In mid-July of the seventh year of Qian Sheng, Lin Ziran hosted a seminar on new warships in the Mirror Palace of the Daheng Empire.
The Ministry of Ship Affairs has submitted numerous new warships for detailed discussion and finalized the production and construction plans for many new warships. If nothing else, this meeting will determine new battleships, new armored cruisers, new cruisers, and new types of warships at once. Selection of ocean-going lightning strike ships.
Because the Daheng Empire Navy has no extra time to waste!
Since May, except for the warships under construction that have already started, the Daheng Empire has completely stopped building new warships. Now it is July, and no warships have been started for two full months, not even torpedo boats. No small battleships have been built, which is abnormal for the Daheng Empire Navy, which is facing huge maritime pressure and is focused on expanding the size of its fleet.
The Daheng Empire Navy does not have so much time to waste!
Therefore, after two months of intense discussions and design work, the Ship Administration Department has designed several new high-freeboard warships based on the new strategic and tactical needs of the navy and combined with the technological capabilities of the defense industry of the Daheng Empire.
The designs of these new battleships will be finalized at today's seminar, and the battleship designs that are most suitable for the Daheng Empire Navy will be selected.
As Lin Ziran entered the conference hall and sat on the dragon chair, many naval generals and core technical leaders in the national defense field below all took their seats after Lin Ziran gave him a seat.
Duan Hongxiao, Director of the Naval Military Command Department, then spoke first: "According to His Majesty's decree, combined with the new strategic and tactical needs of our navy's third phase development plan, our navy has planned to build a pure ocean-going main fleet. The new ocean-going main fleet will be based on Implement long-distance blockade as the core strategic goal, and achieve the above core strategic goals through fleet decisive battles, sea area blockade and other measures."
"Based on mission requirements, the initial plan for the new ocean-going fleet is to consist of eight battleships, eight armored cruisers to form the core fleet, 24 second-class cruisers, and 32 ocean-going lightning strike ships for escort, reconnaissance, and lightning strikes."
"According to intelligence, the new battleships of the Kingdom of Krul have been equipped with 350 mm and 30 times caliber naval guns, and the Southern Orissa Empire Navy has also been equipped with 300 mm and 30 times caliber naval guns. Valia The Imperial Navy is equipped with 280mm 40x caliber naval guns."
"At the same time, new warships of various navies generally use steel-faced iron armor, and the armor thickness generally reaches more than 300 mm, and some battleships even reach more than 400 mm. At the same time, parts of the warships, especially the upper part, begin to use nickel steel."
"It is worth noting that the navies of various countries have followed our example one after another and adopted the combined image rangefinder as the main means of measuring naval gun range. The long-distance accuracy of the main gun has been greatly improved."
"In terms of speed, the speed of the main battleships of the navies of various countries is generally between fifteen and sixteen knots. There are also some second-class battleships with weak armor that can reach a speed of more than seventeen knots."
"Therefore, the new type of battleship must have the ability to fight against the above-mentioned battleships!"
At this time, Zhu Zhaoyuan, Vice Minister of the Department of Ship Administration and Director of the Shipbuilding Department, who was also the most famous warship designer in the Daheng Empire, said: "In response to the needs of the new strategy and our national defense industry capabilities, our Ship Administration The Ministry has clarified the main design indicators!”
"In order to ensure ocean combat capabilities and combat capabilities in complex sea conditions, we determined the layout of high freeboard and semi-enclosed open-air turrets to ensure ocean combat capabilities and reduce the center of gravity at the same time!"
"In order to effectively counter the main battleships currently under construction in various countries, the proposed battleships should be equipped with at least four new 300 mm 35 times new naval guns, equipped with our latest developed smokeless propellant, No. 2 armor-piercing projectiles and No. 3 armor-piercing projectiles.
.”
The No. 2 armor-piercing bullet he mentioned is an armor-piercing bullet that has been quenched and hardened using nickel-chromium alloy steel that has been used before. Its penetrating power is far better than ordinary steel armor-piercing bullets in the past. At the same time, many enemy ship armors adopt a tilted design. In order to
In order to prevent the shells from being bounced off, starting this year, the Daheng Empire Navy also began to use the counterfeitly designed No. 3 armor-piercing projectiles to enhance the penetration of sloped armor.
"The new 300mm naval gun, paired with smokeless gunpowder and No. 2 armor-piercing projectiles and No. 3 armor-piercing projectiles, is enough to effectively threaten any contemporary enemy capital ship at a combat distance of four thousand meters."
"It is equipped with at least eight new 150mm 40x rapid-fire cannons and twelve 50mm small-caliber rapid-fire cannons."
"For the protection of the proposed battleship, comprehensive protection and hardened armor shall be adopted. The thickest part of the main armor belt shall be no less than 200 mm of hardened armor. The armor protection of the gun mount shall be no less than 150 mm. The thickest part of the command tower shall not be less than 100 mm.
Less than 150 mm, and the main armor belt must be a fully armored belt, completely covering the waterline, extending upward to protect the secondary battery emplacements, and extending downward to expand the protection area."
"The power of the proposed battleship shall not be less than sixteen knots under normal pressure, and shall not be less than seventeen knots under forced ventilation."
In fact, no one has any opinions on the design of main battleships, especially the main indicators. These main performance indicators have been the result of repeated discussions among the top brass of the Navy, especially the dispute between high freeboard plus open-air turrets and low freeboard plus turrets.
It directly caused violent turmoil within the navy. In the end, former head of the naval affairs department Ye Hongwei, who supported the design of low freeboard and turrets and emphasized protective performance and firepower, and former naval officer Xi Yibin, former director of the Strategic Department of the Naval Staff, transferred to the navy.
End of reserve duty!
The reason why it caused such serious consequences that two important naval officials were forced to transfer to the reserve force is because this is not only a battle over battleship design, but also a battle over naval routes. Behind this battle over routes is the overall strategy of the navy.
Development, after the two sides decided the winner, in order to ensure the consistency of naval strategy and avoid internal attrition and repeated routes, the former Minister of Ship Administration Ye Hongwei and the former Director of the Strategy Department of the Naval Staff Lieutenant Commander Xi Yibin
Forced to transfer to reserve service.
Because if these two core supporters of the low freeboard and turret design are still in these two important positions, then the third phase of the development plan of the Daheng Empire Navy will not be launched at all.
After the main design indicators were clear, the detailed ship design work became simpler. The designers under the Ship Administration Department directly came up with three main design plans as alternatives.
Lin Ziran looked at the design drawings of these three candidate models and felt that the warship designers under his hands were still very radical. Plan A included dual-mounted main guns on the front and rear central axes, and at the same time deployed a single gun on each side.
Install main guns to achieve a six-main gun layout. However, this layout has more main guns, but fewer secondary guns, and the tonnage has reached 16,000 tons. The tonnage is too large and the cost is too expensive.
Plan B is a layout of three double turrets in the front, middle and rear of the central axis. In order to avoid the hull being too long, to ensure protection performance, and to ensure the range of fire, the middle turret has two main guns, and its main gun is thirty times the size of 300 mm.
caliber main gun instead of a 35 times caliber main gun. This design plan is also very radical. The direct consequence is that the tonnage seriously exceeds the standard and the cost exceeds the standard. It also requires 16,000 tons and the speed is only 15 knots.
Plan C, this design plan is the most conservative of the three main plans. It is basically a high-freeboard version of the previous Endless Sea-class improved battleship. The layout of the dual-mounted turrets at the front and rear of the axis is also the traditional naval gun layout of the Daheng Empire.
Traditionally, due to the small number of main guns, the number of secondary guns is relatively large, including twelve 150mm rapid-fire guns.
The protection area is larger, the thickest part of the main armor reaches 275 mm, the thickest part of the gun mount reaches 250 mm, the thickest part of the command tower reaches 215 mm, and there is also a layer of seven
Fifteen millimeters of horizontal armor,
The tonnage is well controlled, only more than 15,000 tons, and the speed is the fastest among the three options. The normal pressure speed is expected to reach 16 knots, and the forced ventilation speed is expected to reach 17 knots. As for the actual maximum speed in the future, it still needs to be
We won’t know until we conduct sea trials after completion.
Among these three plans, the first two are six main gun plans, and the latter one is a four main gun plan.
However, after comprehensively considering the cost and comprehensive combat effectiveness, as well as potential technical risks, the meeting finally decided to choose the most conservative Plan C, which is the four-main gun plan.
For the four main gun plan, the shipyard only needs a 15,000-ton shipyard, instead of a larger 20,000-ton shipyard. Currently, there are not many 20,000-ton shipyards in the Daheng Empire. At the same time, the small hull means that the cost is also low.
Small. One ton of displacement of a battleship costs one ton. The difference between two main guns and more than two thousand tons means a price difference of at least hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
After Plan C was selected, it was initially named Jingzhou. This will be the most powerful warship in the history of the Daheng Empire, and even the history of Blue Star!
The Jingzhou's 275 mm hardened armor is equivalent to more than 450 mm of steel-faced iron armor, which is the highest standard armor thickness for contemporary warships. It adopts a comprehensive protection concept and uses hardened armor to save
The tonnage expanded the protection area, making it the battleship with the largest protection area among battleships. Even the secondary guns were equipped with a 150 mm hardened armor shield.
In terms of firepower, many types of naval guns used will innovatively use new secret smokeless artillery. After this new type of propellant was developed, the Army has not yet applied it first, and the Navy has taken the lead in applying it as the main weapon.
Use of propellant.
The 300mm 35x caliber main gun using smokeless artillery is even more powerful than the 350mm 30x caliber main gun. It weighs only more than 40 tons and has a faster rate of fire of two.
One round per minute, which is much faster than the early 300mm 3.5 minute round.
This gun is equipped with No. 2 nickel-chromium alloy steel armor-piercing bullets, and No. 3 nickel-chromium alloy steel armor-piercing bullets. To put it bluntly, this gun uses a series of new technologies and has become the most powerful naval gun in Blue Star.