Although various reactionary academic authorities have pointed out the unforgivable shortcomings of front-loading rifled guns, especially the "fatal" problems of front-loading guns, such as the slow firing of guns, the large footprint of guns, and many other drawbacks, the Planning Institute believes that at this stage, these shortcomings will not pose a danger of "life and death" in battle

At present, the Ordnance Department can produce a small number of Armstrong breech guns with threaded bolts of coastal artillery and equip them with coastal artillery, which is not ideal in practical use, especially the difficulty of locking the bolts, and in practical use it is necessary to use a hammer to reach a locked state, in addition to being able to load the breech, whether in terms of reloading or gun range and accuracy, there is no obvious place to surpass the Dahlgren rifled guns, but the complexity of production is much greater

As for the well-established and reliable broken bolts, it is bound to touch the rubber and asbestos that the industrial sector has been feeling weak - for the manufacture of airtight plugs

Although some people proposed that the plan of adding a cross-wedge bolt and a metal closed ring to the breech mechanism did not require rubber and could be produced with the existing industrial capacity, the Dahlgren gun once again won in terms of the simplicity of the process and the simplicity of the material, although the Planning Institute finally approved the Shiyan to manufacture two guns using a cross-wedge bolt and a metal closed air ring bolt, but it was clear that it was not ready to mass-produce it in the near future

Sun Xiao, a representative of the Planning Institute, explained the reasons for the Planning Institute's choice of Dahlgren rifled guns at a meeting of the Equipment Department of the General Staff Department: "Since the Navy does not dislike the problem of slow gun loading when using smoothbore guns in sail warships, we believe that the problem of using rifled guns with a range and accuracy far better than smoothbore guns on hybrid warships will not be very serious."

Behind the stinginess of the Planning Institute lies the bottleneck of the steel industry's production capacity, and although the blast furnace and open-hearth furnace of the Mayuan Iron and Steel Complex have been put into operation, the production situation is not satisfactory, and the lack of qualified workers and administrative personnel has seriously affected the further expansion of production capacity

Lin Shenhe stopped the car outside the shed, set up the car, he saw a special shelf on a vacant land on the whole row of produced Dahlgren guns on the gun body, although it is a cast iron barrel, but the surface of the gun body is regular and smooth, Lin Shenhe stopped the bicycle, touched the lower body tube and the muzzle, and observed the rifling inside the barrel by the light of the lamp, the craftsmanship of the machinery and metallurgical department is getting better and better

The Mayuan Industrial Complex is now able to produce very high-quality pig iron ingots, and then use a reverberatory furnace to refine the molten iron, and can produce extremely high-quality molten iron for casting cannons - in the past, when Lingao did not have its own blast furnace, the imported pig iron used for casting cannons was refined through the reverberatory furnace

In the distance, mountains of gun carriages, rails, and metal parts for installation shimmered in the faint light

When he walked into the shed, there was smoke inside, and there were drawings spread out on the table in the shed, and several people were discussing the drawings

Lin Shenhe greeted Zhou Ke and the others

"It's really inconvenient to reload the front-loading gun" Although Zhou Ke is not a naval talent and does not know much about weapons, as long as he goes around the deck and looks at the drawings of the gun and deck, he will know the problem of the breech gun

The muzzle of the gun had to be returned to the deck after the front-loading gun was fired before it could be reloaded by the sailors, so the size of each open battery was larger than the length of the gun body and gun mount, and the diameter of one gun emplacement was at least 5 meters or more, and the area was much larger than that of the rear gun

"It doesn't matter, no matter how many problems there are with the front-loading gun, it is also rifled, and the artillery is easy to modify," Lin Shenhe said, "Right now, the Dahlgren gun can be used, just enough"

"I can understand that the planning institute wants to save a lot, but it should still be considered in one step, and it can't always be upgraded ......."

Lin Shenhe smiled softly: "It's still in one step, if it weren't for everyone's high call for grenades, rifled guns, and fixed-loading rifles, most of the planning institute would have prepared 12-pounder smoothbore guns and Mini rifles to fight the world."

"Good and economical ......"

"I can understand Wu De's thoughts," Lin Shenhe said, "Everyone is as long as they are cool, no matter how cool and what to do when they are finished - he is now saving and making a revolution."

"Well, I didn't expect you to still have a big global view," Zhou Ke said

"Where, where, where I have a global view, just talk about my feelings"

Zhou Ke said: "Let's go to the ship and check the situation on the spot," he said, picking up the phone and shaking it twice: "Turn on the lights on the Navy Pier."

After a few minutes, all the lights on the Navy pier were turned on, and the intensity of the light was not strong enough to illuminate every angle of the ship, but at least it allowed one to see the outline of the object in general without stumbling

Looking at the lights, it can be seen that the surface of the hull is an irregular light black - this is the result of unskilled painters applying asphalt paint, and the hull is made of lychee wood imported from Guangdong, Vietnam, etc., which is very strong, and it is not visible from the outside, and the ribs and keel inside are made of iron - all covered by the outer panels of the hull

On the deck, the three masts stood the three composite masts of the Class of 1630, which were shorter than their prototypes - the Navy could not train so many skilled sailors to climb the mast and put the sails on the masts, so its sail outfit was as simple as possible, and the sail line was retracted with a steam auxiliary

The sails have all been installed, the white canvas is rolled up, the sail ropes made of jute are criss-crossed, and Lin Shenhe, who looks black, inadvertently wants to touch it

"Don't touch it, it's all tar" Zhou Ke hurriedly reminded him

Lin Shenhe was startled, and quickly retracted his hand, and the tar on the deck was also smeared with the same color, and even so, under the light, he could see that there were beautiful patterns on it

"It's made of imported Southeast Asian teak," Zhou said, "it's really luxurious."

On the contrary, Lin Shenhe did not care - it was not surprising that teak wood was used for the decks of warships, and the battleships and aircraft carriers of the 20th century still used this precious wood for decks

The layout of the Class 1630 is in the shape of a middle island, with the only chimney located in the middle of the island, and the black chimney painted with a yellow marker band, which is the only bright color livery on the entire ship

The base of the exposed turret had already been installed at the location where the gun was scheduled to be installed, and the tracks, gun carriages, and barrels were to be installed early the next morning

Since the Class of 1630 was a sail-steam hybrid battleship, the presence of three masts severely limited the range of gunfire, and the foremast and aft mast were just in front of the muzzle of the main guns, making it impossible for the two main guns to fire in the forward and aft directions - for the sake of hull structure and center of gravity, the open batteries of the two main guns were located on the deck closer to the central part of the ship, so the 0-degree fire in the bow and stern was provided by the secondary guns arranged on both sides, and the only way for the Class 1630 to get the most out of their firepower was still to fire a salvo from the side sides

Lin Shenhe knew the location of the artillery well: he was one of the participants when the artillery layout was first discussed, and there was a fierce debate about the artillery layout of the 854 and 901, and the final decision was to change the 854 to the layout plan with reference to the blueprint of the model, with slight modifications

The layout of the ship's guns is as follows: the bow deck and the stern deck are each equipped with an exposed battery along the center line, each of which is equipped with a 130mm caliber Dahlgren rifled gun, and a gun profile is set up on the left and right of the bow, middle and stern respectively, and a 75mm caliber Dahlgren rifled gun is installed, a total of 6 secondary guns, and the auxiliary armament is 4 typewriters, which are set on the decks on both sides of the ship, and the guns are rotated with circular tracks, sliding rails, manual horizontal and high and low machines

According to the navy and the ordnance department on the shooting range to do black powder destruction Shiyan, to effectively destroy the oak hull of the Galen ship at that time while taking into account a certain amount of shore bombardment power, the shell charge should be about 2 kg of black powder at high density, with the loading coefficient, the grenade fired weighs 25~35 kg, corresponding to a caliber of more than 120mm, so the final choice of 130mm rifled gun

The Exposed Fort itself was not designed to be armoured, but only steel fencing was used - only the ammunition depot of the entire 1630 class was protected by a thin layer of steel plates, and as for the boiler room, it was protected by coal bunkers on either side of it

In peacetime, the open fort uses a folding canvas shed to shield from the sun and rain, which is removed during combat

"Class 1630 is still a bit smaller, otherwise we could have used a fully sealed turret and could also install mechanized reloading equipment," Zhou Ke said with regret

Lin Shenhe also felt the same way-the small tonnage of the ship actually limited the size of the naval artillery, and according to the current industrial capacity of Lingao, it is not difficult to manufacture front-loading rifled guns of more than 200mmIn addition, since the shells of 130mm guns are the limit of manpower loading, no matter how large the artillery is, it needs a mechanically assisted loading system: this also requires sufficient space for ships

He walked into the bridge, most of the equipment inside has been installed in place, however, some advanced navigation equipment is still in "research and development", only the installation position is reserved, the navigation clock is still brought from the old time and space, he noticed that there is a special shooting command tower on the bridge of the 1630 level, climb up and see that it is empty, except for tables and chairs, there is no shooting control equipment

Zhou Ke said: Yuan Jihua is going to install artillery sight glasses, rangefinders, calibrators, and mechanical ballistic computers

"What-" Lin Shenhe's mouth was almost closed in surprise, he thought he was just going to get a few telescopes, rangefinders and other "fire control equipment", but he didn't expect that there would be "advanced equipment" such as ballistic computers - it's really a thousand miles a day (to be continued)

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