasingly invasive, and the whole world was blinded by the arms races between Germany and Britain. They didn't know that Germany and Britain were both masters who built plank roads openly and secretly went to Chen Cang.

The construction of ships of the German Markensen-class battle cruisers, the Stein and Hardenburg, were made smoothly, and construction was about to start secretly in early 1915. On the other side of the North Sea, another British fast battleship code-named Nelson, also started drawing design work.

This battleship can be regarded as a shrinking version of the Hood-class battleship. It has a designed displacement of 34,000 tons, three 16-inch main guns and are all placed at the bow, two raised gun seats, equipped with 12 boilers, 2 steam turbines, the main engine has a power of 60,000 horsepower, and a maximum speed of 26 knots. In order to strengthen protection, the British adopted a key defense concept, focusing the secondary gun and power chamber at the back of the hull, and using 14-8-inch side armor and 16-12-inch turret armor in the gun seat wells and ammunition depots of the three turrets in the bow. There must be gains and losses, but the power chamber and secondary gun at the stern of the Nelson-class ship should have only 10-3 inches of protective armor.

Fisher finally breathed a sigh of relief. The facts proved that David Betty, whom he chose, could bear the responsibility. The three Nelson-class battleships were the young man's controversy; Tirpitz finally breathed a sigh of relief. Emperor William did not like Heidi Silem, a young man who was in a different way. Tirpitz wasted a lot of political resources to cheer up the young man. Silem really lived up to expectations and once again used his naked conspiracy to consume the British's resources and national strength.

The hatred and heroic pity between Fisher and Tirpitz have not yet ended, and the fateful duel between David Betty and Wang Heidi, the pair of close friends, will continue. Amid the noise of the crowd watching the flowers in the fog discussing which Saxony or Hood-class battleships, the cruel and bloody 1915 has finally come!

The New Year bells send off not only the old age of a year, but also the memories of the war in 1914, which were either painful, tenacity or sweet.

I still remember that on August 4, the Palace of Westminster voted, and King George V of England declared war on Germany as the head of state. At that time, the British Isle was filled with joy.

The British had reason to see Germany unhappy. The 60th anniversary celebration of Queen Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, the Germans sent only an old cruiser to attend the grand ship reading ceremony, which was a blasphemy of the Queen's glory! The Boers' war, Germany and his emperor were not clean, this was a trampling on the supreme rights of the Empire of the Sun in the Colonial! The Baghdad Railway, Berlin attempted to spread their influence to the Ottoman Empire, to the Indian Ocean, and even India, which was related to the rise, fall, honor and disgrace of the British Empire, was intolerable! The most important thing was that the Germans actually established a high seas fleet that was enough to challenge the hegemony of the Royal Navy.

The ocean made the British Empire strong for a century. The ocean was the untouchable scale for the British. The ocean was the last bottom line of the empire that the sun never set. As early as before the First Naval Expansion Act of Germany in 1898, the British proposed two principles without fear, that is, the strength of the Royal Navy should be the sum of the second and third in the world! In 1898, the expansion of the German Navy touched the sensitive nerves of the British, and the naval arms race first showed the tip of the iceberg and entered a white-hot state.

As time entered 1914, the competition continued, but Britain had already shown a tendency to decline. The stagnant economy of the British Empire made this unrestrained competition unable to continue. Although the Royal Navy had an advantage, this advantage would be caught up with the thriving Germans over time and then overtaken.

From this perspective, the First World War is by no means a one-man show for the Germans. The British, who are as compassionate as Winston Churchill, may have stronger expectations for war than the militaristic Germans. It should be noted that after Germany and Britain declared war on August 4, the Germans were looking forward to victory, while the British Islands resounded through the battle manifesto "God Bless My King"!

The European war broke out, the battle was fought in Europe, in the Middle East, in the Far East colonies, and in South America. The sound of artillery lasted tens of thousands of kilometers. The British team hummed the "Song of the English" and joined the battle.

The Boers War discredited the reputation of the British Army into a laughing stock. The pocket army spent more than ten years of expansion, which surprised the whole world in northern France. It was the bloody battle of the British Army that saved the precarious France and allowed the French who were busy moving the capital to stabilize the front line. However, this was also the full energy of the British Army. The French finally lost a large area of ​​land, the British shroud was almost out of stock, and the trained elite forces were consumed.

The Royal Navy, which defeated the arrogant invincible fleet, destroyed the powerful sea coachman, and won the glorious glory of Cape Trafalgar, is the most terrifying existence on this blue planet, but the performance of the British Navy surprised the world: the maritime transportation line was disrupted by the German attack ship, the North Sea confrontation failed in succession, and the naval arms race was also on the weak side.

The British and the whole world were wondering what happened to the powerful empire of the Sun never set, was it because it was lying in the credit book for too long that it lost its motivation to move forward, or was it because Darwin's competitive advantage, and history chose the Germans?

Fortunately, the British Empire did not make its people confused for too long.

The abnormal movements of the German army and navy in December made the Allies smell the scent of conspiracy. As an ally of the polar bear, Britain and France naturally knew its strength in the outside world and the middle. Whether the weak Russia could withstand the German thunder attack and continue the Alexander miracle of the Napoleon era, the heads of the Allies were unsure of it, so they provided material assistance to Russia, and restrained or even had a full-scale counterattack on the Western Front battlefield became an unavoidable topic.

At this moment, British Navy Secretary Winston Churchill proposed a novel and alternative plan - the Battle of the Dardanelles!

The so-called Battle of Dardanelles is to take advantage of the movement of the German center of gravity eastward to organize a powerful landing fleet to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey, occupy the Turkish Strait with important strategic value, and force Turkey to withdraw from its allies. This move is not only conducive to strategically encircling the hinterland of Germany and Austria, forcing the Balkan countries to make choices that are conducive to the Allies, but also can transfusion blood from the Black Sea to Russia.

Churchill proposed the Battle of Dardanell not only exposed his personal ambitions, but also fully demonstrated the British's strategic skills.

The humiliating 1914 made Winston Churchill famous. Although he had a large number of allies in Parliament and Downing Street, this did not block the British people's leisurely mouths. Churchill urgently needed to make a record. It was obviously stupid to let the large fleet fight the Ocean Fleet to the death. Before regaining the numerical advantage, the large fleet did not have the strength to challenge the Ocean Fleet at all. Fortunately, the main force of the German Navy advanced eastward and Churchill, who had a breathing opportunity, was waiting for the end of the South Atlantic strangle battle, and could calmly dispatch troops to realize the landing battle of the Dardanelles Strait in Turkey.

Churchill's idea coincides with the global strategy that the British Empire had adhered to for many years. Although Russia is an ally of Britain, the British's fear and vigilance of the double-headed eagles have never diminished for a day. Controlling the Turkish Strait is not only conducive to ensuring the crucial strategic point of the Suez Canal from the flanks, strengthening Britain's control over the Indian Ocean, but also helping to curb the Russians' attempt to open up the Mediterranean Sea from a long-term perspective, and blocking the tentacles that the polar bear poked towards the Indian Ocean into the small land of the Black Sea.

Regarding the Battle of Dardanelles, he was more concerned about the recovery of the land of revenge against Germany, France, but he still agreed to send troops to fight. The polar bear's ambitions for the Turkish Strait and Constantinople were inherited from the era of Peter the Great. Although the British Battle of Dardanelles was conducive to sharing the pressure of Russia's multi-line combat, the outcome of Britain and France occupying the Turkish Strait was by no means happy to see. The Russians declined Churchill's proposal.

In fact, even if the Russians agreed to send troops, they could do nothing. After the Battle of Cape Sochi, the Black Sea Fleet was greatly injured and gave up the Black Sea's sea control. The Russians could only sigh. What's more, the Turks launched a fierce offensive in the heart of the North Caucasus in Russia, and Russia, which was fighting on multiple fronts, had no soldiers to send.

Whether the Russians participated in the war was insignificant. Since the German army moved eastward, the top leaders of Britain and France decided to take action on the Western Front. More than three million Allied Army was waiting to be on the verge of war and was about to launch a spring offensive from the Swiss border to the North Sea coastline. General Xiafei couldn't wait to announce that the Allied Army's goal was to "drink the Horse and Rhine River in the autumn of 1915."

At the same time, 100,000 British and French coalition forces will assemble in southern France and Seed and Alexandria, Egypt. The landing fleet consists of British Agincourt, Ireland, eleven former dreadnoughts, a French Oba-class dreadnought, and three Dandong-class dreadnoughts, planned to enter Mudros, Greece's island of Lemnos, and is under unified command of Admiral Sackville-Carden.

In January 1915, the Allies completed preparations for the Battle of Dardanelles. After sixty years, the British and French forces once again set foot in the places where their ancestors had fought and sacrificed, and approached the Dardanelles Strait. History is full of ridicule. This time, the former opponent, Russia, became an ally, and the former ally, the Ottoman Empire, became an enemy.

"Jazz, Kaden has sent the plan for the Battle of Gallipoli..." The First Minister of Maritime Affairs Arthur Wilson put the slightly thin documents on Churchill's desk and said easily: "The horn of the British Empire's counterattack is about to be played, and glory is created by you!"

Churchill sat on the sofa, weighing the notepad in his hand, and easily turned over the page marked "1915, keywords - counterattack!".

The subsequent page was filled with the names of naval officers who were about to be promoted. Although the name "David Betty" has been repeatedly changed, it still stubbornly and stubbornly jumped on the paper.

[The long-winded and messy plot is finally over, the emperor's counterattack, friendship in the war, my Jutland!]
Chapter completed!