Chapter 459 Start!

@@@@@@@@@@ "Your Majesty, Boss, you're finally here!"

"Your Majesty, Boss?!"

This cold name made Emperor Li shiver involuntarily. He didn't expect that he had just stepped into the door of the naval ship design center. McKinson immediately looked aggrieved and grabbed him and didn't let go, as if he had suffered a lot of grievances, which made Emperor Li get goose bumps all over his body, and hurriedly asked, "Mai Ke, what's going on? You are the viscount of the empire. Who dares to bully you?

"It's him." McKinson pointed viciously to Long Guozhang, who had just chased out from behind, and opened his eyes angrily: "He actually asked me to get him a garbage cruiser!"

"Garbage cruiser? Do it! [Drug) When will our country be rich enough to use cruisers to transport garbage!"

"Nonsense, that's the most advanced cruiser!" Long Guozhang did not show weakness at all and shouted at each other.

Emperor Li quickly rubbed his eyes and doubted whether he had misread it. One was the commander of the navy and the other was a full-time chief designer of the navy. He said that the two of them were flirting. If their children were not too young, they would have been directly assigned to their children. How could they suddenly turn against each other?

"Cough." Emperor Li showed the majesty of the emperor. After coughing twice and driving away the designers and researchers who covered their mouths and watching jokes, he pulled them into McKinson's office and laughed and scolded, "One is the commander of the navy, and the other is the chief designer of the navy. It doesn't matter if it's not right. Now you are still scolding the street. Look at all of you. What did it look like?!"

Emperor Li raised his legs and said fairly, "Tay it, what's going on?"

"Your Majesty." Although McKinson has lived in Xinhua for more than ten years, his Chinese is not very neat. As soon as he opened his mouth, he was preempted by Long Guozhang. He took out a stack of photos and pointed to him and said, "You come to judge. I kindly showed him the latest photos and materials of the British cruiser. He looked at it twice and said it was garbage, and said I collect garbage!"

"I put up with this." Long Guozhang stared at McKinson fiercely again and continued to complain, "But if you want to say garbage, you should also take out good things for me to see? This guy actually ignored me, saying that it was a top secret and could not be leaked!"

"It's a top secret. It was set by the boss himself. Do you have any opinions?" McKinson was proud and pointed the finger at Li Mo.

I didn't expect that the last thing would take a detour to him. Li Mo couldn't laugh or cry. He grabbed the photo taken out by Long Guozhang and asked, "Where did it come from?"

"We just got it back from the Alvik Shipyard of Armstrong Company in the United Kingdom, and we sacrificed an intelligence officer for this." Speaking of the loss of the intelligence agent, Long Guozhang also sighed, but it was the first loss that made him feel that these photos were of great value, otherwise Britain would not have taken such strict confidentiality.

Li Mo was also secretly surprised. In history, Britain's naval secrecy before World War I was almost blank, otherwise there would not have been a joke-like farce of ordinary people who sneaked into the dreadnought and proposed to buy it. Therefore, when he heard that the intelligence officers had been sacrificed, he was also shocked and looked at the photos carefully.

The photo shooting angle is good, and the shape and size can be clearly seen. Compared with the people next to it, the length and width can be roughly calculated between 17,000 and 20,000 tons. This displacement is not surprising in this era, but the four turrets in the stern can be reserved. It can be seen that Britain has also solved the backpack turret technology and has begun to be applied to a new generation of warships.

"Is it super fearless to appear in advance?" Looking at the four big holes, Li Mo racked his brains and couldn't figure out that the British warship adopted this layout in 1907. On the contrary, the four chimneys made him feel familiar and couldn't help asking, "Do you have any data?"

"Yes." Long Guozhang immediately took out a small piece of paper and said, "The intelligence officer visually calculated that the length of this warship is about 172 meters, but the width is only 24 meters, which is relatively slender, so it is inferred that it is a new cruiser with a tonnage of about 17,000 to 20,000. In addition, we checked the transfer record of the British naval boiler factory. It shows that 36 oil-fired boilers have been shipped to the Alvik shipyard recently, all of which should be installed on this warship, so we estimate that so many boilers must be in order to enhance the speed. Mike has calculated before that according to Britain's current reciprocating steam engine technology, it should be close to 40,000 horsepower, and the speed forecast is 25. Around the festival."

"And from the size of the turret, it should be a double 305mm naval gun base. The layout has learned from our backpack type. If the rangefinder can be installed, the combat ability will be greatly improved."

"In addition, the intelligence officer also roughly measured the armor. At present, the thickness of the armor is not very large. The main armor belt of the water line is about 100-127 mm, the thickness of the turret is about 180 mm, the conzzle is 254 mm, and horizontal armor is laid, and the thickest place reaches at least 60. "Millimeter!"

"From the perspective of armor, we think it is a new armored cruiser, and it places great emphasis on speed. Although the specific model data has not been obtained, according to the eavesdropped conversation, Fisher personally proposed and led the British designer to develop a new type of ship called battlecruiser. The British believe that it can be suppressed. At present, all first-class armored cruisers from all over the world.

"Invincible battle patrol!" Emperor Li blinked his eyes. In fact, when he heard half of it, he was basically sure of what kind of warship it was, so after listening to it, he immediately stretched out easily. Fisher was worthy of being the last British naval fighter. In the case of dreadnought behind, he still gritted his teeth and finally took out his so-called "speed is the best defense". As expected, a battlecruiser was created.

However, it is too exaggerated to suppress all the cruisers in the world. Except for speed and naval guns, other aspects are not enough in front of the Dalian-class heavy patrol.

And the invincible level in history is different. The new invincible class adopts its own first backpack turret design, so that the ship layout can be more compact and the firepower can be more uniform. However, judging from the number of 36 boilers, the UK still has not broken through the steam turbine technology, otherwise it will not be more equipped than in history. Five boilers, this is because the biggest disadvantage of reciprocating steam engines is that the utilization efficiency of steam is too low, so the maximum speed is one section less than history.

Originally, he thought that Fisher's battlecruiser would die after the lack of steam turbines. Unexpectedly, he still used the old-fashioned power combination to speed up, but then again, this was also due to his first launch of the backpack turret, otherwise he relied on the old layout of putting the two main guns in the middle. There is not much space available.

However, the lack of power still has a great impact. The pursuit of speed is too much, making the main armor one inch less than the invincible level in history. Although this can save more than 200 tons of weight, it undoubtedly reduces the survival power that is not high again.

It is no exaggeration to say that after adopting the full-body tube sleeve technology, the internal chrome plating improves the barrel strength, the new generation of L52/152mm naval gun adopted by the Yangtze River-class light patrol can be used to penetrate the opponent's main armor with cap-type armor-piercing bullets, and the speed of 31 knots is beyond the reach of the opponent.

However, this is only compared with myself. After all, the power is the existence of the biggest bug brought by his reincarnation. Based on the power of nearly 80,000 horsepower in the Yangtze River class, if it is to be used for the invincible level of 20,000 tons, it is the speed of nearly 28 knots!

However, the emergence of the invincible level is not a bad thing. For Germany, France and other countries, they will find themselves lagging behind again, and Britain will also think that they have once again gained a technical advantage over Xinhua, and the rivering sound that permeates around the world will be more dense.

Seeing that Li Mo didn't speak for a long time, Long Guozhang thought that he also felt threatened by the appearance of this new warship, and quickly said, "Your Majesty, I suggest that you should let Mike come up with countermeasures immediately!" Although the armor of this kind of battlecruiser is insufficient, our capital ship can't catch up with it at present. If we rely on light cruisers, the gun power is seriously insufficient, so.

"So you're going to make garbage?"

Before Long Guozhang finished his words, he was choked by Li Mo and said, "Do you think you can build 30 or 50 ships as you wish when you get the military money?" Fill in the Pacific Ocean first?"

"Huh? How did the emperor know what I was thinking? Long Guozhang was surprised. He was not a fool. He had seen that the defense of this thing called a battlecruiser was really bad, so today he came not so much to introduce a new warship to McKinson as to put pressure on McKinson to take out new things early, but he didn't expect to hit Li Mo.

Li Mo doesn't know the abacus in Long Guozhang's heart. This guy is more active in pickling vegetables in his bowl than anyone else, but now he has got 170 million US dollars, and with the proceeds from the sale of the ship, he has collected 200 million US dollars.

And Duan Fei also took out the income of 100 million US dollars from scattered sales in heaven over the years. This demon he made is now the biggest secret income of Xinhua, most of which is subsidized to the current Ministry of Intelligence and the International Security Agency, which also enables the two institutions to expand rapidly without relying on national finances. Later, he included the money in military control in order to supervise whether the intelligence department would abuse it.

The surplus of the two major intelligence departments has been suppressed by him. Even if the domestic economy is in urgent need, it has not been used for today's needs.

This is a crime of 100 million US dollars. Although it is currently obtained abroad, it cannot guarantee whether it will be introduced into China. Xinhua announced drug control at the beginning of the founding of the country, but in fact it is limited by the medical level. At present, opium is still being used for medical treatment and has not been fully banned. However, this situation will change this year. The Ministry of Science and Technology has After getting morphine, Li Enfu has proposed a comprehensive anti-drug in this year's work plan, including his own paradise.

So this secret income is destined to be completely cut off in the future, because with the improvement of the national finance, the ** of intelligence construction has also passed, which can basically ensure their needs, and keeping it can only be a scourge.

But now, it is undoubtedly a big tonic, 300 million US dollars, a full of 4 billion and 220 million blue coins!

And it is also a huge amount of money that does not rely on finance and will not burden the country. Now with the emergence of the invincible level, it is time to invest in it.

Li Mo put aside the Dragon Constitution and asked with a smile, "Mike, has your design been completed?"

Hearing that Li Mo finally agreed with his idea, McKinson, who also thought that the invincible level was a garbage design, immediately got excited and took the two to the confidential showroom of the design department.

This is a large office with reading power. Li Mo has been here. There are all kinds of drawings and large-scale ships in it. When he walked in with two people under the leadership of security personnel, Long Guozhang, who came in for the first time behind him, was about to drool.

In the huge display room, there are all kinds of large-scale models everywhere, from the coast guard ships equipped by the National Guard, to large supply ships, from destroyers to cruisers, and finally to battleships, and even an aircraft carrier model that looks like the later Nimitz, but it was not made by the design department, but Li Mo was curious. I made it out and put it on display at home. I didn't expect that McGinson came back after seeing it last time and imitated one that he wanted to test the data.

The skins of many models displayed here have been worn out. At first glance, they are the traces left after a long-term test of the pool, which shows that these models have been verified.

Hundreds of design and experimental teams, almost all night to design and experiment with all kinds of ships, have this huge showroom, which is enough to see how wise it was to recruit McKinson and support him to be the chief designer.

Especially after the Jinghai class, he began to follow Li Mo's thinking in an all-round way. When he had time, he pestered Li Mo to explain the future plan for the development of the ship, learned from the experience and ideas beyond this era, and finally, after the establishment of the design institute, he immediately took out those ideas for the initial experiments and design demonstration. Today, it is not inferior to the naval ship design institute of any country.

Over the past few years, hundreds of engineers have entered major shipyards from here alone, which has not only driven the shipyard's own innovation ability, but also enabled Xinhua to develop a not largest but efficient and visionary technical team.

McKinson is not satisfied. Although many of the designs and models in it have passed the experiment, they have not yet entered engineering. The main reason is that the industrial capacity has not been reached, so his biggest dream has been changed, from designing the world's strongest battleship to all the ships here. All have been built.

After passing through the messy outside, McKinson took the two to the inside. When he turned on the light, several huge models immediately appeared in front of him. Looking at the model, Long Guozhang's saliva flowed directly and roared, "Mike, thanks to you still have the face to let me buy you a drink. There are so many good things hidden. Why don't you let me Let me see?!"

"Because, this is." McKinson also rubbed his hands excitedly and spit out two words: "Peast secret!"

"Dry!"

Long Guozhang was completely speechless. Every time this guy came to the navy, he dragged him to treat him. Unexpectedly, he still had a top secret. There was a rule that didn't match. He was the commander of the navy!

Li Mo ignored Long Guozhang, who was about to go crazy. He walked to a triple-armed large warship with bright eyes and pointed to him and asked, "Is this it?"

"Yes!" McKinson said excitedly, "Your Majesty, you are simply God, you know? When Long took out those photos and told me the data, I thought of the battlecruiser you proposed ten years ago, and I was going crazy! God, how on earth did you know that such a new warship would appear?!"

"What? Ten years ago!" Long Guozhang suddenly jumped up. God, is the emperor really a fairy? I discussed battlecruisers with McKinson ten years ago! Why don't you know?

No wonder both of them said it was rubbish. It turned out that they began to study it ten years ago and find countermeasures!

Emperor Li was also a little vain, pretending to wave his hand mysteriously: "It's not worth mentioning. It's just an accidental idea. Tell me about the design."

Accidental design.

Long Guozhang was speechless and listened attentively to McKinson's explanation.

The one in front of us can be said to be an upgraded version of the Dalian class, or a stronger version of the British battlecruiser, or simply a battleship with high speed.

Li Mo's weakness of the battlecruiser is very clear, so he has never considered building it. With the unique power technology, he appreciates the fast battleships of later generations.

Of course, the current power is not enough to push a battleship of 40,000 to 50,000 tons to a high speed of more than 30 knots, but the third-generation power combination on the Yangtze River class makes him see the hope of improving the speed of the existing battleship again.

When the battleship meets the battlecruiser and has an advantage in speed, the result is self-evident, so Li Mo has quietly asked McKinson to design a new generation of capital ships as early as a few years ago when the third-generation power made progress.

The water line is 206 meters long, 27 meters wide and 9.2 meters in water.

The standard displacement is 23,500 tons, the normal displacement is 25,500 tons, and the full load reaches 26,800 tons.

As a new capital ship, its firepower cannot be weaker than it is now. However, although the 356mm gun is already in the test, the displacement of the 356mm gun will exceed 30,000 tons. In that case, the speed will drop a lot, which will not meet the requirements of the battlecruisers. Fortunately, the equipment department got it last year. The new triple L50/305mm naval gun has been released, which solves the biggest problem plaguing McKinson.

Compared with the L45 main gun, the new L50 is not only a simple upgraded version of the extended body tube. It can be said to be almost redesigned. It abandons the old-fashioned threaded bolt, adopts an updated transverse structure bolt, and also increases the number of rifling from the original 68 to 76, especially the use of 3 After three key technologies on the 56mm naval gun, the barrel life has increased from the current 150 shots to 220 shots, and the life of the medicine room has been enhanced.

From the beginning, this gun was designed to match the shell. It not only increased the maximum elevation to 45 degrees, but also used two of the latest 460 kg heavy armor-piercing shells and 410 kg high explosive shells, with a maximum range of 35,000 meters and a remarkable rate of fire. The rapid rate of fire reached 3 shots per minute, with an average rate of 2.4 shots per minute.

The lengthening of the body tube, electric slag refining and chromium plating technology have completely changed the strength and toughness of the body tube, and the improvement of the lazy name propellant has further strengthened the kinetic energy of the muzzle. According to the experiment, at a distance of 25,000 meters, it can penetrate 230 mm of Kryp armor, which is widely used in various countries. If the distance is close to 17,000 meters, its wear depth will reach 330 mm, and within 12,000 meters, it will reach 400 mm!

Xinhua's achievements in large motors also ensure that the rotation speed of the heavy turret can reach 5° per second, and the pitch also reaches a high level of 12° per second.

And what moved McKinson most was that although the gun was lengthened, the weight did not increase but decrease under the condition that the defense power was not reduced. Compared with the L45 used in the Jilin class, the weight dropped from 960 tons to 890 tons, which was a full 70 tons improved. When the three-door triple assembly was used, it could be used for the whole army. The ship saved 210 tons.

This saved weight allows McKinson to arrange the superstructure and other firepower more leisurely. For example, the secondary gun has been upgraded from four double L47/130mm rapid-fire guns to six, and eight deck single 76mm high-level dual-purpose rapid-fire guns, which makes it possible to defend against small high-speed expulsions. The firepower is stronger when the ship is on the ship.

The earliest use by Xinhua has also been improved many times. The equipment department of the 37mm machine gun, which is becoming more and more handy, has also been greatly adjusted from the Dalian-class six-seat double-loading to the six-seat four-loading, making the firepower more dense.

In addition, McKinson also installed an eight-door double 12.7mm large viper machine gun as a last resort to the air and defense of torpedoes.

In order to manage and distribute so many naval guns, the fire control system has also been upgraded. The combination of the new ballistic mechanical computer and the naval gun gyro, plus two sets of new 18-meter-long optical rangefinders, and the addition of several 12-meter reading secondary gun rangefinders, the fire channel and accuracy have been greatly improved. High.

After the upgrade of firepower, speed has become the most critical issue, and even exceeds the requirements for firepower. Fortunately, a critical technology has been successful at this time.

Turbocharged technology!

This is a technology proposed by Li Mo very early. In later generations, there was this set of equipment on modern destroyers. After reading the drawings and repairing them by himself, the imitation design is not the biggest problem for his naval engineer. When he began to develop the steam turbine in 1894, he took out the preliminary design and drawings, but Its requirements for processing are too high, especially the impeller curvature is demanding. The equipment department has not been able to break through. It was not until a few years ago that it was exchanged for high-precision machine tools and processing technology from Germany with no wires that it succeeded last year.

Although there are not many senior technical workers in Xinhua, after absorbing foreign technical workers and self-cultivation for ten years, some good craftsmen have emerged. In fact, the traditional Chinese Confucian peace of mind and the unique soft touch make the country never lack skilled craftsmen, otherwise Luban will be a foreigner. .

What they lack is only experience and lack of understanding of high-tech processing equipment. In this regard, everyone must admire Li Mo. He adopts the combination of theoretical learning, guidance of foreign teachers, and self-action. Sometimes he even personally demonstrated it to the technicians. After scrapping thousands of tons of materials, which even Tang Xiao called the most wasteful material in history, he finally trained a group of senior technical workers.

Compared with Europe and the United States, their number is still very small, but as specialized technical schools and more and more highly educated young people enter them, the scale is gradually increasing. It is precisely because of them who have studied hard all night that the increase in turbines and the vital star engine have made breakthroughs at the same time. Break.

and the star engine are still insufficient, and the actual use may take a period of time. Compared with the turbocharger, it is quite successful because the design starting point itself is high.

Although the turbine can increase horsepower, the real effect is to greatly improve the starting speed. In later generations, a modern class of tens of thousands of tons accelerates from 0 to 32 knots, and it only takes less than 2 minutes. The power can be seen!

Now the technology can't reach that kind of abnormal ability, but as a weakened version of the high-speed battleship, it has very high requirements for acceleration and high-speed maneuverability. Therefore, the emergence of turbocharging has completely solved this big problem. With a large-area angled rudder, the maneuvering ability can even be comparable to that of the Yangtze River. And the start-up speed is comprehensively exceeded.

So Mackinson almost copied the power combination of the Yangtze River, but installed two more Loongson three-type oil boilers, so that the total power of the ten boilers reached 88,000 horsepower, the maximum speed reached 28 knots, and the endurance reached 12 knots / 15,000 nautical miles for the first time. Degree.

Compared with 36 boilers stuffed with British battlecruisers, McKinson thought he was more than calm, but he didn't expect that he would eventually encounter big trouble in protection and armor.

The power is not unlimited. At any time, designers have never completely solved the contradiction between speed, firepower and armor. As the distance between sea combat is getting farther and farther, and the requirements for horizontal armor are getting higher and higher, Li Mo strictly requires that the horizontal protection energy should be strengthened without reducing the main armor. Force, the horizontal armor of the key parts should reach at least 100 mm, which made him almost cry at that time.

The only way to increase the thickness of armor is to increase the displacement, but the speed of increasing the displacement has to be reduced. In the end, he can only ask the real "design" master in his mind.

Li Mo can't solve this problem. He just put forward a method that can appropriately reduce the thickness of the main armor belt and use tilt laying. For the first time, he put forward the requirement that there is no need for comprehensive protection, but focus on protection, that is to say, the armor weight can be reduced in some minor parts, and focus on strengthening ammunition depots, oil. Key parts such as cabin, power cabin, etc.

Historically, this concept was put forward by the United States after Delan, and Li Mo was just borrowing flowers to offer Buddha.

With the "precious" advice, McKinson immediately began to study. In fact, the main armor tilt laying has been tested in the United Kingdom, but on a small scale, and the design department has also gained confidence from the main turret front tilt armor experiment. According to the experiment, at a distance of 15,000 meters, the main armor laid at an inclination of 15 degrees and the 320mm armor laid vertically are almost the same. Finally, after repeated experiments by the naval gun and armor materials department, he finally adopted Li Mo's suggestion to lay the main armor belt at a 17° inclination, which not only saved With a lot of weight, the main armor belt was stretched up and down by half a meter for the first time, which enhanced the defense capability of the whole ship.

After adopting the new key protection idea, McKinson and the design department have almost redesigned the hull. First of all, they need to ensure that non-important parts will not cause serious losses after being hit, which requires the watertight cabin to play a more critical role, and a large number of non-essential After the armor has been moved to the key parts, the balance of the hull also needs to be recalculated. Finally, the position of five high-power reading generators needs to be re-adjusted to ensure that they can be discharged quickly after water is ingress.

Finally, McKinson finally came up with an improvement plan for armor and protection. In addition to the 100mm thick horizontal armor, the front of the naval gun and the conning tower reached 310mm, and the underwater torpedo protection wall reached 120mm. In addition to several important compartments such as power and ammunition, another layer of 80 was added. Millimeter thick armor!

And his major reform was not in vain, and later this protection design even became the standard for Xinhua's subsequent capital ships at all levels.

After listening to McKinson say that all the subsystems have been designed and tested, and the starting conditions have been met, Li Mo is also very happy. It can be said that in addition to the radar, the naval gun follow-up system that represents the highest ability of machinery, the four main technologies of fin reduction, and electronic fire control, Master Li, a BB party, knows Dao's technology is almost exhausted, and the future will only be improved and perfected. In addition to the last one, which is not available at present, the other two will take a few years, so this class of battleship is almost the ultimate in Xinhua's industrial capability!

And this will be the first real state-made battleship. There are some foreign accessories in the previous Jilin class and Dalian class, but after several years of training, all the subsystems can be self-produced, so this time it will be completely domestically built!

However, the cost of such excellent equipment is also extremely amazing. According to McKinson's calculation, even if VH steel, welding and other time-saving technologies are used, the minimum cost will be about 16 million blue coins per ship!

This price made Long Guozhang couldn't help but take a breath. You should know that the previous information showed that the cost of the British battlecruiser was only about 1.7 million pounds, about 12 million blue coins, an increase of one-third!

According to Xinhua's tradition, if the construction starts basically four ships, it will be a full 64 million! As soon as I got 420 million, I was bitten a lot in the blink of an eye.

And this is still the first batch. According to the progress, if the new 356 naval gun is finalized in half a year, there will definitely be a second batch!

At this time, he really understood that in order to give up the strategic thrust of the Nicaraguan Grand Canal for the time being, he would rather get a sum of money from the United States. To put it bluntly, this kind of arms race is not affordable for ordinary countries at all!

Looking at this class, which is specially used to suppress the war patrols of various countries in the future, it is also the first real fast battleship in his dream. Although it hurts, Li Mo is still determined.

Start work!

According to the new naval regulations, battleships use the name of the province, and the heavy patrol is the name of the city, but because of the special design goals, although the establishment is definitely a battleship, it is faster than that of the British battlecruisers. Therefore, Li Mo thought for a long time and wrote down the names of four municipalities directly under the central government with the same status as the province. .

Yanjing, Shanghai, Yucheng and Hong Kong...

(to be continued)