To say that the country of Great Britain is really very evil, at its peak across Asia, Africa and Latin America, it was the ceiling of imperialist expansion, and most of the modern scientific, monetary and financial systems also came from this period.
Today, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can only shrink into three islands, with less than 1% of its territorial area, and the former master of earth rebalancing can only be the little brother of the Americans.
Of course, the decline of Britain was a complex and slow process, but if only technically speaking, it was that the British had clicked on the wrong tech tree, and the two impulses of the Germans had caused the British Empire to lose its maritime supremacy.
To explain how the British did not have maritime supremacy, we must first talk about how this hegemony came about.
As we all know, since the great geographical discovery in the 16th century, the Spaniards were the first to colonize South America, and in order to maintain maritime supremacy, the Spaniards also spent huge sums of money to build an invincible armada.
Britain is a latecomer country, and most of the time it can only unite with France and the Netherlands to rob Spanish merchant ships, so the British often say "My grandfather's grandfather is a pirate on the Black Pearl", which is the same as the Germans showing off their ancestors carrying guns.
In 1588, England finally defeated the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Graveland, ending the opponent's maritime monopoly at the same time, and also opened the starting point of its own maritime hegemony.
In the following two hundred years, the British navy won a complete victory in the naval hegemony with the Netherlands and France, and the gunboats were in the empire's sphere of influence everywhere they went, with colonies and dependencies covering four continents, covering 25% of the world's land and population, commonly known as the "empire on which the sun never sets".
It was not until the outbreak of the First World War that the maritime supremacy of the British Empire ushered in a turning point in history.
Friends who know the modern history of Europe can know that Germany was able to transform from a bunch of bulk violent groups to a unified country, thanks to the British, but since entering the second half of the 19th century, Europe has entered a period of development, and the upgrading of science and technology has directly led to a substantial increase in the speed of industry and human reproduction.
At that time, the population of Germany exceeded 60 million, and the population exploded from 100 million to 1 in 30 yearsMore than 600 million.
Because the traditional old powers such as Britain and France took the first step and carved up 84% of the world's land area, this means that Russia and Germany can only grab it from others if they want to develop, which leads to the Thucydides trap that Americans often talk about, especially the work of Tsarist Russia in the Balkans, which makes the whole of Europe suffer from paranoia, ready to rob or be beaten by neighbors at any time.
So in this case, Germany began to explode its armaments, France had no choice but to follow the rhythm, and Britain almost all the skill points were on battleships in order to maintain maritime supremacy.
In 1906, the British battleship "Dreadnought" was launched, its displacement reached 17,900 tons, the maximum sailing speed was 12 knots, and 10 12-inch large-caliber naval guns were distributed on the deck, with a range of up to 20,000 yards, and the firepower output was about twice that of the old battleship.
In the eyes of the British, the battleship fleet was equal to the navy, about equal to maritime supremacy.
And the German side was not idle, although they had the best army in Europe, but Kaiser Wilhelm II wanted to build a strong navy, with his full support, the Germans began to frantically pile up battleships, and on the basis of the dreadnought battleships, attack and defend, through 20 years, the German Navy from the seventh position in the world to the second.
Even so, Germany's naval strength still lagged behind Britain, before the start of World War I, the ratio of the number of main battleships on both sides was 33:18, the ratio of strategic cruisers was 9:6, and Britain also added several new battleships, the quality of which was much better than the old version.
It was clear that Germany wanted to challenge British supremacy at sea, and Britain was ready to fight.
In 1916, the tipping point for both sides came.
Judging from the map, Germany's strategic position is really poor, France on the left, Tsarist Russia on the right, although the army does not fall behind on the battlefield, but the navy ** team is harmless to people and animals.
Because to the south is the English Channel, which is only 19 nautical miles at its narrowest point, and the way to the Atlantic Ocean is basically a death, and to the north there is a British fleet and mine-filled shipping lanes.
Although Germany called it a high seas fleet, it could only lie in this pot in the North Sea and could not go anywhere.
How can a German, who has to be strong all his life, stand this?
After trying a submarine ambush to no avail, Reinhardt, commander-in-chief of the High Seas Fleet. Scheer decided to make it big, he planned to use the battle cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers as bait, bombarding Sunderland to lure out part of the British fleet, while the main German naval force was to wait in the waters of Cape Franboro and the Dogle Sandbank, and wait until the British fleet entered the ambush circle, and then cooperate with the battle cruisers to give it a pot.
In addition, Scheer also arranged for ten large submarines to ambush in Helgoland Bay, and when the naval battle broke out, ambush the ships returning from the British, and even planned to dispatch Zeppelin airships to prevent the British Grand Fleet from going berserk en masse.
The plan was a good plan, but the embarrassment was that the British had long since cracked the German telegram, Commander Johann. Jericho also made a plan to lure the enemy almost indistinguishably from the Germans, and the two sides set up positions in the North Sea.
On May 31, under the orders of Scher, the German Navy sent a decoy fleet into the waters of Jutland, and soon ran into the British battlecruisers.
In less than half an hour, the flagship "Lion" was destroyed, the ammunition compartment of the "Unremitting" was sunk, and the super dreadnought "Queen Mary" was hit in a series and blown into a pile of fragments.
The British Fifth Fleet was the first to arrive, and two German ships were quickly damaged, and then the main fleets on both sides were disengaged, and a gunboat bombardment began.
Due to the British army's advantage in speed, the return channel to Wilhelmshaven was cut off in one move, and the German army fell into passivity, if it could not break through quickly, the high seas fleet would basically be buried on the high seas.
There was not much time left for the Germans, so Scheer moved the wounded cruiser to the tail of the team, put the battleship with the strongest combat effectiveness in front, and concentrated his forces to venture out to the rear of the British fleet.
The battle lasted less than a day, but the result was terrible, with the British losing 14 ships, including 3 battleships.
The situation was a little better on the German side, but the battleships with heavy armor were also unable to resist 13The cannons of more than 5 inches hit directly, and 11 warships of various types were lost, and the "Luzuo" was forced to sink itself due to serious injuries.
After the war, both sides declared themselves victorious.
Because in terms of the number of battle losses, the German navy was clearly superior, but from a strategic point of view, the British navy still controlled the North Sea, and the Germans did not completely destroy the main force of the Grand Fleet, nor could they break through the naval blockade, and until the end of World War I, the Germans did not send out the high seas fleet again.
The Battle of Jutland was the pinnacle of battleship bombardment and the last glory of battleships.
It perfectly demonstrates the strength and fragility of the battleship, although the violence value is full, but the hit rate and maneuverability are very weak, reconnaissance is limited by the angle of view and distance, and the range is limited by the rules of artillery calibration, and it is a moving target at sea on the modern battlefield.
In addition, in this war, the role of the British aircraft carrier was better than nothing, the German airship stopped at the base, and the promised submarine ambush only ambushed a lonely one, which made many melon-eating people see the huge mistakes in the Battle of Jutland.
As a result, the United States and Japan, far from the war zone, took the lead in making changes.
In 1916, the United States announced an ambitious program for the construction of a large navy, in which they took heavy artillery and thick armor to the extreme, and on the upgraded version of the battleship, the armor thickness reached 135 inches, and installed 4 triple 50 times caliber 16-inch guns, the maximum range of more than 41,000 meters, the main focus is a steady and accurate ruthless.
And the Japanese Navy, which chose a completely opposite path to the British, was the first to install 8 doors on battleships 16The 1-inch main gun, with an aggressive centralized defense design and an all-oiled boiler, has both optical sighting and fire control, and pays attention to the firepower of the main gun, but also pays great attention to local control details.
In 1920, Britain finally came out of the shadow of World War I, but by this time the United States and Japan had already saved a lot of money.
The United States had 10 battleships and 6 battlecruisers;
Japan has 4 battleships and 4 battlecruisers, and 8 more are under construction in the dockyard
And Britain only had 4 battleships and 4 battlecruisers left, and it was also completely crushed in terms of power and firepower output.
The British Navy, once dominant, has fallen behind in this new dreadnought race.
In 1922, due to the impact of the Great Depression in the United States, the great powers lost their economies and could not spend huge sums of money to build their own dream navy, so Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy reached the "Treaty on the Limitation of Naval Armaments" in Washington, stipulating that during the 15-year validity period, the total tonnage ratio of the capital ships of the five countries should be maintained at 5:5:3:175:1.75, that is, 22 ships in the United Kingdom, 18 ships in the United States, 10 ships each in Japan, France and Italy.
In the following years, the years were quiet, and Britain, the United States and Japan focused on upgrading the old ** in their hands, but in 1929, the German pocket battleship "Deutschland" was launched, which once again set off an arms race in the navies of various countries.
Later, in World War II, the Germans played an infinite harassment stream, using cruisers and submarines to hunt down British convoys and escort ships, so that the British Navy could only be passively defensive.
For most of the time, the British had to hide on small islands and endure the Luftwaffe's bombardments, Churchill had to sell off overseas assets in order to get the United States to send troops, and the global colonial system began to crumble.
In the Pacific theater, the Japanese Navy also followed the same example, using submarines and cruisers to consume the main force of the US Taiping Fleet, and on the other hand, using the capital ship pair model to occupy a strategic advantage at sea.
Under these circumstances, the United States had no choice but to change its thinking, simply using the aircraft carrier task force as the main offensive force, with battleships as auxiliaries, and only responsible for air defense and land fire support, and upgrading artillery bombardment to a long-distance combat mode in which flying planes at sea and torpedoes are still under the sea, and the main focus is an air-sea integration.
In the Battle of Midway in 1942, the U.S. and Japanese navies faced each other in the air, and the fighters of both sides dived into the aircraft carrier against anti-aircraft guns, and after several rounds of killing, Japan lost four large aircraft carriers, while the United States only lost two, thus completely reversing the strategic situation in the Pacific Ocean, and Japan had to turn to passive defense.
It is worth noting that in this naval battle, battleships played almost no role, and aircraft carriers became the protagonists and decisive factors in naval battles, and it was also from that time that the era of battleships came to an end, and British naval superiority became gone.
After the end of World War II, Britain also wanted to build a new fleet with aircraft carriers as the core, but the ideal is plump, the reality is skinny, due to economic difficulties and the colonies have declared independence, Britain's aircraft carrier construction plan can only be forced to cancel or postpone, and the current aircraft carrier is also due to high maintenance costs, either retired or sold at a discount to the wronged boss.
In addition, the rise of the Soviet Union also changed Britain's military strategy, which needed to maintain a strong army to prevent Soviet invasion on the one hand, and strengthen the defense system to prevent a nuclear attack by the other side.
These adjustments led to a serious decline in the navy's budget and status, and the British Empire's maritime supremacy could only be transformed into a military defense on the European continent.
Although the British Navy saved some face in the Battle of the Falklands in 1982, the old fleet, which was put together on a temporary basis, was no longer capable of regaining the former glory of the Empire.
End of this article.