African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1043: Chapter 512: Joining the Naval Arms Race

While East Africa was assessing the results of the First Five-Year Plan and beginning preparations for the Second Five-Year Plan, in the distant waters of the Far East, the Japanese and Russian navies were also迎来 their final showdown.

Even though the Russian Navy, which had received a certain degree of assistance from East Africa, was in noticeably better spirits than in the previous timeline, once it actually clashed with the Japanese Navy, it immediately fell into a perilous situation. In particular, the mistakes made by command and decision-making personnel caused the Russian Navy to repeat the same old mistakes. The Russo-Japanese naval battle began to develop in the direction Ernst had hoped for, or rather, in the direction desired by all countries in the world other than the belligerents themselves. However, the benefits East Africa could extract from the Russo-Japanese War were ultimately too limited, far inferior to those from the Spanish-American War and the like.

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Bajamojo Port.

As East Africa’s earliest shipbuilding center, Bajamojo Port bore the main burden of current East African naval construction, especially the building of battleships.

With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese naval war, more and more details were being grasped by East African military-industrial shipyards, and the original battleship construction plan was also redrafted.

Lola Lainera, the chief engineer of Bajamojo First Shipyard, was re-evaluating the formerly conservative-leaning battleship design scheme.

Lola Lainera: ”According to the battle reports from the Far East, once again it has been proven that only large-caliber naval guns of over 300 millimeters can be the key to deciding the outcome of naval battles. The future will still be an era of big ships and big guns.”

”Therefore, for the construction of the new battleship, I strongly recommend increasing the displacement from the original 18,000 tons to at least over 20,000 tons, and canceling some of the secondary batteries. Although these guns are mostly quick-firing with a high rate of fire, their range and power cannot compare to the main guns.”

”These secondary guns may be usable when engaging medium and small vessels such as cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats, but against a battleship, this behemoth of the sea, they are a tremendous waste of firepower resources and onboard space.”

”At the same time, secondary batteries result in a great variety of gun calibers on a battleship, with differing ballistic characteristics, making centralized fire control difficult. Most of the time each mount has to aim and fire independently. This shortcoming has become even more obvious in the Russo-Japanese naval battles.”

”So I advocate that on the next battleship, all the main guns be standardized to the same model and the same caliber of heavy gun, adopting an ’all-big-gun’ concept. A battleship of this kind should have at least six or more guns of over 300 millimeters that can be fired in unified salvos.”

”The main guns on board should have as long a range as possible, and their caliber must be uniform to facilitate spotting and correcting the fall of shot. The number must be sufficient to concentrate fire on the critical parts of the enemy. The propulsion must be powerful, the speed high, in order to seize favorable positions in the battle line. The armor must be solid enough to withstand enemy hits.”

The new design proposed by Lola Lainera was in fact already completely indistinguishable from the ”Dreadnoughts” of the previous timeline, and his proposal won the support of the majority.

Very quickly, the design plan for the new battleship was placed before Ernst. Ernst knew little about warships, but he still decided to immediately implement the construction plan for an East African version of the ”Dreadnought.”

Ernst said to the Navy Department: ”We should complete the construction of the new-type battleship before the end of 1906, and refer to the latest warship construction trends in other countries, especially the battleship programs of the United Kingdom. After evaluating the overall performance of the new-type battleship, we will then proceed to formulate our shipbuilding program for the new era.”

”Before that, our shipbuilding industry must also be given priority in planning. During the Second Five-Year Plan, shipbuilding will receive more support in order to sustain the development of our maritime endeavors.”

Ernst’s remarks left the East African Navy Department overjoyed. After nearly ten years of dormancy, the stage of major expansion for the East African Navy was finally about to begin.

Previously, the East African Navy could only watch with envy, jealousy, and resentment as their counterparts in other countries massively expanded their fleets, while the East African Navy had to give way to economic development. Although the East African Navy was not exactly weak, compared with other Great Powers it had already fallen into a situation of being hard-pressed on all sides.

Ten years passed in the blink of an eye for the navies of other countries, but for the East African Navy it was an extremely long period. In that time, the Japanese Navy’s total tonnage rose directly from around 50,000 tons in 1895 to more than 200,000 tons, nearly five times that of ten years earlier. The German Navy had built more than a dozen new battleships, and the United Kingdom had constructed over thirty battleships.

At that time, among the world’s naval Great Powers, France, Austria-Hungary, Spain, and East Africa could only stare blankly in the naval arms race.

France was mainly influenced by the Jeune École and therefore failed to catch up with the early wave of battleship building. Austria-Hungary did not place much emphasis on its navy, and Spain was completely constrained by its national strength.

The East African Navy, like the Austro-Hungarian Navy, had not taken part in the previous naval arms race, but the East African Navy was clearly given much more importance than the Austro-Hungarian Navy.

In fact, the Austro-Hungarian Navy was also currently pushing forward a new round of its own shipbuilding program, and it was said to have already obtained Franz’s support. Under such circumstances, the East African Navy naturally felt even more urgency. However, with the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War and the ”dress rehearsal” of the Russo-Japanese naval engagements, the dawn the East African Navy had been waiting for seemed about to arrive.

Ernst said: ”Don’t be too quick to celebrate. Although naval construction will be one of our country’s key strategies over the next decade, naval procurement is extremely resource-intensive. Therefore, the development of the new-type battleship must proceed in a down-to-earth manner. If we cannot even pass this initial test, it will inevitably affect my thinking on naval expansion.”

Ernst certainly had to pour some cold water on the Navy Department. After all, once the navy as a service heads down the wrong path, it will take a vast amount of resources and time to bring it back on track.

”During the Second Five-Year Plan and Third Five-Year Plan periods, my expectation is that our country will build one battleship per year—that is, ten battleships in total. We will strive to ensure that by 1915, the number of battleships in our fleet reaches at least fifteen. Together with our existing battleships, that will come to nearly twenty in total, while we also build a number of cruisers, submarines, torpedo boats, and other types of vessels.”

”Because the updating and iteration cycle of warships is currently quite rapid, these ten new-type battleships must be subject to continuous design adjustments and cannot take current battleship technology as a fixed benchmark.”

In the previous timeline, after the Dreadnoughts came the super-dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, and so on. Therefore, warship construction certainly could not remain unchanged, but had to be adjusted in step with the times. Once East Africa’s aircraft manufacturing industry matured, Ernst would of course take the opportunity to push forward an aircraft carrier construction program.

Regardless of Ernst’s repeated emphasis, the Navy Department was already fired up. Ten years and at least ten battleships—although this pie was not as large as the earlier extravagant programs of the United Kingdom and Germany, it was already more than sufficient for the current East African Navy.

As a country straddling two oceans, or even three (if its Pacific overseas territories are counted), East Africa’s current naval scale was clearly far from meeting national needs. Its fleet might be sufficient for homeland deterrence, but attempting any significant activity overseas was almost impossible. The new shipbuilding plan would greatly ease the pressure on the East African Navy.

Of course, Ernst’s thinking was somewhat different from that of the Navy Department. Ernst was primarily considering East Africa’s naval construction plan from the perspective of the First World War in the previous timeline.

Whoever could profit from a world war would likewise need the support of a powerful navy. In the previous timeline, the United States dared to profit from both sides at once precisely because the strength of the United States Navy was enough to earn the ”respect” of both the Allies and the Allies. If, on the contrary, the United States Navy had been insufficiently strong, it would have been impossible for the United States, as a ”Neutral Country” in the First World War, to reap such enormous benefits.

Therefore, before a possible outbreak of the First World War, the East African Navy must also reach a certain scale, not only to undertake escort or deterrence missions in wartime, but also to position itself to seize vast overseas markets during the war.

At that time, if a European war broke out, the United Kingdom, France, and other countries would inevitably weaken their control over overseas colonies and subordinate spheres of influence outside their home territories.

If East African industrial goods were to occupy these newly vacated overseas markets more rapidly, they would naturally need ”gunboat diplomacy” to open the doors of other countries around the world. Thus, before the First World War, in terms of overall scale, the East African Navy had to become one of the key forces shaping the international order.