Muntz was very efficient, and within a few days, Jochen returned to the Admiralty, and in the Admiralty conference room, a large number of designers gathered, both from the major shipyards and from within the Admiralty, and when Jochen entered the conference room, everyone got up to greet him. After some pushing, Jochen was finally pushed to the main seat by Muntz, citing Jochen's status as the crown prince and the leader of the meeting. Once everyone was seated, the meeting officially began. These designers had already understood the Crown Prince's arguments against the construction of a protective cruiser through Guò Montz, so they didn't have to go into further explanations and went straight to the topic - how the new cruiser should be designed.

Although His Royal Highness the Crown Prince's plan to enlarge the hull was accepted, the proposed design was still a simple design with the addition of a waterline armor belt and the use of a 210 mm main gun. Although he was very dissatisfied with the designers' simple idea of adding more water and more water, Jochen knew that this was also a helpless thing, after all, the Germans did not have enough experience in the design and construction of armored cruisers, and naturally they could not summarize and find the shortcomings. In fact, the design of directly increasing the waterline armor belt + dome armor proposed by the German designer Men can only be regarded as the armor belt cruiser used in the initial exploration stage of armored cruisers.

The earliest armored cruiser is generally considered to be the admiral-class built by the Russian Navy in 1870, although it still adopts the full sail and side gun design of a sail battleship, but it also has a 25 mm armor deck, that is, flat armor, and also arranged a 152 mm vertical armor belt on the waterline, the armor belt is wrought iron material riveted to the wooden back plate, 61 cm high above the waterline, and 152 cm deep below the waterline, making her waterline belt basically immune to flowering shells. The emergence of this kind of ship is mainly because the Russian Navy suffers from its own lack of national strength, unable to build ironclad ships on a large scale and is forced to make a reluctant choice, hoping that this kind of ship can be used as a secondary capital ship, and its thinking mode is very close to the model of the four decisive armored cruisers built by the Japanese in history, all of which hope to use the easier to build ship type to undertake the work of the capital ship.

Since the original tasks of the British cruisers were escort, reconnaissance, notification and display of force, all of which were low-intensity tasks, the British cruisers of the same era suddenly lagged behind the Russian armored cruisers in terms of protection and firepower. Because the cruiser itself has the characteristics of good navigation performance and large endurance, if the Russian armored cruiser is used to surprise British shipping all over the world's oceans, none of the British cruisers escorting shipping will be able to confront it alone. To this end, in response to the Russians, the first British armored cruiser was also sent to the slipway in 1873, the Shannon. At this time, the British and Russian armored cruisers were designed to cover the entire length of the hull.

However, with the advancement of artillery technology, both sides quickly changed the overall protection design to adopt the early key protection (unlike the key protection in the dreadnought era), the Russians adopted the ironclad design common to ironclad ships at that time, while the British reduced the armor coverage area and only placed armor on key areas. Because of the reduced coverage area, the waterline armor belt is simply a narrow belt, for example, the British's latest Orlando-class armored cruiser at this time The waterline armor belt is only 1.67 meters high, and the protection ability it can provide is extremely limited, which is why the early armored cruisers are called armor belt cruisers.

The reason for this change was the fact that at that time the artillery was more powerful and armor-piercing shells were already used. The full-length armor of the Admirals and Shannon was designed to protect against the great explosive shells that posed a great threat to wooden warships in the 1860s and even earlier. In 1853, in the Battle of Sinop, Russia completely destroyed the Turkish fleet with its explosive shells. However, with the increasing power of artillery and the use of armor-piercing shells, the original armor protection soon became unable to cope with the rapidly increasing power of artillery. Since the armor was made of wrought iron (wrought iron) at that time, the protection capacity was very limited. The 254 mm 26 times diameter main gun of the Chao Yong, launched in the early 1880s, could penetrate 356 inches of wrought iron armor at 3,000 meters. As a result, the armored cruisers, which at that time relied mainly on wrought iron armor or, later, steel-faced ironclad had to increase the thickness of the armor belt in order to withstand the bombardment of large-caliber naval guns of more than 200 mm that were equipped on large cruisers at that time. When Li Hongzhang purchased a new cruiser after the Sino-French War, he put forward the protection requirements: "The armor should not be thinner than 12 inches, and the steel armor should not be thinner than 10 inches." This was basically the general perception in the West at that time. However, the vitality and role of the cruiser depend more on its speed and maneuverability, and the weight of the armor cannot be too large, which inevitably limits the area of armor protection.

Therefore, although the above-mentioned armored cruisers have a thick waterline armor belt from the point of view, the protection of the warship is very incomplete due to the defects in the protective structure of the armored cruisers and the very limited armor protection area. However, as Jochen said to Muntz, the rate of fire of the guns at this time was very slow, so the early key protection design of the armor-belted cruiser was not a big problem, but in the face of the birth of rapid-fire guns, this design could not be continued, and in 1887, the British developed a 120 mm rapid-fire gun, which reached 8 times the rate of fire of the old guns of similar calibers. Thus a new comprehensive protection appeared, which marked the advent of the regular armoured cruiser, and the French Dubouil de Lom was born.

However, Jochen did not intend to simply replicate this design of enlarged side armor, and the difference between armored cruisers and armored cruisers that Jochen had learned in his previous life was that "the armor belt and the protective deck were not connected", that is, the side armor belt was too small to be connected to the horizontal armor as a whole. However, even if the area of the side armor belt is expanded and the horizontal armor is connected, in Jochen's opinion, it is still not perfect, and some of the materials that Jochen has seen in his previous life describe the armor protection of the British Imperius-class armored cruiser as a "bottomless box", and some sources believe that the characteristics of the armor belt cruiser are the lack of a complete armor box, so the design of the complete armor box in the future is the true meaning of the armored cruiser.

The transformation of the protection of armored cruisers from early focused to full-fledged protection did not happen overnight. The process of moving towards regular armored cruisers, especially fully protected armored cruisers, is gradually carried out with the development of armored materials and the deepening of the understanding of this type of ship, and the speed of each country is not the same. Many of the armoured cruisers built after 1888 were old and did not meet the standards of full protection, such as some Spanish and Russian armoured cruisers around 1890.

Those armored cruisers that in the era of rapid-fire guns still did not get rid of or did not completely get rid of the armor belt cruiser protection method suffered heavy losses in naval battles. For example, in the Battle of San Diego in the Spanish-American War, three Maria Theresa-class armored cruisers, which Spain had begun construction in 1889 and had been improved from the British Orlando-class armored cruisers, were all destroyed. In a brief exchange of fire, the Okundo was hit by 43 rounds of 57mm shells, causing most of its deck casualties. Three rounds of 203 mm, one round of 152 mm, one round of 140 mm, and nine rounds of 119 mm shells wounded the hull of the ship and sank immediately. The waterline armor of this class of ships is 254-305 mm thick, and the main turret armor is 229 mm thick, the reason why it is so vulnerable is that in addition to the relatively primitive armor materials, the defects in the protective structure and insufficient protective area under the protection mode of the armored belt cruiser are also important reasons. The 10,000-ton Rurik (Rurik I), which sank in the Battle of Ulsan in the Russo-Japanese War, also belonged to the armored cruiser, and in addition to insufficient protection against the steering gear, its artillery defense was also insufficient, and in the naval battle all her guns were destroyed, and even some of the guns were destroyed in the battle with the Naniwa and Takachiho, which were only equipped with 152 mm 40x radial rapid-fire guns.

Therefore, Jochen demanded that the armor of the new cruiser be arranged in such a way as that of the Elector-class ironclad ships of the first class that they were composed of side armor, flat armor and dome armor, and that they were built with extra-long armor boxes that were sufficient to protect all important parts of the entire hull. However, this request made it very difficult for all the designers present.

"Your Highness, we can understand the design idea you are talking about, but with such a huge protective area and sufficient armor thickness, the total weight of the armor must be very amazing. And to ensure firepower and speed, the displacement of the new ship may be difficult to control. ”

"This is not a problem, Krupp's new surface carburized hardened armor can solve this problem, although the current development progress of Krupp is relatively slow, but the cruiser obviously does not need the same thickness of armor as the ironclad, if the surface carburized hardened armor is 1.5 times the efficiency of ordinary steel armor, we can save one-third of the armor weight. It will take at least one year from the completion of the design of the new ship to the start of construction, so that Krupp must come up with more than 50 mm of case-hardened armor within a year. ”

There is indeed a certain risk in doing so, and once Krupp can't keep up with the progress, there will be an embarrassing situation where there will be no armor available after the new ship is launched. However, Jochen also believed in the ability of the Krupp company to do this, because of Jochen's intervention, the Krupp company had mastered the nickel steel armor as early as 1886, and its armor efficiency was 5% higher than that of the steel surface armor used on the Dingzhen 2nd ship, and the British Ren had just come up with a similar product this year, and the research work on surface carburizing on this basis was also carried out in the same year. Since the Americans were able to come up with Harvey steel armor in 1890, which was 67% better than steel-faced armor, there was no reason why Krupp could not have produced this armor before the Americans (Note 1). Therefore, Jochen would rather take the risk so that the new ship would not face a backward armor material when it is completed. And if the surface carburized hardened armor is installed, the performance of the new ship is enough to lead all the "irregular" armored cruisers of various countries in 5 years, and this advantage can even be maintained for 10 years in the case that many countries led by the United Kingdom believe that armored cruisers are not as cost-effective as protective cruisers, and the development of armored cruisers has stalled. And even the "regular" armored cruiser Dubouil de Lom, which the French had just started, would definitely not be a match for the new ship because of the material of the armor.

"The problem of the weight of the armor is solved, let's talk about firepower again." Jochen set the tone for the design of the armor.

Note 1: Harvey steel is a nickel alloy steel that has been case-hardened. Krupp's surface carburized hardened armor, i.e. KC steel, was successfully developed in 1895, and its performance was improved by 108% compared to steel-faced composite armor. Although KC steel is also nickel alloy steel, the composition ratio is not the same.

By the way: I have read several novels about Germany that have made the same mistake, that is, they think that the Brandenburg-class battleships began to use KC steel, and therefore there are many accusations that the 400 mm armor of the Brandenburg-class waterline is a waste of displacement. In fact, the Brandenburg class only uses Krupp surface heat-treated armor, which is much weaker than Harvey steel armor. Later, Harvey steel armor from Krupp was used on the Caesar Frederick III class, which was 300 mm thick, while the first German battleship to use KC steel was the Wittelsbach class, with an armor thickness of only 225 mm. And if you do the math, KC steel performance is 41% higher than Harvey steel, and 225 mm KC steel is equivalent to 317 mm Harvey steel, which shows the progress of the Germans in armor steel technology, as well as the reduction of armor thickness due to technological progress, rather than the Germans' miscalculation to equip the Brandenburg class with 400 mm KC steel that no one could penetrate in World War I.

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