On the other hand, after the combat distance is opened, each time the artillery fire needs to wait longer, even if the theoretical rate of fire of the naval guns is very fast, it is difficult to reflect it in actual combat, and it is generally enough to reach less than 1 round / minute, unless the victory or defeat has been divided into the defeated soldiers, and the artillery can be approached unscrupulously......

More importantly, the British Royal Navy finally found a way to deal with case-hardened armor, and after spending a lot of money to use the Majestic-class battleship that was not too old as a target ship for a live-fire test, the newly developed (soft) cap-piercing shell successfully penetrated the 9-inch (229mm) thick Harvey nickel steel armor of the battleship and successfully detonated, which was much better than the traditional armor-piercing projectile, so it immediately got an order from the military and began to produce and equip the troops in large quantities. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

With the new armor-piercing projectile with special effects on case-hardened armor, the power of large-caliber naval guns can reflect the advantage, your main gun can penetrate the armor of the opponent's warship, while the opponent's main gun cannot penetrate the armor of your warship, the gap is almost infinite, what is the projection amount?

As a result of these changes, high-caliber naval guns with a relatively small caliber (under the same technical conditions) were not as effective as large-caliber naval guns, which had a slower rate of fire but had a longer range and greater power.

In addition, there is another reason, that is, the current triple naval guns interfere with each other during shelling, seriously affecting the accuracy of the problem has not been solved, so generally speaking, the most common use of twin main guns, under this premise, if the caliber of the main gun is too small, the huge hull of 20,000 tons is too wasteful tonnage.

In fact, even the 12-inch caliber cannon still seemed a little smaller, so that the British designers could only adopt the hexagonal main gun layout, which Li Hui despised the most, so as not to waste the tonnage of the warship, which was a variant of the diamond-shaped main gun layout, but because there could only be a maximum of three main turrets in the longitudinal direction and only four salvos in the lateral direction to fire at the same target, the firepower efficiency was quite mediocre.

But what can be done? In addition to this layout, what else could be done to fit six main turrets on one battleship? It is important to know that there is a strict limit to the number of main turrets that can be installed vertically on a warship, and more than 4 will significantly affect the structural strength of the warship, and with each additional turret, the impact will increase exponentially rather than linearly. With the technology that the British are currently mastering, it will be able to install 5 main turrets in the longitudinal direction, which is better than designing a hexagonal layout with 12 305mm main guns available!

Therefore, there is never a perfect design in the world, but only the most suitable reality, and no matter how talented the design idea is, it must be subordinated to the objective conditions.

Rao's design is not perfect, this new battleship named after the lead ship "Dreadnought" came out but still shocked the world, 12 new 305mm guns even if they can't fully exert firepower, it is enough to be terrifying; The introduction of Krupp armor from China, the continued use of a comprehensive protection layout, and the maximum thickness has been increased to 280mm, the British Royal Navy believes that even if other countries have developed cap-piercing shells, they will not be able to help this epoch-making powerful warship. The most incredible thing is that the armor is so strong and the firepower is extremely powerful, and it can still run at a speed close to 22 knots during sea trials, even if it is a battle cruiser, right?

"A maximum speed of more than 20 knots? That was the previous standard, the Dreadnought class was designed to follow the new standard, and she was rightfully a battleship. Fisher, who has been promoted to the title of First Sea Lord, said, and shortly after his public statement, the "real battlecruiser" was unveiled, which once again shocked the whole world, and everyone finally understood why the Dreadnought class can only be regarded as a battleship, and the battle cruiser named "Invincible" has a maximum speed of almost 26 knots!

This kind of speed is simply terrible, even a light cruiser that relies on speed to eat is difficult to run so fast, and those slightly older models that are more than 5 years old are even more far behind, once they hit it at sea, it is difficult to escape!

You must know that the tonnage of the Invincible-class battlecruiser is slightly larger than that of the Dreadnought-class battleships, and it is really surprising that such a large man can run so fast. However, it is such a large hull that allows it to be equipped with the same twin 12-inch main guns as the Dreadnought-class battleships, the only difference is that the Invincible class is a battlecruiser to pursue speed, and the slender shape is more advantageous, so the Invincible class is equipped with five main turrets arranged along the central axis, instead of using the hexagonal layout used by the Dreadnought-class battleships, which looks much more reasonable in design.

However, it is reasonable to be reasonable, the longitudinal arrangement of the five main turrets still inevitably has a negative impact on its structural strength, and its armor thickness is only a maximum of 6 inches (152mm), which is enough to deal with the old armor-piercing shells against the capital ship, but if the enemy also has armor-piercing shells, it will be a tragedy. However, Fisher did not care much about this, because in his opinion, the main task of the battle cruiser was to hunt the enemy's light cruisers, and the armor was enough to withstand the attack of 8-inch guns......

In addition to the basic parameters that are difficult to keep secret, because European and American countries are of the same race, love and kill each other in the past few hundred years, and penetrate each other fiercely, the fire control system used on the Dreadnought-class battleships and the Invincible-class battlecruisers cannot be concealed at all, although most of the governments are not clear about the details, but at least they have learned about the application of this new technology (because of the changes in appearance), and the role of the fire control system is known to everyone (even the principle has been disclosed in the gunnery section of the naval magazine journal, just from the theory to the sample to the finished product, there is still some distance. Naturally, it is not difficult to recognize the unprecedented strength of these two epoch-making warships, "I can't imagine that after only a few years, the world's capital ships will become obsolete again!" Such rapid technological progress has never been seen in the history of the world's navies! ”

That's right, after the appearance of dreadnoughts, all the active battleships in the world became obsolete overnight, even if they were modified with new technologies, they would need at least twice as much tonnage to barely compete with dreadnoughts, considering that the cost of refit was also not low, as long as it was not too poor, they would generally choose to build new ships directly, so the world's naval shipbuilding race finally ushered in the biggest climax, and the golden age of giant ship cannons - the age of dreadnoughts has arrived! (To be continued.) )