Can the heyday of the Beiyang Navy Division be leveled in 1888?

First Class Ironclad Ship: Dingyuan.

Ship information: The bow has a steel ramming angle, 18 meters long, 18 meters wide, 6 meters draft, normal displacement of 7220 tons, full load displacement of 7670 tons, power of 2 composite horizontal steam engines, 8 round coal-fired boilers, power 6200 horsepower, speed knots, endurance of 4500 nautical miles 10 knots, equipped with 1 searchlight with illumination of 8,000 candles and 20,000 candles, and 3 generators to provide 70 kilowatts of electricity. The total weight of the armor is 1461 tons, the length of the ironclad fort, the armor on the waterline of the ironclad fort is thick, the armor under the waterline is thick, the armor of the main gun is 304mm, the gun cover is 15mm thick, the armor of the command tower is 203mm, the coal container has a coal carrying capacity of 700 tons, the maximum coal load is 1000 tons, and the establishment is 329,363 people.

Main**: The main guns are 4 Krupp 305mm breech guns, 50 rounds of ammunition, 2 Krupp 150mm breech secondary guns, 75 rounds of ammunition, 4 75mm Krupp sampan guns, 150 rounds of ammunition, 8 37mm five-barreled Haggaeus cannons, 2000 rounds of ammunition, 2 57mm Haggaes cannons, 1200 ammunition, 2 47mm Haggaes cannons, 1500 rounds of ammunition, 3 14-inch torpedo tubes, 7 torpedoes, Equipped with 2 carrier-based torpedo boats, fixed.

The power system includes one steam engine and one boiler, with a power of 200 horsepower, a speed of 15 knots, a 37-mm Habegkaith machine gun, 2,000 rounds of ammunition, two 14-inch torpedo tubes, seven torpedoes, and one Henri Martini breech-loading rifle with 500 rounds of ammunition, one bayonet, one broadsword, and 15 grenades.

No. The Secret History tells us:

In addition to the addition of wood chips and soil ash, the ship-based ** ammunition of the Beiyang Naval Division;

What's more:

** Short range; The speed of the ship is slow; The power of the ammunition is hard (the most important: Japan's is a new explosive developed by the United States, called "Shimose gunpowder", as long as it hits, basically the entire ship will be completely burned, and the more it pounces, the more it is pounced, the use of a new chemical similar to burning gasoline. ）

And Japan learned German ships and ** technology.

Please**: The consequences will naturally fail.

According to the comparison of military strength at that time, it was completely possible, but the Qing Dynasty at that time had no intention of expanding, and the Chinese people did not have a warlike nature.

In 1896, the Qing court ordered the rebuilding of the Beiyang Fleet, and by 1899, the rebuilt Beiyang Fleet had begun to take shape. There were five cruisers, six destroyers, and one training ship. They are:

Cruisers: Haitian, Haiqi (4,300 tons); Haichen, Hairong, Haichip (2950 tons).

Destroyers: Flying Eagle (850 tons); Thunder (720 tons); Hailong, Haixi, Haiqing, Haihua (234 tons).

Training ship: Tongji (1900 tons).

The Beiyang Naval Division, also known as the Beiyang Fleet and the Beiyang Navy, is a modern naval force established in the late Qing Dynasty of China, and it is also the strongest and largest of the four modern navies established by the Qing Dynasty of China. The strength used to be the first in East Asia and the ninth in the world (here we use the ranking of the "US Navy Yearbook" that year, the top eight are: Britain, France, Russia, Prussia (Rusman), Spain, Austria (Smann), Italy, and the United States).

The Beiyang Naval Division was formally established on December 17, 1888 on Liugong Island in Weihaiwei, Shandong. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 marked the defeat of the Westernization Movement. As a result, the Qing Dynasty signed the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki.

In the Sino-Japanese First Sino-Japanese War, all the troops were annihilated.

I don't have much strength, at that time, Qing ** couldn't come forward to engage in the navy!

The reason for being crushed by others is that the Beiyang Naval Division lacks financial support, and the maintenance and shell costs of the ** are used by Cixi for a big birthday, and the Japanese Navy has always been in a state of high maintenance.

Because in these short years, the Japanese Navy has been absorbing advanced foreign science and technology, so it has naturally made great progress, while there has been no great progress in China at that time.

Because the Beiyang Naval Division was not valued at that time, the military salary was often insufficient, and because of opium smoking, the combat effectiveness of the Beiyang Army declined rapidly.

In the First Sino-Japanese War, the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle actually included two battles, the first was the Battle of the Yellow Sea, and the second was the Battle of Weihaiwei.

In the Battle of the Yellow Sea, although the Beiyang Naval Division was defeated and lost 5 **, the main ironclad ships of the Qing Army, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, were still there, and the Japanese fleet also had 5 ** ships that were heavily damaged, that is to say, in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, although the Beiyang Naval Division was defeated, it was not completely annihilated, and it could still be a battle.

In the movie "The Battle of the Yellow Sea", the indomitable spirit of the officers and soldiers of the Beiyang Navy is shown. However, at this time, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty changed from the main battle to the main peace, and Li Hongzhang ordered the fleet to hide in Weihai Harbor in order to preserve the strength of the Beiyang Naval Division, and Japan obtained the right to control the Yellow Sea.

On January 20, 1895, the Japanese army of more than 30,000 people landed in Rongcheng, Shandong, attempting to outflank Weihaiwei by sea and land, and annihilated the Beiyang Naval Division, however, the Qing Dynasty did not pay attention to it, only more than 2,000 people guarded Rongcheng, after the Japanese army landed in Rongcheng, divided the two armies to attack Weihaiwei, and by February 2, the Japanese army had captured the entire Weihaiwei battery, and the Beiyang Fleet parked in the harbor fell into the encirclement of the Japanese sea and land.

At that time, there were still 26 Beiyang Navy ships in Weihaiwei Port, but they could not leave the port at all, and the land was occupied by the Japanese army, can you imagine that kind of picture? Is it the kind of situation where after being surrounded, the bombing takes turns?

The dignified Beiyang Naval Division, the result of more than 30 years of Westernization Movement, was under such circumstances, the whole army was annihilated, and I always believe that this was the most humiliating battle in China's modern history, and there is no one.

If it is said that if there is no combat capability, it is okay to fight a war, at that time, the main ships of the Qing army were still there, and the Nanyang Naval Division was also there, although the strength was not good, but if the Beiyang Naval Division could be transferred to the south and the Nanyang Naval Division could be combined into an army, it may not be able to fight a decisive battle with the Japanese army, and it also had some deterrent effect, at least it also achieved the purpose of "avoiding war and protecting ships".

In short, although there is a gap between the strength of the Beiyang Naval Division and the Japanese Navy, this is not the fundamental reason, the fundamental reason is the corruption and incompetence of the Qing Dynasty.

Two reasons. The first is that the bigger the ship, the more difficult it is to turn around, and the second is the limitations of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the corrupt politics of the late Qing Dynasty. After the fall of the Song Dynasty, Chinese culture, economy and technology were hit by dynasties, and many Tang and Song cultures and technologies were interrupted and lost.

Before and after the entry of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, years of war, coupled with the Manchu Qing's biased understanding of Chinese culture, led to the termination of the budding capitalism in the late Ming Dynasty and the stagnation of social culture and technology. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, China had lagged behind other countries in many respects and was in dire need of a change. At that time, the Manchu rulers were still clinging to the "ancestral system", and the huge size of China led to the holding back of each other's forces, and every attempt at reform ended in failure.

The Beiyang Naval Division is a product of this period, and naturally the above reasons have been withdrawn. The defeat of the Beiyang Naval Division was not a simple matter of military command and arms procurement. In the talent pool, ideological transformation is far from sufficient, and the social constitution is also out of touch with it.

All this inhibited the development and combat effectiveness of the Beiyang Naval Division. In addition, the First Sino-Japanese War was not only a simple naval battle, but also the containment of the interests of all parties in the country, which made the war between the two countries become a war between the Beiyang Navy Division and Japan. It's much harder to wake up a sleeping giant than it is to wake a mouse!

Although the Beiyang Naval Division was the first in Asia, the Qing Dynasty's rotten political system and management corruption made it impossible to give full play to the military strength of the Beiyang Naval Division, so that it was defeated by the Japanese Navy, which was inferior in military strength to itself.

Because of the wrong way of command and the idea of wanting to keep the two ships, this war will be lost.

This is because the military strength at that time was not particularly strong, and it was not prepared, and it did not do a good job in the strategic layout, and the Qing Dynasty adopted a policy of closing the country to the outside world at that time.

The main reason was that the strength at that time was not high enough, and the first aspect was relatively backward, and the country was not strong enough, so it failed.

No first shot, no initiative.

Although the strength of the Beiyang Naval Division was very strong, the commander was cowardly, and in the end the enemy won without a fight.

At the time of the First Sino-Japanese War, the Beiyang Naval Division was no longer the first in Asia.