Although different reactionary academic authorities have pointed out various unforgivable shortcomings of muzzle-loading rifled guns, especially the "fatal" problems of muzzle-loading rifles: such as slow firing speed, large floor space and many other disadvantages, the Planning Institute believes that , at this stage, these shortcomings will not pose a "life and death" risk to the Navy in combat. [No pop-up novel website]
The ordnance industry department is currently able to produce small quantities of the Armstrong breech-loaded gun equipped with the Coast Artillery's threaded gun bolt, but it is not ideal in actual use. In particular, the locking of the gun bolt is difficult. In actual use, a hammer must be used to reach the locked position. In addition to the breech loading, there is no obvious advantage over the Dahlgren rifled gun in terms of loading speed, gun range and accuracy, but the complexity of production is much greater.
As for the mature and reliable broken thread gun bolt, it is bound to involve rubber and asbestos, which the industrial sector has always felt powerless - used to make air-locking plugs.
Although someone has proposed a new solution: the breech mechanism uses a horizontal wedge bolt and a metal air-locking ring. No rubber is required and can be produced with existing industrial capabilities. But once again, the Dahlgren gun won out in simplicity of craftsmanship and rarity of materials. Although the Planning Institute finally approved the experimental manufacture of two artillery pieces using a horizontal wedge bolt and a metal closed gas ring bolt, it is obviously not ready to mass-produce them in the near future.
Sun Xiao, a representative of the Planning Institute, explained the reasons why the Planning Institute chose Dahlgren rifled guns at a meeting of the General Staff Equipment Department: "Since the Navy uses smoothbore guns on sailing battleships and does not dislike the problem of slow reloading of the guns, we It is believed that using rifled guns with far better range and accuracy than smoothbore guns on hybrid-powered battleships will not be a serious problem."
Behind the stinginess of the Planning Institute lies the production capacity bottleneck of the steel industry. Although the blast furnaces and open-hearth furnaces of the Ma Niao Iron and Steel Complex have been put into operation, the production status is not satisfactory. The shortage of qualified workers and administrative personnel severely hampered the further expansion of production capacity.
Lin Shenhe stopped the car outside the work shed and set it up. He saw a whole row of newly produced Dahlgren gun barrels placed on a special shelf in an open space. Although it was a cast iron barrel, the surface of the barrel was regular and smooth. Lin Shenhe stopped his bicycle, touched the lower barrel and muzzle, and observed the rifling inside the lower barrel through the light of the car lights. The technology in the mechanical and metallurgical departments is getting better and better.
Ma Niao Industrial Complex is now able to produce pig iron ingots of very good quality, and then uses a reverberatory furnace to refine the molten iron to produce extremely high quality molten iron for casting cannons - in the past, when Lingao did not have its own blast furnace, casting The imported pig iron used in the cannon was refined through a reverberatory furnace.
further afield. It is a mountain of gun mounts, rails and metal parts for installation. There was a faint metallic light shining under the dim light.
When he walked into the work shed, there was smoke inside, and drawings were spread out on the table in the work shed. Several people were discussing around the drawings.
Lin Shenhe greeted Zhou Ke and others.
"Loading the front-loading cannon is really inconvenient." Although Zhou Ke is not a naval talent and does not know much about weapons, he only needs to walk around on the deck. Looking at the drawings of the artillery and deck, we can see the problem with the muzzleloader gun.
After the front-loading gun is fired, the muzzle must be returned to the deck before it can be reloaded by the sailors. Therefore, the size of each exposed turret is larger than the length of the gun body and gun mount. The diameter of a gun emplacement is at least 5 meters or more. The floor space is much larger than that of a breech-loaded gun.
"It doesn't matter. No matter how problematic the front-loaded cannon is, it is also rifled. Besides, the cannon is easy to modify." Lin Shenhe said. "Now that the Dahlgren cannon is available, that's enough."
"I can understand the Planning Institute's insistence on saving money, but we should still consider taking one step at a time and not just upgrade technology all the time..."
Lin Shenhe chuckled softly: "We're still one step ahead. Let's put it this way, if everyone hadn't called for grenades, rifled cannons, and fixed-loading rifles so loudly, the Planning Institute would probably have prepared 12-pound smoothbore cannons and Mini rifles to conquer the world. "
"So economical..."
"I can understand Wu De's thinking." Lin Shenhe said, "Everyone just wants to be happy. No matter how happy he is and what to do after the fun is over - he is saving money to start a revolution."
"Hmm, I didn't expect that you still have an overall view." Zhou Ke said.
"No, no, I don't have an overall view. I'm just sharing my thoughts."
Zhou Ke said: "Let's go for a walk on the ship. Check the situation on the spot." He picked up the phone and shook it twice: "Turn on the lights on the Navy Pier."
A few minutes later, all the lights on Navy Pier came on and were brightly lit. Although the intensity of the light is not enough to illuminate every angle of the ship, it can at least allow people to roughly see the outline of the object and avoid stumbling.
Looking under the light, it can be seen that the surface of the ship's hull shows an irregular light black color - this is the result of unskilled painters applying asphalt paint. The hull is made of lychee wood imported from Guangdong, Vietnam and other places and is very strong. It cannot be seen from the outside that the ribs and keel inside are made of iron - they are all covered by the outer plates of the hull.
On the deck, three masts stood. The three composite masts used by the 1630 class are shorter than its prototype - the Navy cannot train so many sailors who are skilled in climbing the mast and retracting and lowering the sails on the mast, so its sail rig is as simple as possible and uses steam. The auxiliary engine retracts and unwinds the sail rope.
The sails have all been installed, the white canvas is rolled up, and the jute sail ropes are crisscrossed, each one looking dark. Lin Shenhe accidentally wanted to touch it.
"Don't touch it, it's full of tar!" Zhou Ke quickly reminded him.
Lin Shenhe was startled and quickly retracted his hand. The decks were also smeared with tar of the same color. Even so, you can see the beautiful patterns on it under the light.
"It's made of imported Southeast Asian teak," Zhou Ke said, "It's really luxurious."
On the contrary, Lin Shenhe didn't take it seriously - it was not surprising in the past that teak was used for the decks of warships. Battleships and aircraft carriers in the 20th century still used this precious wood to lay their decks.
The layout of the 1630 class is in the shape of an island. The only chimney is located in the middle of the island. The black chimney is painted with a yellow marking band, which is the only bright color painting on the whole ship.
The base of the exposed turret has been installed at the location where the artillery is scheduled to be installed, and the rails, gun mounts and barrels are just waiting to be installed early the next morning.
Since the 1630 class is a sail-steam hybrid battleship, the existence of three masts severely limits the firing range of the artillery. The foremast and mizzen mast are just in front of the muzzle of the main gun. This makes it impossible for the two main guns to fire in the forward and rear directions. For the sake of the hull structure and center of gravity, the exposed turrets of the two main guns are set on the deck closer to the center of the ship. Therefore, the 0-degree firepower at the bow and stern is provided by the secondary guns arranged on both sides. The only way to maximize the firepower of level 1630 is still to fire sideways salvos.
Lin Shenhe knew the location of the artillery well: he was one of the participants when the artillery layout was discussed. At that time, there was a heated debate about the artillery layout of 854 and 901. The final decision to modify the 854 was still based on the layout plan of the model, with slight modifications.
The artillery layout of the entire ship is that one exposed turret is installed along the center line on the bow deck and the stern deck, and each turret is equipped with a 130mm caliber Dahlgren rifled gun. A gun profile is set up on the left and right sides of the bow, middle and stern of the ship, and a 75mm caliber Dahlgren rifled gun is installed, for a total of 6 secondary guns. The auxiliary weapons are four typewriters, which are installed on the decks on both sides of the ship. The artillery adopts circular orbit rotation, slide rail braking, manual leveling machine and height machine.
According to the black powder destructive power test conducted by the navy and ordnance industry department on the shooting range, in order to effectively destroy the oak hull of the Galen ship at that time while also taking into account a certain level of bombardment power on the shore, the shell charge should be about 2 kilograms of high-density suppressed black powder. , combined with the loading coefficient, the launched grenade weighs 25 to 35 kilograms, corresponding to a caliber of 120mm or more, so a 130mm rifled gun was finally chosen.
The exposed turret itself did not consider installing armor, and only used steel baffles - only the ammunition magazine on the entire 1630-class ship was protected by a thin layer of steel plates. As for the boiler room, it was protected by the coal bunkers on both sides.
During normal times, the exposed fort uses a foldable canvas shed to shield it from the sun and rain, but it is removed during combat.
"Level 1630 is still a bit small, otherwise we can use a fully sealed turret and install mechanized loading equipment." Zhou Ke said with regret.
Lin Shenhe also feels the same way - the small tonnage of the ship actually limits the size of the naval artillery. According to Lingao's current industrial capabilities, it is not difficult to manufacture a front-loading rifled gun of over 200mm. In addition, since the shells of the 130mm artillery are the limit of manual loading, no matter how large the artillery is, a mechanically assisted loading system is required: this also requires sufficient ship space.
He walked into the bridge, where most of the equipment had been installed. However, some advanced navigation equipment is still "under development" and only installation locations are reserved. Navigation clocks are still used from the old time and space. He noticed that there was a special shooting control tower on the bridge of the 1630-class ship. When he climbed up, he saw that it was empty. There was no fire control equipment except tables and chairs.
Zhou Ke said: The original plan was to install artillery observation scopes, rangefinders, calibration devices and mechanical ballistic computers.
"What -" Lin Shenhe was so surprised that he could hardly close his mouth. He originally thought he was just going to buy some "fire control equipment" such as telescopes and rangefinders, but he didn't expect there were "advanced equipment" such as ballistic computers. "——It's really a thousand miles. (To be continued)
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