The reason why there is a controversy about secondary artillery is because the protection of warships is getting better and better, and some naval powers, such as the Kingdom of Krull, have begun to use steel-faced iron armor on new warships, and at the same time, the capital ships of various countries generally pursue heavy armor defense, and these three or four hundred mm armor belts can appear on small ships with only three or four thousand tons.

The thickness of the armor on the main battleship is even more amazing, and the Daheng Imperial Navy itself is building a unity-class battleship, using wrought iron on the outside and teak lining it on the inside, and the wrought iron of its waterline armor belt reaches more than 300 millimeters at its thickest point.

The Yonglin-class battleship, which has a larger tonnage, a standard displacement of more than 9,000 tons and a full load displacement of more than 10,000 tons, is known as a 10,000-ton battleship, and the thickness of the wrought iron of its waterline armor belt has reached more than 400 millimeters.

This is still the Great Heng Empire.

If there are several other naval powers, many of them are already using steel-faced iron armor, such as the newly built warships of the Krull Kingdom in recent years, which are basically composite armor with steel and iron armor, and the protection ability is even more amazing.

The protection is getting better and better, which also means that the power of the naval guns needed to penetrate these warships is also increasing.

At the same time, this was also affected by the increase in the range of naval battles, which further reduced the power of naval guns.

In the past, naval guns considered armor-piercing capabilities with an effective range of a few hundred meters or kilometers.

Now, with the advent of rear-loading rifled guns and the advent of sextant rangefinders, the navies of various countries generally believe that the naval combat distance will be directly increased to between 1,000 and 2,000 meters, and under special circumstances, it can be increased to more than 3,000 meters or even 5,000 meters.

At this time, higher requirements were put forward for the power of naval guns.

Then this made the navies of various countries invariably further improve the caliber of the main gun and lengthen the barrel to increase the power of the main gun.

In the era of front-loading rifled guns, when the barrel could not be lengthened, the navy of the Krull Kingdom and other powerful countries coincidentally chose to increase the caliber of the main gun, from 200 mm to 250 mm, then to 300 mm, 350 mm, and even more than 400 mm front-loading rifled guns appeared before.

After entering the era of rear-loading rifled guns, countries choose to increase the caliber while lengthening the barrel, the Krull Kingdom is currently secretive 300 mm 30 times the caliber naval gun, and the Daheng Navy is developing 300 mm 30 times the caliber naval gun are typical products of this concept.

However, this large-caliber main gun is more powerful and can penetrate those thick armor, but the rate of fire is too slow.

It takes a few minutes to get a shot, and in actual combat, the estimated rate of fire is even slower.

No matter how powerful it is, it's useless if you can't hit the enemy!

In this case, how to develop is a difficult problem that plagues the navy of the Great Heng Empire.

Some of them think that it can be equipped with a slightly smaller caliber, such as a naval gun of more than 200 mm, and use it as a second-class main gun.

Others believe that the caliber of the 150-mm secondary gun can be expanded to 170 mm.

These two schemes have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the large-caliber second-class main gun is naturally very powerful, but there are also the shortcomings of the slow rate of fire, which is only about 2.5 minutes per round, which is about the same as the rate of fire of a 300-millimeter naval gun at 3.5 minutes per round.

The 170 mm large-caliber secondary gun scheme, which is of course the ultimate caliber of manpower loading, allows the rate of fire to be increased to about 1.5 minutes per round, but the power is a little smaller, and it is basically unable to penetrate the armor of the enemy's capital ship.

There is a more extreme plan, anyway, whether it is 170 mm or 200 mm, it is difficult to penetrate the armor belt of the enemy's capital ship, and it is better to deploy a few more 300 mm main guns.

And then add a bunch of one hundred and fifty mm secondary guns.

However, this will bring a series of problems such as the increase of the hull, the area that needs to be protected is larger, and the power required is also greater, which directly leads to a multiplication of technical difficulties.

At the same time, even if the number of main guns is increased, it is difficult to coordinate and unify the shooting in actual combat.

This seemingly extreme plan, in fact, Lin Ziran is very concerned, this plan is very similar to the gun layout plan of a battleship on the earth, with eight or ten or even more large-caliber main guns.

But the reason why this plan is an extreme plan is that it is difficult to build with the current technical difficulty, and it is difficult to make it out of reluctance to estimate.

Many controversies within the Navy have a direct impact on the Navy's design and construction of warships, as well as the formulation of future tactics.

In this regard, Lin Ziran used his experience on Earth to unify the voice of the navy.

It doesn't matter what other countries do, but the Great Heng Imperial Navy must firm its own line!

What route?

Many, big, long!

Lin Ziran used words that were very in line with the appetite of Daheng people as a summary: There should be more naval guns, the caliber should be large, and the body tube should be long!

The Daheng Imperial Navy, either you don't play, you have to play a vote of battleships to line up and drown your opponent with a large number of large-caliber naval guns!

In this case, in order to organize more battleships to fight in formation, and at the same time flood the opponent with a large number of large-caliber naval guns, there is nothing more suitable than facing the enemy on the side side.

Lin Ziran did not directly criticize the tactical thinking of facing the enemy with the bow of the ship against the enemy, and even engaging in a bunch of collisions, but just said that this kind of tactical thinking is not suitable for Daheng.

The tactics of the bow facing the enemy and even colliding with the ship sound like it is to play bayonet with the enemy desperately, but the people of Daheng do not respect this tactical idea very much, and the people of Daheng are more admirable to kill the opponent with a large number of cannonballs from afar.

It's better if the enemy can't even touch his own side, so he kills the enemy in one go.

Therefore, the Dahengren army pursues large-caliber long-range heavy artillery, and the same is true for the navy.

In addition, Lin Ziran also asked a very important question to the generals of the Daheng Navy: that is, if the bow of the ship is used to face the enemy and the goose-shaped formation is adopted, how does the navy plan to command its own large battleship fleet in a naval battle.

When Lin Ziran said this, a large number of Admirals of Daheng also reacted.

That's right!

Their Daheng Empire is not a small country of second or third rate, and there are not so many capital ships, at least they have to get dozens of battleships, if they use a goose-shaped formation that exerts their bow firepower, how should they command dozens of battleships and more cruisers at that time?

I'm afraid the command will collapse.

But if you turn into a side to face the enemy and play line tactics, then it will be much simpler, one will follow the other to line up on the battlefield, so that it will be much easier and more convenient to command.

When a number of problems are combined, after more than a year of repeated entanglement, the Daheng Navy has also determined the strategic development direction of the Daheng Navy: the side against the enemy!

The unification of the strategic thinking of the temporal part of the Navy also made Lin Ziran breathe a sigh of relief.

Previously, at Lin Ziran's insistence, the newly built battleships began to carry out the layout of the main turrets in the front and rear of the central axis, including several dome cruisers, as well as the Unity-class and Yonglin-class.

There's no reason to play for a year or two and then go back to the old ways, playing the central fortress or the two-string crossbody layout.

After this great controversy, the Daheng Navy completely suppressed the theories of the central fortress and the cross-body layout.

Began to fully turn to the route of the main turrets in front and rear of the central axis.

What the designers of the subsequent warships need to consider is how to further improve the protection, speed and firepower in this strategic thinking.

At this time, Luo Hai Precision Instrument Company in Luo Hai City sent a huge piece of good news to the Daheng Imperial Navy!

According to the instructions of His Majesty the Emperor Lin Ziran, after more than a year of research and development, they finally got the optical rangefinder out.

After the Daheng Imperial Navy conducted a preliminary test of this so-called combined rangefinder with naval guns, it immediately issued a confidentiality regulation for this product.

This thing may seem inconspicuous, but it's a big killer!

Because when the Navy was conducting a live-fire test, it used this thing to accurately hit a target five kilometers away!

In the words of Admiral Duan Hongxiao, the strategic role of this composite rangefinder is worth ten battleships!

And at present, other countries do not have this thing, and at the same time, this thing is relatively small in size, and it is auxiliary equipment, and the attention is relatively small, as long as the navy takes strict measures to keep it secret, then it can still keep it secret for a period of time.

As long as it is kept secret, it is enough for the Daheng Navy to maintain a huge advantage in range, and this range advantage can play a strategic role in deciding the outcome of a war at a critical moment, especially when a decisive battle at sea is conducted.

The successful development of the optical rangefinder also made Lin Ziran quite happy, but he knew the role of this gadget better than the generals of the navy.

With the advent of optical rangefinders, this means that the distance of naval warfare has increased from one or two thousand meters to five or even six kilometers.

In this case, the design of the battleship should also be improved accordingly.

Hitting an enemy warship at a distance of 5,000 meters is very different from hitting a battleship on the ground at a distance of 1,000 meters.

This means that the power of your own warship needs to be larger and more accurate, so that it can cooperate with the optical rangefinder to hit the enemy ship at a distance of more than 5,000 meters, and at the same time ensure sufficient power.

And the main guns of the current Yonglin-class battleships with a caliber of 300 mm and 25 times the caliber are a little too powerful to keep up.

This is also an extremely embarrassing scene when there is an extremely embarrassing scene in the Great Heng Imperial Navy!

That is, they have found a solution to the long-range hit in naval battles, but they lack a main gun that can hit the enemy battleship at a long distance and penetrate the enemy's battleship's armor belt!

As a result, as soon as the 300-millimeter 25-caliber main gun was developed, it was already backward, and the navy even wanted to suspend the plan to put the ship's gun on board, and wait for the 300-mm and 30-caliber naval guns to come out before going on the ship.

But after all, it didn't do so, after all, most of the two Yonglin-class battleships have already been constructed, and the most important thing is that the caliber is the same, and if you make targeted improvements to the hull in advance, you can also replace it with thirty times the caliber of naval guns in the future.

However, the Yonglin-class No. 3 ship, which is scheduled to start construction by the end of next year, and the No. 4 ship, which is scheduled to start construction in the first half of next year, have suspended their plans and directly revised their designs, and are directly designed to be equipped with 300 mm and 30 times the caliber of naval guns.

For the main guns of the follow-up warships, the Navy put forward the minimum standard: the minimum must be the main gun of 300 mm and 30 times the caliber!

For this reason, the Navy would rather slow down the construction process of the third and fourth ships of the Yonglin-class battleships, and install a 300-millimeter main gun with a longer barrel.

As for how to solve the 300-mm 30-caliber main gun!

According to the existing major caliber naval artillery projects of the three major weapons companies, the Navy has directly integrated the large-caliber naval artillery projects in the Nanzhou Machinery Bureau, the Jingzhou Machinery Bureau, and other related enterprises and departments.

A 'large-caliber naval artillery research room' under the direct leadership of the Navy has been set up to be responsible for the research and development of large-caliber naval guns of more than 170 millimeters.

The laboratory consists of five major project teams, namely 170 mm project team, 200 mm project team, 250 mm project team, 300 mm project team, and 350 mm project team.

Do great things by concentrating!

This time, the Navy is planning to fight hard to get a new naval gun!

At the same time, in order to concentrate their forces, they cut down many naval artillery plans that had not yet been developed, but were already backward, such as 170 mm 30 times the caliber naval guns, 200 mm 30 times the caliber naval guns, and 250 mm 30 times the caliber naval guns.

Because the navy thinks that these 300 mm naval guns are all going to 30 times the caliber, and those naval guns with smaller calibers will naturally have longer barrels, otherwise what use will they be......

Therefore, the research and development plan of the project team in the main naval artillery research room is in accordance with advanced standards, and at the same time, it also adopts the research and development of contemporary main naval guns, and begins to pre-research the next generation of new naval guns, and makes technical reserves in advance.

For example, the 300 mm project team is currently mainly developing 300 mm and 30 times the caliber of naval guns, and at the same time has begun to pre-develop 35 times the caliber and 40 times the caliber of the barrel.

And the Navy firmly believes that a larger caliber naval gun is the future, so there is a project team of 350 mm caliber naval guns, and preliminary research is carried out for 350 mm or even 400 mm caliber naval guns.

And for the various technologies required for these larger and longer barreled naval guns in the future, technical reserves will be made in advance.

For example, now, the technical equipment of the naval artillery factory can be used to make 300 mm and 30 times the caliber of naval guns, but it is very difficult to further develop 35 times and 40 times the caliber of naval guns, only 350 mm caliber naval guns, this thing has higher technical requirements and higher requirements for equipment, even if it is a style goods, the Daheng Empire can't get it now.

Therefore, it is necessary to prepare relevant equipment in advance, because these equipment often need to be developed, so if you do not prepare in advance, it will be very troublesome in the future.

The navy has already begun to fight hard for the sake of naval artillery.

The shipbuilding plan adjusted by the navy because of the conjunctive rangefinder is not only the Yonglin-class battleship, but even the Tongyi-class battleship that has entered the later stage of construction has also adjusted the naval guns that have been attached, mainly to adjust the elevation angle of the naval guns in order to obtain a larger effective range.

The follow-up shipbuilding plans of other types of ships have also been significantly changed.

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