Valentine had never approved of Chen Wei going crazy on these statues. "It's time to go!" He shouted, "James, if you don't come up again, you'll be swept away by the waves!" ”

Chen Wei just glanced up at him.

"Let's go! James! Valentine shouted again.

But at this moment, Chen Wei was probably distracted again, and the more he reached such a critical moment, the easier it was for Chen Wei to get distracted, and his thoughts spread around like mercury, and he couldn't contain it. At the last moment when the overwhelming waves hit the hull of the ship, Chen Weicai jumped up and jumped up the steps like being chased by a ghost, and it was not fun to be slapped by the waves. The waves behind him seemed to rise endlessly, and finally shook violently and shattered into trillions of huge crystals, and the entire mountain cliff shook with that roar, as if it was about to collapse, and the raging waves slammed into the huge hull of the ship, wetting the clothes of Chen Wei and the sailors on the deck.

"Phew!" Valentine spat out a mouth full of salty water and said, "I'll never play with you madman again." ”

"You really shouldn't be a sailor." Chen Wei looked at the embarrassed Valentine with a smile, and firmly grasped the gangway with both hands, no matter how the hull shook, he always stood firmly.

There was a violent vibration under his feet, and Chen Wei knew that the "Alexandra" was speeding up and moving forward bravely against the waves.

Another mountain-like wave hit, Valentine forgot to grab the handrail in a panic, and just as he was about to sweep the wave away, Chen Wei grabbed his wrist.

The sharp bow of the battleship split the waves, but the hull was also lifted high.

"The ship is capsizing! We're going to fall! Valentine screamed in fright.

"We're not going to fall! Have faith in our warships! Valentine! We're in steam-powered ironclads! Not a sailboat! Chen Weiwei roared, letting the waves rush against him.

The Industrial Revolution brought about comprehensive technological and intellectual progress. The storm of this revolution also blew to the sea. The stormy winds and waves that set off constantly swept batch after batch of warships to the bottom of history. The winds and frenzy of history gradually blew away and swept away the low-tonnage sail warships that relied on the wind, and the survivors who stood at this moment were steam-powered, armored ironclads.

When the Western powers found that their proud battleship was becoming more and more like a pile of flammable firewood, the ** that improved the defense capability of the battleship became more and more intense in their minds, and finally, the three technological revolutions allowed them to put an end to the nightmare of the image of the battleship burning every day and night. They were revolutionary advances in hull design, powertrain, and armament, as one naval historian put it well: "The process is made of wood." The combination of sail and spherical projectile evolved to the combination of steel, steam and modern shells. "The Army equips soldiers with weapons, and the Navy provides soldiers for their equipment. ”

The first of the three major advancements to hit the deck of a warship was the steam power system.

The era of the development of ironclad ships can be said to be an era of conflict between the old and the new, various technologies and ideas in the development of the navy and the design of ships are fighting a tug-of-war, after radical progress, there will always be conservatism to make new technologies give way to more mature old technologies, in the design of ironclad ships, the rush of sails and steam engines, the entanglement of breech guns and breech guns, and the choice between attack and defense of torpedo mines and mines. and the ramming horns that once sprung up, and even the "basin" battleships that turned around. Exploration and search have almost always accompanied the development of ironclads.

At the beginning of the appearance of the ironclad, except for the chimney hidden under the towering mast, the lower freeboard and the armor on the surface, the appearance of the battleship was not much different from its predecessors in the sail era, but it was always evolving. In the sixties of this century, the central gun emplacement, compared with the previous gun placement layer for the all-through deck design, the central gun emplacement, the central gun emplacement, on the one hand, solved the problem of "everything is all-encompassing" armor layout, but also reduced the burden of the steam engine, in addition, the weight of the ship is concentrated in the middle of the hull, which is also conducive to improving the maneuverability of the ship.

The entanglement of the power system is manifested in the hesitation of the steam engine and the inseparability of the sail equipment, to a large extent, because the power reliability and work efficiency of the reciprocating steam engine as a ship need to be improved, and the sail technology has long been basically mature, so the early ironclad ships have retained a full set of sail equipment, but in this way, the towering mast has a great impact on the stability of the relatively low freeboard ironclad ship, especially the lateral stability. The complex mast structure also affected the firepower of the turret (which is naturally a more advanced design than the broadside gun). There was once a tragic ship in the sail and turret combination, the "Captain", who capsized in the storms of the Bay of Biscay shortly after launching. Obviously, the combination of the two eras, fights are inevitable, and the best way to solve this problem is to replace the old one of the two with a new product.

With the improvement of system efficiency, the application of water-tube boilers and the test of practice, etc., the steam engine gradually consolidated its position in the course of the times, began to become the main power of ironclad ships, and eventually became the only power, and the propeller could finally be put away and put down all day long like a pod.

The waves came one after another, and Valentine was so frightened that he closed his eyes, while Chen Wei looked at the other two ironclad ships of the Mediterranean Fleet in the distance that were also moving forward with the "Alexandra" ironclad ship, and his heart was full of pride.

At this time, although the turrets on the warship had been covered with tarpaulins, Chen Wei could still catch a glimpse of the heroic posture of the giant cannon inside.

In his mind, the scene of the cannon firing came to mind.

The huge waves surged like a mountain, lifting up an ironclad giant ship, and Chen Wei clearly saw that the huge angle of attack of the battleship was exposed.

It can be regarded as belonging to the era of ironclad ships that the artillery on the ship seems to be later than the steam engine and ironclad, but the development is very rapid, from the grenade, rifled guns, hydraulic mechanisms, hoisting machines, to breech guns, turrets, etc., revolutionary changes continue to appear in the development of naval artillery, although the development is also after ups and downs, but in the end the right path was chosen.

The most significant difference between the so-called breech guns and breech guns. Name implies. It's about where the shells are loaded from. In contrast, the breech gun loaded from the rear has the potential to improve the firing speed, be more convenient to load, and adapt to the fully enclosed turret, but as a new thing, there will be problems such as unstable performance, lack of supporting facilities and personnel at the beginning of its invention, so although the British equipped the first ironclad ship "Warrior" with Armstrong breech-loading guns. But in fact, the British were much more conservative than other countries at that time in their attitude towards this immature new technology, and they struggled with the issue of breech guns and breech guns for decades, but by the time the breech guns were really fully adopted, it was basically a relatively mature technology.

The production of the turret is a revolution in the firepower of the ironclad, the early turret ironclad with a strong representative turret is the "Monette" during the American Civil War, although this is only suitable for inland navigation of the freeboard is so low that it can not even act as a shallow water heavy gunboat at sea, but the application of the turret makes it famous in history, as a mechanism that can achieve omnidirectional shooting, the advantage of the turret is that the complex maneuver of the heavy hull is replaced by the fixed axis rotation of the turret in the calibration of the gun, And the presence of a turret provides better protection for the shooter. Although where to place the turret is also a matter of repeated consideration. However, the boarding of the turret was generally quite smooth, although the secondary guns remained on the side for a long time. But the main gun was soon turretized.

The appearance and popularity of the ramming angle can be said to be a slightly farcical event in the development of warships, with the steam engine to bring "unprecedented power", the ramming angle of the oarship era was turned out of the pile of old papers and made a big article, the designers of the ship apparently thought that the power brought by the coal-burning reciprocating steam engine was enough to make the battleship of tens of thousands of tons flexible like a dagger, and the fact is that the only major achievement of the ramming horn was the Austrian "Ferdinand? The Maximilian rammed and sank the Italian ironclad ship "Italia" at the Battle of Lisa - if the sinking of the Iron Duke in 9072 by its sister ship "Avant-garde" was not a major achievement, the latter was obviously more like a mistake. Ships that were sunk were generally hit by the transverse bulkhead by chance (apparently not by precise calculations to the designated location), but this can also reflect the problem of damage management, obviously if it was sunk due to too much water, if the watertight tank technology was fully applied and the reserve buoyancy was sufficient, such a tragedy could probably have been avoided.

Another effect of the ramming angle was that the warships at that time basically used the tilt of the bow, but the problem was that the bow was easy to go up the waves, which was very unfavorable to the use of the front gun. At that time, the design on the hull was largely the same, and even the aspect ratio was close to 5:1, with a backward tilt, a cruiser's stern, a straight-walled broadside, and no straight lines could be seen at the edge of the design waterline. However, the use of ramming horns also reflects from the side that the protective power of iron armor at that time was better than the destructive power of artillery, so the revival of ramming horns is not without reason.

The development of ironclad ships rushed left and right in the stumbles, searched up and down, and finally moved closer to a gradually mature and stable idea, and the general layout and design ideas of warships were also stabilized. And these revolutionary technologies have gradually been evaluated objectively and fairly in the quarrels and comparisons after they were born, and then some far-reaching "reform movements" will begin on these steel giants, and no one will know at this time that some revolutionary improvements will fall on this 15-year-old boy who is not afraid of the stormy seas.

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PS: Lao Wang went to Macau to gamble. I lost all my belongings and owed millions of debts, and I had one left** when I got home and said to my wife: "The enemy is coming for the five-star red flag." ”

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