"This is the design of a new type of battleship that has been determined by our Ship Administration Department after many revisions!" When Hu Licai and Lin Zhe spoke, they did not cringe from ordinary officials, but were full of excitement, which was not the excitement of seeing Lin Zhe, but the excitement of the warship he designed was about to start construction.

Hu Licai worked in Nanjing all the year round, and often reported to Lin Zhe on some warship design affairs, so he saw Lin Zhe more often, in addition, Hu Licai is different from ordinary admirals, although he has the rank of rear admiral, but in fact he is not a strict soldier.

He is a warship designer, a ship designer to be precise, and many years ago, his status has climbed to the top, as the head of the shipyard department, he has no channel to rise, because he has climbed to the highest position.

And he didn't climb up by such feats or something, he rose up because of his outstanding battleship design ability, and this ability is temporarily no one in the country can replace him.

There are many admirals who know how to fight, but there are not many designers who know how to design warships, and there are even fewer designers who can design an excellent warship.

At the point where Hu Licai has arrived, what he is pursuing is no longer promotion, wealth and the like, because he has all of these, and what he wants now is very simple, that is, as a warship designer, he hopes to design the most powerful warship. It has left a strong mark in the history of later generations.

He has been in charge of the design of the Imperial battleships since many years ago. The Chiyou-class battleships were his work, and he later made minor modifications to the Chiyou-class. The Yinglong battleship was designed, but because the change was not large, the performance of the Yinglong battleship was comparable to that of the previous two battleships, so it was still classified as a Chiyou-class battleship, and it was the third ship of the Chiyou-class battleship.

When the design of the Yinglong was finalized, Hu Licai did not sit idle and began to prepare for the design of the No. 4 battleship.

Although even the Chiyou is still under construction, and it will not be completed until next year at the earliest, it does not prevent the navy's top brass from putting forward higher requirements for the new battleship.

The requirements of the navy's top brass for the new battleship put forward by the Ship Administration Department are to have the main gun firepower that is not inferior to that of the Chiyou class. At the same time, the firepower of the secondary artillery must be strengthened. The proportion of the armor belt covering is more than 20 percent larger than that of the Chiyou class battleships, the thinnest part of the armor belt must be kept at least seven inches, the thickness of the armor in the core area must be more than 12 inches, the speed must not be less than 15 knots, and at the same time, the seaworthiness must be strengthened, as far as possible to avoid the danger of sailing in the bow and in the wind and waves, and the cruising range must not be less than 2,500 nautical miles at a speed of eight knots.

And then there is the most important point: the cost must not exceed 2.4 million yuan.

In fact, the Navy's requirements for the No. 4 battleship are not excessive, and they are generally based on the Chiyou class. The firepower of the main guns is still the same, and the appropriate secondary gun firepower and the coverage area of the armor belt are strengthened, and the speed of 0.5 knots is required to be increased compared with the Chiyou class, and the seaworthiness and endurance range are appropriately enhanced.

But these requirements may not seem high. But except for the main firepower has not been increased, the others have been increased across the board, and one has increased a little. Then it is not so easy to put it together.

Especially now that the industrial technology in all aspects has not changed much, Hu Licai wants to complete the design required by the top level of the navy. It's not that easy.

In order to achieve the goal of the Navy's top brass, Hu Licai led a group of designers from the Department of Naval Affairs to study repeatedly. The design of the new battleship is based on many concepts and technologies of the Chang'e-class armored cruiser, and integrates them into the original Chiyou-class battleship.

Finally, the design plan of the No. 4 battleship in Hu Licai's hands was completed.

The standard displacement of the battleship was ten thousand and a half hundred tons.

The main gun arrangement of the scheme is still four twin 250 mm naval guns, and the secondary guns are divided on both sides.

In terms of firepower, it is not much different from the Chiyou class, at most, the arrangement of the secondary guns has changed.

In terms of power system, it adopts the latest research and development of Linde Machinery Company's inverted cylinder steam engine, which can exert more power than the previous steam engine under the same weight and volume, and is enough to propel this huge warship to run fifteen knots, which is improved compared with the previous Chiyou-class steam engine, and the overall performance has been improved by about 10 percent.

If there is little change in firepower and power, then the change in armor is relatively large, and on this No. 4 battleship, Hu Licai tried to use the new armor solution proposed by the Jiangnan Mining Company for the first time. That is, 'steel-faced ironclad mixed armor'.

Since the Imperial Navy used wrought iron armor on a large scale many years ago, the Imperial Navy has not stopped the research and development of new armor, because although the wrought iron armor was said to have sufficient protection at the beginning, as countries successively equipped with nine-inch and ten-inch guns, and the length of the barrel of the gun is also constantly strengthening, the previous wrought iron armor has to continue to strengthen the thickness of the armor in order to continue to maintain the protection capability.

From four and a half inches in the past, to seven or eight inches later, and then to twelve inches now, or even fourteen inches, it is foreseeable that around 1875, the first-class ironclad ships of various countries were embarrassed to come out to meet people if they did not have armor belts of more than 12 inches, and some of the more strange warships even piled up the armor thickness to 14 inches or even 16 inches.

And the thicker the armor, the heavier it is, the more displacement it needs to occupy, and it brings a series of problems such as insufficient power and larger hulls.

Therefore, the empire's two major suppliers of naval armor, Jiangnan Mining Company and North Coal and Iron Company, are actively carrying out research and development of new armor, and the direction of research and development is moving towards tempered armor.

Last year, Tianjin Coal and Iron Company took the lead in developing steel-faced armor, but when the navy tested this steel-faced armor, it was found that although this armor was hardy enough, it was too brittle, and the protection ability of some small and medium-caliber shells was good, but for large-caliber heavy artillery shells, the power was not much better than that of wrought iron armor.

But at the beginning of this year, Jiangnan Mining Company came up with a steel-faced iron armor hybrid armor, which is a mixture of steel and iron to maintain the hardness of the steel armor while using wrought iron to strengthen the toughness.

After the navy's test, it was found that the protective performance of this steel-faced iron-armored mixed armor was about 15 percent higher than that of wrought iron armor under the same weight, and the Jiangnan Mining Company also said that they believed that this kind of mixed armor still had a great performance improvement, because the current processing technology was insufficient, which affected the performance of this mixed armor to a certain extent, and if they continued to improve the processing technology, they were confident that the performance of this steel-faced iron-armored armor would be improved to about 125 percent of the wrought iron armor. (To be continued.) )