In order to fight against the Daheng people's new warships, they hope to equip the new warships with 350mm naval guns. However, they can build the hull and other parts by themselves, and even give them a certain amount of time. This 350mm caliber gun
They can also use the main gun.
They had previously successfully developed a 300 mm 25-caliber naval gun on their own, and after introducing certain technologies from the Kingdom of Krul, they successfully developed a 300 mm 30-caliber naval gun on their own.
But the problem now is that the 350mm caliber naval gun is more technically difficult. It can be done, but it will take a long time, and they don't have much time to wait, so they try to get it from Krul.
The kingdom introduces certain technologies to speed up research and development.
The technical problem of naval guns must be solved as soon as possible, otherwise they can only prepare the second plan, which is to continue to use 300 mm and 30 times the caliber naval guns, but install six main guns at once.
But without much surprise, the Kingdom of Krul rejected them!
If they order battleships directly, even the Harold-class battleships will be sold to the Orissa people. After all, the relationship between the two countries is not bad, especially after the unification of Daheng, the strength and big moves shown in the naval expansion have made
The Kingdom of Krul is becoming more and more dissatisfied and even feels threatened, so they have also deliberately begun to support the Orissa people in recent years.
But warships can be sold, but they are not willing to sell the naval gun technology, especially the top-of-the-line 350 mm caliber naval gun technology.
It's not that it's about national defense and security, but if they sell naval gun technology, the Orissa Empire won't order warships from them.
After all, it’s still about money!
But, the Orissa Empire has been in trouble in recent years, and its finances are very tight. This battleship can easily cost several million yuan, and the foreign trade price of a Harold battleship has even reached 600 yuan.
Five hundred thousand hengyuan, if you buy two of them, it will be more than ten million.
Even if you have money, you can't go through such trouble, not to mention that they are very strapped for funds recently.
So in the end, the warship trade naturally came to nothing. At this time, the Orissa people also got angry. They simply did not want the 350 mm caliber naval gun and used their own 300 mm caliber naval gun, although the performance was slightly lower.
It's a little bit worse, but I loaded six of them at once, and the ammunition projection is not bad at all.
At the same time, it is also increasing its efforts to upgrade and improve its own 300mm naval guns, hoping to develop a longer 300mm naval gun.
As a result, not long after, the shipyard in the Orissa Empire started construction of a very special warship for the mainstream warships of contemporary countries. The warship adopted the design of three twin turrets on the central axis.
There is a double-mounted turret at the front, tail and midship, arranged along the central axis!
At the same time, in order to strengthen protection against the Daheng people's "350 mm" naval guns, they did not hesitate to further reduce their seaworthiness and adopted a closed turret design. The armor belt was also thicker, and the main armor belt even reached
The 450mm steel surface armor inevitably brings about the problems of low freeboard and extremely poor seaworthiness.
However, the power is not bad, reaching 16 knots, but the endurance is a bit poor.
In fact, the Daheng Empire Navy has also struggled with this layout of three twin turrets on the central axis with six main guns. When selecting the Jingzhou-class battleship, two of the three major plans had six main guns.
One of the designs is a three-seat twin-mounted layout on the central axis, but this selection uses a high freeboard plus semi-enclosed exposed turret design instead of a low freeboard plus enclosed turret design.
However, at the seminar at the time, the senior generals of the Daheng Navy believed that this was not worth the gain, because the middle turret was deployed between the chimney or the bridge, which greatly affected the shooting. At the same time, it would lengthen the hull and dilute the thickness of the protective armor, resulting in overall
The protective performance will be reduced, and it will also lead to an increase in shipbuilding costs.
The most important thing is that the rate of fire of main guns these days is actually very slow. Even the large-caliber main guns of various navies have generally adopted hydraulic retraction. However, re-entry still relies on gravity, and the overall rate of fire is very slow. Three
The rate of fire of a 100mm-caliber main gun generally stays at about three minutes.
Even though the Daheng Empire has realized the rate of fire of small and medium-caliber naval guns, the development progress of the rate of fire of large-caliber naval guns is still very slow. The largest caliber rate-of-fire gun of the Daheng Empire is now 100.
Fifty millimeters.
The larger-caliber main gun can only achieve half the rate of fire, which means that some of the technology of small-caliber rapid-fire guns is used on large-caliber naval guns to solve the problem of retraction. At the same time, spring-assisted recoil is added, but the overall
The rate of fire is still very slow.
In addition to the problems of retreat and reentry, ammunition that is too heavy and difficult to load also restricts large-caliber naval guns from increasing their rate of fire, even with the assistance of mechanical equipment.
Well, without mechanical assistance, manpower alone cannot complete the loading of a main gun with a caliber of more than 300 mm. The propellant of that thing is dozens of kilograms larger. As for the shells, it is even heavier, reaching several hundred kilograms.
For example, the 300mm naval gun in the Daheng Empire Navy has a standard charge of 78 kilograms of propellant alone. This is still using smokeless propellant. If it were replaced with the black powder of the early years, it would be even more powerful.
many.
The No. 2 armor-piercing bullets and No. 2 semi-armor-piercing bullets it fired weighed 385 kilograms.
The No. 4 high-explosive bomb weighed 400 kilograms.
Moreover, these propellants and shells are extremely dangerous things. They cannot be stored in the turret. Instead, they are stored in the ammunition depot below the turret. The shells need to be transported up with the help of a hoist for reloading.
It is almost impossible to lift a 400 kilogram iron lump and stuff it into the barrel by human power alone.
Therefore, we must rely on the assistance of mechanical equipment. However, the loading auxiliary equipment these days is still very crude, which also affects the loading speed.
The reset and loading of large-caliber naval guns are two major issues that further limit the rate of fire of large-caliber naval guns. The Daheng Empire can increase the rate of fire of the new 300 mm naval gun from three minutes to two minutes. This has already
This is quite good progress.
To this end, they improved the gun mount, added hydraulic retraction and re-entry auxiliary devices on the basis of gravity re-entry, and also designed a complete set of new loading auxiliary equipment for the entire ammunition handling process with the bomb lifter as the core.
, even the location and passages of the ammunition depot have been more carefully designed.
Finally, we were able to achieve a firing rate of one round every two minutes!
Of course, if the artillery shells are lifted into the turret in advance, the gun crew can be ready within sixty seconds. After loading, they can fire at any time. The second firing can also be controlled in about one hundred seconds, but further
It will take more than two minutes. This is still the theoretical rate of fire. In actual combat, because both sides are constantly maneuvering, ranging, calculating shooting elements, etc., the time will be even slower. Only a few shells are fired in half an hour.
It's also very normal.
This also means that although the main gun is extremely powerful, its rate of fire is slow.
At this time, the rapid-fire cannon appeared!
Therefore, when choosing between increasing the number of main guns and increasing the number of rapid-fire cannons, the Daheng Empire Navy is more inclined to choose to increase the number of rapid-fire cannons.
So it can be seen that the Jingzhou-class battleship is equipped with twelve 150mm and 40 times caliber secondary guns.
Moreover, in a demonstration conducted by the Navy half a month ago, it was decided to change the layout of the small-caliber secondary guns and abandon the 55mm and 45mm secondary guns.
The Navy believes that these two types of secondary guns fail to form a clear distinction in firepower levels and overlap. At the same time, the 55mm secondary guns are not powerful enough against some slightly larger ships, such as large tonnage ships.
For this reason, the Navy chose the newly developed 75mm caliber rapid-fire gun as the main small-caliber secondary gun. This thing has a very fast rate of fire and is also very powerful.
Coupled with the 75mm rapid-fire cannon is the 40mm rapid-fire cannon, which has a faster rate of fire, even faster than the 20mm machine cannon used by the Daheng Empire Navy before, and its power is not weak.
The 75mm rapid-fire cannon and the 40mm rapid-fire cannon are matched with each other to form the small-caliber secondary battery of the next-generation battleship.
After the third phase of the naval development plan was finalized and various warship construction plans were finalized, the Daheng Navy entered a new peak in warship construction.
In August of the seventh year of Qian Sheng's reign, the battleship Jingzhou officially started construction in the 20,000-ton dock of Quping Naval Shipyard, which currently has the most complete facilities and the most powerful technology.
At the same time, construction of multiple cruisers began one after another at Luohai Shipyard and Jingzhou Shipyard.
In September, the keel of the Fengyang armored cruiser was officially laid at the Jingzhou Shipyard. Because of the close distance, Emperor Lin Ziran personally attended the ship's groundbreaking ceremony.
This also represents Lin Ziran's emphasis on the construction of the navy's new generation of warships.
Lin Ziran knows very well that the series of battleships currently under construction by the empire are already relatively typical pre-dreadnought-class battleships in the history of the earth.
To put it bluntly, this kind of battleship has ushered in a new era. It is the same on Earth, and it will be the same on Blue Star.
This is the inevitability of technological development!
Lin Ziran is looking forward to the new generation of pre-dreadnought battleships and matching armored cruisers and other battleships, which will allow the Daheng Empire's navy to go out of the country's offshore waters, go deep into the sea, and travel to sea areas around the world to protect the Daheng Empire's overseas interests.
Even though the Daheng Empire does not have any overseas colonies or overseas enclaves, it only has some islands.
However, the Daheng Empire needs to guarantee the right of passage in the Endless Strait, and it is best to be able to control the Endless Strait in the future.
At the same time, more importantly, as time passed, the Daheng Empire, which had a large population, a large area, rich resources, and developed agriculture, quickly became an important player in international trade after its unification.
In the seventh year of Qian Sheng, the total international trade volume of the Daheng Empire has entered the third place in the world, second only to the Krul Kingdom and the Varia Empire.
The Daheng Empire's total import and export volume of three billion yuan a year has already strongly announced to the world that the rise of the Daheng Empire is proceeding in an unstoppable trend.
However, as the Daheng Empire expanded international trade, especially after it continued to increase the export volume of industrial products, the Daheng Empire inevitably encountered international trade barriers!
At this time, the Daheng Empire needs a powerful navy to open up overseas markets and protect its overseas interests!