Some time ago, Bai Shinian made a statement and talked about the training and combat issues of new warships equipped with front-mounted rifled guns. He proposed to focus on training long-range gunnery capabilities. At the same time, he was not just making false claims, but was really
Come up with a detailed training plan and follow-up tactical plan.
The core idea is to use the accuracy of the front-loaded rifled gun to increase the effective range, focusing on gunnery training between 800 meters and 1,000 meters.
After training gunnery at this distance, in subsequent naval battles, you can use long-distance precise artillery to kill enemy warships.
At the same time, it also put forward a point of view, that is, as the distance of artillery battle increases, even if rifled artillery is used, the hit rate of naval guns will drop significantly. For this reason, we can focus on increasing the power of naval guns, so that
As long as a small number of shells hit the enemy ship, the combat effectiveness of the enemy ship can be paralyzed or even the enemy ship can be sunk.
In the past, when shelling was conducted within 500 meters, or even at a distance of about 300 meters, the hit rate was very impressive. Therefore, the artillery configuration on the battleship was based on the number of naval guns.
In order to equip more naval guns, sometimes it is better to sacrifice the power of the naval guns. This is why in the past wooden sail warships, the main force of the warships of most countries were often 32-pound/24-pound cannons, and
Or mainly medium-caliber naval guns such as 18-pound/14-pound naval guns. As for the larger 64-pound/48-pound cannons, they are actually equipped with relatively few.
But last year, Rear Admiral Bai Shilin already suggested equipping more large-caliber front-loading rifled guns.
However, his suggestion was not taken seriously by the navy before, because at that time, the navy's top generals were all focused on breech-loaded rifled guns and had little interest in front-loaded rifled guns.
But starting this year, the Navy finally compromised.
Because the breech-loading rifled gun technology is still immature, although the Jiangnan Artillery Factory has produced a breech-loading rifled prototype gun and successfully conducted test firings, it is still far from finalized production, not to mention extremely expensive.
Based on the current industrial production capacity of Datang, the cost of a breech-loaded rifled gun of the same caliber and barrel is more than five times that of a front-loaded rifled gun, and the larger the caliber, the greater the gap.
The reality forced the navy to bow its head. Finally, in the new cost plan, forward-loading rifled guns were included in the equipment plan, and at the same time, preparations were made to upgrade and modify naval guns on several capital ships.
Rear Admiral Bai Shilin has supported muzzle-loading rifled guns for several years. He has already become proficient in muzzle-loading rifled guns, and has also designed a complete set of training plans for muzzle-loading rifled guns in detail.
While everyone in the Navy is obsessed with 10,000-ton giant ships and studying breech-loading rifled cannons, Bai Shilin is one of the few who specializes in front-loading rifled cannons. Now everyone is preparing to adopt front-loading rifled cannons on a large scale. Li Xuan
It would not be an exaggeration to mention him for reuse.
The four Shanxi-class battleships currently in the Eleventh Squadron are the first batch of battleships in the entire navy to be equipped with front-mounted rifled guns.
Li Xuan asked him to serve as the commander of the 11th Squadron, asking him to tinker with front-loaded rifled guns and then promote them to the entire army.
Of course, being able to rise to the top is also related to his personal identity.
He is a foreign relative, but his identity as a foreign relative is different from other relatives.
The Bai family is Empress Dowager Bai's natal family. For the Bai family, Li Xuan still uses it as much as he can.
In addition, Li Xuan of the Dong family also uses it more, but other relatives and relatives are generally suppressed.
Because the Bai family is the uncle's family, Li Xuan does not have to worry about the struggle for imperial power.
Behind the Dong family is actually the crown prince Li Hao. Li Xuan has long ago decided to let Li Hao succeed him. It is reasonable to gradually support Li Hao's power, but it can only be used to a limited extent to prevent them from becoming bloated and unable to wait. , I want to kill him Li Xuan in advance and take over.
As a member of the Bai family, Bai Shilin's official career is relatively smooth, and Li Xuan will basically not deliberately suppress him.
Since we have this ability and this opportunity, it is reasonable to mention it.
After Li Xuan's decree came down, Bai Shilin went to the palace to pay homage to his aunt, Queen Mother Bai, while there was still time. Of course, Queen Mother Bai did not look at him differently.
Just because Li Xuan wanted to see the Bai family, it didn't mean that the Queen Mother Bai also wanted to see her own family.
In fact, most of the time, the Queen Mother Bai didn't care about the life and death of the Bai family. In the early years, the Bai family opened a department store in Shanghai first, which made the Queen Mother Bai unhappy. She caught Bai Yunqi and cursed him a few times, saying that he was robbing the royal family. business.
But even though Empress Dowager Bai didn't like the Bai family very much, she was the Bai family's biggest supporter anyway. Since Bai Shilin had been promoted, she naturally wanted to pay homage to this aunt.
But as usual, Queen Mother Bai didn't give him a good look, she just said a few words and drove him away.
After Bai Shilin came out of the palace, he was also a little speechless!
In the early years, he thought that Empress Dowager Bai's dislike of him was due to political considerations and she did not want the Holy Emperor to misunderstand and cause any accidents, or she was simply trying to show off to the Holy Emperor to make him feel guilty. Let the queen help her own family.
But after so many years, he gradually understood that Queen Mother Bai really didn't take her family members into consideration.
It's hard to understand, but it's true.
It is difficult for ordinary people to understand the thoughts and actions of Queen Mother Bai. She does not just marry the chicken and follow the chicken, and marry the husband and follow the husband, but she is too lazy to take care of her own daughter, so how can she care about her mother's family.
It is said that in the early years, the Holy Emperor reminded Empress Dowager Bai several times about the eldest princess's marriage, so that she could decide it. Otherwise, Empress Dowager Bai would just turn around and forget about it. It can completely turn the eldest princess Hui Chen into an old girl.
The Bai family is not well received, and the eldest princess's family is not treated very well either.
In order to maintain the relationship with the royal family, the eldest princess often brought her two children into the palace, but most of the time Queen Mother Bai was too lazy to see them. On the contrary, Queen Dong Yunyun was very kind to the eldest princess and her family.
As for the Holy Emperor, he doesn't care about these household matters at all.
Having such an aunt is a blessing, but to some extent it is also a curse!
Who knows if I can personally destroy the Bai family one day!
After leaving the palace, Bai Shilin stayed in Jinling City for another two days and met with many navy bosses before taking a train south to Hong Kong.
The home port of the 11th Squadron is Hong Kong. In peacetime, it controls and defends the central and southern coasts of the empire and the Nanyang Sea. It is powerful.
All battleships are the latest steam steel battleships, the four Shanxi-class battleships, the eight cruisers are all Hangzhou-class cruisers, and the frigates are also the latest frigates.
However, when he arrived in Hong Kong, not all of the above-mentioned battleships were available for use.
Only two of the four battleships are in combat readiness, because one of them is undergoing routine maintenance, which is expected to take about a month, while the other one is undergoing upgrade and modification.
However, only two ships could be used for daily training. A few days after arriving in Hong Kong, he personally led the fleet out to sea for training.
When I went to sea for the first time for live ammunition training, the results were not very good. When shelling from a long distance, the hit rate was quite low.
However, among the few hits, the huge explosion power of the shells caused severe damage to the target ship.
The number of front-mounted rifled guns currently equipped on Shanxi-class battleships is actually not many, only twelve, but they are all large-caliber naval guns.
Among them are 200mm front-loading rifled guns and ten 150mm front-loading rifled guns. In addition to these twelve main guns, there are actually a large number of old front-loading smoothbore guns, mainly 120mm.
, a 100-millimeter caliber, that is, a nine-pound or five-pound front-loading smoothbore cannon as the secondary gun.
In this year's naval reorganization plan, the artillery classification standard based on the weight of the shell has been officially abandoned, and instead the caliber plus barrel length is used to make distinctions.
New rifled guns are all distinguished by caliber and barrel. Early smoothbore guns were also converted to a general standard and began to be numbered with Arabic numerals.
The power of the 200mm naval gun is unquestionable. Because it is a rifled gun, the projectile is a cylindrical shell, which can hold more explosives. After hitting the target, the explosion will be very powerful.
Even if it is purely a solid artillery shell, its weight is greatly increased and its penetrating power is very good.
The 200 mm caliber and 150 mm caliber front-loading rifled guns are currently the two most valued front-loading rifled guns of the Datang Navy. They are intended to be used as the main artillery of warships of all levels. Although many projects have been carried out in the past
Test, but how can it be as intuitive as moving it to a battleship for a timed exercise and live-fire test?
Many naval officers who participated in the live-fire exercise couldn't believe it when they saw that the guns of their own warships only hit the target ship with one shell or blew the target ship into the sky.
Many people doubted whether the target ship had been equipped with explosives, kerosene, etc. in advance to make the exercise more beautiful.
But just being powerful doesn't mean anything. The most important thing is that the combat distance has been greatly increased.
When shooting within a thousand meters, you can still get effective hits. Although the hit rate is a bit poor, you can still hit. In the past, when using smoothbore cannons, you could not get hits at this distance at all.
It doesn't matter if the hit rate is a little bit off. At worst, the training will be more intense. The gunnery skills will eventually be improved, and the hit rate will naturally increase by then.
Bai Shilin also proved this. Half a month later, he once again led the fleet to sea for a live-fire exercise. This time, the hit rate of his warships was greatly improved.
This matter was quickly learned by many senior naval officials.
After all, many naval generals are facing the situation in the 11th Squadron. They are eager to know the actual combat effectiveness of the front-loaded rifled gun.