In the spring and March of the 18th year of Chengshun, Songjiang Prefecture was an important economic town and shipbuilding center of the empire.
At the huge Songjiang Naval Shipyard dock, many senior generals of the Imperial Navy gathered. They will participate in the launching ceremony of the Chu Empire's first iron-ribbed wooden hull ship.
In addition to the navy generals, there are also a few army generals and Guards generals who were invited to show the so-called unity of the three armed forces...
However, it can be seen from the fact that the generals of the army and the Guards are just field officers and not even a general has been sent over. The so-called unity of the three armies is just an empty talk.
Your navy has come up with a big toy, and you still want me from the army or the Guards to tease you?
Beautiful thought!
Being able to send a school officer over at will is enough to give your navy face.
The navy was also happy about this...it was shown that it had already succeeded when it invited the army and the Guards to participate in the launching ceremony of the Jiangning.
As long as the invitation letter is sent over and the people in the Navy can see the angry and embarrassed faces of those country bumpkins in the Army or those in the Guards who have no balls but make a fuss every day and regard themselves as the emperor's soldiers, the people in the Navy will be very happy. .
For many naval generals, there are not many things that are interesting and satisfying during their long service life, and seeing the Army suffer is definitely the most important one, followed by seeing the Guards suffer... …
Therefore, although the representatives of the army and the Guards nearby looked as if they had eaten flies, a group of senior navy officials were in a very good mood, and they were all surrounding a man in civilian clothes.
This civil servant is not an ordinary civil servant. Ordinary civil servants are not qualified to appear on such an important occasion.
This middle-aged civil servant was Shi Yongzhen, deputy director of the Secretariat of the Hanlin Academy and lecturer of the Hanlin Academy.
The deputy director of the Hanlin Academy Secretariat is his actual position, the Imperial Academy Minister is his official title, and the Fourth Grade is his rank.
He can't be said to be an important minister of the empire, but he is definitely a close minister of the emperor!
Because the Hanlin Academy is the emperor's personal secretarial agency, in the huge Hanlin Academy, in addition to the three bachelors of the Academy, the bachelor of ministers, and the bachelor of ministers, there are four ministers and four ministers.
The lecturers and lecturers are also people who actually accompany him on a daily basis and act as royal secretaries... For example, when Luo Zhixue went out for inspection, the person following him carrying a bag and pouring tea was one of the eight lecturers on duty. .
At the same time, the emperor often asked people from the secretariat to act as angels to go out for inspections, condolences and other activities on his behalf.
Shi Yongzhen appeared here today to participate in the launching ceremony of the Jiangning frigate, the first iron-ribbed wooden hull ship of the Great Chu Empire.
So today, Shi Yongzhen is not a civil official, but an imperial envoy!
It is precisely because of this that a group of senior naval officers, including the commander of the Beijiang Fleet, Admiral Zheng Zhilong, surrounded Shi Yongzhen and listened to Shi Yongzhen's speech respectfully.
In fact, it was not listening to Shi Yongzhen speak, but listening to Shi Yongzhen delivering His Majesty's speech.
"I have to say that the iron-ribbed wooden hull ship can be rolled out so smoothly, and the Jiangning can be built and launched so quickly. Your Ship Administration Department, especially the shipbuilding department, has put in a lot of effort. This is good and needs to be maintained. !”
Although Shi Yongzhen was only a lecturer of the Hanlin Academy, he was not considered a high-level official in the Hanlin Academy. After all, there were a bachelor of lectures and a bachelor of students, not to mention a bachelor of the imperial counselor's office.
But today, he is not just a person, he also comes on behalf of the emperor.
This is also the reason why he can speak loudly and condescendingly to a group of senior navy officials.
Because today he does not represent himself, but represents the emperor!
These words were not his words, but His Majesty's oral instructions conveyed on his behalf.
No, even the commander of the Beiyang Fleet, Admiral Zheng Zhilong, looked like he was listening carefully.
Because the next sentence of Shi Yongzhen is: "The development of the navy must continue to promote the development of technology and use science and technology to build more advanced warships and more advanced tactics to control and defend the empire's thousands of miles of sea territory and protect the empire's overseas interests!"
"But we must not forget that no matter how advanced weapons are, they need people to use them. Therefore, while we are developing science and technology and manufacturing advanced weapons, we must not fall into the trap of weapons only."
"Loyalty and courage are indispensable and the most important at all times!"
"Nowadays, the iron-ribbed wooden hull ship has been built, which is a good thing, but the ship is there, and how to tap and unleash its combat potential requires the concerted efforts of all the navy leaders."
Shi Yongzhen said a lot eloquently...but none of these words were his own words...all were the words of His Majesty Luo Zhixue, who was just a ruthless repeater...When he spoke, he was still holding a I read a manuscript and take a glance at it from time to time...
After finishing what he said in the manuscript, Shi Yongzhen breathed a sigh of relief!
Then he put away the arrogant face that was beyond everyone just now, smiled again and said to Zheng Zhilong and other admirals: "The above is what Your Majesty said when I met the Holy Spirit!"
"Your Majesty has great expectations for the navy!"
Seeing that the oral decree was read out, Zheng Zhilong and others also relaxed. From this moment on, they were able to talk freely, instead of pretending to listen carefully as before...
After everyone talked, it was almost time for the launching ceremony. Zheng Zhilong immediately invited Shi Yongzhen to come forward to watch the ceremony, and he personally presided over the launching ceremony.
Looking at the Jiangning frigate ahead, Shi Yongzhen also sighed. The construction plan of this ship was faster than expected.
Relevant plans were not made until the 15th year of Chengshun, and the keel was officially laid in the summer of the 16th year of Chengshun. However, the construction took only more than a year to complete. This progress can be said to have exceeded Shi Yongzhen's expectations.
As the deputy director of the Secretariat of the Hanlin Academy, which is mainly in charge of naval affairs, Shi Yongzhen is also familiar with the progress of the construction and service of warships.
A wooden sail frigate with mature technology and smooth supply of raw materials would take almost a year to build.
This is talking about a wooden frigate with mature technology and smooth supply of raw materials.
However, this Jiangning frigate is the first iron-ribbed wooden hull ship of the Chu Empire. It requires a lot of problems in terms of technology and raw materials. It can be completed and launched in more than a year. This is already It is very fast.
In this process, you don’t need to guess to know that the Navy must have paid a heavy price.
Shi Yongzhen guessed right. The reason why the Jiangning frigate could be built so quickly was inseparable from the strong support of the Navy... In addition to internal warship design and other internal affairs of the Navy, the Navy was fully involved in the construction of the warship. .
For example, in order to solve the problem of iron rib supply, the Navy has repeatedly coordinated with the main suppliers of iron ribs, namely Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company and Daye Heavy Machinery Company, to ask them to solve technical problems and provide materials as soon as possible.
He also took the lead in solving numerous technical problems for Songjiang Naval Shipyard, the shipyard responsible for final assembly.
If you want to build an iron-ribbed wooden hull ship that is several hundred tons in size and uses a large amount of iron materials as the supporting structure, the technical difficulty is much more difficult than building a purely wooden ship before. Many technologies need to be overcome one by one.
Not to mention these difficulties, let's talk about the financial expenditure. The Navy has actually invested no less than 400,000 yuan in order to build the Jiangning frigate, or to build the iron-ribbed wooden hull ship... This price is already the same as the current price of a first-class battleship. about there.
The latest first-class battleship of the Great Chu Empire, the sixth ship of the Guangzhou-class battleship, the Yangzhou, was purchased by the navy for 430,000 Chu yuan. This thing is a big thing with a standard displacement of more than 2,600 tons!
The latest third-class battleship in service, the Kunming battleship with a displacement of more than 1,600 tons, was purchased by the navy for only 260,000 Chu Yuan.
And what about the frigate Jiangning? This thing is actually only over 500 tons... which is the tonnage of a serious frigate in the navy. It is only used for miscellaneous tasks in its tactical position.
It is also a frigate. The latest Daye-class frigate Jiayuguan has a displacement of more than 450 tons and a cost of only 70,000 yuan. What stands out is its high quality and low price.
But the Jiangning cost more than 400,000 yuan... This price is far more than the normal price of a frigate!
The reason why it is so expensive is purely because most of the expenses are spent on technology research and development, and the actual construction costs are not that much.
According to estimates from the Naval Ship Administration Department, if iron-ribbed wooden hull ships continue to be built in the future, a series of previously invested technology research and development expenses will be amortized, and the average cost of iron-ribbed wooden hull ships will be greatly reduced.
If you do not consider the prerequisite R&D costs and only consider the pure construction cost, although the price of mass-building Jiangning-class frigates is higher than that of pure wooden ships, it is not much higher. The cost of each warship can be reduced to ten dollars. Around Wan Chuyuan.
Don't look at the fact that one hundred thousand Chu yuan is tens of thousands more than the 70,000 yuan of the Daye-class frigate... But you have to know that the tonnage of the Jiangning-class frigate is actually larger. This is a frigate with a standard displacement of 550 tons. , and the latest improved version of the Daye-class frigate is only 450 tons.
Tonnage, in the age of sails, was firepower, protection, and cost.
Therefore, the larger the tonnage, the higher the price will naturally be.
In terms of average cost per ton, the hull cost of an iron-ribbed wooden hull ship is actually not much more than the hull cost of a purely wooden warship.
Except for the cost of the hull, the cost of naval guns and sail equipment are similar. After all, they all use the same set of things, so there is no difference.
Considering the difficulty in supplying ribs for wooden ships...the difficulty in building large-tonnage hulls and other factors, even if iron-ribbed ships are slightly more expensive, the Navy will be happy to support them.
After all, sometimes you can't build a wooden boat even if you have money... because you don't have so many qualified ship rib materials in a short period of time.
Iron ships are simple. There is not much steel in the steel company, but it is definitely more than enough to supply the navy with shipbuilding... The steel industry of the Dachu Empire, which is aiming for a production capacity of 100,000 tons of wrought iron, has more than enough steel production capacity for the navy!
After all, the battleships of the Navy are actually quite small... the frigates are only four to five hundred tons, the cruisers are only eight thousand to one thousand tons, the main third-class battleships are only about one thousand five hundred tons, and as for the first-class battleships, there is only one digits, and it’s only over 2,500 tons. Moreover, these warships are not all steel structures, but only part of the load-bearing structure, mainly the ribs and beams are made of wrought iron.
A frigate of four to five hundred tons cannot use four to five hundred tons of iron...
The supply of raw materials is stable, and subsequent maintenance is simpler and more convenient. The subsequent use of steel materials can also make the ships larger. This is the fundamental reason why the Navy has placed a heavy investment in iron-ribbed wooden hull ships.
The Navy has stated that it is acceptable to build 100,000 frigates. The follow-up will definitely be the large-scale construction of iron-ribbed wooden hull ships, not only frigates, but also cruisers and even battleships.
As for the specific ship type and subsequent design, it depends on a series of test data after the Jiangning frigate was launched.
The launching ceremony of the Jiangning went smoothly. After the launching, engineers from Songjiang Naval Shipyard, Hantian Weapons Company and other companies carried out subsequent sail installation and weapon installation.
It is worth noting that the Jiangning’s sails use the latest type of upper edge girder sails, and there is no superstructure in traditional battleships...
Contemporary warships, including other warships in the Da Chu Empire Navy, will have a poop, which is just lower than the early ships, but still has...
But there is no such thing as a poop on the Jiangning frigate... Its entire upper deck is straight.
Such sails and deck layout are actually based on the advantages of private merchant ships. In the past two years, a series of new merchant ships in the Chu Empire basically have flat decks and upper edge girder sails.
The advantage is to increase the protective performance and avoid casualties caused by damage to the superstructure during battles. In addition, eliminating the superstructure can also lower the center of gravity and reduce self-weight, thereby enabling the deployment of more artillery or increased protection.
This new design idea was absorbed by the Ship Administration Department and began to be applied to the Jiangning. If the effect is good, it will quickly spread to other ship types.
The Jiangning frigate is a test ship, and the new technologies tested are not only iron-ribbed wooden hulls, but also straight decks and new sails.
There is even a new type of naval gun, a large-caliber, short-barreled, front-loading smoothbore gun that fires solid shells.
The Navy believes that the combat distance at sea is only a few hundred meters anyway. What solid artillery shells need to kill the enemy is kinetic energy...and kinetic energy can not only be obtained by enlarging the barrel of the cannon and increasing the speed of the cannon ejection, but also by increasing the number of shells. weight to obtain.
This is the Navy's "low-speed heavy bomb" plan!
The idea is that instead of throwing a small flimsy projectile at the enemy ship at a very fast speed, it is better to throw a big iron lump at the enemy ship at a slower speed...
And here, thanks to the series of mechanical theories put forward by the physics people at the Royal Institute of Technology, the people in the Navy came up with the concept of terminal kinetic energy.
Experts from the Naval Ship Administration Department believe that the key to the power of solid artillery shells lies in the terminal kinetic energy, that is, the kinetic energy possessed by the shell when it hits the enemy.
In this way of thinking, low-speed reloading obviously has more advantages than high-speed flicking, and the cost is lower!
After all, in the manufacturing process of artillery, the larger the caliber, the higher the cost. At the same time, the longer the barrel, the more difficult it is and the higher the cost. In this process, the cost of a long barrel is twice as high as that of a large caliber!
Especially the navy's cannons, which often have a diameter of more than 20 times or even 30 times... It is very difficult to cannon this kind of long-barreled artillery.
Relatively speaking, if you simply increase the caliber, the cost will be much lower and the weight will be much lighter.
A typical example is a series of short-barreled howitzers, which look large in caliber, but are actually much cheaper... The Army even directly assigns 115mm light howitzers to infantry regiments, and as a matching regiment-level long-barreled howitzer What is an artillery tube? It's a 65mm field gun!
By adopting the low-speed heavy artillery plan, the Navy will be able to equip its limited ship tonnage with larger-caliber naval guns...and not only artillery guns that can fire howitzers, but also naval guns that can be used to fire solid artillery shells!
The Jiangning frigate is also the first test ship for this new type of low-speed, heavy-shell artillery.
So you will see that the frigate Jiangning, with a standard displacement of only 550 tons, is actually equipped with several 150 mm short-barreled naval guns.
This is a typical small boat carrying a big gun...but there is no unstable center of gravity, because although this kind of artillery has a high caliber, its barrel is short...
The top brass of the Navy have high hopes for the Jiangning, and all kinds of new technologies are being added to it.
Because it received a lot of attention and made various technical preparations in advance, the Jiangning quickly completed the installation and deployment of sails and weapons.
Two months later, the Jiangning began its first sea trial!
This sea trial mainly tested ordinary navigation data, and the test results were quite good. The new sail equipment was applied to the battleship, allowing the Jiangning to reach a higher speed than traditional frigates.
At the same time, although the hull structure is still a traditional U-shaped structure, the bow adopts a new wave-cracking bow. Coupled with the new sail equipment, its speed is quite good.
The new sail outfit also brings Jiangning a superior upwind sailing capability, which is very important for a battleship, because when a battleship engages in battle, it needs to seize the T-letter, but sometimes in order to seize the T-letter Head, you need to sail against the wind and so on.
In the case of frequent maneuvers during battles, if the warship has excellent upwind sailing ability, it will bring greater tactical advantages to the warship.
During the regular navigation test of the first sea trial, the Jiangning handed over very good test data, and then the Jiangning conducted the second test to test a series of relatively demanding items, including maximum speed, large Data such as sailing under load and testing in the face of high sea conditions.
The test was successfully completed, and the third test was mainly based on live ammunition testing, mainly testing some data of short-barreled heavy artillery.
And the test results are very good!
The killing effect of this short-barreled heavy artillery at medium and short range is very excellent. This excellence is also compared to its tonnage and the traditional 115mm cannon.
After all, the largest caliber of the artillery tested was 150 mm. A cannon of this caliber was the main gun of a thousand-ton cruiser and the main artillery on the battleship.
Through actual comparative tests, naval gunnery experts discovered a series of interesting situations.
That is, in long-distance battles, large-caliber cannons bear the main damage, while in medium and short-range battles, large-caliber short-barreled heavy artillery is obviously more powerful than small-caliber cannons.
Especially in battles within a hundred meters, the large-caliber shells fired by short-barreled heavy guns are much more powerful than the shells fired by small-caliber naval guns.
Then the gunnery experts of the Navy raised a question: "Large-caliber cannons are used for long-distance battles, and short-barreled heavy cannons are used for medium- and short-range battles. So what's the point of small- and medium-caliber cannons?"
With this question in mind, Navy gunnery experts have come up with a brand new concept, that is, whether the current combination of robes of different calibers can be changed to match long and short artillery pieces of the same caliber.
This was the "Unified Caliber Naval Gun Plan" proposed by the Guns and Artillery Department of the Naval Ship Administration Department in June of the 18th year of Chengshun.
Researchers from the Guns and Guns Department of the Ministry of Ship Affairs believe that the artillery that a warship can be equipped with can be equipped with a single caliber gun. These single-caliber artillery can greatly simplify logistics and training, and at the same time bring greater combat effectiveness. .
As for the weight and center of gravity issues, they can be completely controlled by the barrel length of the naval gun!
They made an assumption, that is, in a first-class battleship with hundreds of artillery pieces, the main artillery is equipped with 170 mm caliber naval guns.
The lower deck continues to be equipped with the typical long-barreled 170mm cannon, the 150mm cannon on the middle deck is replaced by a 170mm cannon with a medium barrel length, and the 115mm cannon on the upper deck is replaced by a short-barreled 170mm howitzer. .
A large number of 170mm naval guns with the same caliber and different barrel lengths will make this first-class battleship a real firepower monster!
And such a change will not affect the center of gravity of the ship, because the weight of the artillery has not actually changed... The weight of the short-barreled 170mm artillery is not heavier than the 115mm cannon...
This proposal by the Guns and Guns Department of the Naval Ship Administration Department caused a huge discussion within the Navy. Even Luo Zhixue had heard about it... but Luo Zhixue had little interest in it.
They are all front-loaded smoothbore cannons, and they are still the same after many changes... Even though the combat effectiveness has been improved, there is no qualitative difference, so Luo Zhixue allowed the navy to toss around.
As for the changes in naval guns that Luo Zhixue is really concerned about... they are not front-loading smoothbore guns, but rifled guns!
The breech-loading rifled gun is definitely not available now. Luo Zhixue is counting on the front-loading rifled gun... It is a pity that it has never been available, otherwise he would have promoted the rifled naval guns.
