The first thousand nine hundred and thirty-two chapters of the navy
The navy was too lazy to modify its early steam steel battleships. This does not mean that their hulls were too old. In fact, the hulls could be used for more than ten or even twenty or thirty years without any problems.
The main reason why the Navy does not want to refit is that the early design ideas of warships are incompatible with the current ones, which makes the refit difficult and expensive, and the combat effectiveness after the refit is not very good.
After all, when several early steel battleships were designed and built, they were still in the musket era.
Although front-loading rifled guns were equipped in the following years, front-loading rifled guns have never become mainstream in the Tang army and navy, not only artillery, but also muskets.
Front-loading rifled weapons are very typical transitional weapons. From their appearance to their replacement, they last only four or five years.
Because front-loading rifled weapons have many similarities with smooth-bore weapons, it was barely feasible to upgrade warships equipped with smooth-bore guns to front-loading rifled guns.
This is why the Tang Dynasty Navy upgraded and converted many early warships into front-mounted rifled guns.
However, if you want to equip a breech-mounted rifled gun, the changes will be too big, not to mention the need for major surgery on the hull, and the combat effectiveness will not be exerted.
In addition, a very important point is that the shipbuilding technology at that time was still relatively poor, especially the steam engine. Early steam engines actually seemed to have good performance, but the failure rate was generally high.
The Tang Dynasty steam warships that were put into service thirty years ago by Xuan Ping deliberately pursued high performance under conditions of limited technology. For example, the steam unit had a small horse-drawn cart, and there were still certain problems with the rivet technology of the steel hull. Therefore, in the early days
Battleships commonly have problems such as high steam unit failure rates, difficult maintenance, and various minor problems often occur in the hull.
Many daily problems mean that daily maintenance costs are very high.
The Navy upgrades the guns of old steam warships. Hull modification can naturally solve these problems, but you have to know that these problems are actually design problems of the hull. If you want to change them, you will need major surgery.
The cost of upgrading and refitting this kind of old warship is enough to build more than half a new warship of full tonnage.
If an old Shanxi-class armor-belt cruiser wants to be upgraded and refitted, it will need to be replaced with a steam unit, a new breech-mounted rifled gun and many other ancillary equipment. Even many parts of the hull need to be re-strengthened. The project is too big.
So the total cost is about 300,000 yuan.
If this is the case, the Navy might as well directly purchase the Gohe-class dome-armored cruiser, a scaled-down version of the Nishiyin-class protected cruiser.
Although the Gohe-class dome-armored cruiser is a reduced version of the Xiyin-class, its combat effectiveness is still good. It can defeat a large number of old warships only by relying on its speed and high-rate naval guns.
The cost of the ship is only 350,000 yuan. The most important thing is that this scaled-down version of the cruiser uses a large number of mature and stable technologies. Not only is it cheap, but the maintenance costs are also cheap.
The Navy is quite fond of the two current warships that are low-cost and have lower maintenance costs. They are the Gohe-class cruiser, a reduced version of the West Indian-class dome cruiser, and the Mikawa-class frigate, a reduced version of the New Antarctic frigate.
Currently, these two scaled-down versions of warships are under large-scale construction. The Navy plans to use these two warships to completely replace the early ironclads, armored cruisers, frigates, etc., to form the subsequent main ocean-going ships of the Datang Navy.
For this reason, the planned number of Gohe-class cruisers to be built has reached more than twenty.
The number of Mikawa-class frigates to be built is expected to reach more than forty.
Although the relative performance of the Xiyin-class cruisers and the New Antarctic frigates are more advanced and the combat effectiveness is more powerful, the number of constructions has been cut. In the end, only six Xiyin-class cruisers and New Antarctic frigates were built, and their follow-up ships were built.
The construction plan was changed to a new scaled-down version of the battleship.
This has to be said to be a kind of irony. The Tang Dynasty Navy finally managed to produce a cruiser with excellent performance such as the Xiyin class, but it was because the enemy was so weak that the performance was excessive. In the end, in order to save money, it surrendered.
Construct a lower performance Gohe class cruiser.
But this in turn proved the invincibility of the Tang Navy!
Nowadays, when the navy builds new warships, they are all cheap warships, and money is wasted on upgrading and refitting those old antiques.
Under such circumstances, the Tang Navy was not willing to carry out large-scale modifications on the warships that were originally designed to be equipped with smoothbore guns thirty years before Xuanping.
At most, it's just a front-loading rifled gun or something, but don't count on the power system.
In addition, there are a small number of old warships whose hulls are in relatively good condition and have no major hull problems. They can be given the opportunity to retrofit rear-mounted guns, but the number is very small, and most of them will not be used to perform front-line tasks after modification, but will be used
It is used as a training ship to allow naval cadet officers and recruits to have access to the training of rear-mounted rifled guns.
As for other early steam battleships with many problems, once the navy feels that the maintenance cost is too high and it is not cost-effective to use, they will often be directly mothballed.
In a few years they will be dismantled and sold for scrap!
The Jiangnan-class ironclads/cruisers of that year were decommissioned one after another.
Now it is the turn of the Shanxi-class cruiser and several other old battleships.
According to the plan of the Tang Dynasty Navy, they expected to completely upgrade the warships in the next ten years and completely retire all the warships built before Xuanping thirty years ago.
These four old warships that have returned to the mainland from Europe have different fates waiting for them. The three frigates will be directly decommissioned and stored, and maybe they will be directly sold and dismantled in a few years.
A Shanxi-class cruiser with better luck will return to the mainland to upgrade and install a few breech-mounted rifled guns, and at the same time remove other unnecessary front-mounted rifled guns to serve as a training ship.
The fate of these four battleships after they returned to the mainland was naturally not known by the people on the New Atlantic, especially Elizabeth. At this time, she was looking at the battleships in the distant sea, puffing out light white smoke in the foreground.
There was no curiosity or doubt, just watching, because those warships had been sailing nearby for many days, and the excitement and curiosity at the beginning had long since disappeared.
In the vast sea, Elizabeth stood on the first-class deck wearing a white sand soft-topped wide hat, looking sideways to the east, although there was nothing in the east except sea water.
But she knew that the far east was the Tang Dynasty!
The Tang Dynasty that Elizabeth looked at in the distance was still peaceful at this time, even though the empire's diplomats, troops and even businessmen were constantly causing trouble on a global scale, making most of the world's regions turbulent.
Let the words "Datang" spread to every corner of the earth, and let every native tremble from the bottom of his heart when he hears it.
But in the Tang Dynasty, there was no turmoil at all. People were obsessed with studying and working.
When they have time, some people will also pay attention to the recently popular polo match.
Discussing which team will win the championship this year.