Chapter 456 Technological Breakthrough

@@@@@@@@Dongmeng Province.

In the desert 70 kilometers north of Tongliao, a row of high barbed wire walls circled this desert with an area of nearly 300 square kilometers. The eye-catching military heavy land on the barbed wire wall and the soldiers patrolling along the barbed wire from time to time make this isolated desert even more mysterious.

Sitting in the car, Lenin looked at the desert wrapped in barbed wire, and he couldn't help but feel a trace of appall in his heart, knowing that he was about to enter a secret base in Xinhua.

In fact, although he did not think wrong, he also exaggerated. This is only the largest weapon and equipment experimental center of the Xinhua Army. Almost all the three military weapons have to be tested here, which is far from confidential. As for the encircled barbed wire, as long as it is afraid that people will enter at will and be accidentally injured.

When the convoy drove into the desert under the cold eyes of the guards and passed through a gate without any sign, Lenin was immediately attracted by the sound of gunfire in the distance. He only saw a row of soldiers making machine guns, and the feet of the machine guns were already full of casings like hills.

In a farther distance, he was shocked by the huge craters. He couldn't imagine how big the explosion was to leave such a deep pit, but compared with these, he was more concerned about the person he was going to see today.

The car drove to the naval gun experimental shooting range ten kilometers away. At this time, Li Mo was holding a telescope and looking at the busy engineers at the target in the distance. When a figure of himself appeared in the field of vision, a smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Matsuno didn't know that Li Mo had come here in person, and he was looking at him. At this time, he was directing the workers to carefully place steel plates of different thicknesses in the bull'seye position. Because it was too heavy, it needed to be transported by rails, and the flat train that transported it must also stop here.

Matsuno is a Japanese metallurgical technology expert. He studied in the United States in his early years. After returning to China, he was employed in the senior technical department of the Japanese navy. He once wanted to develop the best steel and armor in the world for His Majesty the Emperor, but with the defeat of Japanese metallurgy, his dream was finally shattered.

When the guns of the Xinhua Navy roared over Japan, he had to lower his arrogant head and be escorted to the ship coming to Xinhua with his family.

At first, he thought he would suffer a long imprisonment, but he didn't expect that he was specially hired as a senior technician by the material research and development team of the Ministry of Science and Technology of Xinhua. He could not only enjoy the same treatment as other engineers, but also enjoy a relatively free living space.

Of course, this enjoyment is not priceless. In addition to his knowledge, he and his family are imprisoned. They are prohibited from leaving the residential area within 20 kilometers. Except for the communication between them, they can't contact the outside world. They can only understand the motherland and the outside world through the newspapers delivered on time every day. In the world, together with the communication between Japanese experts, it must be handed over to special people for review before it can be sent out, and the letters are also delivered by special personnel. Even if he wants to other places in Xinhua to provide technical guidance, there will be several intelligence personnel to follow him at any time.

At the beginning, such restrictions made them disgusted by these original technicians, but when some people fled quietly, they were shot without exception, their bodies were dragged into special residential areas, and even their families disappeared, everyone recognized the reality that they were still special prisoners!

The signal given by the Chinese is very simple, either determined or dead!

Under such strict measures, the Japanese technicians who came with him accepted the reality and began to join Xinhua's scientific research department to use their talents and knowledge to arm the enemies of the country.

He was assigned to the Alloy and Steel Materials Department of the Xinhua Ministry of Science and Technology. At first, he was quite disdainful of the technical ability of the Chinese people, but when he went deep, he found that it was really backward.

Some alloy nouns and materials that even scientific researchers do not know where they came from began to enter the research institute. Although they are empty, although they are just a name or a paragraph, these nouns give everyone a basic direction.

As his talent is gradually revealed, especially his technical ability in steel smelting, the treatment of his family has also been greatly improved. The child has even entered a special school, but the education methods and content there are Chinese.

He can't change.

For him, life is like being covered by a thick iron curtain. In life, he can't find any other happiness except research or research, so he accepted his fate. He knew that he was just a loser under the shelter of others. He studied technology desperately and gave his family more happiness for the rest of his life.

Through the Japanese newspapers sent from time to time, he can feel the chaos and turbulence in Japan. In addition to Xinhua, the blackmail of Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries is increasing. A large number of Japanese have replaced the Chinese as laborers. There are even many Japanese women who have tried their best to come to Xinhua for a living and use them in pubs and dance halls. Body in exchange for money and physical objects.

Compared with the chaotic China, it is extremely lucky to be able to live here. At least you don't have to worry about getting enough to eat, you don't have to die on the street one day, or to be caught as a hard laborer, and you don't have to worry about your wife lying under someone else's body one day and moaning.

But in this hopeless life, there was a sudden turning point two years ago, because he received a task to participate in a research group called VH with some Chinese and foreign technical experts, and became the team leader.

What makes him most incredible is that according to the people who manage them, as long as he can lead everyone to make this project, his children will automatically receive the treatment of Xinhua National.

This is a miracle for him. He has no hope for his life, but he has always wanted to get his child out of this environment, so he hardly thought about it, so he signed a confidentiality agreement and took over the topic.

The VH plan is a major initiative. He doesn't know where the scattered and disorderly information of the Ministry of Science and Technology comes from, but it is still a major project.

That is to change the complex surface carburizing technology commonly used in various countries to harden the steel, but to use direct forging and heat treatment to process armored steel, and add some special materials to greatly increase the current defense capabilities of armored steel.

He doesn't know who proposed it, but there is no doubt that this is an innovation. If it can be developed, it will greatly increase the armored defense of the current warships, and the production time will be greatly shortened, and the cost will be greatly reduced.

For the dream of making children free, he has been looking for ways to solve technical problems for the past two years, and many times he even lives in the research institute.

And all of this will be verified today!

Looking at the six steel plates of different thicknesses processed with the new forging technology in front of him, he was both excited and extremely nervous. What he was excited about was that he had finally completed the task. What he was nervous about was that if the data in the laboratory could not be reflected under the real environment test, then there was no doubt that he would lose value!

When six pieces of VH armor of different thickness were placed, he looked at several different calibers that had been on standby in the distance, and his heart suddenly hung into the air.

"There are still talents." Looking at Matsuno with a nervous face in the lens, Li Mo smiled and put down the telescope.

"Yes, I am indeed fierce. I heard that in order to solve the surface oxidation problem in the secondary quenching, Matsuno stayed up for several days and nights in a row, and finally came up with a solution." Chen Ping, who came with Li Mo to watch the test, also said admiration twice, but he was a little worried about the open treatment and said, "Your Majesty, will you let their children join our country?"

"Worried about leaking?" Li Mo turned his head and smiled and walked to the huge naval gun on the side.

"A little bit."

"Ha ha." Li Mo was worried about Chen Ping. He smiled and said, "No technology can be kept secret for a long time. Science and technology can't be really strangled, because it is the embodiment of the human dream, just like a radio. Don't the Russians also get it out? What we have done is to let us master it early and stand at a higher starting point.

"And a large country must have a more open mind and give them national treatment. It does not mean that they can leave. Instead, it can serve as an example to encourage talents from all countries to join. Think about it, the immigration component in the United States is so complex that it can attract talents from all countries to stay?"

"When their children grow up under our education, when they see the chaos in Japan and the free and prosperous life in our country, do you think they will choose where?"

"And when their children grow up, it will be more than ten years later. At that time, we may have more advanced technology, so why worry about the leakage of old technology?"

Li Mo's words made Chen Ping nod. In addition to extremely confidential technology, appropriate opening up some conditions could make those foreign experts work harder.

So after he figured it out, he and Li Mo focused on looking at the huge naval gun in front of him, and the corners of his eyes were immediately full of excitement.

This is a real heavy artillery! 14-inch, 356mm naval gun, 45 times barrel, was once one of the most key projects of the Xinhua Navy. At the beginning of the construction of the Chinese-style battleship in the early years, Li Mo was tired of the pain of the slow development of naval guns, so after exchanging from Germany to gun steel technology, he was still worried and made up his mind to invest a lot of manpower and huge funds to continue the research and development. .

At this time, countries have not yet realized that the caliber of naval guns will become larger and larger in the future. Although there are also large-caliber development plans, the investment is far less crazy as that of Li Mo.

Although he is a naval engineer and fanatical BB party, he also knows nothing about naval guns, but his biggest advantage is that he clearly knows the important technologies and general development direction that limit the development of naval guns.

The biggest problem of restricting naval guns is the material and process. In terms of materials, Xinhua has made some breakthroughs after integrating the technology of Germany, Britain and other countries, but the process has always been a problem. Previously, Xinhua used the production line and manufacturing technology of British naval guns, so it mostly used traditional British steel wire. Winding and fastening technology, but this technical defect is obvious. The most important thing is that the longitudinal strength of the barrel is seriously insufficient, which also leads to the serious backwardness of British large-caliber naval guns in the later period.

Compared with Britain, Germany and other countries, Xinhua's technical reserves are even more insufficient, but Li Mo's crazy early investment can make up for this. What's more, Xinhua now has the world's largest team of military technicians, with more than 6,000 foreign experts alone, plus nearly 10,000 Chinese returning students, so After concentrating all the resources, I still successfully took out the sample shot.

And on this sample gun, the three key technologies proposed by Li Mo are also used, namely, electric slag refining, a full set of barrel composite barrel and internal chrome plating.

The sleeve barrel technology was actually applied as early as the Jinghai class. At that time, several Austro-Hungarian artillery experts used this technology to develop a new 152mm naval gun, but at that time, half a sleeve was used. From the outside, it seemed that the barrel was divided into two sections, and there seemed to be a layer at the back, which was required by Li Mo. After the sleeve, this technology was conquered soon, so there are big problems.

The technology of chrome plating inside the gun barrel and increasing strength has also been proposed in Europe at this time. After learning about it, the Ministry of Science and Technology quickly purchased the information and conducted research, and took the lead in applying it to the new 152mm gun of the Yangtze River class more than a year ago.

The real difficulty is the electroslag refining technology, which is a complex technology for secondary refining of special steel and advanced alloys. It originated from the refining method proposed by Hopkins in the 1940s in the United States. The main purpose is to use the resistance heat generated by the current passing through the slag as a heat source for smelting. The main purpose is to Pure metal and steel ingots with uniform and dense clean tissue.

The steel remelted by electric slag has high purity, low sulfur content, less non-metallic inclusions, smooth surface of steel ingots, clean, uniform and dense, uniform chemical composition, and much higher strength.

This is a refining method that requires high processing technology, especially the design and process of the new electric slag smelting furnace. Li Mo also knows a little, so he can only put forward a general idea and then hand it over to the Ministry of Science and Technology for development.

After five years of hard work, the Ministry of Science and Technology finally broke through this technology not long ago, but the problem is that the electric slag furnace can process very little steel at a time, so it took half a year to have the only large-caliber naval gun.

Fortunately, the naval gun is one of the last installed subsystems, so it is too late to build more slag furnaces, so this test is extremely important. Once it passes the acceptance, it means that the slag furnace will be built on a large scale immediately.

Originally, Li Mo also proposed the barrel self-tightening process, but it is estimated that it can't catch up with this wave of shipbuilding plan.

Compared with the naval gun, the new VH steel opposite is also an extremely critical technology. It imitates the VH steel technology developed from later generations. Although it has been criticized by many people, research after World War II shows that it is indeed a good armored steel. While ensuring that the strength and impact resistance are not weaker than the world's best armored steel, it also ensures an excellent toughness, which is comparable to the best armored steel in the world at that time.

And most importantly, the processing time of VH steel is one-third shorter than that of the surface carburizing process, and the price is correspondingly reduced by 20%, which is extremely important in the upcoming large-scale arms race!

You should know that on a 20,000-ton battleship, armor needs to occupy at least one-third of the weight, and the price of 7,000 tons of armor will drop by 20%, which will directly lead to a sharp reduction in the cost of the whole warship.

War also pays attention to cost, especially in large-scale wars. Later Soviet Union and Germany have excellently expounded this view. When well-made and expensive German tanks encounter cheap and simple T34, they can only accept the submerged end.

In addition to warships, the emergence of armored vehicles and tanks will lead to a rapid rise in the cost of each [***] reserve. In the end of World War I, the reason for the final failure of the Allies is not the army, but the lack of money to fight!

Xinhua is not a rich United States. Even if there are still ten years to accumulate, it still can't afford it. Even if it can save one more battleship at that time, it will have a huge impact.

If VH steel can succeed, then with the cooperation of welding and VH steel, the price of each warship in Xinhua will be reduced by at least 20%. That is to say, with the money to build ten battleships in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, Xinhua can build two!

And welding and VH steel are both means to greatly shorten the construction time. If necessary, a 20,000-ton battleship can even be fully built in a year and a half! Originally, it has the advantage in power, fire control and other technologies, and has the advantage of quantity and time, so if you don't fight this battle, you already have half of the certainty. To put a famous saying in later generations, this is called "drowning him"!

As the red flag was raised high, Li Mo and Chen Ping quickly put on ear guards. In order to ensure the safety of the two, the security guards even pulled them far away to watch.

From 76mm to the largest 356mm naval gun, when roared in turn under the command of the gunners, Lenin, who had just arrived at the naval gun test site, was also shocked. Looking at the huge fireball rising in the distance, his heart was cold.

The rising fireball annihilated the surroundings like lava, and the young man he was about to face was like a fire, constantly leading the army to devour all the unstable factors around him.

He didn't know whether it was worth contacting that person, but at this moment, Europe is almost an ally of Nicholas II. No one wants to see him fall, so after paying so much blood and life, the flame of the Bolsheviks has reached the most dangerous moment!

After receiving a large amount of foreign financial support, Russia's domestic situation began to turn back to the brutal Tsar, which forced him to come to the Far East to find a suitable foreign aid.

But will he help himself?

(to be continued)