Chapter 241 Five years of shipbuilding, targeting great powers

The war is over, but there is more work to be done in its aftermath. new

First, according to the London Treaty, Australasia needed to withdraw its troops from Portuguese India and East Asian colonies and ensure the safety of all Portuguese citizens in these two areas.

Well, yes, the personal safety of citizens.

As for these Portuguese properties, most of the previous factories, equipment and other properties have already been moved away by Australasia, and all countries are well aware of this.

Also, the more than a thousand Portuguese soldiers captured in Australasia were all moved to Portuguese India, waiting for the Portuguese to come and receive them.

These people, Arthur, did not ask for ransom. After all, Australasia had already made enough money in this war. In addition, the excuse for the war was to seek justice for the fishermen. Being too greedy would be bad.

In fact, the harvest in Australasia this time is indeed quite large. Not to mention Portuguese Timor, which has rich mineral resources, almost all the factories and various facilities in the other two colonies have been moved.

After all, Portugal has been operating in these areas for decades or even hundreds of years, and these properties are enough to make Australasia gain a lot.

As for the population problem of Portuguese Timor, there is a relatively reasonable solution, which is to give them severance pay and allow them to relocate to Portugal's other two colonies in Asia.

The remaining people who are unwilling to leave must accept the rule of Australasia and even take Australasian citizenship.

They will go through a testing period of at least three months to ensure there are no problems before they can obtain Australasian citizenship.

When more immigrants from Australasia arrive from the mainland, Timor's rule will become more stable.

On the 1st, the Australasian government officially announced that the Timor region will become the second colony of Australasia, and a Timor colonial government will be formed to manage this area.

Timor, or Portuguese Timor, was also officially renamed Australian Timor. New 𝐱.𝐜𝐨𝐦

The Governor-General of Australian Timor is Roman Peto, a member of the Royal House of Commons and formerly of New Zealand's House of Lords.

After successfully entering the Royal House of Representatives, Roman Pito also expressed his absolute loyalty to Arthur very wisely, and he was never troubled and very low-key.

It is definitely enough for such a talent to manage the small Australian Timor, and it can also make New Zealand talents feel Arthur's attention.

You must know that even the governor-general of Australian Timor who has just been established has an administrative level equal to that of the governors of each state, and his status is even slightly higher than that of the governor.

After all, governors were elected by the people of each state, while governors of the colonies and capital territories were appointed by Arthur himself.

This degree of intimacy also determines that the governor of the colony and capital territory has a higher status than the governor. This is why the governor is a member of the Royal House of Representatives, while the governor is not.

After the army withdrew from the two occupied areas, it returned to its original station and entered into daily training.

The First Division only retained one regiment as a garrison in Australian Timor. Other soldiers also returned to their posts in Australasia.

Although this war was a victory, it also exposed many shortcomings in Australasia's current military.

Although the army's strength is very good, it can compete with the German regular army. But at present, the total number of Australasian army soldiers is only more than 60,000, which is one Guards division and three regular divisions.

This number of people is still too few to guard Australasia, which has a total area of ​​millions of square kilometers.

The second is Australasia's navy, which is where its shortcomings are currently exposed the most.

Australasia's naval strength has not changed much compared to the previous colonial period, with only a few medium-sized frigates and cruisers added.

A navy of this size can only defend against pirates and weaker neighboring countries, and is not an opponent of European countries at all. new igh.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Even countries such as the Netherlands and Portugal, which currently have similar paper strength to Australasia, have large navies compared to Australasia, and Australasia is not its opponent at all.

In particular, this war was almost limited by the inferiority of the navy. If the three European countries had not been invited to peace talks in time, I am afraid that the war would have lasted longer.

After discussions between Arthur and government officials, the Australasian Navy's expansion plan within five years was formalized.

First is the expansion of the most important warship type, the battleship.

The good news is that two Russian warships have entered the final stage of construction, and the Petropavlovsk battleship is even about to be completed.

Next, the two Russian battleships will enter the navigation test stage, which also means that the shipyard has more energy to build Australasia's own warships.

Because of this, the construction of battleships is the bulk of the five-year construction plan, and the scale is very large.

According to Arthur's decision, the Australasian Navy will order three Monarch-class battleships, named the first ship HMAS Australasia, HMMS Australia and HMMS New Zealand.

According to reports from the Royal Dockyard, the first ship, the Australasia, can start construction as early as January next year, while the Australia and New Zealand will also start construction in March and July respectively.

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Because of the construction of three battleships at the same time, the construction period will also be extended to a certain extent.

Conservative estimates suggest that the Australasia will be built around 1, and the New Zealand battleship will be built no later than October 1909.

Counting another year or so of sea testing time, if all goes well, the Australasian Navy will have its first dreadnought ship and 1 dreadnought ship.

By then, the Australasian Navy, which has three dreadnoughts, will definitely be able to rank among the top ten in the world.

In addition to the Monarch-class battleships, Australasia also has a new class of strategic ships, or perhaps more appropriately called battlecruisers.

In fact, the current British Empire already has battlecruisers.

This is a warship that has been weakened in some aspects compared to battleships or dreadnoughts.

Take the Indomitable, Invincible and Steadfast battlecruisers that have been launched by the British Empire. Their hull and turret armor thickness is only about 150 to 180 mm.

But at this time, the battleship's armor had reached 11 to 12 inches, which is 280 to 300 mm.

The difference in armor thickness is literally twice as much, not to mention the actual protection capability, which may be even worse.

This is a shortcoming of the British battlecruiser, but it is precisely because of this shortcoming that the battlecruiser has gained a huge advantage that battleships cannot match, and that is the powerful speed of the battlecruiser.

While the dreadnoughts can only reach the conventional speed of 1, the speed of the Invincible-class battlecruisers is as high as that of the terrifying 2-dreadnoughts.

The speed of the dreadnought is much ahead of the previous old-fashioned battleships, which is enough to prove how exaggerated the speed of the battlecruiser is.

More importantly, the British Invincible-class battlecruiser has a gun caliber of 12 inches, which is a 305 mm gun.

The caliber of this gun is comparable to that of battleships of the same period. This also means that the battlecruiser has the same powerful firepower as the battleship while having a speed that far exceeds that of the battleship.

In addition to the greatly weakened armor protection capabilities, the battlecruiser's other performance can be said to be first-rate and top-notch among current battleships.

Although the weak armor greatly weakens the protective capabilities of the battlecruiser, the extremely fast speed gives the battlecruiser strategic significance that other warships cannot possess.

The strategic cruiser can use its high movement speed to maneuver around and outflank the enemy's fleet. It can also cruise and pursue. With such a movement speed, enemies cannot escape even if they want to.

More importantly, the update speed of dreadnoughts is very fast, while the update speed of battlecruisers is not that fast.

As long as the firepower is almost the same as that of a battleship, coupled with extremely fast speed, the strategic significance of the battlecruiser cannot disappear.

After the birth of the Monarch-class battleship, Arthur ordered the shipyard experts to begin exploring this kind of warship.

A long time has passed now, and experts have finally achieved some results.

Australasia's strategic cruiser is called the Unification-class fast cruiser, which is about 173 meters long, 24 meters wide and 7.9 meters high.

The expected standard displacement of the Unification-class fast cruiser has reached 17,000 tons, and the estimated full-load displacement can barely reach 19,000 tons.

The power plant of this fast cruiser is not much different from that of the Sovereign-class battleship, but due to the significant reduction in armor, the estimated speed of the fast cruiser can reach more than twenty-four knots.

As for the maximum speed, actual testing will need to wait until the warship is completed, but it is expected to be able to exceed 25 knots.

The fast cruiser is equipped with four twin-mounted 45-caliber 283 mm main guns, 12 single-mounted 45-caliber four-inch secondary guns, and seven machine guns.

There are also four 458mm underwater torpedo tubes, which can defend and attack submarines.

Apart from the obvious lack of armor protection, this Unification-class fast cruiser really has no shortcomings, which is why Arthur was determined to build it.

In addition to the Monarch-class battleships, the construction of the Unification-class fast cruisers was also the focus of Arthur's plan.

However, there are only two fast cruiser construction plans, and construction will begin after the construction of Australasia and Australia is completed. Their completion time is expected to wait until 1 to equip the navy, or even until around 1911.

But no one can deny that after equipping three Monarch-class battleships and two Unification-class fast cruisers, the size of Australasia's navy will definitely reach the level of the great powers, although it is only a lower-level power.

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