If you ask him to design machine tools or something, the speed will definitely be fast, after all, this is something he has done before.
It is possible to design and manufacture explosive bombs, which is really a bit difficult.
In particular, it is very difficult to industrialize explosive bombs based on existing materials and technologies.
The main difficulty here is that the shells produced in the laboratory have a high dud rate.
If such a blooming bullet is put into industrial production, the dud rate will be even higher.
After all, some things are not so easy to copy.
The type of ship chosen for the artillery installation this time is a 500-ton steel fishing boat.
Previously, the Navy wanted to convert a thousand-ton cargo ship into a gunboat, but it was rejected by the Ministry of Transport at the first opportunity.
The reason is simple. The 1,000-ton freighter is the only 1,000-ton freighter currently available for use by the Ministry of Transport. If the Navy takes it, the transportation capacity from the Cochin Hongji Coal Mine to Xinghai Kingdom will be cut by more than half in an instant.
After all, most other freighters are very difficult to repair based on current technology.
Therefore, fishing boats, which are the largest in number and difficult to use for a long time, are of great concern to the navy.
After the transformation, the 500-ton steel fishing boat can be equipped with 5 new naval guns. It has a full central axis layout, two guns at the front and rear, and three guns in the middle. They all use rotating base gun mounts, so that the 5 guns can be fired simultaneously at a certain angle.
Fire a cannonball in one direction.
The firing angle of the two naval guns at the front and rear is 270 degrees.
It has to be said that the rotating base gun mount can be regarded as a black technology of Xinghai Kingdom.
This gun mount structure, which was supposed to appear at the beginning of the 20th century, appeared more than 300 years in advance.
In addition, Fang Xiaoyue also designed a mechanical fire control calculator for the Navy, which greatly increased the calculation speed of shooting units and made unified fire control possible.
The central axis layout, unified artillery caliber, and unified fire control are the essential differences between later Dreadnoughts and previous Dreadnoughts.
In other words, although this fishing boat is not at all comparable to later generations of dreadnoughts in terms of gun caliber and other aspects, it is essentially the same as the dreadnoughts.
Wang Haitao wanted Fang Xiaoyue to install a few more naval guns on the fishing boat to increase the firepower of the fishing boat.
But the problem is, Fang Xiaoyue doesn't dare to do this.
Fishing boats are still fishing boats, not warships. Although they are made of steel, their internal structure determines that they cannot carry too many artillery pieces.
Let's put it this way, after adopting a full central axis layout and unified fire control, the recoil caused by the fishing boat shooting in one direction is quite terrifying.
Five naval guns are already the best condition of the fishing boat.
It is okay to install 7 naval guns, and the deck will be a little crowded, but if shelled for a long time, it is easy for the steel structure of the fishing boat to quickly fatigue, eventually causing the fishing boat to disintegrate.
Steel boats like fishing boats are still difficult to build with the existing basic technology of Xinghai Kingdom.
No way, the existing steel mills in Xinghai Kingdom have a monthly output of only 500 tons for the time being, and most of the steel produced is used in the construction of the industry itself, and a small part is used in agriculture.
, as for the military, firearms production has been temporarily suspended.
Unless Xinghai Kingdom is in trouble, it will not be able to provide steel to the shipbuilding industry at this stage.
And it doesn’t mean that once you have steel, you can directly build a ship.
Technologies such as marine steel plates cannot be turned on in a day or two.
Therefore, if they want these steel ships on hand to be used for a few more years, Xinghai Kingdom's technicians must consider many factors to extend the life of the steel ships.
Because the Ministry of Industry attached great importance to the matter and used precious welding rods, the rotating base gun mount was completely welded in just a few days.
As for the artillery being loaded onto the ship, it is quite simple, just use the gantry crane.
Since the quality of the steel is far higher than that of current artillery in European countries, Fang Xiaoyue thinned the barrel thickness a lot during the design, so that its weight was controlled within one ton.
After the fishing boat was refitted, Wang Haitao gave it a new name: Breaking Waves!
Well, the navy currently in charge of Wang Haitao is actually very weak.
Apart from a bunch of Fuchuan and Clipper ships serving as training ships, there are only two 100-ton patrol boats.
This fishing boat converted into a gunboat can be regarded as the first gunboat of the Xinghai Kingdom Navy.
No way, those Fuchuan and Clippers that serve as training ships can only install a few small cannons at most, which has little practical significance.
After the gunboat was renovated, Wang Haitao couldn't wait to take people out to sea to test the ship and test the guns.
As a former navy sergeant and freighter captain before time travel, Wang Haitao has no problem driving a fishing boat.
This steel fishing boat is highly modernized, and one person is enough to operate it. Therefore, in addition to a few maintenance workers who ensure the power of the fishing boat, the rest are navy recruits and artillerymen who have just completed sailing training.
From the beginning, Wang Haitao attached great importance to the naval artillery. When the Army began to train the second batch of artillery, he sent some naval recruits to the Army and entrusted the Army with training.
Therefore, compared with those naval recruits who have just completed sailing training, these naval artillerymen are the most highly trained.
Of course, there are still many differences between firing on land and firing on the sea.
For example, because ships are used as shooting platforms, naval guns can be made larger than army guns, thus greatly surpassing army guns in terms of range and power.
Fang Xiaoyue also participated in this test launch at sea.
After all, as the designer of this naval gun, he needs to collect enough data to perfect and improve this naval gun.
After sailing a few nautical miles out to sea, the Breaker stopped off a coast full of rocks.
The naval artillerymen who had just become familiar with the new naval gun began to clean the barrel of the naval gun, perform trial operation rotations, etc. according to the naval gun operation manual.
After more than an hour of busy work, the training entered the stage of loading artillery shells and test firing of ammunition bags.
The test firing is divided into three types of propellant filling modes: half charge, full charge, and full charge +1.
Each mode was tested more than three times to facilitate data statistics.
After nine rounds of test firings, a lifeboat was immediately hoisted into the sea. Several navy recruits rowed the lifeboat into the reef area and counted the impact points of the shells to determine the shooting distance.
Fang Xiaoyue was quite satisfied with the test firing data.
In the full-charge firing mode, the shell hit as far as 3180 meters.
A full medicine pack +1 will hit around 4,300 meters.
If the medicine pack is halved, the distance is about 1800 meters.
To put it simply, this range completely crushes all naval guns in the modern era.
Of course, the only disadvantage of this kind of naval gun is that because the shape of the naval gun is more inclined to the long-barreled naval gun of later generations, it cannot use chain bombs and grape bullets.
Of course, if Fang Xiaoyue can design an integrated grape bomb, it will not affect its use.