The first thousand six hundred and seventy-ninth chapters can not afford the rear cannon
As the first purely civilian shipyard in the Tang Empire to get involved in the field of warship manufacturing, Shamian Shipyard has experienced numerous turmoils in its more than 20 years of development.
When Xu Zhuliang's father was managing the Shamian Shipyard, although he had a good relationship with the military and was able to undertake some orders for patrol ships and frigates, the scale was never large due to limited technology.
At the same time, Xu Zhuliang's father attached great importance to equity. Even when the shipbuilding industry was at its peak, he only gave up about 10% of the shares to introduce strategic investors.
There is not much capital, and the technology is not improving quickly, so naturally it cannot accept orders for high-profit ships, regardless of whether they are civilian ships or warships.
Later, Xu Zhuliang inherited the family business and became the controlling shareholder and general manager of Shamian Shipyard, launching a comprehensive reform.
He has successively introduced a number of strategic investors. Although the shares in his hands have dropped to more than 30% due to the introduction of strategic investors, he is still the largest shareholder and holds more than 20% of the shares.
It was purchased by several fund companies, and its voting rights were entrusted to Xu Zhuliang.
Therefore, Xu Zhuliang still firmly controls the shipyard with more than 30% of the shares.
After bringing in strategic investors, we used the money to upgrade technology, build a new large-scale shipyard, and even set up a branch factory.
Shamian Shipyard has two production bases, the First Shamian Shipyard and the Second Shamian Shipyard, with a total of three 5,000-ton dry docks, four 3,000-ton docks, and a 10,000-ton dock under construction.
One.
In terms of purely technical capabilities, the technical capabilities of Shamian Shipyard are enough to rank first among private capital shipyards. Even if we look at the country, including official capital shipyards and royal capital shipyards, Shamian Shipyard is also ranked first among private capital shipyards.
Able to break into the top five.
The only ones ahead of him are Guangzhou Shipyard, Jiangnan Shipyard, Dingsheng Shipyard, and Qingdao Naval Shipyard!
Even Zhaoqing Shipyard, a large shipyard directly under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, actually has lower technical capabilities than Shamian Shipyard.
However, this ranking is limited to shipbuilding technology, especially technology for building large-tonnage high-performance ships, and does not refer to production capacity.
If we talk about production capacity, the combined number of shipyards affiliated to Feng Shipping Company exceeds that of Shamian Shipyard. However, Feng Shipping's shipyards build ordinary civilian ships, which is not as capable as Shamian Shipyard.
The gap between the shipyards that build main warships is still relatively large.
Building warships is one of their important businesses, and recently the Navy is promoting a large-scale construction plan for a new generation of warships. Although it is inevitable that the majority will be taken away by the two shipyards, Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard and Qingdao Naval Shipyard.
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However, orders for cruisers and frigates can still be obtained by Shamian Shipyard, Guangzhou Shipyard, and Jiangnan Shipyard.
In recent years, Shamian Shipyard has also received several orders for warships, but Xu Zhuliang felt that it was not enough!
He wanted more, especially to squeeze into the large warship business that had been monopolized by Hong Kong shipyards.
Otherwise, he would not have invested huge sums of money to build a 10,000-ton shipyard, which was prepared for the military's 10,000-ton giant ship.
As for civilian ships, for the time being, civilian ships generally do not have ships of such large tonnage. After all, the construction cost is too high, and it is still difficult for many domestic civilian ports to accommodate the berthing of giant ships of 10,000 tons.
Among civilian ships these days, those under five thousand tons are the most popular, especially ocean-going merchant ships with a tonnage of two to three thousand tons. Overseas trading companies like them the most.
Because the tonnage is not small, the transportation volume is large, and more importantly, it can be berthed in overseas territorial ports or simply indigenous ports, so there is no need to worry about the ship being too big to dock.
Among civilian ships, generally only luxury passenger ships that carry out ocean routes are large-tonnage ships.
For example, take the Pacific route from mainland China to Xinjinshan.
Another example is the Indian Ocean route in South Africa.
Moreover, these luxury passenger ships will actually make money by carrying a large amount of cargo, and they will also lose money simply by transporting passengers.
At the same time, these luxury passenger ships are actually only six to seven thousand tons in size. At present, there are no luxury passenger ships with tens of thousands of tons in the empire.
In the civilian ship market, the market capacity for large-tonnage ships is still relatively small. Counting on the civilian market, it is difficult to recover the cost of a 10,000-ton shipyard.
Therefore, Xu Zhuliang has always wanted to win orders for armored cruisers from the Navy.
As for battleships, he doesn't expect them for the time being. Battleships are too high-tech. Currently, only Dingsheng Shipyard in the empire can build 10,000-ton battleships.
All he wants is an order for armored cruisers!
A large ship of seven to eight thousand tons is quite profitable.
Therefore, even though the construction process of this cruiser Colombo was quite bumpy, not to mention not making any money, but almost losing money, Xu Zhuliang did not complain, but complained every chance he got.
Only in this way can the navy see the grievances and efforts of its shipyard. When the big bosses at the top soften their hearts a little, they might be able to get an order for an armored cruiser.
Naturally, Navy Captain Ge Chengbin had no interest in Xu Zhuliang's ideas and the development of the Shamian Shipyard. He was only interested in the cruiser Colombo in front of him.
This Colombo cruiser is a newly completed ship, and the paint on it is still brand new. The waterline is red, the hull is gray, and the upper wooden deck is white.
Almost all the steel battleships of the Tang Dynasty have this kind of painting.
This red, gray, and white paint actually has no tactical effect or special significance. It is purely because the three types of paint used on battleships underwater, on the water, and on the deck are red, gray, and white...
Just like the eyes of a dead fish, they look weird, just because they are weird and have no special meaning.
The red, gray and white paint used by the Navy has no special meaning. It is purely because the paint is that color.
After boarding the Colombo, Colonel Ge Chengbin walked very briskly along the iron stairs, first climbed to the main deck of the bow, and looked at a 150mm breech-loaded gun placed on the semi-enclosed turret on the deck.
Colonel Ge Chengbin just leaned over and looked at it: "This barrel is very long. The barrel is thirty-five times the caliber, which is much longer than the front-loading gun we used before!"
The lieutenant colonel and chief of staff next to him also looked at the artillery with curiosity, and said at the same time: "We have a total of four 150 cannons on this ship, one on the front, one on the left, and one on the left. When facing the enemy, any
Three main guns can be concentrated on one side."
Ge Chengbin said: "Don't forget, we still have four 100mm secondary guns. When facing the enemy on the side, we can also invest two more 100mm secondary guns. If we are facing the enemy from the bow or even the stern,
, you can also invest the same number of artillery, which should be very useful for chasing the enemy."
In addition to the four 150mm main guns of the Colombo, there are four 100mm secondary guns deployed at the four corners on the left and right sides of the ship!
As for the two small-caliber secondary guns of 75 mm and 40 mm, these guns are generally used to deal with enemy small sampans and other close-range self-defense firepower, and are usually not included in the statistics of battleship guns.
In terms of firepower, the Colombo is naturally inferior to the West India-class cruiser that was newly designed and finalized last year. After all, the tonnage difference between the two sides is almost 500 tons.
However, both sides are equipped with the same artillery, and the other designs and subsystems are actually not very different. To a certain extent, the two sides are relatively similar.
Leaving the deck, Captain Ge Chengbin and his men continued to climb up, first climbing to the bridge. Looking down from the high bridge, he felt that the Colombo was even more majestic.
"Good ship!" Naval Captain Ge Chengbin held the iron railing and sighed sincerely.
The Colombo cruiser was originally the third ship of the second Zhangzhou-class cruiser built by the Navy and equipped with forward-mounted rifled guns. It was modified in design along with the other three semi-finished ships of the Zhangzhou-class, and then converted into a rear-mounted rifled gun.
Battleship.
Therefore, there are actually four Zhangzhou-class cruisers in total, and they are also the first batch of newly built cruisers in the Tang Empire to use rear-mounted naval guns.
The ship has a standard displacement of 2,000 tons, four 150mm main guns, four 100mm secondary guns, and several 75mm and 40mm small-caliber close-in defense guns. The sails are powered by
, the maximum speed of pure steam engine power is sixteen knots, and it uses a relatively traditional belt armor, except that it only lays a very narrow, not too thick steel armor on the waterline.
Colonel Ge Chengbin, who had just accepted the ship, was quite excited. After getting familiar with the ship with his officers and soldiers for a few days, he drove the ship directly away from the Shamian Shipyard and headed for the Hong Kong Naval Base.
Although this is the first time to sail on a ship and they have only been familiar with it for a few days, Ge Chengbin and the others are all veterans of the navy.
They had been on a long voyage on the Fuzhou before. Now they have a new ship and they can still sail away with a little familiarity.
After all, when Datang's warships were designed, many details and some usage habits were reserved. Therefore, if the officers and soldiers were a little familiar with them, it would not be a problem to sail away directly.
Of course, this does not mean that it has combat effectiveness.
It was also the first time for Ge Chengbin and the others to come into contact with this breech-loaded artillery piece. They had heard a lot about it before, but this was the first time they had actually come into contact with the real thing.
After arriving at the Hong Kong Naval Base, Ge Chengbin and his officers and non-commissioned officers were busy getting familiar with the warships every day, and then went out to sea for a trip, and also conducted gunnery training.
During the gunnery training, they were still not used to these breech-loaded artillery!
Why?
The rate of fire was so fast that the gunner was in a hurry and couldn't keep up with the rhythm.
Then Ge Chengbin also discovered a very important problem, that is, the 100mm ammunition bay was a bit far away from the two 100mm artillery.
The 100mm naval gun uses fixed-loaded shells, and its rate of fire is much faster than that of front-loaded guns, even compared with those breech-loaded guns that have separate ammunition.
The artillery fired so fast that the soldiers had no time to carry the shells!
The Colombo was originally prepared to use front-loaded artillery. The rate of fire of the front-loaded artillery was not that high, so they concentrated the ammunition depot for protection at that time. They thought that after replacing the 100mm naval gun with the rear-mounted gun, the rate of fire would be higher.
It became so fast that there was no time to transport the artillery shells.
This was a design defect. Even if he discovered the problem, he had no choice but to report it to the superiors, saying that the ammunition could not be transported, and let the superiors find a way to solve it.
But the reply from above made him vomit blood: it was recommended to lower the rate of fire and win with accuracy.
In fact, the ordnance department in charge at this time not only responded to the Colombo like this, but also issued a similar document to all commanders of warships equipped with breech-mounted artillery: For 100 mm and 100-mm cannons using metal fixed-mounted artillery shells,
The 120mm breech-loaded rifled gun cannot blindly pursue the rate of fire, but must pursue accuracy.
The reason why the top brass of the Navy did this is very strange!
Because the rate of fire of these two artillery pieces is too fast, the consumption of shells has increased significantly, and the ammunition supply design inside the battleship has completely failed to keep up. Not only is it a transportation problem, but the ammunition compartment is too small, and the shells in reserve are not enough!
Another more important problem is that after equipping the breech-loaded artillery, the rate of fire is too fast, the ammunition consumption is doubled compared to before, and the new cylindrical collision fuze shells are too expensive.
When the top brass of the Navy saw the ammunition consumption data from the munitions department, all of them couldn't help but frown!
I have been struggling for several years and spending countless funds to finally increase the rate of fire of the naval gun. Now you are telling me that I can't fire so fast and must take my time?
This made the navy's top brass particularly speechless.