Chapter 1601 The wonderful army and navy arms race
Li Xuan does not provide funding for the navy to build ships, but the navy is unwilling to do so!
In the past two years, they have watched the Army dominate the Western Regions and attract a large number of young talents to apply for martial arts schools. Even in society, the reputation of the Army is much higher than that of the Navy.
How can the Navy tolerate this?
The navy now urgently needs to regain its position and bring back the navy's reputation, and at the same time, it is also to better consolidate the navy's voice within the empire.
In this way, there is a construction plan for a new generation of warships!
In fact, for the navy, the strategic deterrence or strike capabilities of these new warships against the enemy are not that important. The cheap ones of a thousand tons in the Datang Navy can defeat the wooden sail warships of European countries.
Spending huge sums of money to build a giant ship of 10,000 tons will not be as useful as the current cheap frigates of 1,000 tons.
The biggest role of the giant ship is actually only one, and that is to steal the limelight from the army!
So now the people in the navy cry and complain every day, and each one of them makes it sound as if the navy is extremely miserable.
But Li Xuan remained unmoved.
There is only so much money, it needs to be used for internal affairs construction, the army also needs to use it for the Western Expedition, the navy is already quite expensive, and now there are millions of dollars to build a new generation of giant ships. It is not necessary for the time being. In seven or eight years,
It may even take more than ten years to wait until the new technology matures.
In this regard, the Navy is also quite helpless!
The navies of other countries in the world are not strong enough, resulting in their own invincible opponents around the world. Can this be blamed on the navy itself?
It's fine now. Even if I want to make a big toy, I can't.
After Sheng Tianzi made it clear that he would not pay, the senior officials within the Navy discussed it over and over again, but in the end they could not let go of the temptation of the 10,000-ton giant ship.
So the navy gritted its teeth.
If you don't give money, you won't give money. At worst, the Navy will scrimp on food and clothing and build a ship to show off no matter what, making the army bumpkins envious and jealous!
As the saying goes, everyone strives to take a breath of Buddha and receive a stick of incense!
In order to compete with the Army, the Navy is already preparing to build new ships.
As for Li Xuan, he didn't care about it. Anyway, there was a fixed annual military expenditure for the navy. The navy could use the money to build whatever ships it wanted. He didn't care. As long as he could control the sea areas of interest and complete what Li Xuan had told him,
Just the task.
Once the navy made up its mind, it immediately started taking action.
In June of the 29th, Admiral Bao Yifen, deputy envoy of the Naval Command, who had been retreating behind the scenes in the Tang Dynasty Navy for many years, appeared at the Dingsheng Shipyard in Hong Kong.
Although Admiral Bao Yifen no longer holds actual positions, he is still an active admiral and his influence is still considerable.
He went to Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard for the obvious purpose of inspecting the conditions of the shipyard.
After all, in the entire empire, only Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard has a shipyard of more than 7,000 tons and has the construction capacity to build 7,000 tons.
Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard, as the shipyard with the strongest technical capabilities in the Tang Dynasty, has been building steel steam warships for many years. The relevant technology is very mature. If they are simply constructing the hull, they guarantee that there will be no problems at all.
However, the shipyard can only be responsible for building the hull, but many crucial subsystems of the warship need to be solved by other domestic manufacturers.
Otherwise, the hull will be useless.
Bao Yifen started, and then many senior navy officials visited and inspected many important domestic companies.
For example, there are several artillery factories that build artillery. Among them, Jiangnan Artillery Factory is the focus of their inspection, because currently only this artillery factory has come up with a relatively mature design of rifled breech-loading artillery.
The test firing of the prototype gun was relatively successful. Although it still had many shortcomings such as high cost and low barrel life, it was a usable breech-loading rifled gun after all.
Although several other artillery factories have also developed breech-loading rifled artillery, most of them have not entered the actual testing stage.
In addition, there are four relatively large domestic shipboard steam engine manufacturers, which were also inspected by the Navy one by one.
The power unit the Navy needs this time is no small matter. The Navy's power requirement for the new warship is pure steam engine power, which can propel the 7,000-ton hull to a speed of 14 knots.
At the same time, taking into account factors such as balancing the protection ability of the hull and the hull not being too slender, the number calculated by the Navy Ship Administration Department is that at least 6,000 horses are needed, otherwise it will not be enough.
Moreover, the volume cannot be too large and the weight cannot be too heavy, otherwise it will not be able to fit into the hull of a 7,000-ton ship and it will be useless.
This number is a huge adjustment for the current steam engine industry in the empire. The empire has not yet built a ship-based steam engine with such high horsepower.
Although the four major domestic steam engine manufacturers are trying their best to compete for orders, whoever can get the order from the Navy in the end will need to show real technical capabilities.
Then, several domestic steel manufacturers are also the focus of the Navy. In particular, steel manufacturers that can produce armor steel have all received technical inquiries from the Navy.
In the four major aspects of hull, armor, power, and naval guns, the navy did not miss any of them. Within a month, the navy generals rushed around and inspected all of them.
Finally, the relevant technical data was summarized to the Naval Ship Administration Department, allowing the warship designers in the Ship Administration Department to use their talents to build a 7,000-ton giant ship as much as possible under the existing technical conditions.
Moreover, the Navy has also given rigid targets. Regardless of other performance, the tonnage of 7,000 tons must be guaranteed.
Secondly, there is the breech-mounted rifled gun. It is best to have this thing, but if you really don’t need it, a front-mounted rifled gun will also work, but the caliber must be large and the barrel must be long, otherwise it will not scare people.
As for the speed, if it can be achieved, then it can be achieved. If it cannot be achieved, as long as it is not too different, as long as it is barely usable, the navy can accept it. Anyway, don't expect to go there to fight.
In short, the design goal of the new warship is to be tall and powerful. It would be best if it could be pulled out and walked around in a circle to fire two cannons and make the Army people angry to death.
Therefore, seven thousand tons is necessary, and the caliber of the naval gun must be large, otherwise it will not be able to show off.
What is the use of warships that cannot be shown off? Is it really to defeat the navies of other countries? Stop talking nonsense.
Just to fight the navies of other countries, the existing new 1,000-ton frigates of the Tang Dynasty Navy are enough, and they can even use them on two or three thousand-ton battleships, let alone a seven-thousand-ton giant ship.
It has to be said that the requirements of the top brass of the Navy are very strange.
So this time, in addition to regular design, the design department of the Naval Ship Administration Department also had to consider how to make the warships better-looking and more powerful.
For example, naval guns!
This thing must be scary enough!
Therefore, the gunnery department under the Ministry of Ship Affairs, with a shake of its hand, decided that the gun of the new warship would be a 300 mm breech-loaded rifled gun. However, such a gun is not even a shadow now.
Not yet. Several rifled breech-loading guns previously produced by Jiangnan Artillery Factory only had a caliber of 200 mm.
In addition, a lot of thought has been put into the exterior design of the battleship, everything is done to look good.
Even for the sake of good looks, they deliberately designed one more chimney, from the original three to four, just to make it more symmetrical and look more powerful!
Taken together, many of the ship's designs are completely unnecessary, even redundant, and unsuitable from the perspective of ocean warfare.
However, the senior officials of the Navy are extremely satisfied with the design of the ship, because this warship looks very large and majestic just by looking at the drawings.
In July of the 29th year of Xuanping, the Navy officially determined the construction plan for a new generation of battleships. The first ship was named Guangdong and was built at Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard. Many of its subsystems were jointly provided by many domestic manufacturers. It is expected that three
The basic construction of the hull will be completed in the next year, and all construction will be completed within four years for testing.
But this is just a plan, and no one knows how long it will take.
It is worth noting that in the design and construction of this class of warships, electric equipment was used for the first time.
This set of electrical equipment is actually used to promote the rotation of the fort, not for electric lighting or anything like that.
The bottom line is that the Tang Navy tried to use steam power to rotate the turret before. This proved to be a very unreliable solution. After the failure, the Navy began to look for other solutions, and finally found the Royal Institute of Technology Physics.
Department of Electromagnetics Project Group.
Because at that time, they had already learned that the electromagnetic project team of the Royal Institute of Technology had invented the generator and the electric motor by the way. Although it was only a laboratory product, the Navy saw the dawn of a solution to the problem and directly
I ran over and threw away a large amount of research and development funds and asked them to buy a set of electric motors for the navy to push the heavy turret.
However, just like the naval gun, when the keel of the hull began to be laid, the Royal Institute of Technology had not yet produced the finished product and was still in the state of research and development.
Who knows if we can catch up with the construction plan of the Guangdong.
In order to build the Guangdong, the Navy was really ruthless this time. They retired many wooden sail warships at once, just to save money. In addition, they also cut the construction plan of many warships.
It is said that the navy has even lowered its food standards.
There is no other way. If the superiors do not provide funding for shipbuilding, the Navy will have to squeeze money from other sources.
In Bao Yifen's words, even if you starve to death, you still have to build the Guangdong!
When the report of the Navy's shipbuilding plan came to Li Xuan, Li Xuan did not show any expression and said: Got it!
This also means that Li Xuan doesn't care. If your navy is willing to do it yourself, you can do it yourself. If you do it well, praise it. But if you accidentally repeat the failure of the battleship Hebei, Li Xuan will inevitably have to take down several navy troops.
A general's official hat.
In order to steal the limelight, the Navy started construction of the Guangdong, and there was no intention to hide it. The keel had just been laid, and it was publicized and reported directly in the newspaper. The report frequently mentioned the army's artillery and artillery.
Armed trains for comparison!
Its intention is very obvious, and it is nothing more than to promote to the public: "In front of the navy's brand-new battleships, their army's armed trains are nothing, and they can be beaten back to the state of parts in minutes."
The deterrent power of the seven-thousand-ton giant ship and the three-hundred-millimeter cannon was huge. It instantly aroused the curiosity of the people. For a time, the frequency of discussions about the navy among the people became much higher.
And the Army said hehe!
You, the navy, just take your time and play your part, while our army is expanding its territory!
Of course, this is just a public statement.
In fact, several big bosses in the army were quite unhappy!
A group of navy bastards dare to steal the Army's limelight, they must be suppressed!
As a result, the Army immediately launched a new generation armed train plan. They planned to put the Navy's breech-mounted rifled naval gun, which is a 300 mm caliber giant gun, onto the train!
Isn't it just thicker and longer than anyone else? Who is afraid of whom?
The behavior of the navy and army made Li Xuan particularly speechless!
In his two lifetimes, he had only seen arms races between countries, but he had never seen an arms race between the army and navy of a country.
Can battleships and armed trains also be compared?
Simply insane!
However, although he felt particularly strange and speechless, Li Xuan still pretended not to see it. As long as the army and navy completed the established strategic tasks honestly, they could do whatever they wanted to do with the rest. He had always been too lazy.