Bulgaria's coastal defense battleships had been doted on by the Admiralty from the moment they were conceived, which promptly ordered five of them in one go. Unfortunately, Ferdinand vetoed them outright!
What a joke. The age of dreadnoughts was about to arrive! Though these coastal defense battleships performed well and could even go toe-to-toe with older battleships, against a dreadnought, other than running away, a decisive battle would basically be serving themselves up on a platter!
In theory, with five or six of them, they could still contend with a single dreadnought. Of course, so long as Ferdinand was not an idiot, he would never do such a thing!
Using coastal defense battleships to fight dreadnoughts in a decisive engagement was not only astonishingly costly—it was also tantamount to gambling with the lives of naval officers and sailors!
In fact, Ferdinand had already decided that, aside from small warships, no more new warships would be laid down! He intended to wait until the United Kingdom's dreadnought was launched, observe for a while, and then decide whether to proceed further.
The British had yet to join the Entente. At this point, it was the French who needed allies most badly. If he approached France for help now, they would not refuse—especially when it meant strengthening military power!
At present, the strength of the German-Austrian-Italian Triple Alliance was more or less evenly matched with that of France, Russia, and Bulgaria. Yet those Russian bears had perversely run off to the Far East to fight Japan to the death. One could easily imagine the pressure France faced on the European continent!
Historically, it was only with French assistance that Russia's naval industry had successfully overcome the technical hurdles of dreadnought construction. Ferdinand did not mind taking a page from that book!
Though Bulgaria