Chapter 188 Beiyang, Beiyang

Since Hu Chuyuan entered the Weihai Port of the Beiyang Marine Division, Liu Bu toad and Lin Tai have been hiding from him.

At the beginning, they thought that they had come to the right place. The Beiyang navy was the most important fleet of the Qing court. They would also be heavily used here and soon serve as admiral and general. For this reason, they did not hesitate to offend Hu Chuyuan.

The result is completely different from what they thought.

After the Sino-French naval battle of the Yellow Sea, the Qing court completely tilted its policy to the Fuzhou shipping administration, and even deprived the right to purchase the warships of the Beiyang Marine Division on the grounds that the warships operated by Li Hongzhang had failed one after another, and all of them were transferred to the Fuzhou Shipping Administration.

Starting in 1887, the Qing court stopped buying warships. All warships were produced in Fuzhou Ship Administration. It was indeed worth using and the price was cheap, but all the power and the power of the entire Qing Navy were further controlled by Fuzhou Ship Administration.

Ye Zucuo, Lin Yongsheng, Ye Fu, Lv Han, Deng Shichang and Zhuo Guanlue, who have always looked down on, have been promoted to admirals and general soldiers one after another, and even Sa Zhenbing, Chai Zhuoqun, Ye Chen, Lu Hongjie, Lin Luzhong, Dai Bokang and others who have been promoted.

Whether it's Liu Bu toad or Lin Tai, his heart is more or less unbalanced.

Entering the camp, Hu Chuyuan sat down, and the generals of the East China Sea Division entered the account one after another to report the new situation in the past two days.

War has always killed 10,000 enemies and lost 8,000 yuan. In the Yellow Sea War, most of the main force of the Standing Fleet was lost, and the East China Sea Division also lost two warships, because they all sank in the deep-sea area, with an average depth of more than 50 meters. With current technology, it can no longer be salvaged, and can only be completely abandoned.

Weihai Dockyard has been under construction since 1879. It has been 11 years. The overall level is not as good as that of the Haiphong Shipyard. The scale is small and the maintenance ability is worse. At present, it mainly relies on the Donghai Water Division's own soldiers to participate in the emergency repair. It is expected that in two or three days, four severely damaged warships can be restored to 8. The speed of the knot.

Lv Han is taking some ships of the Ningbo Fleet and the Yangtze River Fleet to the south. After their arrival, some of the wounded ships of the East China Sea Division will return to Luoyuan Bay for overhaul under the escort of the Ningbo Fleet, trying to restore combat capability within a month.

Listening to these words, how embarrassing Ding Ruchang was.

For a long time, the overhaul of the Beiyang Fleet has been operated in Lushun Port. Weihai Port was only responsible for the regular maintenance. Later, Suo went to Luoyuan Bay for overhaul, and even Lushun Port gave up further construction.

Li Hongzhang only pays attention to the dazzling appearance, and does not pay attention to the various details that will arise from the actual war. Even if he allocates an additional 200,000 yuan to Weihai Port every year to prepare for the construction and maintenance of the factory, this will not be the case.

Subsequently, Lin Yongsheng will carry out a comprehensive war report.

In general, there are two main problems at present. First, the tactical literacy of the Japanese fleet is not low; second, some of the shells used by the Japanese fleet are bitter and sour shells, because the ammunition caliber is small and the power is not great. The key is that the side effects are obvious. The soldiers of each ship have been burned and seriously injured. There are still many people who have been poisoned and have not been effectively cured so far.

When he finished speaking, Deng Shichang said, "Your Excellency, let's also change the shells and attack the poison with poison. Otherwise, the soldiers can't stand it... In the future, we can't stand it, and they can't stand it."

Hu Chuyuan nodded slightly and said to Lin Yongsheng, "For this matter, you and Ye Zukui send a telegram to ask Wu Zhengbing to handle the comprehensive replacement of shells. First, buy an additional batch with the Americans, and the shipping factory will also speed up production."

Lin Yongsheng nodded.

He is not a very careful person. It is said that such trivial things are in the control of Ye Zugui. As a deputy general, he is responsible for the actual command of operations and tactical formulation.

After most of the things were finished, Lu Hongjie submitted a practical report on Chunyu. Because of the data confidentiality, only Hu Chuyuan read this report alone.

He looked at it carefully and confirmed that there were still many problems with the Spring Rain, especially the feeding mechanism of the 150mm double rapid-fire main gun was not very stable, and the rapid-fire advantage could not be played at all.

This problem cannot be solved for the time being. Looking around Europe and the United States has the same problem, so Japan mainly chose the 120mm rapid-fire gun.

Chunyu can only go back and replace a set of 135mm triple rapid-fire main gun. This is a set of alternatives prepared in advance, and it can only be done now.

After the generals of the East China Sea Division retreated one after another, Hu Chuyuan discussed with Ding Ruchang and asked about the current specific situation of the Beiyang Sea Division.

The Beiyang Marine Division is easily affected by the Fuzhou ship administration in the whole development process, because it is of great importance. In the design of the Dingyuan level, Hu Chuyuan exerted some influence on it very early. He did not use the corner central fort, which would soon be abandoned, but the 305mm caliber with a triple loading in the bow and stern. The main gun.

In the use of steel for Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, Hu Chuyuan also persuaded the British Admiralty to provide Bo's hybrid steel armor to Dingyuan. At the same time, he transferred some technology to Germany to use German-made Weishi mixed steel armor on Zhenyuan.

From the perspective of defense, these two warships were world-class before 1887 and can also occupy a strong advantage at present. In the whole of Asia, only two Ise-class ironclad battleships purchased from Britain in early 1888 can be compared.

The two ironclads of the Dingyuan class realized a major reform plan at the Volkhang Shipyard in Germany in early 1889. They replaced new boilers, steam engines and main guns, and used kerosene mixed combustion boilers to reduce smoke emissions, and only one elliptical chimney was retained.

Taking advantage of the new space, the main gun has been replaced with eight new 275mm tube retreat main guns. The front and rear are triples, with a single set on each side, four 150mm secondary guns, 4 120mm rapid-fire guns, 4 75mm rotary machine guns, and 2 35mm machine guns. .

New electronic control technology has been added, carrying two multi-purpose patrol boats created by Fuzhou Ship Administration. Torpedo launchers can be added at any time and converted into torpedo boats.

Due to the use of ventilation pressure and fuel injection technology, both ships can reach 17 knots in terms of overall speed, but the damage to the boiler and steam pipe is relatively large, and the normal limit speed can be controlled at 15.5 knots.

Of course, there is only one reason why Li Hongzhang agreed to make such an improvement - all expenses go to Fuzhou Shipping Administration.

In addition to these two main ships, Li Hongzhang has successively ordered two ironclad cruisers and two dome cruisers in Germany, and Fuzhou Ship Administration has purchased four dome cruisers, six Jiangwei-class defense ships, 12 new 425-ton gunboats, 14 100-ton torpedo boats, and seven 300-ton patrol boats. Buy four artillery ships from Jiangnan Shipbuilding Factory.

These are the current situation of the Beiyang Marine Division, which is stronger than the Nanyang Marine Division and weaker than the East China Sea Division.

Taking this opportunity, Hu Chuyuan and Ding Ruchang talked about the future technology trends of the navy. Half of the talk, Qiu Baoren, Fang Boqian, Lin Yingqi and Chen Jinrong also came in.

Hu Chuyuan didn't mind. He expounded his point of view on the matter, especially for the Battle of the Yellow Sea. He insisted that the unskilled cannon was worthless. Of course, the bigger the cannon, the better, but he should also comprehensively consider the rate of fire and other technical maturity.

Fuzhou Ship Administration has conducted large-scale drills on the test ship. Finally, it is believed that Armstrong's new 275mm artillery can still be fired up to three rounds per minute in a very bad combat state, while the 305mm main gun, the old one is only fired every ten minutes. In the actual battle, top It's about 15 minutes.

If it is a new main gun of 305mm caliber, the situation is better, but it is also about two minutes at most, and about three minutes in actual combat.

Considering that the main enemy's ship armor is difficult to defend against the main gun of 275mm caliber. Even if you encounter the two main battleships of the Nishikyomaru class, you can still use the advantage of electronic control technology and gun speed to suppress them, and wait for the opportunity to deal with torpedo tactics.

To put it simply, Hu Chuyuan does not believe in luck. A huge cannon may hit the enemy's key point. He still hopes to find a balance between the huge cannon, gun speed and actual value.

He said so, and everyone nodded silently.

Ding Ruchang couldn't help sighing with Hu Chuyuan: "The senior government and the subordinates are also half-hearted. Now the gap is so big that the subordinates are really ashamed. Fortunately, with the support of the senior government, our Beiyang navy now also has many battleships that can compete with Kou...

"I don't think so, right?"

Someone suddenly sneered outside the camp. Then, Liu Buchan came in with dissatisfaction. When he saw Hu Chuyuan, he pretended to see: "I have met the Prime Minister and the Minister."

Hu Chuyuan didn't mind this person's provocation too much. Anyway, as long as the fleet fell into his hands, the first thing was to kick Liu Bu toad out and go wherever he wanted. Anyway, he didn't need it.

He just smiled and said with Ding Ruchang and other generals, "I have something else to do. I'll leave now."

After saying this, he got up and left, and Ding Ruchang and others hurriedly got up to see him off.

When Hu Chuyuan was sent out of the government, Ding Ruchang sighed and said to Liu Buchan, "Why do you need this? Now everything in the navy of the court is in his hands. If he thinks the cannon is good, you can say that the cannon is good. Besides, you can also not talk. Why do you have to speak and provoke?

Liu Bu toad sneered and didn't pay attention to it. He said to others: "He changed the main gun of our Beiyang Marine Division to a small caliber without authorization. Even if he increased the number of cannons, so what? Half of the water army's business lies in deterrence. It is precisely because he pays too much attention to practicality that the court advocates small ships, which makes foreigners neglect our navy and think that there are no giant cannons available. Otherwise, how dare they dare to be our enemy. It is really a misfortune for the whole country to control the affairs of the world in the hands of such annipers.

Ding Ruchang was speechless for a moment. Others had always followed Liu Buchan, and then changed the wind direction. He sighed with Liu Buchan, as if they were all drinking hatred for national affairs.

(to be continued)