After more than 20 hours of sailing, the Longxing Island arrived at Qingdao Bay at about six o'clock the next morning, by which time most of the crossers on board were still asleep, and only the members of the negotiating team had already gotten up and disembarked. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

At this time, Qin Zheng was waiting for them on the dock, and after everyone met, they greeted each other, and then boarded the ship sent by Shanghai to receive the negotiation team. It turned out that Shanghai sent the Ping'an on which Li Hongzhang took during his last visit to Tianjin, and the escort warships were also the two protective cruisers, Haitian and Haichou.

At seven o'clock, the three ships left the island and headed for Shanghai. At this time, the other people on the Longxing Island got up one after another. At the same time, it was announced that the LAN on the ship would be shut down, and that after the dormitory for the traversers in Qingdao was built, the LAN would be arranged in the dormitory area.

But not every traverser wants to work, some people even think that this kind of life is not bad, at least three meals a day, get off the boat and wander around when there is nothing to do, and tear it on the LAN at night, so it is not bad to mix it up, and now this kind of life has not naturally caused the dissatisfaction of a few people, so there is a lot of noise on the boat, and the scene is a little chaotic for a while.

And at this time, Qin Moman sneaked off the Longxing Island and rushed to the Prince Heinrich Hotel to meet Prince Heinrich. Because the cooperation between Germany and the traverser is still not visible, Qin Moman's visit to Qingdao this time is a secret operation, claiming that he is sick and recuperating at home, and the affairs of the consulate are handed over to the vice consul to be responsible, even the only three people in the German consulate in Tianjin know that he came to Qingdao.

Now the Heinrich Hotel has basically become the temporary residence of the German envoy, and there are no guests anyway, so Heinrich, as well as Wadsey, Falkenhess and others who were released by the traverser, all live in the Heinrich Hotel, just to hide their whereabouts, and cannot easily leave the hotel.

However, when Qin Moman arrived, another envoy, Tirpitz, had left Qingdao yesterday with a complete set of drawings of the old man's star battleship and a German merchant ship, and he would transfer to a passenger ship back to Germany in Shanghai.

Although he had not yet obtained the drawings of the Majestic-class battleships and the Crecy-class armored cruisers, Tirpitz did not have the slightest regret or unwillingness, on the one hand, because the remaining drawings were agreed otherwise, and sooner or later they would also be German; on the other hand, Tirpitz believed that the gains from this trip to Qingdao had far exceeded his expectations.

After Qin Zheng and Heinrich signed the [Sino-German Qingdao Agreement], Tirpitz did not participate in the subsequent negotiations, mainly discussing the design of the warship with Huang Zhe. Although Tirpitz has courage, drive, and courage, he is not a person with innovative ideas, so the German warship construction technology he presided over mainly follows the way of British warships, rather than developing new warships, although this can make Germany build ships less detours and avoid risks, but it also makes Germany's technical level a generation behind Britain, after all, Germany can only imitate Britain's completed warships, but after Germany builds warships, and Britain has built a new generation of warships. As a result, German warships often fell behind as soon as they were built.

After several previous explorations, and a visit to the warships of the Traverser, Tirpitz has basically decided that the warship design capability of overseas Chinese is not below that of Britain, at least it is roughly the same as that of Britain, even now that Germany and overseas Chinese have signed a military cooperation agreement, Tirpitz naturally hopes to have a good exchange of ideas on warship design with overseas Chinese, and it is best to make some suggestions for German warship design, speed up Germany's warship design level, and strive to catch up with Britain as soon as possible.

And this time Tirpitz did not hide his secrets, in fact, this time Tirpitz came to Qingdao to bring the sketches of the latest German battleships, and when he communicated with Huang Zhe again, he took out the drawings of these types of battleships and let Huang Zhe watch and point out.

In fact, Huang Zhe knows all these types of German battleships: Caesar Frederick III-class battleships are the 2nd type of pre-dreadnoughts built by Germany. Of course, there is no concept of a pre-dreadnought, because dreadnoughts have not yet been built. The standard displacement of the battleships of this class is 11,100 tons, full load displacement: 11,780, length: 125.36 meters, width: 20.3 meters, draft: 8.2 meters, speed 17.5 knots, and 650 crew members. It is armed with 2 twin 40x 240 mm main guns, 14 single 40x 150 mm secondary guns, 12 88 mm secondary guns, and 5 450 mm underwater torpedo tubes. At present, all five ships of this type have been launched, and three have entered service with the German Navy.

The Wicchersbach-class battleship was a German-built Type 3 pre-dreadnought, an enlarged and improved version of the Caesar Frederick III class, with a standard displacement of 11,770 tons, a full load displacement: 12,790, a length: 126.8 meters, a width: 20.79 meters, a draft: 8 meters, a speed of 18 knots, and a crew of 683 people. It is armed with 2 twin 40x 240 mm main guns, 18 single 40x 150 mm secondary guns, 12 88 mm secondary guns, and 6 450 mm underwater torpedo tubes. Germany also plans to build 5 warships of this type, all of which have already started construction, and 3 have been launched.

Compared with the current British main battleship Majesty-class battleship, which has reached a displacement of 15,000 tons, the two types of battleships are of course greatly inferior. This was mainly due to the fact that the Kiel Canal across the North Sea and the Baltic Sea in the early years limited the displacement of German warships, preventing Germany from building warships with a displacement of 15,000 tons. However, the Germans were already planning to expand the Kiel Canal, so that the bottleneck limiting the displacement of German warships would soon be lifted.

In fact, the design of these two types of warships still has certain uniqueness, due to the advanced military technology of Germany, because the rate of fire of the 150 mm secondary guns used by these two types of warships is faster than that of the British naval guns of the same caliber, so the 105 mm secondary guns are canceled, and only the 88 mm secondary guns are retained, which is also conducive to the smaller hull to arrange weapons, and reduce the pressure on logistics.

However, there were still many problems with the design of these two types of warships, some of the 88 mm guns of the Caesar Frederick III class battleships were arranged in a lower position on the middle deck, and the secondary gun ports were opened on the side of the ship, which was originally designed to facilitate the flat fire of the rapidly approaching torpedo boats at any time at anchor, which was also the experience of the Sino-Japanese War, but caused the integrity of the broadside armor to be destroyed, which made the defensive performance reduced, and it was impossible to shoot at all in bad sea conditions. The Wicchersbach-class battleships were strengthened by eliminating the mid-deck guns and the secondary gun openings on the ship's side. However, more weapons were moved above the upper deck, which made the center of gravity of the whole ship too high, and the position of the secondary gun deck had to be lowered by one level, so the problem of not being able to shoot at all in bad sea conditions remained unresolved.

In the final analysis, these two types of warships had too small a displacement, but they had to take on the task of capital ships, and had to install too many weapons and thick armor. Problems in these areas, such as the British Majestic-class battleships, were much better.

Listening to these questions pointed out by Huang Zhe, Tirpitz also nodded again and again, because the three Caesar Frederick III-class battleships that had entered service had indeed encountered a situation in which the lower secondary guns could not shoot in bad sea conditions during sea trials.

Huang Zhe also pointed out that another problem with these two types of warships is that the caliber of the main guns is too small, only 240 mm, and as a battleship, the main guns of such a caliber are obviously not powerful enough. The main guns of the British battleships of the current first class have reached 305 mm, and the two sides are too far apart. Although the rate of fire of the main guns of the German ships was fast, no matter how fast the rate of fire was, it would be in vain to not be able to penetrate the enemy's warships.

The reasons why the German warships insisted on using small-caliber guns were: first, they learned a lesson from the Battle of Dadonggou, in which the rapid-fire artillery firepower of the Japanese Combined Fleet overwhelmed the large-caliber guns of the Beiyang Naval Division; second, the naval battle area set by Germany had a poor view of the North Sea climate for many years, the Baltic Sea was narrow, and the combat distance in such waters was relatively close, and the importance of the artillery rate of fire relative to caliber and firing range was much higher. Therefore, although in the design of the next Braunschweig-class battleship, Germany switched to a 280 mm caliber main gun, which is not a change of course for Germany, but a 280 mm caliber main gun with a rate of fire that is almost the same as that of a 240 mm caliber gun, and to put it bluntly, it still attaches importance to the rate of fire, but the single-shot damage of the 280 mm caliber main gun is still inferior to the British 305 mm naval gun.

The Brunswick-class battleship is the 4th type of former dreadnought built by Germany, because it has accumulated considerable experience, so this type of battleship is also more successful in design, the displacement has increased to 13,200 tons, and the main gun has also increased to 280 mm caliber, although it is still slightly inferior to the British Majesty-class battleship, but the combat effectiveness of a single ship has been greatly improved, but this type of battleship has just completed the design freeze and has not yet begun construction. At the same time, the German Type 5 pre-dreadnought had already begun to be designed, and the ultimate goal of this type of warship was to compete with the British Majesty class.

Huang Zhe knew that it should be said that Germany's idea of attaching importance to the rate of fire was not wrong, but it was a bit overkill, and in the Battle of Dadonggou, the rapid-fire artillery fire of the Japanese Combined Fleet did cause huge damage to the Beiyang Fleet, but the warships under 2,000 tons were sunk, because the rapid-fire guns of the Japanese Combined Fleet were all small and medium-caliber, and it was difficult to cause fatal damage to the heavy armor of the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan ships. The power of the 305 mm naval guns of the two ships in the town was huge, as long as one shot hit, it was enough to kill the Japanese ships, so the Battle of Dadonggou ended with the Japanese Combined Fleet first taking the initiative to retreat, and although the Beiyang Fleet lost this battle, the main force was still there, and there was still combat power. This also shows that in the decisive battle of the capital ship, it is not enough to talk only about the rate of fire and ignore the power.

However, Germany believes that the North Sea climate has been poor for many years, the Baltic Sea is narrow, and the combat distance in such waters is relatively close, and the importance of artillery rate of fire relative to caliber and range is much higher. It is even more of a false proposition, no matter how small the North Sea and the Baltic Sea are, there are 4, 500,000 square kilometers, enough for the two fleets to open a formation and fight, and the North Sea is not every day The climate is harsh, in the old time and space, in the First World War, the largest battleship war The Battle of Japan was fought in the North Sea, and the average exchange distance between the two sides was about 15 kilometers.

Although Huang Zhe could not use the Battle of Japan to illustrate Tirpitz as an example, the battles in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea could also be fought at a distance. But Tirpitz also knew that Huang Zhe's opinion was correct, and the caliber of the main guns of German warships was indeed a big problem, because Tirpitz had conducted many firing tests of naval guns in Germany, and the results were very dissatisfied with the penetration of the 240 mm caliber guns.

But let Tirpitz give up the rate of fire, and a little unwilling, so Germany made great efforts to develop a high rate of fire 280 mm caliber main gun, but also wanted to strengthen the power of the main gun without affecting the rate of fire on the premise, but although Germany increased the caliber of the main gun to 280 mm, but it is still slightly inferior to the British 305 mm naval gun, and the displacement of British warships is generally larger than that of Germany, and the assigned armor is naturally thicker, so that if the two sides really want to have a naval battle in the future, it is naturally unfavorable to German warships.