After the passage of the Navy's 33rd Fleet Supplementary Bill, the Admiralty immediately launched a new round of shipbuilding plans with great fanfare.

The specific rules for building the ship were formulated by Wei Han, director of the General Administration of Naval Shipbuilding, and implemented by the directors of major shipyards such as Lu Wenjing, Cai Haoyuan, He Jialan, Lu Tiaoyong, and Lin Guoxi.

From the day Wang Chenhao became Minister of the Navy, he took the opportunity to annex the major shipyards in China's coastal provinces. By the time Wang Chenhao became prime minister, Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry had already controlled more than a dozen government-run shipyards and shipbuilding bureaus, including Dalian Shipyard, Zhigu Shipyard, Wuchang Shipyard, Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, Ningde Shipyard, Mawei Shipyard, and Huangpu Shipyard, forming a huge ship monopoly, and all ships used by the domestic military and civilian were built by these shipyards. At first it was loss-making, because the steel of the shipyard needed to be imported from foreign countries at high prices. However, with the completion of the large-scale high-quality steel production project of Zhili Iron and Steel Company, after the cheap steel supply to major shipyards, its shipbuilding costs dropped significantly, and finally turned a profit. Coupled with the introduction of advanced shipbuilding technology from the United Kingdom, China can finally build its own ships of various purposes and tonnage, and the local advantages have made the Chinese shipbuilding market, which was originally squeezed by foreign shipyards, slowly take back.

As a specialized construction of military warships, Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. has the top technical support from the British shipbuilding industry. The dockyard of the shipyard can build warships of any tonnage in the current world, of course, some of the equipment is not yet able to imitate the level of the British in the current domestic imitation capacity, but with the wisdom of the Chinese, I believe that it will soon be done, or even surpassed.

After receiving the latest shipbuilding order from the Admiralty, the General Administration of Ships immediately began the relevant project.

The designers of the Ship Administration Department have never been idle, they are specialized in the design of the latest warships from all over the world, and they are also using the experience of building large warships of the Dengyun and Hunter classes to design and build the Daji battleship on their own. Now the Daji battleship has completed the first phase of the project, the 10,000-ton hull has been launched, and the four-seat twin main guns of a unified caliber are being installed and debugged intensively, and everything is going very smoothly, and it will not be long before relevant sea trials will be carried out to test a series of new concepts and technologies that are enough to lead the direction of the navy. With this experience, Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. is fully capable of designing and building large battleships for the Chinese Navy on its own.

According to the plan for the development of warship equipment at the first level of design, construction and service, as early as the start of construction of the Hunter class and the Daji class, the designers of the Ship Administration Department began to design the drawings of the first domestic battleship on the basis of the Dengyun-class battleship. When the design of the Daji test ship was completed and construction began, the first large battleship designed by the Chinese people also completed the final blueprint.

The Tri-Three Fleet Supplement Act called for the construction of three battleships, three heavy armored cruisers and three light armored cruisers, as well as three hunting fleets. Among them, three battleships were built at Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, three large armored cruisers were built at Zhigu Shipyard and Dalian Shipyard, three light armored cruisers were built at Mawei Shipyard and Huangpu Shipyard respectively, and three hunting fleets with a total of 18 hunting ships chose to build their hulls in private shipyards because of insufficient docks, and then returned to Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry to install weapons systems at staggered times.

The three new battleships built by Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. were classified as Jianwei, namely Jianwei, Xuanwei and Zhiwei.

Since the day of design, the Jianwei-class battleship has been designed based on the most advanced Dengyun-class battleship related parameters, because it is the first battleship built by China, the designers are still relatively conservative, basically most of them follow the ready-made design ideas of the Dengyun-class battleship, but in some links for the improvement of the design of the Motoshiki-class battleship and the Russian Borodino-class battleship, and also draw on the advanced design ideas of the two new battleships of the old man star and the dreadnought class that are under construction in the United Kingdom.

It can be said that in order to pursue the dream of a powerful navy, the Chinese designers with good faces could not help but position the Jianwei-class battleships in the ranks above the world-class level from the very beginning of the design of the Jianwei-class battleships, so that the construction costs of the Jianwei-class battleships continued to increase.

In the end, the Jianwei-class battleship was designed as a bow ship with a design standard displacement of 16,500 tons. Because Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. has introduced the most advanced improved reciprocating steam engine technology from Germany, and adopted a hybrid boiler system composed of 20 coal-fired boilers and two oil-fired boilers, the efficiency of boiler combustion has been greatly improved. During the strong ventilation test, the high-pressure steam emitted by the steam engine drives three reciprocating steam engines, so that the maximum power output of its main engine can reach 19,500 horsepower, so it can theoretically drive a 17,000-ton ship to operate at a maximum speed of 19 knots.

Because China has acquired thousands of islands in the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese navy's patrol range has also been expanded to the Central and South Pacific, and the island of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea also needs to patrol regularly to assert sovereignty and territorial waters, so the Jianwei-class battleships have an additional ocean-going patrol mission than the Dengyun-class battleships.

Due to the needs of national majesty, the Jianwei-class battleships are designed to carry 1,800 tons of coal and 200 tons of oil, so they can sail at a speed of 10 knots and can reach up to 9,500 nautical miles, and can complete the cruising mission in the waters around Puerto Rico, the farthest colony, without coaling. Such a huge voyage was also carried out under the instruction of Wang Chenhao, and from this alone, it can be seen that Wang Chenhao has great ambitions for the open sea.

Due to the fact that the number of second-class guns of the four Shikishima-class battleships has been increased to 14, which is 2 more than the Dengyun-class battleships currently in service in the Chinese Navy, and there are also several more third-class rapid-fire guns, in order to counter the numerical superiority of the Shikishima-class artillery, the Jianwei-class battleships designed and installed 16 40-fold 152 mm rapid-fire guns, all of which are fully protected by twin turrets.

In this way, judging from the design of the hull of the Jianwei-class battleship, the hull of the original Dengyun-class battleship needs to be lengthened. In terms of hull width, according to the 6.5:1 ratio of the battleship's golden length to width, the hull width has also been slightly increased as a corresponding compensation for the increase in length.

The main gun of the Jianwei-class battleship still uses the British-made MK1897 40-fold extension 305 mm double-mounted main gun system, and the 40-fold extension 305 main gun has always been the standard equipment of the British Navy's capital ships, with mature technology and stable and reliable use. Although Beiyang Ordnance Heavy Industry is also developing a 40-fold extension of the 305 mm naval gun system, it is not up to par in the manufacturing technology of the main gun barrel, and the caliber and multiple-extension cannot be industrially mass-produced, so it can only continue to import to the United Kingdom. Of course, Beiyang Ordnance Heavy Industry has made great progress in the development of 280 mm 40 times extended naval guns, and it will not be long before the industrial mass production of 305 mm caliber naval guns will be realized.

The British Navy's standard main gun was much more powerful than the old 1892 model. Because the Chinese Navy has completed the generalization of the artillery ammunition, it no longer uses the cotton gunpowder of the British Navy, but uses the powerful black gold gunpowder successfully developed by Beiyang Ordnance Heavy Industry.

As a result, the Chinese and British navies use the same type of naval guns, but there are great differences in the speed of gun discharge, firing range, lethality, etc. The muzzle velocity of the 305-mm shells fired by the British Navy was only 680 m/s, while the 12-inch shells fired by the Chinese Navy reached 900 m/s. Such a high muzzle velocity of the shell also greatly increases the range of the shell, when fired at the maximum elevation angle of 20 degrees from the main gun of the Jianwei class, the maximum range can reach 18,000 meters, compared with the British Navy has a range of only 14,000 meters, which shows the leap in its surname.

Of course, the reloading of black sorkin high-explosive gunpowder was not without its negative effects. For example, with the same model of 305 mm naval guns, the British Navy could fire 200 rounds of shells before replacing the barrel, while the Chinese Navy used black sorkin explosives, which greatly reduced the barrel life and had to replace the barrel after firing 180 shells. Invisibly, the logistics and maintenance costs of the Chinese Navy have increased.

However, you can't stop going to the toilet just because it's dark. In order to solve this problem, the gunpowder and chemical experts of Beiyang Ordnance Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. are working hard to improve the black sokin explosives, adding some preparations to protect the barrel to the propellant to improve the life of the barrel. Research is ongoing, and it is believed that it will not take long to solve this problem.

For the navy, among the shells used by naval guns, artillery shells of more than 152 mm will be packed separately by warhead and propellant, because if the shells of more than 152 mm are integrated with the warhead and projectile body, one shell is too heavy and long, which is not conducive to transportation and storage. Therefore, the large-caliber main guns of the main ships of the Navy still use the method of separating the warhead and the projectile body, and it is impossible to shoot as easily as the heavy machine guns.

In order to speed up the supply of shells for the main guns, Chinese engineers installed a new type of electric loaf in the main gun turret of the Jianwei-class capital ship for the first time, which is much more efficient than the original loafers, so the main gun fire rate is also faster than that of previous warships.

The main gun had to be imported from the British, but the secondary gun was localized, using the Type 99 40-fold extension 152 mm twin-mounted rapid-fire gun, and the turret design made its firing range better than that of the secondary gun of the Shikijima-class of the Navy, with a wider strike area and stronger protection, and it could fire in bad sea conditions.

At the same time, the motor-driven secondary turret has significantly improved its response to high-speed targets at close range, although the main combat object of the secondary artillery is not the enemy's high-speed lightning strike ship, but with it is undoubtedly equivalent to an increase in double insurance.

Since the Chinese Navy is equipped with a large number of high-speed lightning destroyers, the Chinese Navy has to pay close attention to the threat of high-speed lightning destroyers to large capital ships, so how to resist the enemy's high-speed destroyers and torpedo boats that use torpedoes as the main means of attack has become an increasingly urgent task in future naval warfare.

Against high-speed destroyers and torpedo boats, third- and fourth-class artillery is the main force.

Because the third class guns of the Shikishima-class capital ships of the Shikido class of the Navy, they are equipped with 20 rapid-fire guns with a caliber of 76 mm, which is four more than the third class guns of the Dengyun class of the Chinese Navy. To this end, Chinese engineers installed 20 88-mm rapid-fire guns on the Jianwei-class battleships, the number of which was the same, but the caliber was 12 mm larger than that of the other side, and the difference in firepower was self-evident.

As for the fourth-level rapid-fire guns, the Jianwei class retains the same firepower configuration of the Dengyun class, and still suppresses the fourth-level firepower of the Shikijima class of the Navy.

The Jianwei-class battleships surpassed the Shikishima-class battleships of the Saimoto Navy in terms of speed and firepower, and in order to control the displacement, the armor could not be increased. Fortunately, the armor protection of the original Dengyun-class battleships was higher than that of the Motoshijima-class battleships, so the Jianwei-class only needed to maintain the armor protection design of the Dengyun-class.

Despite this, the armor weight of the Jianwei class still exceeded that of the Dengyun class by more than 1,000 tons, mainly because the Jianwei class increased the number of second- and third-class guns, lengthened and widened the hull, which led to an increase in the armor coverage area, and ultimately led to an increase in the total weight of the armor.

In order to reduce unnecessary armor protection, in accordance with the idea of key protection, the armor design of the Jianwei-class battleship follows the design idea of the Daji, and the main armor belt extends to the bow and stern main gun turret, and at the same time wraps the turret seat, the command tower, the ammunition magazine under the turret, as well as the key parts such as the bomb shaft, boiler room, and motor room. The turrets of the main and secondary guns were fully armoured, while the 88mm rapid-fire guns, located at the waterline and in the bow chambers, had at least modest protection against shell fragmentation.

At present, the main armor technology of all countries in the world is Krupp armor and Harvey steel, and the capital ships of the Chinese Navy have used domestic special steel for the first time in the armor steel starting from the Jianwei class.

Domestic special steel, also known as China Steel, was developed by Wang Chenhao according to the special instructions of Zhili Iron and Steel Company according to the ideas of special special steel for aircraft carriers in his era. Of course, although Zhili Iron and Steel Company has the world's top steel technical team, it is still unable to develop special steel for aircraft carriers in the future. However, for the technical teams of this era, it is not that they cannot develop special steel, but that they lack guiding ideology, lack of "chance discovery" and "inspiration". Under the reminder and guidance of Wang Chenhao, the technical team of Zhili Iron and Steel Company began to add chromium, nickel, tungsten, titanium and other metals mentioned by Wang Chenhao to the steel, changing the original relatively simple steel into alloy steel, and then developing military special steel step by step.

After some efforts, the technical team of Zhili Iron and Steel Company has developed more than a dozen special steels, several of which have undergone rigorous strength and hardness tests, and the results show that these Zhonghua steels surpass the current Krupp steel and Harvey steel, and the cost is lower than the two. So Wang Chenhao named it China Steel, and in order to stimulate the technical team to continue to work hard, Wang Chenhao asked the Navy Administration to use China Steel on the Jianwei-class battleships first.

In this way, after the Jianwei-class battleships used Chinese steel, they originally needed 310 mm of Krupp steel as armor protection, but now they only need to install 295 mm thick Chinese steel to achieve the same protective strength. As a result, the armor weight of the Jianwei-class warships was reduced considerably.

The Chinese Navy has been through many naval battles, and the Chinese Navy has rich experience in the performance of warships in naval battles. In terms of the protection design of the battleship under the waterline, the Jianwei class is covered with a 4-inch (101 mm) thick layer of underwater protective armor. Not only was it protected by armor, but also under water on both sides of the battleship, protective compartments were installed. When attacked by torpedoes or mines, these compartments can break into the water to reduce the damage to the hull caused by the explosion, so that the survivability of the warship in the event of underwater damage is greatly improved.

Finally, in terms of communication command, the Jianwei-class battleship was designed from the beginning to reserve a reading compartment and pipelines for the installation of radio systems and telephone systems, the cabins have armor protection, and the pipelines are arranged on the inside of the armor, and after scientific planning, a number of backup circuits are designed to ensure continuous communication in the event of damage to the line.

The Jianwei-class radio system is far more advanced than the radio system licensed to the United States and Russia by Beiyang Technology, and it is also stronger than the radio system licensed to the United States and the United Kingdom. The radio systems of the Russian and Indian navies are still at a distance that can cross the English Channel, and belong to the Marconi II radio system. Britain and the United States, as China's paramilitary alliances, have a radio system authorized by their navies called Russia, which is the third generation of Marconi radio systems that can cross the Atlantic. However, the radio system used by the Chinese Navy itself is the Tesla second-generation radio system improved by Tesla on the basis of the fourth generation of Marconi, which can already span the entire Pacific Ocean, and the signal strength has also been greatly improved.

In terms of fire control system, the Jianwei-class battleships adopted the latest fire control system, which greatly improved the gun hit rate. This is due to the latest optical observation system developed by the Beiyang Science and Technology Optical Laboratory.

Before the middle of the 19th century, most of the battleship guns were front-loading smoothbore guns, with a slow rate of fire, a short firing range, and a very close combat distance.

With the advent of large-caliber battleships, the firing range of the 305 mm main gun has reached more than 14,000 meters, and the main gun strike has become the key to victory. Various optical instruments are the key to the fire control system. No one in the battle could measure the actual distance between the hulls with a tape measure, and the gun commander could only read the distance with optical instruments and specify the angle of the gun. At the same time, observe the impact point and determine the location of the next salvo. Early slide rules only needed to determine the appropriate elevation angle and lead amount.

After the First Sino-Japanese War, the distance of engagement at sea had exceeded 2,500 meters, and simple sights could not meet the needs of such long-distance needs.

(To be continued)