After all, the Great Heng Empire is not a pure sea power country like the Krull Kingdom, and the investment in the navy is huge, and there are more than a dozen battleships built casually.

Because of the stimulation of the Orr War, the Krull Kingdom began to build ships in the second half of last year, and began the construction of their high-freeboard battleships, and according to reliable information, they started construction of four ships in one fell swoop in the second half of last year.

This year, eight ships have started construction one after another!

In just one year, they have already started construction of twelve battleships in one go, all of them with a high freeboard of 14,500 tons, and a big guy with a main gun of 350 mm and 30 times the caliber!

In addition, they also got several second-class battleships, although their second-class battleships were about the same tonnage as the Fengyang-class armored cruisers of the Daheng Imperial Navy, but their tactical positioning was very different, and their second-class battleships were mainly sent overseas to carry out missions, after all, not all places needed them to send expensive first-class battleships over.

The positioning of the Fengyang-class armored cruisers of the Daheng Empire has tended to be high-speed battleships, attacking the two wings in a high-speed formation, and cooperating with battleships to carry out a decisive battle in a line.

The Krull Kingdom can open more than a dozen battleships of the same class in one breath so arrogantly, the Daheng Empire can't do this, Lin Ziran hopes that the navy can improve the design on the basis of the Jingzhou-class battleships, and then build a new generation of battleships.

Although the Great Heng Empire has always boasted of overwhelming people, it is playing a flat-push war!

But in the navy, compared with the Krull people in terms of the number of warships, for the time being, it is still a little reluctant.

To get it again, you have to rely on the performance advantage!

Especially when you still have hardened armor and rapid-fire gun secrets and advantages, you can further distance yourself from performance.

A 150-millimeter rapid-fire gun is not enough, a 200-millimeter, 250-millimeter rapid-fire gun, and finally a 300-millimeter rapid-fire gun.

In this way, we can make up for the numerical disadvantage with a steady stream of better technical advantages!

And when the financial pressure of the Great Heng Empire is eased one day, and more money can be invested to expand the navy, it will become a double advantage in quality and quantity, and then it will be time to pull the navy of the Krull Kingdom down.

Therefore, after coming to Quping Naval Base, although Lin Ziran said a lot of good things in the early stage of watching, he never heard the Navy's funding requirements.

It was only when the people in the navy introduced him to the sea trials of the Jingzhou-class battleship, which had run an ultra-high speed of up to 17.5 knots, that he responded to these requests from the navy.

"This new ship must be built, but how to build the navy still has to be considered in detail, we can't be complacent, we must continue to raise the requirements, continue to improve!"

"I've heard that the Krull people have started construction of more than a dozen battleships, each of which will not be smaller in tonnage than the Jingzhou-class battleships, and they are also researching all kinds of new technologies, maybe in a few years, they will be able to get hardened armor and rapid-fire guns, once this happens, we will lose our existing advantages!"

"Therefore, we must continue to maintain and even improve our advantages, especially the large-scale rapid-fire guns must be paid attention to!"

After Lin Ziran said a lot, he didn't interfere in the navy's warship design work in detail, otherwise he still gave the navy a big reminder, if he still wants to make old things to fool people, His Majesty the Emperor will be mad.

But the navy is actually very difficult, how can this technological progress be so easy!

The more advanced 300 mm and 40 times caliber main gun has been established for several years, and the research and development forces of the empire's large-caliber main gun two years ago are basically working around this new artillery, but the difficulty is not ordinary!

The same is true for the large-scale rapid-fire guns, and the navy has actually been promoting this work, but the basic technologies such as materials and processing are not up to standard, especially the hydraulic cylinders used in large-caliber naval guns, which have extremely high technical requirements.

But this time, after being hinted at by Lin Ziran and teaching a lesson, the top brass of the Navy also delegated the pressure, and the last layer was passed to the research project team responsible for the hydraulic device of the large-caliber main gun.

For this reason, a group of researchers in the project team are also very helpless, at this time, a single scientific research dog who has just graduated from Imperial College London listened to a group of bigwigs with sad faces saying that the pressure capacity of the hydraulic device is not good, the life is not good, and the oil leakage will leak after a period of use......

Listening to the bigwigs discussing these problems, the young innocent scientific research dog who passed by the door interjected: If it's broken, change it......

As soon as these words came out, they were glared at by a group of bigwigs in the conference room, and the last bearded man said: "Yes, if it's broken, replace it, why didn't I think of it, why do we have to improve the service life of the hydraulic cylinder, if it's broken, it's not over!" ”

"Let's make a hydraulic cylinder set that can be easily replaced, the design is simpler, so that ordinary soldiers can be directly replaced after training, one group of hydraulic pipes can not meet the life requirements, we use two groups, three groups!"

"I think the Navy should not lack this money for changing hydraulic cylinders!"

After these words came out, a group of bigwigs were shocked!

They used to just think about improving the pressure-bearing capacity and service life of the hydraulic cylinder, and thinking about improving various processes, but why didn't they think of treating the hydraulic cylinder as a consumable and replacing it if it was broken......

So, within a few days, the hydraulic project team sent a notice to the large-caliber rapid-fire naval gun project team: the project team has successfully solved the problem of hydraulic service life.

But a look at their solution left many experts in the large-caliber rapid-fire gun project team speechless......

The hydraulic project team did not make any revolutionary changes to the hydraulic device at all, especially the material of the crucial hydraulic cylinder, and the core design did not change, the only change was to design the hydraulic device into a more easily replaceable component.

If it's broken, replace it!

This is the solution of the hydraulic project team to the large-caliber rapid-fire gun project team!

This......

At first, many people thought it was ridiculous, but when you think about it, it's true!

In the past, I always thought that the hydraulic device was not up to par, but the service life was short, and the naval gun, as the core component of the battleship, was accompanied by the entire service life of the battleship, and the turret was the most important of it, and it would not be replaced easily.

But now, they are saying that the barrel is also often replaced, why can't the hydraulic barrel?

The barrel of a naval gun also has a service life, generally speaking, there are hundreds of rounds, and depending on the technology of various countries, the length of the barrel and the strength of the charge.

This will lead to large fluctuations in the service life of naval guns.

For example, the 300 mm 35 times caliber naval gun has a service life of 300 rounds, and it can also achieve a service life of 300 rounds when the long body tube and the use of smokeless gunpowder as the propellant at the same time can lead to a higher chamber pressure, which is already good for the Daheng Empire.

Since the gun barrel can be replaced, the hydraulic barrel can naturally be replaced, and it is simpler to replace the hydraulic barrel, as long as the design is changed slightly, then the soldiers can be replaced on the spot under the guidance of the ship's technicians after training, and they don't even need to drive back to the shipyard for maintenance.

Although this solution is very earthy and does not show any technical content at all, there is no doubt that it has become a major problem to solve the rapid-fire cannon of the Great Heng Empire.

This kind of problem does not only exist in large-caliber rapid-fire guns, in fact, other small- and medium-caliber rapid-fire guns also have this problem, that is, the hydraulic barrel is easy to malfunction, and oil leakage or something is commonplace.

However, small and medium-caliber rapid-fire guns are under less pressure after all, so they can barely be used, and they can be replaced when the ship is maintained.

However, now, there is no need to be so troublesome in the future, just replace the hydraulic kit on site.

What's more, this cleared the last major obstacle to the large-caliber rapid-fire gun project, and that was the problem of hydraulic barrels!

This also announced that the large-scale rapid-fire cannon of the Great Heng Empire had made breakthrough progress.

After two or three years of research, the Naval Artillery Research Institute soon perfected the 200-millimeter rapid-fire gun program according to the plan for replacing the hydraulic barrel, and made use of the mature 200-millimeter 40-fold caliber naval gun, which could directly form a perfect design and put it into trial production.

At the same time, the progress of their 250 mm rapid-fire gun is also very fast, and it is expected that all the research and development work will be completed within three months, and the turret can be matched with the existing 250 mm 35 times the caliber naval gun.

This means that rapid-fire guns of 200 mm and 250 mm caliber will be able to be officially installed in a few months, which also means that many warships under construction can modify their designs and directly use the gun carriages of rapid-fire guns.

As for the rapid-fire research of the 300-mm main gun, this difficulty is higher, even if the hydraulic barrel is replaced, it is unreliable, so it has to be gnawed slowly, and the people in the rapid-fire gun project team said that even if this large-caliber main gun uses a rapid-fire gun mount, the rate of fire will still be relatively limited, and it is impossible to achieve the same level as the 250-mm caliber main gun that can shoot three or four rounds a minute, and the 200-millimeter caliber main gun four or five rounds.

According to the results of the rapid-fire gun project of the Naval Artillery Research Institute, the Daheng Imperial Navy decisively revised the main gun design of the Klan-class armored cruiser under construction.

And this achievement also increased the Navy's confidence in the Crane-class armored cruisers, and even they were not even interested in the follow-up ships of the larger tonnage Fengyang-class armored cruisers, but were ready to build several more Crane-class armored cruisers, and their orders had increased from two to four.

As for the follow-up ships of the Toyoyang-class armored cruisers, there is a big debate within this navy.