On December 2, the new flagship "Haitian" that the Beiyang Navy Division had been looking forward to finally sailed into Weihaiwei Military Port, and as soon as the giant ship with a full load displacement of more than 11,000 tons was unveiled, it attracted the cheers of the Chinese military and civilians on the dock.

Looking at this world's most advanced and powerful armored cruiser, every Chinese felt excited, sincerely looking forward to her becoming the new guardian saint of China's maritime frontier like the Dingzhen 2nd ship in the Battle of Dadonggou.

"As soon as the Haitian came, even Dingzhen became an ugly duckling", although Liu Buyun was also happy, but the words he said were somewhat mixed with a hint of sourness, how much he hoped that he could become the pipe band of this warship! But Li Hongzhang handed over the Haitian to Deng Shichang!

Admiral Lin Tai beside him understood his thoughts, and reached out and patted him on the back to comfort him, but Liu Buyun did not appreciate it, obviously this pimple is not so easy to eliminate

After Ding Ruchang was martyred, Li Hongzhang always wanted to parachute another crony to be the commander in order to ensure his control of the Beiyang Naval Division, but after renting the Haitian, Lao Li soon found that he seemed to have a better solution.

Although he has always disliked Deng Shichang's "just offense", Li Hongzhang has always been more worried about the dominance of the "Fujian Party", so after leasing the Haitian, he chose Deng Shichang as the pipe belt of this new patrol instead of Liu Buchan, and at the same time took this opportunity to promote Deng Shichang to the position of the left wing commander and replace Lin Taizeng, and Lin Taizeng's position as commander was regularized.

In this way, on the bright side, Liu Buyun's status in the Beiyang Naval Division is even ranked after Deng Shichang and only ranked third, but with Deng Shichang's qualifications and his exploits in the Battle of Dadonggou, even Liu Buyun could not question this appointment

"Lao Li's power tricks really have a set, Liu Buyun can't say it now, even if he had a good relationship with Deng Shichang before, it is inevitable that he will have some opinions now. What's more, Deng Shichang's temperament is completely different from Lin Taizeng's good old man, and his personality is even above Liu Buyun, when his status was lower than Liu Buchan's, he could still obey the former's command, but now that his status on the surface has surpassed Liu Buyun, can he still be willing to obey orders? Li Hui couldn't help but be a little worried after learning about this.

But the matter has come to this point, and Li Hui can only hope that the two captains can take into account the overall situation and not let the Japanese take advantage of the loophole.

However, this round of personnel transfers of the Beiyang Navy Division is not all bad, such as Yang Yonglin, the first mate of the Zhenyuan, was finally able to become the pipe band of the Zhenyuan, and this outstanding talent who was praised by Lang Weili as "Oriental Nelson" thus got the opportunity to show his strengths; And the original Yangwei pipe belt Lin Luzhong was transferred to the Zhiyuan pipe belt and replaced the vacancy left by Deng Shichang, which is also a good arrangement.

However, Li He, the pipe band of the Pingyuan, who performed more well in the Battle of Dadonggou, did not get a chance to be promoted, which made him very disappointed, but to his comfort, the Pingyuan could finally change guns

Since less than half of the 4 million taels of ship purchase money was spent, Li Hongzhang was able to purchase another batch of ammunition and parts and equipment for the Beiyang Naval Division, and even the part of the warship modification plan that had to be temporarily shelved because of lack of money could finally be implemented.

Among them, the Jingyuan and Laiyuan, who have not had rear firepower, finally waited for spring, and they were replaced with rapid-fire guns!

With Lin Yongsheng and Qiu Baoren's idea, they actually hope to be able to use the Haitian main gun as the main gun behind the ship, even if it is only a single installation, after all, the optimized "1898 Type 210mm rapid-fire gun" performance is too good.

However, because the tonnage of these two warships is too small, and the recoil of the rapid-fire guns is much greater than that of the erection guns of the same caliber, if they are forced to be mounted, there may be a danger of capsizing when firing sideways at a large angle, especially when firing a salvo

In addition, the rear deck of the second ship has been sealed, and the main gun can only be equipped with a half-covered turret, and the loading and transportation of shells are all dependent on manpower, and the caliber is still a little smaller.

Considering the price-performance ratio and the new positioning of the two warships (after the addition of the Haitian, the task of destroying the enemy ships was handed over to the three giant ships, while the other warships only needed to suppress the enemy's firepower, so the rate of fire of the secondary guns was more important than the power). The two had no choice but to abandon this unrealistic delusion and chose a twin-mounted 120mm Ghanaian rapid-fire gun.

The two ear guns were also replaced with the same model, plus one ear gun was added to each wing of the rear deck, and the two ships needed a total of 120mm rapid-fire guns.

Compared with the Jinglai No. 2 ship, the layout of the Zhijing No. 2 ship itself is relatively reasonable, but the two 152mm ear guns are obviously too large, and the hull is slightly tilted to be unable to fire, so it was replaced with a 120mm rapid-fire gun when refitted, and then a new ear gun was added on each shoulder on the rear deck, and the two ships needed a total of 8 120mm rapid-fire guns.

Li He, the pipe band of the Pingyuan, also hoped to carry out a similar modification, anyway, her unique 260mm main gun in China had been destroyed in the Battle of Dadonggou, so she simply took the opportunity to replace the gun.

It's just that there is a high platform at the rear of the Pingyuan, and if you want to install tail guns, you must remove it, otherwise it will inevitably affect the stability of the warship because the center of gravity is too high.

In addition, if you also want to add an earring platform in the rear, this high platform will also severely limit the firing range, which will require major surgery, and it is obviously not worth spending so much money for a backward warship, it is better to save up and buy a new one!

So the Pingyuan finally only changed the four guns in front (both of which were 120mm rapid-fire), but fortunately, as a large mosquito cannon ship, the Pingyuan had a fast steering speed, and generally did not fear the enemy's attack around its back.

Because the main guns of the Dingzhen No. 2 ship are arranged on both sides, in order to ensure their firing range, it is not possible to install ear guns like the other ones, and can only make a fuss on the front and rear main gun emplacements, and in addition, after removing the shipborne torpedo boats located in the middle and rear of the warship, they can also make room for an additional gun emplacement.

In fact, this is exactly the idea of the Japanese to modify the Zhenyuan after the capture of the Zhenyuan in history, but due to the different positioning of the secondary guns, and the types of guns provided by the venture capital company to the Beiyang Naval Division are also different from those used by the Japanese in history, the second ship of Dingzhen finally chose a double-mounted 120mm rapid-fire gun instead of a single-mounted 152mm rapid-fire gun.

In addition, a rotatable twin-mounted 120mm half-enclosed turret was chosen for the new gun emplacements instead of the two back-to-back single-mounted 152mm rapid-fire guns chosen by the Japanese, which totaled 6 guns per ship, making a total of 12 120mm Ghanaian rapid-fire guns.

In addition to a total of 36 120mm rapid-fire guns, the 75mm sampan guns originally equipped with the Beiyang Seventh Ship were replaced with new rapid-fire guns with a rate of fire of more than 15 rounds per minute, and those small-caliber machine guns were all replaced with Makqin 37mm machine guns with an astonishing rate of fire (but the number was reduced), which made the Beiyang Naval Division's previous most loss-induced close-range firepower have made a qualitative leap, whether it is used to wash decks or deal with torpedo boats