The road is wide and smooth, the factory building is magnificent and tall, and the scene inside the Ansaldo Military Factory is extremely magnificent, so that Fang Yan, who is also from the industrial Junkers family, can't help but be secretly frightened. From what he has observed, even compared to his own shipyard, Anshardo is not far behind, and even better in some areas. As the number one power in the capitalist world, Italy really has its commendable essence of heavy industry, but it is a pity that this nation seems to have no fighting genes after the fall of the Roman Empire, although they have a solid foundation armed by the industrial revolution, but their performance in previous wars is not worthy of these advanced weapons in their hands!

However, the situation of the Royal Italian Navy is still unsatisfactory. In addition to the fact that the daily training and combat readiness of this unit are much stronger than those of their army counterparts, and their will to fight is much stronger, another very important reason is the nature of the navy. After all, the army is completely controlled by the soldier, and whether he wants to fight or flee is all his own will; The navy, on the other hand, is composed of warships as a unit, and its actions are completely dominated by propellers and steering gears. This means that even some of the sailors were already scared, but because they had nowhere to escape from the vast sea, they had to stay and continue the battle!

In addition, the Navy is more dependent on the performance of equipment than the Army. When the two ships exchange fire, the victory or defeat of the battle largely depends on the results of the mechanical collision of armor-piercing bullets against armor-piercing bullets and armor steel against armor steel, which has little to do with courage and will. Because of this, Fang Yan paid special attention to the construction of the Italian Navy, even if he gave up the time with Sylvia, he had to come to the other party's shipyard to find out.

Although the relationship between Germany and Italy is not close now, it stands to reason that neither the Ansaldo shipyard nor the Italian military would allow Fang Yan, a German lieutenant, to get close to his important ships under construction; However, due to the nod of the old Ciano, Fang Yan was given a complete right of way here, second only to the core dignitaries. Fang Yan's own reasons are also very good, since he has unreservedly handed over such key ship design techniques to Anshardo to share, it is enough to prove that he has no hostility towards Italy. In view of this, it is not unacceptable for Fang Yan to open the door to visit that was not allowed in the first place.

Accompanied and monitored by a member of the shipyard's reception and an agent of the Italian military, Fang Yan successfully passed through the three checkpoints along the way and arrived at the dock near the sea. The blue waves were swaying and sparkling, and in the distance, Fang Yan saw the figures of two large ships outfitting in the berth. Although there were no signs or introductions, Fang Yan could see at a glance by the size of his ship that this was exactly the goal of his trip: the Italian Navy treaty cruisers "Taranto" and "Trieste"!

The boom was in the air, the gold and iron roared, and Fang Yan climbed onto a steel tower crane next to the berth in order to observe their overall appearance from a high vantage point. The two treaty cruisers were the first to be produced by the Ansaldo shipyard after absorbing its own design techniques, and their targets were aimed at their French counterparts. At this moment, Fang Yan looked intently with the large telescope hanging around his neck, and was shocked to find that three huge seats were arranged on the central axis of their hulls in the way of the front 2 and the back 1; The fore and aft seats are about half the length of the ship, and the broadside hull from the deck to the waterline has a noticeable inward slope.

"3 triple guns?" Fang Yan, who had been staring carefully for a while, put down his binoculars and muttered to himself in the whistling autumn wind. Historically, the Italian heavy cruiser adopted a four-seat twin main gun layout, which not only lengthened the core compartment but also increased the protective weight of the weapon system, which was used on the body of the treaty cruiser, which was already overstretched in tonnage. In order to allow Italy, a future ally, to win the Mediterranean, Fang Yan deliberately provided the other party with the design of a two-seat quadruple main gun that can reduce weight to the greatest extent as a template during the original technical exchange. As for the defects of using quadruple main guns, Fang Yan also gave a detailed explanation in the technical documents. Although this layout has the risk of losing half of the enemy's firepower in a single shot, because the total ammunition area of the weapon system also decreases greatly with the increase in the number of combinations, the mathematical expectation of firepower loss is not significantly different from the multi-turret layout with a huge ammunition area.

As for the defects of the quadruple gun's excessively large seat diameter, which would increase the requirements for the width of the hull, and then affect the speed of the cruiser, which was important to the cruiser, due to the fattening of the hull, Fang Yan also gave a remedial strategy. Since the use of quadruple turrets can significantly reduce the length of the core compartment, it is possible to arrange the main turret closer to the middle of the larger hull width, which solves this problem to a considerable extent. In addition, the forward main gun away from the bow can also better avoid the influence of the waves when the battleship is sailing at high speed, and at the same time can also play a positive role in the front and rear counterweights of the battleship. On the whole, the use of quadruple turrets is the best choice for large ships equipped with more than 8 main guns, and what it really needs to pay is only the technical research of the ordnance department!

However, the Italian military ultimately did not adopt this radical design. The 3-seat triplet they chose was a compromise in the fields of weight, technical difficulty, firepower preservation, and ship type requirements, although it was much better than the 4-seat double, but it was undoubtedly much inferior to Fang Yan's 2-seat quadruple. Not to mention anything else, the seat armor that the raised No. 2 turret had to consume alone was enough to be called a weight killer, making Fang Yan hate to grind it with a file. However, Fang Yan also understood that it was impossible for him to directly intervene in the tactical choices of the Italian Navy, after all, he was an absolute outsider!

After returning to the ground, Fang Yan asked the second lieutenant agent next to him to board the ship for a visit, but the other party flatly refused. In desperation, he could only walk around the two sister ships on the dock to roughly judge their specific ship size. By carefully controlling the amplitude of his footsteps to measure, Fang Yan also barely got the result he wanted: the waterline of the Italian warship of this class was less than 180 meters long, and the deck width was about 18 meters. This made Fang Yan feel a burst of joy, and the helplessness of being refused to board the ship suddenly dissipated without a trace. Because combined with what he saw on the tower crane before, the core compartment of this type of battleship is not too long, which means that this type of battleship does not over-strengthen the power and pursuit of speed as it has in history, but puts defense in a very important position. And if the Italian Navy can always implement this line, then the comprehensive performance of its grassroots warships will be significantly improved, which is extremely important for Germany's war against Britain!

"100,000 horsepower, 33 knots, immune to the protection of the core compartment of its own 203-mm gun. This indicator shouldn't be too far off. Fang Yan secretly made his own judgment. While it may seem fanciful that a specific performance of a warship can be judged by its appearance alone, it is not an unattainable fantasy under certain conditions. There is no doubt that this class of Italian cruisers must have adopted Fang Yan's design methods, and the performance of the ship's power system, which is crucial, is also understood by Fang Yan through the cooperation between his own shipyard and Ansaldo. As long as we refer to the length of its core compartment and the layout of the main turret, it is not difficult to make a rough but reasonable estimate of the indicators of the whole ship.

Fang Yan, who got this result, left the berth that was being outfitted with satisfaction; Although the Italian Navy had some flaws in the choice of main gun layout, there was no problem with its choice of macro performance. This result is completely within the acceptable range of Fang Yan. Now the only thing he has to do is the Libyan oil fields. And for this biggest historical change promoted by himself, Fang Yan's heart is full of expectations; Today, the first phase of construction there has already been completed and is in production.

What surprised Fang Yan was that the "Starfish" he was going to take across the Mediterranean Sea this time was actually a 10,000-ton oil tanker, and it had been running on this new channel for half a year. This undoubtedly means that oil from Libya is being shipped to Italy, and the latter's oil-poor situation with Germany in the future will be fundamentally improved. After 4 days of sea voyage and desert drive, the towering ** and a spacious warehouse house came into Fang Yan's eyes on the reckless Gobi Desert. The construction machinery, which represents the brilliant achievements of industrial civilization, is located in this barren land in the desert, if it were not for Fang Yan's own eyes, there is really an unbelievable absurd feeling.

This time, Fang Yan did not have the relevant restrictions as in the Ansaldo shipyard. The person in charge of the Yofra Oilfield warmly received Fang Yan, the son of the shareholder, and took him to the plant for a comprehensive tour; Through the introduction of the person in charge, Fang Yan also understood the specific status of this oil field. At present, the Yofra oil field can produce 100,000 tons of crude oil per month, all of which are shipped to Italy. The second phase of the expansion has already started and is scheduled to be completed in three years' time, with a sizable production capacity of 250,000 tonnes per month expected by then. After some visits, the operation and management of this oilfield left a good impression on Fang Yan; It seems that for enterprises that are closely related to their own interests, the old Chiano's methods are still quite trustworthy.