After arriving at the pier, Lin Ziran couldn't help but feel proud when he saw the battleship Ning Yu moored quietly at the berth.
This is the largest warship ever built by the Daheng Empire. Well, although it is not the largest warship on Blue Star, the Kingdom of Krul next door is a bit crazy. Last year, it put a model into service with a standard displacement of more than two meters.
A 10,000-ton battleship with mixed main guns is packed with primary and secondary main guns.
It firmly occupies the throne of the largest battleship in Blue Star's tonnage!
However, although the Ning Yu battleship is not the first in terms of displacement, it is still the second in terms of displacement, and its combat effectiveness is definitely far superior to the mixed main gun battleships of various countries today.
You don't need to look at anything else, just look at the ten 300 mm 45 times caliber main guns on the battleship Ning Yu.
The firepower of the eight main guns can be used against the enemy on the side. Under the guidance of the unified fire control system, it can carry out long-distance bombardment against targets more than 15,000 meters or even further away. The warship's naval guns are the most effective.
The range is up to 18,000 meters.
This capability is not available in other hybrid main gun battleships.
Nowadays, the effective range of battleships with mixed main guns from various countries is still limited to about six to seven kilometers, and the actual combat distance will be even closer.
However, the battle distance of this unified all-heavy artillery battleship of the Daheng Empire is already 15,000 meters.
This means that the enemy warship will most likely be sunk by the Ning Yu battleship before it enters the effective range.
It has a standard displacement of 18,500 tons and a full load displacement of more than 21,500 tons. It adopts the most advanced Luojing nickel steel surface hardened armor, fuel-injection-assisted coal-fired water tube boiler, and four-cylinder three-expansion steam engine.
Using a flying shear bow, the maximum speed can reach 20 knots.
It is equipped with five twin mounts and a total of ten 300 mm 45-caliber naval guns. The rate of fire can reach 1.5 rounds per minute. It uses an integrated tower mast to deploy a unified fire control system and obtain better visibility.
The aiming height allows the effective range of the main gun to reach more than 15,000 meters.
The shells use smokeless gunpowder propellant, combined with armor-piercing projectiles, which are enough to penetrate the main armor belt of any contemporary battleship at a long distance.
The appearance of such a battleship in contemporary times is almost epoch-making. Its combat effectiveness is almost overwhelming compared to mixed main gun battleships and older battleships.
Looking at this battleship, Lin Ziran knew that the time for the Daheng Empire's navy to take off completely was coming.
This time, the Daheng Empire's navy has an even greater advantage than the previous adoption of hardened armor and rapid-fire cannons.
It was the first to adopt hardened armor and rapid-fire guns. Although it also brought huge strategic and tactical advantages to the Daheng Empire Navy, this advantage was still limited and could not completely establish the Daheng Navy's absolute advantage.
But this time it was different. The emergence of unified all-heavy artillery battleships was enough to completely separate the Daheng Empire Navy from the navies of other major powers.
Even if other major powers reacted quickly and began to develop and build a unified all-heavy artillery battleship, they probably would not be able to do so within three to five years. These three to five years were enough for the Daheng Empire to build it first and serve it for at least ten years.
New battleships, thus forming a larger numerical advantage of new battleships.
Moreover, this new type of battleship costs even more. Nowadays, the cost of a battleship has exceeded 10 million yuan. And with the advancement of technology, battleships are getting bigger and more advanced, and the price of main battleships is still rising. rise.
Complex and advanced technology can make it impossible for a weaker big country to keep up, and economic factors are enough to make several big countries powerless.
Even the two traditional industrial powers, the Kokel Empire and the Varia Empire, may find it difficult to maintain large-scale shipbuilding after the era of unified all-heavy artillery battleships arrives.
In the future, the naval competition on Blue Star can only occur between the navy of the Daheng Empire and the navy of the Kingdom of Krul.
It's not because only these two countries can build such huge warships, but because only these two countries have enough industrial scale and economic strength to maintain a large and expensive fleet.
In the future shipbuilding competition, Lin Ziran is confident enough to keep the Daheng Empire in the lead!
His confidence comes from the Daheng Empire's huge local population, industrial scale, abundant resources, and the huge economic strength brought by these.
In the fifteenth year of Qian Sheng's reign, the Daheng Empire's gross industrial production continues to lead. It is expected that this year's industrial output will exceed 20 billion hengyuan for the first time, reaching a scale of 21 billion hengyuan.
Coupled with the already very large agricultural economic system of the Daheng Empire, the sum of the two has made the Daheng Empire's economic aggregate already surpassed that of the Kingdom of Krul, becoming the veritable largest economic system in Blue Star.
Although most of Daheng Empire's current industrial output is dominated by mid- to low-end industries, if you have money, you have money, no matter how you make money.
The large economic aggregate, coupled with the local's unique oval income structure, makes the financial income of the Daheng Empire very high, allowing the empire to have sufficient funds to maintain the continued expansion of the fleet.
Without such a huge economy and sufficient fiscal revenue, how could the Daheng Empire have built a huge fleet with the second largest tonnage in the world in less than fifteen years.
The smooth commissioning of the battleship Ning Yu also announced that the Daheng Empire Navy once again took the initiative to start a new round of naval competition!
After the commissioning ceremony of the Ning Yu battleship, Lin Ziran also visited and inspected several other main battleships also under construction at Quping Naval Shipyard.
Including the second Ningyu-class ship Quyang, which was successfully launched at the beginning of this year and is currently being outfitted. It is expected to be completed next month for sea trials.
Ningyu-class improved version: The first ship of the Zhongluozhou-class battleship, the Zhongluo, and the second ship, the Ningwu, started construction much later, so they will not be able to complete their outfitting until the middle of next year.
In addition, there are two battlecruisers of the Qiping class, Qiping and Nanping. Although this class of ships was designed early and started construction early, the design was later changed, resulting in a delay in the construction time and subsequent outfitting problems. It's troublesome, so the outfitting time will be postponed to January next year.
The service time of many capital ships in the fourth phase of the Navy's construction plan is concentrated in next year and the year after that.
As for this year, there are only Ningyu and Quyang for the time being.
The simultaneous construction of so many main battleships here fully proves the importance of this place. Quping Naval Shipyard has become a major shipyard in the Daheng Empire. It can start building six main battleships at the same time. Its construction capacity has already It is no less than the Needham Shipyard with the most powerful shipbuilding capabilities in the Kingdom of Krul.