The sea breeze blows, the gulls and birds cry, and the blue waves of the water constantly crash on the breakwater, stirring up white splashes. In the bright afternoon sunshine, Qingying walked alone on the causeway of Kiel Harbour, but instead of admiring the spring scenery along the way, he silently recalled what had happened an hour ago.

After an expedition to the Vidin, Kiyoying and Tirpitz had lunch in a meeting room, and at a table full of knives and forks, Tirpitz presented Kiyoying with his idea for a new battleship.

According to Tirpitz's philosophy, in order to establish the image of the German naval power, Germany must not adopt the blatant escape-style main gun layout of 1 front and 2 rear on the capital ships, and must make changes. However, due to the adoption of a low-freeboard and long-bow ship type, the two main turrets at the rear of the battleship can complete the excellent piggyback arrangement in the shooting range at no cost. In this case, Tirpitz came up with an idea: if one more main turret were added to the battleship, which would be arranged one level higher in the bow, the excellent layout of the stern would be preserved, and the firepower of the bow would be comparable to the stern, wouldn't it be compatible in both respects?

Hearing Tirpitz put forward the idea of this 4-turret turret, Qingying was suddenly startled in his heart, and the silver fork that was sent to his mouth fell to the floor with a clatter, making a loud noise. Qingying never thought that the Wiecchersbach class with a 3-turret layout that he advocated would have this idea, and jump the battleship's main gun layout technology to the Bavarian class, the last of the Second Empire in history, and all the detours of the 17 dreadnoughts of the previous 4th class did not have to go! And when Qingying calmed down and thought about it carefully, he suddenly found that the current Germany already had most of the conditions necessary to build this kind of warship!

In October 1906, the British battleship HMS Intrepid completed sea trials, a revolutionary ship that ushered in a new era of the navy, and its success goes without saying. However, in order to realize this epoch-making ship, it must meet three conditions at the same time: first, the hit rate and rate of fire of the main guns must reach a high level, second, the efficient use of the tonnage of the battleship, and the most important thing is the excellent power system with a high power-to-weight ratio.

Let's start with the main gun factor. In the pre-dreadnought era, after equipping their battleships with four 12-inch main guns, the navies of various countries no longer had the will to strengthen the main guns, but began to equip battleships with powerful secondary guns and secondary main guns, but why? This is not the brains of the designers of the great powers, but the decision they made based on the consideration of fire control, although it lacked foresight, but it was very correct at the time. Due to the exceptionally poor fire control of the pre-dreadnought era, the instruments used to measure distances in naval battles were rather primitive (the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 is a prime example of this). The Japanese flagship Mikasa's rangefinder was not much wider than a person's shoulder, which was the British top dreadnought completed in 1902), and its measured values differed greatly from the actual situation; In this case, the hit rate of the ship's guns can be imagined. Due to the primitive fire control of the battleship, the hit rate of the ship's guns was tragic enough, but the rate of fire of the 12-inch guns equipped with the battleship was even lower, and it took about 50 seconds to complete a round of reloading! The actual effect of this 12-inch gun, which had neither a rate of fire nor a hit rate, can be described as miserable, and what else can you expect it to play a decisive role in naval battles?

Therefore, the 12-inch main gun was also a symbol far greater than the actual combat significance in the pre-dreadnought era, and its existence was only to deter the enemy and make the opposing warship follow the rules and act honestly. The main role played in the naval warfare of the pre-dreadnought era was still the slightly smaller but faster rate of fire: the Battle of Dadonggou in 1894, the Battle of San Diego in 1898, and the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 are the strongest examples of this thesis. The reason why the navies of various countries stopped the development of the number of main guns after equipping the battleships with four 12-inch guns, and turned to the pursuit of various powerful secondary guns, is because they clearly know that under the current fire control conditions, rapid-fire guns with a caliber of about 8 inches are far more effective than powerful but slow 12-inch main guns!

In Germany, however, this is not the case at all. Due to the fact that the German Navy attached great importance to balancing the relationship between rate of fire and power in the consideration of close combat in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, the main guns of its battleships always used 11-inch guns with a smaller caliber. Taking the 283 mm L42 gun that had just entered service in Germany as an example, although the power of the single shot of this gun was 20% less than that of the 12-inch guns of the same power, the rate of fire could reach 2 rounds per minute; German battleships, which are generally equipped with 6 guns of this type, have a barrage density of 2.5 times that of 4 12-inch battleships of other countries, and they already have a fairly good hit rate. At present, Krupp Military Industry is developing an updated 283 mm L45 gun, which is expected to increase the rate of fire to 2.5 rounds per minute; If the new battleship can be equipped with 8 guns, the theoretical number of projections per minute can reach 20 rounds, which is 4 times that of other countries' battleships, which is enough to rely on the main gun to defeat the enemy! While the main gun barrage was resolved, there was no need to worry about the problem of fire control in Germany. Due to the unique optical equipment produced by Zeiss in the world, the fire control of German capital ships has been famous for its excellence in history; In a few years, all kinds of sophisticated fire control equipment will appear in Germany, and when the time comes, it will be enough to directly equip the ship!

In addition to the rate of fire and fire control, the efficient use of tonnage is also an indispensable factor in making an all-heavy artillery dreadnought a reality. The Dreadnought's 10 12-inch guns were 2.5 times more powerful than the previous Dreadnought, and even if it weakened its secondary guns and was only equipped with 24 76.2mm guns for anti-torpedo boats, it could not compensate for the sudden increase in the number of main guns. Therefore, if the tonnage cannot be effectively utilized, its warship will inevitably be unable to withstand the significant increase in the weight of weapons brought about by the full heavy main gun, and will eventually have to stay on the drawing board. Germany can make this a reality! Six years ago, German designers achieved a gorgeous reversal of the efficient use of warship tonnage under the training of Qing Ying with historical ships; Now, except for Italy, which is not well-known, Germany's warship design level is already the first in the world. After solving the problem of propeller efficiency, with the advantages of low freeboard and long bow ship type and power subsystem, the German-made battleship has the terrifying strength of infinitely close to the indiscriminate Divine Cult, and its tonnage utilization rate can be surpassed compared with that of the First World War. What's more, the German battleships used 11-inch main guns, which were much less difficult to equip than heavy 12-inch guns; The construction of battleships with 8 11-inch guns was not a problem for Germany at all.

Among the three conditions for building a dreadnought, the only thing that Germany does not have is an excellent power system with a great power-to-weight ratio, and this is the only thing Qingying feels uneasy about. The giant ship of the current time has just sailed into 1900, everyone is equipped with a reciprocating steam engine, and the battleship can run 18 knots. It is undoubtedly impossible to get it to run to 21 knots on par with armored cruisers. It is important to know that the power to be increased by each 1 knots of speed of the battleship is not linear, but rises in Moyun in geometric multiples; If a 16,000-ton warship wants to increase its speed from 18 knots to 21 knots, the output power needs to be increased by more than 50%.

Since the power technology could not be reached due to the limitations of the age, could a fully heavy artillery warship with a speed of 18 knots be built? Qingying, after thinking about it for a while, also rejected the idea. The reason why he wanted to vigorously develop the fleet decisive battle armored cruiser was that he saw that the dreadnought with a speed of 18 knots could not follow the footsteps of the main fleet in the future, and could only play a second-line role in the war; If such a low-speed ship is built, it will actually be no different from the six Vicchersbach-class dreadnoughts that have been started before, and it will definitely become a shame to abandon them in the future. The two South Carolina-class ships built by the United States in history are typical examples of insufficient speed; Although it was equipped with eight 12-inch L45 guns, its speed was only 18.5 knots, and it was unable to follow the main fleet, which greatly reduced its combat effectiveness.

It seems that the only feasible way is to build the ship first, and then make a major change to the power at a later date; However, if this article is to be implemented, it is still quite difficult. Because the power of the battleship is not only the main engine and boiler, but also the various pipeline valves are the real big head; In order to increase the speed from 18 knots to 21 knots, the power increase was too much, and the entire power had to be completely overhauled, which was completely different from the 20-knots decisive battle type that was originally built. Large-scale power changes are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and budget-intensive, and will take up valuable slipways and human resources in the upcoming Anglo-German naval race.

"Well, we have to push forward the innovation of German ship power technology as soon as possible, so that it can provide ideal power equipment when the battleship is built on the slipway......"

Qingying was thinking in a trance, and suddenly heard a noise in her ears. He looked up in confusion, only to find that he had somehow walked out of the Inner Harbour outpost and came to the civilian area of the Outer Harbour of Kiel. The whistle sounded, the voices of the people were boiling, and dozens of cruise merchant ships were dotted in the berths that stretched for miles, loading and unloading passengers, loading and unloading goods; Less than 100 meters beside him, there is a magnificent and luxurious business cruise ship. Seeing this scene, Qingying laughed at herself, and was about to turn around and return, when she suddenly saw a figure walking down from this cruise ship; Although it was far away and it was difficult to see it in a hurry, after a while, Qingying was stunned in place as if she had been hit by the immobilization method.

Tall and slender, luxurious and elegant, who is it not the girl named Sanya?