In the Chu Empire, the major users of artillery were not only the army and the Guards, but also the navy.
In fact, the navy uses a lot of artillery. In the future, there will be a demand for thousands of artillery, and these artillery are mainly medium and large-caliber artillery.
After all, a warship of several hundred tons requires twenty or thirty cannons. Even a river warship of only about a hundred tons needs several cannons.
The number of warships the navy needs is not one or two, but dozens or hundreds. Just these warships need thousands of naval guns.
Moreover, these artillery pieces are mainly long-barreled, medium- and large-caliber naval guns.
For example, the many Daye-class battleships under construction, which have been classified as frigates, are planned to be equipped mainly with nine-jin naval guns, and a small number of fourteen-jin naval guns. Such a thing would require twenty-two. Long-barreled naval gun.
In addition, the design has just been completed and is expected to be built at the new No. 1 Navy Shipyard in Songjiang Prefecture. The Xiangyang-class cruiser, a large battleship truly used for maritime combat, is a second-class cruiser classified by the navy. It is expected to have a displacement of more than 700 tons. , equipped with thirty-two artillery pieces.
Frigates and cruisers are the names after the battleship classification standards just issued by the Navy.
For example, a battleship whose main combat mission is fleet decisive battle is called a battleship.
Cruisers are those whose main missions are long-term cruising, escorting, and reconnaissance, and which also undertake secondary artillery missions.
Those that perform auxiliary tasks such as simple reconnaissance and harassment, and are known for their speed are called reconnaissance ships.
A frigate whose main mission is to do odd jobs.
Although the above four types have different missions, they are all ocean-going warships.
In addition, there are offshore battleships used for offshore defensive operations with outstanding defensive performance and firepower, and patrol ships for offshore and inland lake patrols.
There are also river gunboats used for river and lake operations.
Finally, there are supply ships, troop carriers, hospital ships, engineering ships, repair ships, etc. for non-combat purposes.
Some of the ship types may have a relatively large span, so they are simply divided into first, second and third tiers based on size and firepower.
For example, battleships, the Chu Empire Navy had a relatively high vision, and directly set the standard for a first-class battleship at more than a hundred artillery pieces.
Even a third-class battleship is required to have sixty-four guns.
Anything below this number is not included in the battleship range.
There are also cruisers. First-class cruisers need to carry more than 40 guns, and second-class cruisers need to carry more than 30 guns.
For reconnaissance ships, first-class reconnaissance ships have more than 20 cannons, and second-class reconnaissance ships have more than ten cannons.
The frigates are similar. Similarly, those with more than 20 doors are first-class frigates, and those with more than 10 doors are second-class frigates.
In addition to the four types of ocean-going warships mentioned above, there are also specialized offshore warships, river warships, etc.
At present, the large warships that the Navy plans to build in large quantities and is capable of building are the Daye-class frigates currently under construction.
This kind of warship has a displacement of about 350 tons and is equipped with 22 naval guns. Although the protection is not very good, the amount of supplies it carries is not too much, and the per capita living space is relatively small. It is destined to be difficult to operate in the ocean. Perform tasks for long periods of time.
However, the firepower is very powerful and the maneuverability is relatively flexible. There is no big problem in using it as the main battleship of the Chu Empire Navy in the short term.
As for the Xiangyang-class cruiser, this is a new attempt by the Chu Empire Navy. If they want to build a large-tonnage ocean-going battleship, they not only have more powerful firepower, but more importantly, they have higher requirements for seaworthiness and speed. Also very high.
Both types of warships use Western-style soft sails to enhance their maneuverability.
Currently, the Da Chu Empire Navy is building these two types of warships on a large scale!
The construction plan of Daye-class frigates has been expanded to twenty ships.
The Xiangyang-class cruiser construction plan has also planned eight ships.
And this is just the current plan.
Even according to the current plan, the major arsenals of the Chu Empire still need to prepare at least several hundred naval guns for these warships, and they will all be long-barreled naval guns.
This put great pressure on the artillery production capacity of the Da Chu Empire Arsenal.
Not to mention that in addition to the demand for naval guns for battleships, the major river defense and coastal defense forts in the Chu Empire also needed a large number of artillery, and these artillery had larger calibers and longer barrels.
For example, the first batch of 18-pound naval guns produced by the heavy artillery factory under the Hantian Arsenal were actually used on forts, and will serve as important firepower for a series of important forts such as Wusong Fort and Jiangyin Fort.
After all, for the fortress artillery used in forts, there is basically no need to consider weight or maneuverability issues, as long as the caliber is high, the barrel is long, and the power is high.
The huge demand for artillery from the army and navy has already overwhelmed the Hantian Arsenal in the Chu Empire. As for the artillery factory under the Xiangyang Arsenal, the production capacity is even lower.
The Dachu Empire urgently needed to expand its artillery production capacity.
Coupled with the urgent need for Suifa rifles, the production capacity of the Da Chu Empire's existing arsenal is simply unable to meet the military needs of the Da Chu Empire.
In this way, the construction task of Dangtu Arsenal is relatively tight.
No matter how urgent it is, it still takes time. After all, the expansion of the arsenal is more difficult than other factories. It takes time to train skilled craftsmen and technicians and build and install high-precision machinery.
The original Hantian Arsenal spared no expense, but it took more than half a year to reach a certain production capacity. It would be a year before the design production capacity was fully reached.
The Dangtu Arsenal can't be reached from here.
At present, only part of the preliminary projects at the Dangtu Arsenal have been completed and put into production. The production capacity is very small, mainly to train preliminary technical workers.
If we have to wait until large-scale mass production, it will probably be in the summer. If we want to reach the design production capacity, it will probably be next year.
The Dangtu Industrial Base, which owns the Dangtu Arsenal, Dangtu Mining Bureau, and Dangtu Ironworks, has the same model as the Daye Industrial Base.
The core goal is to supply a large number of advanced guns to the army.
Around this core goal, these core factories have been established, and a large number of auxiliary factories are supporting these core factories.
Ultimately, Dangtu will be built into a super-large comprehensive heavy industry production base.
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According to the industrial plan of the Dachu Empire, the entire Dangtu Industrial Zone will be very large. The planned industrial zone area alone will reach more than 20 square kilometers.
The industrial zone includes dozens of supporting factories directly invested by the Ministry of Industry, as well as a large freight terminal and a medium passenger terminal.
Luo Zhixue wants to turn this place directly into the pearl of heavy industry of the empire!
There will be a very large steel plant here in the future: Taiping Iron Works!
It is expected that the Taiping Iron Smelting Plant will be even larger than the large iron smelting plant after completion, with a designed annual production capacity of 65,000 tons, so as to supply major enterprises in the Dangtu Industrial Zone nearby, and at the same time, it will also serve the vast and wider world. The Jiangnan and Jiangbei regions with huge markets even supply civilian iron materials to further places through canals and sea transportation.
According to the plan, the Dangtu Arsenal, together with the Hantian Arsenal, will become one of the two super-large comprehensive arsenals in the Chu Empire, with the production capacity of various weapons such as muskets, artillery, ammunition, and cold weapons.
Luo Zhixue attaches great importance to this and has repeatedly instructed the Ministry of Industry to pay attention to the construction of Dangtu Industrial Zone and to be forward-looking and leave room for future development.
"The First Cause of All Realms"
Well, this is why Dangtu Industrial Zone had such a huge area when it was first planned...
It is purely to reserve space in advance for future development.
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In the past few months, the Chu Empire had been unable to launch large-scale military operations due to the cold winter, and had only managed to fight one battle in Hezhou, Jiangpu and other Jiangbei areas.
Most of the time, they are still dealing with their own internal affairs, especially the local yamen that are busy establishing effective governance in the newly occupied areas, and dispatching a large number of garrison troops and even the main army to carry out attacks on their own controlled areas, especially the newly occupied areas. A large-scale purge operation was carried out to eliminate all kinds of chaotic illegal armed forces such as mountain bandits and water bandits, illegal local/landlord armed forces, the Ming army's retreat, and so on.
On the one hand, the Dachu Empire suspended large-scale military operations against the Ming army because of the weather, on the other hand because of internal stabilization needs, and on the other hand because it needed time to restock a large amount of ammunition.
This also gave Mingting an extremely precious respite. However, Mingting did not make good use of these few months of precious time.
In other words, even if they are given a few months, it will be difficult to make any effective changes in such a short period of time. The most they can do is to get more new soldiers and more guns, but the essence of the changes is not It won't be too big.
And there was another thing that attracted the attention, or rather surprise, of the Chu Empire.
That was Song Zushun, the governor of water transportation and governor of Jiangbei who had previously caused a lot of trouble for the Chu army on the Hezhou front line and blocked the Fourth Division for several months. Because he lost Hezhou, he retreated to Jiangpu, Liuhe, etc. without a fight. On the ground, he lost more than 10,000 troops and lost his generals.
Being accused by a group of people of being cowardly and timid, fleeing without authorization, losing troops and generals, losing cities and territory, not killing people is not enough to make the people angry...
Chongzhen was also very angry when he learned the news... So an imperial edict was issued to remove Song Zushun from his official title of governor of water transportation just a few months after he became the governor.
But this time Chongzhen retained some sense. At least he knew that Song Zushun had a new Jiangbei army under his command, so he did not take off his title of governor of Jiangbei...
Immediately afterwards, Chongzhen thought of Yang Sichang who had been imprisoned in the heavenly prison by himself, so he issued another imperial edict to restore Yang Sichang to the military affairs of Shandong, Baoding, Henan, Nanzhili and other places.
However, after receiving the imperial edict, Yang Sichang in the prison did not agree immediately. Instead, he struggled with whether to refuse.
He, Yang Sichang, doesn’t want to be the scapegoat!
