Chapter 1674 A navy without battleships is soulless
The Army ordered 400,000 combined rifles in one fell swoop. It can be seen from this that the Army plans to re-equip all its combat-ready units first. After all, the Army's front-line combat-ready units only have about 400,000 troops.
As for the second-line standing troops, reserve troops, and militia troops, they naturally came later.
No matter how rich the army is, it cannot re-equip all its troops at once. Even if it has money, the production capacity of the arsenal cannot keep up.
This time the Army does not have to wait for the Guards to equip them first, but can directly equip them themselves, because the Guards have already begun to purchase better and more expensive Li Fu rifles.
The Navy was not to be outdone, and they quickly placed an order for 50,000 naval versions of the combined rifles. The barrels of the navy version were shorter than the army version, but still longer than the cavalry version.
In addition, the more than 100,000 Mini rifles that have been transitionally equipped in the past two years will naturally not be wasted. Now the Western Expeditionary Army continues to use them. After the first batch of combined rifles are produced, they will be used by the Western Expeditionary Army on the front line.
Priority will be given to reloading, and then these Mini rifles will be brought back to the factory for bolt action modification and converted into rifles that can be rear-loaded.
Then this batch of breech-loading rifles modified from Mini rifles are expected to be equipped with second-line standing forces, especially second-line standing forces performing missions overseas.
After all, the entire breech-loading gun replacement plan will need to last at least five years based on the current normal production capacity of the empire's arsenal. After all, this is not a period of large-scale war, and it is impossible to engage in overtime production. It takes time to produce new combination rifles.
In addition, these mini rifles cannot be thrown away directly. It is only reasonable to slightly modify them and continue to use them.
It is worth noting that in fact, except for the more than 30,000 Minie rifles that were newly produced, the remaining more than 100,000 were actually modified from the original flintlock muskets.
After all, it is very simple to transform a flintlock rifle into a Minie rifle. You just need to rifling it, and the transformation cost is also low.
The military is also preparing to transform the new flintlock guns in stock. After all, the number of flintlock guns currently in Datang's inventory is too huge. The army and navy combined have 300,000 new flintlock guns in stock!
After being used and decommissioned, but still barely usable, there are even more that have been directly sealed, totaling millions of them!
For example, in the ordnance warehouse of the Guards in Jinling City, there is an entire warehouse with a hundred thousand brand new and unopened flintlock guns in stock. This is all for the purpose of stockpiling guns in case of emergencies and preventing large-scale attacks.
of war.
Foreign enemies are out of the question, we are just afraid of internal strife!
Of course, in addition to some of the newly stocked flintlock guns that are valuable for transformation into breech-loading guns, other parts will be directly rifled and given to reserve forces and militia forces.
As for the remaining ones, they actually don’t have much modification value. After all, many of them are old guns that have been used for many years. It costs a lot of money to modify so many old guns. It is better to just replace them with new ones.
Therefore, the remaining part will be sent to overseas colonies for use by immigrants.
At present, a major feature of the overseas immigrants of the Tang Empire is that guns are not allowed. On the contrary, the military also encourages young immigrants in overseas territories to own guns.
This is because the Tang Empire likes to recruit land-requisitioning militias to fight the indigenous people in its overseas territories.
After all, the number of regular troops in the Tang Empire was actually small. Most of them were deployed in the mainland. There were only a few overseas, and even fewer were dispersed to each colony, and the cost of use was also very high.
In order to reduce costs, the Army has been committed to improving the combat effectiveness of the militia units in the colonies. Basically, young and strong new immigrants will be incorporated into the local militia units and then issued guns for free.
Even if you are unwilling to join the militia, you can still buy guns at very low prices.
After all, the environment in overseas territories is harsh, and indigenous attacks occur one after another. In order to protect your own land and personal safety, this is impossible without guns.
With so many overseas territories in the empire, there will be more and more immigrants. The flintlock guns in this stock can always be used. If it doesn't work, just export them!
Nowadays, many arsenals in the Tang Dynasty are actually still producing new matchlocks and flintlock guns for export every year. They refurbished old guns and bought them as new guns, but the natives couldn't tell.
Even if you see it, it's okay. The arms dealers of the Tang Dynasty have always been notoriously shady. It's trivial to buy old guns as new ones, and the price will definitely be extremely expensive.
The arms dealers of the Tang Dynasty never resorted to such despicable methods as low-price dumping. In their opinion, it was really detrimental to the face of the gentry.
They would rather give it away for free than sell it at a low price!
Of course, they won't say that giving them away for free is all because they want to provoke civil strife among the indigenous people so that they can sell the guns at a higher price in the future.
Anyway, nothing good.
When the military identified the Type 34 Combined Rifle as the new generation standard rifle, the plan to install the breech-loaded artillery was also proceeding normally.
In the 34th year of Xuanping, this is the year when the Army fully enters breech-loading rifled weapons. In this year, combined rifles and various breech-loading artillery will officially enter service.
As for the Navy, it was a little earlier. They started equipment the year before last. However, due to production capacity and construction period constraints, it was actually only this year that large-scale equipment and use started.
After all, only one or two battleships are equipped with breech-mounted guns, which cannot represent the entire navy.
After entering the era of breech-loaded guns, the navy's warship design has also undergone many changes.
For example, the Navy's prestige project, the new 10,000-ton battleship Banten, has changed over the past two years due to changes in technology, which has caused a lot of trouble for the battleship designers!
The design started two years ago as soon as the rear-mounted cannon came out. As a result, the preliminary design turned out to be a battleship of just over 10,000 tons. It is expected to be equipped with four 300mm main guns and numerous secondary guns.
Judging from the original time and space, it can be regarded as a relatively standard pre-dreadnought battleship.
But the design draft had just been finalized. News came from the battleship Guangdong that the fort had problems again, forcing the designer to revise the design again. Not long after the revision, the Shanghai Gun Factory said that they were already working on the 30th anniversary.
times the 300mm artillery.
With a better main gun, it is natural to equip it, but a more powerful gun also means a heavier weight, and then there are modifications to the design!
It’s so frustrating for the designer!
But it doesn’t work if you don’t change it. After all, if you find a problem, you should change it.
For example, the electric turret issue will not work if it is not changed.
The electric rotary turret used on the battleship Guangdong sounded very high-end, and no problems were found during the test. However, when it was actually used, it was found that there were many problems, frequent malfunctions, and in the end it even reached the point of being unusable.
.
The Navy had to sail the battleship Guangdong into the dock again.
Finally, the Navy made up its mind not to engage in this nonsense of electric turrets, but to stick to practical hydraulic turrets!
In order to solve the problem of turret rotation, the Navy successively tried steam, electric, and finally hydraulic. This path was very tortuous, and it also kept the cost high.
There was a problem with the battleship Guangdong. The Luzon, which had just completed outfitting at that time, was forced to return to the shipyard for replacement. Their electric turret had not been used a few times before it was forced to be replaced.
By the end of last year, when the Luzon finally passed sea trials and entered naval service, its total cost had already exceeded 3.5 million yuan, which made many generals of the navy have black eyes!
The final total cost of the smaller Guangdong was close to three million.
These two warships took more than five years to build, costing a total of more than 6.5 million, and they suffered from frequent breakdowns. The navy did not dare to let them sail far, so they could only run offshore.
As for the actual combat value, anyway, there is currently no enemy navy on earth worthy of the Tang Navy using such 10,000-ton warships.
Otherwise, how could the Army say that this was a face-saving project of the Navy?
However, these things are only known to insiders, but not to outsiders. Whenever the navy brings these two warships into coastal ports for the public to visit, they can get a lot of exclamations, which greatly satisfies the navy.
officers and soldiers.
The direct manifestation of this is that in the spring enrollment of the 34th year of Xuanping, Haixuetang successfully snatched the first place in the Royal Youth Military Academy. Forty-five of the top one hundred graduates of the school were snatched away by Navy Haixuetang.
, and troops are generally sent forward.
Its results have reached the highest number of Caspian Academy enrollments in the past years!
The top brass of the Navy were very excited!
This also strengthens the Navy's determination to continue building 10,000-ton battleships!
Of course, the number will definitely not be large. At most, it will be built one ship after another. After all, the Navy also knows that this thing is only a face-saving project. It is good to have more, and there is no need to have more.
This can also be seen from the construction process of the Guangdong and Luzon. At the beginning, there was only the Guangdong. After the Guangdong was launched and the slipway was vacated, the Luzon began to lay the keel.
After the Luzon completed its outfitting, the keel laying of the third-generation battleship Banten began.
After many modifications, the Banten has undergone many changes in details. For example, the turret has been changed to a hydraulic turret, and the power system has also been upgraded.
The main gun also changed from a 300mm 25x gun to a 300mm 30x gun.
The secondary battery has also changed. It was originally expected to have a 170mm naval gun, but later the development of the 150mm naval gun went smoothly and the rate of fire was faster. Taking into account the actual combat value, the navy finally gave up.
The 170mm secondary gun was neither high nor low, so we chose to equip it with a larger 150mm naval gun.
Basically, the forts, naval guns, and power have all changed, so in the end, the hull has also changed, and the tonnage has increased, to 12,000 tons.
For this reason, the cost has naturally increased a lot, which has led to many people outside criticizing the navy for having enough food and leisure, and ruining the fortune by doing face-saving projects.
However, the navy generals have been trained in the past few years, and they are all very thick-skinned.
You can spray if you want, this battleship is going to be built anyway!
After all, a navy without battleships has no soul!