Hu Licai's plan for the new second-class ironclad ship can be said to be conceptually different from the previous ironclad design.

In the design case, Hu Licai did not say what the specific performance of the warship was, but talked about the threats and challenges faced by the imperial navy in the future in recent years.

Undoubtedly, the greatest threat to the Imperial Navy was the British Royal Navy, especially the British Royal Navy's East India Fleet, and in addition to the British Royal Navy, the French Navy was also a potential adversary of the Imperial Navy.

The navies of these two countries are the largest and second largest navies in the contemporary world.

To confront these two enemies, the best way is naturally to build a large number of ironclad ships for the decisive battle, and then defeat the incoming enemy fleet through the decisive battle, and even blockade the Strait of Malacca, so as to keep the enemy out of the country.

However, this seems to be the best method is actually unrealistic, the national strength of Britain and France is to surpass the empire, especially the British are still a maritime country, the navy is their lifeblood, the British launched three or even four ironclad ships for decisive battles, and the empire can launch one.

Limited by the economic strength of the empire and the scale of domestic industry, it is impossible to build ironclad ships in large quantities, and it is barely possible to accumulate a decisive battle fleet of more than five or six thousand tons, but more is basically unlikely, but the British ironclad ships are a large vote, not a few ships, but dozens of dozens of ships to calculate.

Therefore, the quality and quantity of the passing ironclad ships could not be countered by the British Royal Navy.

For this reason, Hu Licai proposed. For a maritime country, its maritime transportation type is their life, if it can hit the enemy's sea transportation lines. Then the enemy army is equal to defeat without a fight.

And the British, in order to protect the shipping routes, deployed numerous cruisers around the world, and in order to attack their routes, they needed a kind of warship that could defeat these cruisers.

And this task is still barely compared with the current Cullen-class protective cruisers of the Empire, after all, although the Cullen-class is claimed to be a protective cruiser, it is only laid with a thin layer of shipbox armor, and only three to four inches of armor are laid in important parts.

If in naval terms. The Cullen-class cruiser is a cruiser with key protection!

Its mission was not to engage in large-scale naval battles with enemy warships, whether it was the Royal Navy in the modern era. It is still a cruiser of the Imperial Royal Navy, whether it is a so-called protective cruiser such as the Cullen class or those old wooden cruisers, in fact, their mission is the same, mainly performing some escorts, reconnaissance, notification, and showing force.

Therefore, the Cullen-class cruisers, although it is said that they have improved their protective performance. However, its firepower and protection performance are relatively reluctant.

Since the Cullen-class could not do it to defeat the British cruisers of their class. Then the Imperial Navy needed a new type of warship capable of defeating these traditional British cruisers.

The firepower and protection of such a battleship must be sufficient to cope with those traditional cruisers, and its speed must not be too low!

However, at this time, another problem arose, that is, since this kind of battleship wants to outperform the traditional cruisers of the Cullen class in terms of performance, the cost will definitely rise directly, and the navy cannot bear a battleship whose tonnage and cost are close to that of a second-class ironclad ship, so it can only bully and bully the enemy's cruiser.

Therefore, Hu Licai simply continued to enlarge the cruiser's hull, added thicker armor, and equipped it with more firepower. At the same time, the large hull can also be equipped with a larger steam engine, so that the speed can be raised.

Such enlarged cruisers with firepower and their armor. It can barely participate in the line battle between first-class ironclad ships, and at the same time, due to its relatively fast speed, it can also form a mobile fleet to use.

Based on the above tactical requirements, Hu Licai came up with this design plan that seems a little weird!

First of all, the tonnage, the tonnage of this battleship is not small, much larger than the second-class ironclad ship of the Kuafu class, its tonnage reaches 7,500 tons.

Its vital protection, firepower and speed are also much higher than the Kuafu-class second-class ironclad ships, the ship uses the same armor belt armor as the ironclad ship, but the thickness and laying height are worse than the Chiyou class ironclad ship, the ship's ironclad belt of the wrought iron armor has reached a maximum thickness of eight inches, and most of the armor belts have reached a thickness of six inches, far exceeding the current Yandi class of the Imperial Navy and the two second-class ironclad ships of the Kuafu class that have not yet been served.

However, it is a little worse than the Chiyou-class ironclad ships, which have full coverage of the waterline armor and are very considerable, ranging from seven to twelve inches thick.

The armor of the turret of its conning tower and main gun has reached the thickest twelve inches, which is no less protective than the 10,000-ton ironclad ships built by the British, and the protection capability is much stronger than the ironclad ships that served in the sixties, and the whole is an iron turtle.

After the Imperial Navy tested it on its own, it used 250 mm breech-loading naval guns to carry out artillery bombardment, which basically could not cause any actual damage to the 12-inch armor at a distance of 1,000 meters, and it was only at a distance of about 600 meters that it could ensure a complete penetration of the 12-inch armor.

This result is actually quite depressing for contemporary naval personnel, the thickness of the armor should be thickened and very simple, as long as the ship is big enough, the twelve-inch armor is casually on, but the naval gun that can penetrate the twelve-inch armor is not so easy to make, the Royal Arms Company in order to develop and produce two hundred and fifty mm rear-loading naval guns, but invested a lot of resources, when the price of this naval gun can be worth the money of a small ship, all the naval guns on the Chiyou combined, the price is as high as hundreds of thousands.

Returning to the issue of armor, the new warships designed by Hu Licai naturally do not have the same protection performance as those first-class ironclad ships, but they are still more objective than other warships of the same tonnage.

In terms of firepower configuration, since the Imperial Navy has completely abandoned the sail system on the capital ship, there is no need to continue to consider the problem of mast in the firepower configuration, and the firepower deployment is a new design, Hu Licai directly adopted a twin-mounted turret in the front and rear. However, on the left and right sides, it was not the same as the Kuafu class, only a number of 150 mm secondary guns were concentrated in the gun gallery position, but a single 250 mm naval gun was directly installed on the left and right sides.

So. The ship is a concentrated six rear-loading guns, and all have a closed rotating turret, when firing to one side, a maximum of five main guns can be concentrated, only one less than the six guns of the Chiyou class.

The rest of the one hundred and fifty millimeters and eighty millimeters a few!

In order to allow this battleship to catch up with the enemy's cruisers, Hu Licai directly equipped this battleship with a steam engine and eight steam boilers, and this power system is actually the power system of the Chiyou-class ironclad ship. The same type of steam engine as well as a coal-fired boiler.

Here I have to remind you, don't think that the speed of the ironclad ships in this year is very low, in fact, the main ironclad ships of various countries in this year. In particular, those ironclad ships with more than 10,000 tons generally have a speed of more than 14 knots, on the contrary, the speed of many second-class ironclad ships is generally slow, 12 knots. Thirteen verses are many. There are very few of them that exceed fourteen stanzas.

The Imperial Navy has always paid attention to the speed of capital ships, so it equipped the Chiyou-class ironclad with a steam engine and ten coal-fired boilers, which is the most luxurious power configuration in modern times, with an output of 7,000 horses, which can propel the thick and short Chiyou-class ironclad to run 14.5 knots.

The new warship, with a displacement of only 7,500 tons, uses the same power system, although there are two fewer coal-fired boilers, and due to some design obstacles in the hull. However, the output power has decreased, but it can still burst out with an output of 6,200 horsepower.

At the same time, it is different from the traditional ironclad ship with a short and thick hull design. The hull of the new battleship was actually based on the cruiser, and its length-to-width ratio was much larger than that of the ironclad, reaching seven points.

The Imperial Navy has always paid more attention to speed, from first-class ironclad ships to cruisers, the ship types are relatively slender, although this inevitably will cause the same tonnage, the protection ability may not be as good as that of the British ironclad ships, but the speed is faster.

The new warships also continued this fine tradition, with a total length of 115, a beam of 16.4 meters, a length-to-width ratio of 7, and a draft of 7.8 meters.

Its maximum speed is 15.5 knots, because it is also responsible for hunting cruisers, so it attaches more importance to endurance, and carries more coal, making pure steam power, and the cruising range reaches 3,500 nautical miles.

The three data of speed, protection and firepower can be said to have reached the peak of this era.

With the same tonnage, this battleship can beat those traditional second-class ironclad ships, and if necessary, it can also have a decisive battle with those first-class ironclad ships.

While the performance is superior, the cost of this battleship is also extremely expensive, and the price is close to 1.5 million!

And this price is the so-called cheap version made by Hu Licai after making a number of trade-offs, if some details of the hull are improved, and the internal labor is calculated according to the standard of Chiyou, the cost may reach 1.7 million.

You know, the scheduled cost of the Chiyou is only 2.2 million.

On the one hand, it is expensive, and on the other hand, the top brass of the navy is also hesitating, this battleship sounds faster than the ironclad ship, the firepower is not much worse, and the protection and firepower are too much more than the traditional cruiser. But will it really be possible to fight cruisers and fight first-class ironclad ships at that time?

However, although the navy is still hesitating, some of the strategies embodied in this Hu Licai's work have also attracted the attention of the navy.

The Navy has directly given a classification to this new warship, that is, a first-class cruiser, and at the same time, the procurement of second-class ironclad ships will be completely suspended until a decision is made on whether to build a first-class cruiser on a large scale.

When the navy submitted the design plan of this new warship to Lin Zhe, Lin Zhe didn't pay much attention to it, after all, he was not very familiar with the development of warships in the ironclad era, if a dreadnought came out, then he must know, but the ironclad ships of this era are messy, and in the ironclad era of the exploration period, it is basically difficult to tell what is good.

In order to explore, the British basically started from the development of ironclad ships, and have been groping for thirty or forty years, during which various designs are extremely abnormal, which fully reflects the confusion of the navy in this era, and there are many roads ahead, but they don't know which one is right, so they can only try one by one.

Strictly speaking, from the Warrior to the Sovereign, during this period, the British man-made ironclad ships were basically experimental ironclads, often built this kind of new design, and after a few years it was back to the old way, in short, it changed back and forth, not to mention that future generations could not figure out the development of ironclad ships in the past few decades, and the British Royal Navy itself was confused in these years.

So Lin Zhe usually doesn't pay much attention to the detailed design of the battleship, anyway, he can't say why, he knows what the dreadnought is like, but can he build it now?

No way!

So let's let the Navy guys toss!

But seeing the design of this new battleship today, Lin Zhe reminded him of a term he had seen in later generations: armored cruisers!

This so-called first-class cruiser evolved from the cruiser, and has little to do with the first-class and second-class ironclads, and at the same time, one of the strategic uses of this battleship is to hunt cruisers and attack the enemy's sea transportation lines, and the other is to directly participate in the decisive battle of the fleet.

Isn't this kind of a battleship an armored cruiser!

Well, while the hull and gun deployment are different from those of modern armored cruisers, they are designed to be standard armored cruisers.

It's just that this price is a bit expensive, if it costs 1.5 million, if it is Lin Zhe, he would rather add hundreds of thousands more to directly build a first-class ironclad ship.

However, since the navy group of people has officially submitted the design plan, it shows that there are still many people in the navy who are satisfied with this kind of warship.

In this regard, Lin Zhe did not make a decision at the first time, but successively summoned a number of senior admirals, of course, not to listen to their opinions on a new warship, but to listen to their reports on some strategic development directions of the imperial navy.

However, he found that he didn't know when it began, and the ambitions of the Imperial Navy had become so huge!

"The core objective of the Imperial Navy in the future is to fight for absolute control of the waters of the western Pacific, and tactically to be able to tactically blockade the Strait of Malacca and Singapore, and at the same time to gain the possibility of advancing into the Indian Ocean.

Maintaining superiority in the North Pacific can deter enemy navies from intervening in the North Sea and the Aleutian Sea, and at the very least, maintain strategic security in the North Sea, that is, west of Kamchatka.

In the Central and South Pacific directions, it is to maintain the presence of the Imperial Navy and demonstrate force as the minimum requirement. ”

Lin Dabiao's words made Lin Zhe gasp when he heard it, if this goal is magnified, it is basically to control the entire Pacific Ocean! (To be continued.) )