Lu Hong naturally didn't know about Ding Ruchang and Liu Buyun's topic of naval avoidance of war, but another fact was that the so-called First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle was not to a large extent a decisive battle deliberately prepared by the navies of the two sides, and the initiative to attack and be more well prepared said himself obviously took advantage of this big advantage.

When he arrived at the house, he was surprised to find that Tang Wenjin was not the only one who came to visit today, but there were also three people, Deng Shichang, Li He and Cai Tinggan, and in addition, there was a tall foreigner with a curly beard...... And Deng Shichang and Li He came to visit the door, obviously a continuation of the topic at today's dinner table, sure enough, a few polite words, after Ouyang Hao sent in tea, the topic of the four immediately turned to the now complex North Korean crisis, and this German who was called Habermen by Deng Shichang was a very quiet listener, and he did not need others to translate at all, obviously quite proficient in Chinese.

Obviously, these four were deeply aware of the threat posed by the North Korean Navy, but the details of the North Korean incident were not very clear, after all, the official correspondence between them was directly to Tianjin and Běi.

Tang Wenjin only knew that there was a civil unrest in Korea, so Lu Hong had to explain the causes and consequences from the assassination of Kim Yujun to the Dongxue Party Violence in North Korea, and mentioned the agreement of the "Sino-Japanese Treaty" on the two sides to send troops to Korea......

The inference drawn by Lu Hong is very clear, once Beiyang sends troops to Korea, it is said that Ben will inevitably send troops, and once the troops are dispatched, it is definitely not a small-scale, but a large-scale invasion of North Korea, a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty...... A few of you here naturally understood what he meant, and if it was inferred from this, it was imperative for the Beiyang Naval Division to participate in the war, after all, to increase troops to Korea, there was no doubt that going to the Bohai Sea was the best way.

At this point, Deng Shichang immediately put forward his intention to visit the door, "Lu Dushi, I listen to you at the dinner table, if we engage in battle, it seems that we have no chance of winning!" So, I would like to ask, what are your plans...... Li He and I have discussed the issue of artillery shells you mentioned, but the use of these shells alone actually limits the power of our artillery."

"The power of artillery?" Lu Hong was slightly surprised by Deng Shichang's words, this admiral who was praised to the altar by later generations, to be honest, now he knows very little, the wine on the wine table is obviously good, and the heroic performance of the Zhiyuan ship in the original history is quite consistent with this heroic appearance, and now Deng Shichang mentioned this problem, but Lu Hong feels a little puzzled......

Hearing the question mentioned by Deng Shichang, the German Habermen next to him spoke, "Lord Lu, I am the instructor of Zhiyuan artillery, and I heard General Deng mention your artillery theory, so I specially came to discuss the problem of artillery with you...... A variety of German-made and British-made flowering shells used by your navy are all cone-head collision fuzes, and although the lethality of the explosion is amazing, it is almost impossible to penetrate more than 100mm steel armor! ”

As soon as he opened his mouth, it was obvious that he was very familiar with Beiyang artillery, and he seemed to be worried that Lu Hong would not understand, so he immediately picked up a paper tube on the table and carefully explained the explosion principle of the flowering bomb in this era...... This made Lu Hong also a little embarrassed, the collision fuse flowering bomb does have this problem, after all, after the fuse of this thing hits the target, although there is a short delay, it is not enough to wait for the shells to penetrate the steel armor, which also caused a result, the shells exploded outside the opponent's steel frame.

At this point, although Lu Hong has visited and supervised several ammunition depots, his understanding of those large shells is obviously not as good as this one, after all, what he knows is only what is mentioned in the information of later generations...... I haven't cut through a shell myself to study.

However, he immediately realized that his earlier understanding of the Beiyang Arsenal had been deviated, and immediately asked another question, "Habermen Sect Xi, is it true that all the flowering bombs used in the Beiyang Naval Division are like this?" When I was studying in Europe, I learned of a flowering bomb that can be set to trigger the detonation time of the fuse, which can solve the problem you mentioned! ”

As soon as he said this, everyone in the room looked surprised, and Lu Hong saw the strange expressions of these guys, and immediately realized that his advanced thinking might really overestimate the situation in this era.

Deng Shichang scratched his head and thought for a while before saying: "Lu Dushi, when the Zhiyuan ship returned to China, it purchased 400 main gun shells from the Krupp Artillery Factory, including half of the flowering shells and half of the armor-piercing shells, and there is absolutely no such shells as you said...... Is it a new type of artillery in Europe today? ”

However, the delayed fuze he mentioned is in fact not a new name in this era, and these people obviously understand that the army artillery used in large quantities in the Hongyang Rebellion many years ago almost all used this kind of high-explosive shells that ignite the letter tube with a high-temperature rifled fire and then control the combustion, but there is a fundamental difference between naval artillery and army artillery.

In the era of Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, whether it was British warships, or German and French warships, they all wore thick heavy armor, which made breaking through heavy armor the primary task.

The shells purchased by Dingyuan and Zhenyuan with 8 305mm and 26 times diameter cannons still followed the tactical ideas of 10 years ago, and the flowering shells were defined as sharp weapons against unprotected or low-protection warships, while armor-piercing shells were used to attack heavily armored ironclad ships, usually using solid shells, and even pouring sand and gravel into the core.

And as the Navy cruisers gradually put on thicker and better armor, it was obviously a mistake to continue to use the earlier idea of shells!

He frowned, picked up the paper tube that Habermen had just put on the table, stuffed a ball of paper into it, and carefully described the structure of the flowering bullet he knew...... In addition to the detonation of the top collision signal, the trigger fuse in the middle of the projectile body and the tail timing fuse are all feasible high-efficiency flowering projectile solutions in this era.

After all, even Zhiyuan's 210mm main gun shell weighs more than 130 kilograms, and it has enough lethality for a battleship like Yoshino with an important part of the armor of about 100mm...... However, the two types of shells used by the Navy today belong to two extremes, and the flowering shells are not enough to penetrate the armor, and the armor-piercing shells are a big hole...... Unless it can penetrate the bilge boiler directly, it would still need to break through a layer of boiler room armor and up to several layers of dome armor.

A few guys listened to Lu Hong's explanation very fascinated, Tang Wenjin was the boss with his mouth open, and he was about to drool, but after listening to Lu Hong, he had an indignant expression, "Brother Lu, this cannonball is really an artifact...... It's just that far water can't quench your thirst, today we are here to ask you about this artillery, you are well-informed, say some useful information! ”

Lu Hong secretly gave a hundred middle fingers to this guy, Deng Shichang and this Habermen did bring important news, and these news obviously confirmed many phenomena in the battle records in later generations, Beiyang and this in the shelling records, both showed a result, although the artillery of the Beiyang Naval Division was slow, but the overall hit rate, the Beiyang Naval Division was 3 percent higher than the Fang, but the result of the artillery bombardment, the two sides wanted to go far, obviously, the shell is a key ......

And the quality of the shells I saw when I inspected the bullet depot before, it was really a bit miserable, rough inspection, only nearly half of the unqualified products, if you carefully inspected, I really don't know how many are qualified, even if it is an imitation of the old flowering bullets, armor-piercing bullets, listening to the Habermen teachings, this efficiency is also very bad!

It seems that he also had to try to improve the shells himself......

He pondered for a moment, and immediately spoke: "Wen Jin, what you said, although this cannonball is not available at the moment, however, I am familiar with the principle, maybe ...... Able to improve a batch of new flowering bombs for the Mariner...... Of course, I have to go and ask Wang Qincha for instructions! ”