As for the second type of battleship, it was decent, only the cannon on it startled the Germans. According to the plan of the Americans, they will install a 13.5-inch cannon on such a battleship. In this era, the mainstream guns of battleships were still 12-inch guns, of course, a little earlier, the British Empire was still using reciprocating steam engines, and when the speed of warships did not exceed 15 knots, battleships had more than 12-inch guns. However, that kind of artillery is very low in diameter, the bore pressure is also very low, the trajectory is curved like urine, and the range is as close as a mortar, and it is not even as good as a long-barreled 8-inch gun.

The manufacture of large-caliber high-pressure guns in that era could definitely be called the crown of large industry, and its status was similar to that of later generations of high-thrust turbofan engines. The British have always had a clear technological advantage in this regard. Although the Krupp cannon is very famous, the Krupp cannon is actually only 11 inches in caliber. The first to use a 12-inch long-barreled high-pressure gun on a warship was the British. It took a lot of effort for the Germans to finally come up with a 12-inch caliber naval gun a few years ago, but in terms of performance, there is still a gap between it and British and American goods, especially in the life of the body. At present, the barrel life of the 12-inch guns made by the Germans is only two-thirds of the life of British and American goods. However, there is no advantage in terms of manufacturing costs. In addition, the barrels of these giant cannons are very expensive, which also leads to the rise in the cost of use.

The Germans got some information that the British were already testing 13-inch guns. Although it seems that the caliber of 13 inches is only one inch larger than that of 12 inches, this means that the weight of the shells it uses will be much larger, and the power will naturally be a lot larger. For example, the weight of shells for 6-inch guns is generally between 40-50 kg, while the weight of shells for 8-inch guns reaches 100 kg, the weight of shells for 11-inch guns is about 300 kg, and then the weight of shells for 12-inch guns reaches more than 500 kg. And the legendary 13-inch gun being developed by the British, the shell weight is definitely more than 600 kg.

With such a heavy shell, the kinetic energy is naturally much greater, and the armor-piercing ability and explosive power are naturally much greater. It was precisely because of this information that the Germans set the standard of the new battleship as being able to resist the fire of 13-inch guns. And the Germans are also working hard to develop a new 13-inch cannon. It's just that although the development plan is already in place, the development process is not smooth. And it is likely that by the time these guns could finally be loaded on warships, the British would already have larger caliber guns.

In contrast, the MacDonald Consortium is much better than the Germans in terms of large-caliber artillery technology, although in this industry, McDonald Steel and MacDonald Infantry Weapons Company started no earlier than Germany, to be honest, the MacDonald Consortium's scientific research strength is not necessarily stronger than the Germans, but the McDonnell Consortium has an advantage that the Germans can't match, that is, they have one more traverser. Don't say that Scrooge is originally a guy from science and engineering, he himself has good knowledge and technology, just knowing which technology trees are positive and which are crooked, you have to take a big advantage. Because the process of scientific research is a process of trial and error. In order to invent the light bulb, Edison is said to have made thousands of materials. These failures consume a lot of time and financial resources. And when it came to this time and space, Scrooge directly gave an instruction, using carbon filament in the short term and tungsten filament in the future. All at once, the difficulty of the study was reduced by several orders of magnitude. Knowing the general trend and knowing which technologies are the ones that will be promising in the future is an unbeatable advantage. Sometimes it doesn't even have to be a solid foundation in science and engineering like Scrooge's, it just needs to have future life experience. For example, even if you are a liberal arts student and travel to the Soviet Union, you know that the miniaturization of the electron tube is definitely a bit of a distortion of the technology tree. Even if you have a yellow soap with a problem in your head, you must know that Heisenberg's original . Child. The conclusion that the bomb could not be made is absolutely wrong. (At the time, Heisenberg, when calculating how many U235s would be needed to reach the critical mass of the explosion, used the wrong formula and came up with an unimaginably large number, so much so that he thought that the original. Child. It is simply impossible to make a bomb, at least not from uranium and plutonium. In order to solve this problem, Heisenberg also proposed an idea that is extremely strange to modern people - through a fusion to trigger fission, and modern hydrogen. The bullets just fell one by one. If the Americans and the British knew that Germany's nuclear weapons program was actually like this, they probably would not have been guilty of sending bombers to bomb the Germans' heavy water plant. ）

It is precisely because of this advantage that the scientific research strength is not only inferior to that of Britain, but also inferior to that of Germany, but it has made technological progress no less than that of Britain, and the financial resources spent are far less than those of these two opponents. Because, in fact, the MacDonald consortium is not pioneering technology, but following research. And following the research is always super saving. For example, the pioneering research in the United States came out of the original. Child. bomb, it cost 2.5 billion US dollars, and how much did the Chitu country that he followed only spent? The Americans pioneered the development of the fifth-generation fighter jet, which cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and the J-20 followed by the Red Rabbit Country will definitely not need so much money.

"Are your 13.5-inch guns ready?" After seeing the plan, Tirpitz asked.

"Yes, Your Excellency the Admiralty." Donald proudly replied, "Our 13.5mm gun has been tested many times. The performance has been greatly improved compared with the current 12-inch gun. It can penetrate the armor of any active warship at a very long distance. If your government agrees with our proposal, there will be absolutely no problem with the 13.5-inch gun. ”

"And what about technology transfer?" At this time, a man spoke.

"Who is this gentleman?" Donald asked.

"Ah, this is Mr. Alfred 61 Krupp. He is the son of Mr. Alfred 61 Krupp the Elder. Tirpitz hastened to introduce Donald and John Morgan Jr. to the man.

"Ah, it turned out to be Mr. Krupp. It's a blessing. Donald hurriedly responded.

Speaking of which, Knoober has always been one of McDonald's competitors to Infantry Weapons. Large-caliber artillery for the Germans has also always been supplied by this company. The relationship between Krupp and the German military circles and the imperial family is very close, and it is even called Germany's national enterprise and state-owned arsenal.

It's just different from history, because of the rise of the MacDonald Infantry Weapons Company and MacDonald Steel, the sales volume of Krupp cannons around the world is much worse than in the original history, but relying on domestic orders, Krupp's business is also good. However, in terms of the related technology of large-caliber artillery, there is still a big gap between them and the United States and the United Kingdom.

"Mr. Krupp, I think you also know that there are many aspects of artillery technology involved, and the scope of application of these technologies is far beyond artillery. Therefore, although we are willing to carry out a certain amount of technology transfer, if we want to obtain all the relevant technology, I am afraid that this will require a lot of money, and this figure is probably much greater than the expenditure of this shipbuilding program. Donald replied.

"Of course we do." Alfred 61 Krupp also replied, "But we are not completely without a technical foundation, I think we only need a part of the technology, such as the handling of the barrel." ”

Donald knew that most of the techniques mentioned by Alfred 61 Krupp were MacDonald's single-body tube self-tightening techniques. The barrel of a gun needs to withstand a huge bore pressure, and in order to avoid accidents such as exploding the bore, the most traditional way is to directly thicken the barrel. However, the consequence of this practice is that the barrel is getting heavier and heavier, and it is extremely inconvenient to use. Moreover, the weight of the barrel itself, which is too heavy, will also cause the barrel to bend and sag. The accuracy of the guide gun decreased significantly, and after a long period of use, the deformation of the barrel became more noticeable.

To solve this problem, there were two common practices at that time, one was to develop more advanced gun steel to make the performance of the steel itself better, and the other was to use casing technology, that is, to divide the gun barrel into two or more layers, and the outer diameter of each layer was slightly larger than the inner diameter of the outer layer of it. First place the outer layer to burn red because of the heat. Expansion and contraction, at this time it can be put on the outside of the inner layer of barrels, and when the outer barrel is cooled, it can apply a prestress to the inner layer that squeezes inward, and when the gun fires, this prestress can cancel out part of the chamber pressure, so that the thinner barrel can withstand greater chamber pressure. Of course, this will be much more costly, and the effect will be limited.

In terms of cannon steel, Krupp also studied the difference between MacDonald's products and its own products, but they found that in fact, although MacDonald's cannon steel is slightly better than Krupp's cannon steel in terms of quality, it is also too good to be limited, and the barrel wall thickness made of such cannon steel with German technology is the same as that of the original gun barrel, which cannot withstand the chamber pressure of MacDonald's infantry weapons company's finished cannon. So, Krupp speculated that MacDonald must have had a completely new key technology for handling gun barrels. And in the current business, what he values most is whether he can get this kind of technology. Because this technology is so important for a company that produces cannons.

So what's up with McDonald's body-tube self-tightening technique? This technology is to apply high pressure to the barrel when manufacturing it, so that the barrel is partially or completely plastically deformed from the inside to the outside. After the high pressure is removed, due to the different plastic deformation of each layer, the outer layer produces compressive stress on the adjacent inner layer, that is, the inner layer is compressed and the outer layer is tensile like countless layers of tight tubes, so the strength of the body tube can be significantly improved. Make it enough to withstand enormous bore pressure.

"This technology is very important and requires a high level of craftsmanship, and it is easy to cause scrap if it is not done properly." Donald replied, "If there is a need to transfer this technology, I am afraid that this offer from the German government at the moment is not enough." ”