"This is a 17th-century version of a 'fully armed light gun', right?" The white and chubby Wang Xiaohui stood on the bow of the "Youguang", looking at the Napoleonic cannon that was being slowly lowered by the steel cable, and couldn't help but sigh a few times, shaking his head and revealing a wicked smile.

"Come on, what do you know about the Army?" Mu Longcheng, the captain of the "Youguang", who was dressed in a straight white uniform, glanced at the goods beside him.

"Hey, I said, we're now the chief of staff of the Joint Command, and if we are compatible with land and sea, we can also be considered part of the Navy, okay?" Wang Xiaohui was dissatisfied.

"Two-way plug." Mu Longcheng muttered in a low voice.

...... Wang Xiaohui was of course a member of the army before, but this gentleman's theoretical level in maritime affairs is also not low - the Sail Mouth Cannon Party. Later, due to the shortage of people in the transport fleet running Hangzhou, he temporarily took several shifts. After coming and going like this, this product actually had the impression of "relatively high comprehensive quality" in the eyes of the gang in the big office.

Then, in a flicker, he became the chief of staff of the newly established Joint Operations Command not long ago, responsible for drawing up the operational plan for the upcoming Fujian coastal bandit suppression war......

......

As the most important armament work at present, the outfitting project of the "Ariko" was carried out as soon as the typhoon passed. There are practical pressures to do so: the faster the outfitting project is completed, the longer it will be left for the Navy to become familiar with. On the other hand, it is a bit tragic: Brother Chen Youguang died because he was worried about outfitting work, so this work must be completed as soon as possible to comfort the deceased.

The construction of the Ariko actually began more than four months ago. However, because the Ariko is actually a verification ship, there have always been some theoretical disagreements, which led to a delay in the construction schedule. When those small "destroyers" were already scolding Zheng Zhilong on the sea, the Youguang was still lying in the dock.

Eventually, all disagreements were dissipated after the destroyers brought back first-hand combat information about the Battle of Cormorant Island.

According to the battle situation at the time and subsequent measurements, the 12-pounder Napoleon gun, which had been processed by later industrial equipment, was fully capable of breaking the hatch of the Fuship at a distance of 1,000 meters and penetrating the enemy ship at a distance of 500 meters.

In other words, it turns out that even Zheng Zhilong's ship is an old-fashioned ship structure that lacks ribs and single-layer ship plates: an iron ball with an arc trajectory, as long as the angle is right, it can ensure that it can penetrate the hatch and bottom plate within 500 meters, causing the ship to enter the water. This effect is also effective at 1000 meters, but with a lower probability.

Actual combat is the best way to test a theory. Now that the answer has been revealed, the final configuration of the Ariko has been decided: there is no need to install a small number of larger-caliber guns, just as many 12-pounder guns as possible.

The Yuguang is a 400-ton sail gunship, and the original intention of building this class of ships was to deal with the Chinese pirates led by Zheng Zhilong. The reason why the ship was never outfitted was largely due to the constant debate over the layout of the ship's guns: between the full 12-pounder Napoleon guns and larger caliber guns.

Now the argument is finally gone: the "fully armed light artillery" faction has won the final victory.

......

Launched in February 1906, the British battleship HMS Dreadnought was the first truly modern battleship: it was the first capital ship to be equipped with a steam turbine and reached an astonishing speed of 21 knots.

However, this was not the most important thing, the most important thing was that the "Dreadnought" was armed with only 10 12-inch guns, with the exception of some small-caliber rapid-fire guns against torpedo boats, and there were no medium-caliber guns at all.

This resulted in the Dreadnought's long-range large-caliber firepower being one and a half times greater than that of other battleships; The artillery firing commander ensures that these large-caliber guns of its still have a high hit rate at the maximum range.

It was precisely because of this unique layout of "fully armored heavy guns" that the "Dreadnought" had epoch-making significance, becoming synonymous with the 150 modern battleships built around the world.

In a sense, the layout of "all-light guns" proposed by some of the vassals was also borrowed from the design ideas of the dreadnought: all the deck space was reserved for the 12-pounder Napoleon gun, and there was no longer a small-caliber secondary gun...... All the work of the secondary guns at close range was left to the muskets.

This naval gun layout maximizes the superiority of the traverser's firepower and sighting, rate of fire. But this layout is also flawed: the imaginary enemy of the Light can only be the Chinese pirates who sail the Fubune Guang, and they will not be able to gnaw when they encounter European ships.

......

The Ariko is 44 meters long and 7.5 meters wide, and the ship type is not much different from the previous flying shear bow and streamlined destroyers, but the tonnage has been enlarged to 400 tons. And a warship of the level of the Light can only be regarded as a fourth-class ship in Europe, and the tonnage is too small.

The 17th century was in full swing during the Age of Discovery, and the Europeans had left other peoples far behind in the field of ships. Any European-style ship that could cross the ocean to East Asia, even a purely merchant ship, was far superior in hull structure to a single-deck Chinese ship: without thick hulls and ribs, navigators would have been feeding fish in storms long ago.

And in the lair of these Europeans, powerful warships are emerging on the surface of the sea one after another. Even in the Battle of the Armada 30 years ago, the fleets of Britain and Spain, led by the Triumph and the San Juan, already had a number of 1,000-ton Galion-type warships. The thick oak hulls and ribs of these battleships were not easily penetrated by the 12-pounder guns on the Youguang.

As a result, while determining the layout of the ship's guns, the Ariko also made his grade clear: only pirates.

After determining the layout of the ship's guns, outfitting work began in earnest.

The outfitting of ships in this era was not the same as in later generations. In later generations, those battleships often took half a year to outfit - hundreds of tons of gun mounts and 15-inch cannons were not so easy to install.

And it only took 5 days for the outfitting with the light number to be fully loaded.

Outfitting was simple: first, a gas power system was installed in the aft engine room. Since the displacement of the Yuko is only 400 tons, there is no need to launch the hull and then install the engine.

The shipyard's practice is to lift the equipment directly on the ship's rack.

When the gas stove, engine, propeller, and a small boiler were all hoisted into the stern compartment, it took the engineers led by Qiao Zhengtai two days to get the small turbine system into operation.

After the commissioning, the ship was launched. The next step was to hoist the Napoleonic cannon from the already designed gun emplacement.

A total of 10 gun emplacements were set up on the deck of the Light Horn.

The gun emplacements were all concentrated on the center line of the ship, separated by a shipbuilding arranged in the middle of the deck, with five guns in the front and five in the fore. The gun emplacements are 360-degree chassis steering and have a retractable canopy overhead.

In order to save deck space to the greatest extent, the gun emplacements of the Light were replaced by gun shafts instead of circular slides that covered a large area.

The location of the gun shaft is just below the gun emplacement and consists of a system of steel stiffeners and slides. When the overhead cannon is fired, the huge recoil force will be transmitted down the steel cable and slide system, and the stoppers placed between the slides will be forcibly raised like an elevator to consume the recoil of the gun.

The gun shaft is an extremely advanced system that completely counteracts the recoil of the ship's guns, so that the gun crew does not need to adjust the gun position again during rapid fire: this is not possible with the annular slide.

Moreover, the presence of artillery silos also reduced the number of artillery crews. Generally speaking, the standard number of people in a land Napoleonic artillery group should be 6-8 people.

The reason for the large number of people is the weight: whether on the march or in columns, shooting, the artillery crew needs to cooperate at all times to move the heavy cannons of the artillery and move back and forth between the ammunition carts behind them.

And now with this system, the crew on the light suddenly became a 3+1 combination. Three men were on deck responsible for a series of simplified firing procedures, while the crew in the gun shaft was responsible for refueling and delivering ammunition overhead.

In short, the recoil is solved, and the deck can become concise and neat. Under the command of walkie-talkies and tweeters on the command building, all gun emplacements can not only fire in a salvo, but also be divided into two groups to shoot at different targets.

In this case, it is very difficult for an enemy Chinese ship to break through to within 300 meters of the Ariko...... Unless there are a lot of enemy ships. However, the speed of the ships passing through the forces is never a problem, not to mention the propellers against the sky to solve the problem of headwinds, so the enemy cannot put up an encirclement formation.

As the price of maximizing the stacking of artillery, there is a light and a weak point: the mast. The ship had only a mainmast and foremast of average height, and no aftermast. This design indicates that the Ariko is a sailing ship that pays considerable attention to fuel, and the utilization rate of its engine and sails is almost equal.

You know, the previous destroyers didn't use propellers most of the time. The Arimitsu was different: a large amount of equipment and fuel in the bilge, the armament on the deck, and the reduced mast allowed the Ariko to maintain a downwind cruising speed of only about 8 knots, and if the engine was activated, the maximum speed could only reach 14 knots.

Of course, this speed is enough, or that sentence, it's the 17th century.

......

Including the electronic instruments in the command building, the machine gun nest, and the motor system to assist in maneuvering the sail lifting, all the outfitting work of the Youguang was completed in only five days with the 24-hour non-stop efforts of a large number of workers in the shipyard.

Now there is plenty of time: after the Navy takes over a new ship, it will have at least 10-20 days to run in and train. And Wang Xiaohui and others can also put aside their worries and officially use the Youguang as the core flagship to design a plan to exterminate pirates.