William snorted lightly and said: "Fortunately, my German Navy has not developed too fast, but 4 Brandenburg-class ships were built 4 years ago to replace the old ironclad ships, and new warships were not built in batches." This time, the Naval Design Bureau was able to correct the previous mistakes, and finally did not slow down the pace of Germany's military expansion. In addition to the innovation of the main gun, are there any other highlights of this design? ”

Tirpitz was a little embarrassed when he heard this, although he did not directly supervise the naval design bureau in charge of ship design, but this department in charge of capital ship design had such a big basket, and as the chief of staff of the navy, he was really to blame. Fortunately, he made amends in time and made a mistake, which made the emperor let him go. Tirpitz wiped the sweat oozing from his forehead and said, "Your Majesty is wise, and he does have extraordinary talent and talent in the field of ship design. The design I have come up with now also has the design ideas of His Majesty. In fact, in addition to the main artillery system, the program has also made drastic modifications in four aspects, including secondary guns, hull, defense and power, according to the actual combat performance of the Brandenburg in the Battle of Dadonggou. ”

"In that naval battle, the Brandenburg was supposed to be the absolute king of the battlefield; But since she was only armed with 8 105-mm secondary guns and had no armor protection, she could only resist the sneak attack of torpedo boats, which was obviously far from enough. In order to change this situation, the new ship will be equipped with 12 40x diameter 150 mm rapid-fire guns that Krupp military industry is about to develop, with a rate of fire of 6 rounds per minute, which is enough to deal an effective blow to the dome cruisers. Even in the duel of the capital ship, the 150 mm secondary gun can cause a lot of damage to the unprotected area of the enemy's capital ship, creating an opportunity for the main gun to delight the enemy. Tirpitz used his stick to point over the 12 gun profiles on the side of the blueprint, and explained, "In order to make room for these 12 secondary guns, the main turret of the amidships has been raised one level to the same level as the main guns in the bow. ”

William snorted, a little satisfied in his eyes. Compared with the weak firepower of the Brandenburg's eight 105 mm secondary guns, the 12 150 mm secondary guns equipped with the new battleship have been greatly improved, and both the weight and number of bullets are absolutely crushing the former. The only fly in the ointment is that Krupp's 150mm rapid-fire gun fires only 40kg of shells, compared with the 45kg weight of the British counterpart's 152mm Armstrong rapid-fire gun, the cannon developed by Krupp is still slightly inferior in terms of single-shot power.

Seeing the emperor nodding in approval, Tirpitz's heart was lifted, and the small stick in his hand moved slightly, pointing to a cross-sectional armor layout next to him.

"Based on the sea-style data sent back by the Brandenburg-class ships, especially the unique experience of the first ship sailing across the ocean, we have carefully designed the ship type of the new first class battleship. During her seven-week voyage, the wave problems on the aft deck that we were worried about were not as serious as we thought, and were completely within acceptable ranges. In addition, the current warships of the German Navy, which are mainly active in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, do not require too high ocean-going capabilities. In view of this, the aft deck of the new battleship was still moved down one level, and the freeboard height of the aft was 3.2 meters when fully loaded with coal, and the freeboard height of the amidships and bow was 5.6 meters, which had no effect on the combat at all. With this method alone, we were able to save a lot of weight that would otherwise be used on the structure and put that weight into something else that would have been more useful. ”

"In terms of armor protection, thanks to the relatively low freeboard and large tonnage compensation, when the new battleship is fully loaded with coal, its waterline armor extends from 2.3 meters below the water to 3.2 meters above the water, covering the entire freeboard except the bowhouse. In the Battle of Dadonggou, the Brandenburg was repeatedly pierced by the Japanese Navy's 152 mm and 120 mm rapid-fire guns due to the lack of effective protection due to the fact that it had only a small waterline of armor and lacked effective protection, causing a large fire and having a significant impact on her combat effectiveness. This time, with a large area of armor running through the entire freeboard, this situation will be completely changed! ”

"Wait," said Wilhelm II, frowning slightly and with some uncertainty, "you mean that the protective area of this ship extends from 2.3 meters below the water to the middle deck?" With such a large area of defense scale, how to ensure the thickness of its armor? ”

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As long as you are interested, you will have the motivation to learn. William was obsessed with the way of the ocean fleet, and after many years of self-study, he also had a good knowledge of naval ship design. This time, he was keenly aware of the relationship between the protective area and the strength of the defense, which shows that his attainments in ship design are far less unbearable than later legends. The unified caliber of the main gun, the twin-twin layout of the head and tail, and the idea of a high-speed battleship (you read that right, the idea of a high-speed battleship was indeed proposed by William at the earliest, and William's emperor was definitely not given for nothing), all show William's extremely high naval skills and creative qualities.

"Your Majesty, have you forgotten the hardened armor of the Krupp military industry?" Tirpitz prompted softly.

William was stunned, then understood, and couldn't help nodding yes. As early as a year ago, Krupp had developed hardened armor belonging to Germany, whose protection ability was almost equivalent to ordinary armor with twice the thickness; Due to the lack of production capacity, only the waterline part of the "Brandenburg" and "Wissenburg" of the four Brandenburg-class battleships used Krupp hardened armor, and the remaining two battleships still used old composite armor. Even if the armor is cut in half, 230 mm thick hardened armor will be equivalent to 400 mm thick composite armor, not to mention another year of development in between? You must know that in this era of unprecedented development of science and technology, one year is enough to make a breakthrough in technology!

Seeing William nod slowly, Tirpitz said no more. He froze down, and the small stick in his hand slowly moved down along a red line, and said, "Your Majesty, have you seen this red line?" This is another innovation in the protection of the ship, we call it the anti-torpedo longitudinal next door! In the Battle of Dadonggou, ships on both sides of the Qing and Japanese sides were torpedoed; And those battleships that were torpedoed only lasted 3 minutes at most before they sank. Although these ships were small in tonnage and had suffered a lot of previous injuries, their weakness in the face of torpedo attacks was also obvious. In order to prevent our German battleships from repeating the mistakes of the past, the new first-class battleships were laid with a layer of longitudinal armor belt, which directly led to the longitudinal partition of the torpedo protection at the bottom of the ship, which could absorb the shock wave and shrunnel generated by the explosion when being attacked by torpedoes, greatly reducing the trauma of the watertight compartment in the rear and improving the anti-sinking ability of the battleship. Every capital ship of Germany is precious, and it must not be lost to such a small weapon! ”

"Not bad. The German Navy was inferior in number of ships and had to give priority to survivability. William picked up the kettle on the stone table and poured half a cup of warm water into the cup; He shoved it in front of Tirpitz and said, "Alfred, take a drink of water and moisten your throat." ”

Tirpitz had spoken to the Kaiser for a long time, and his mouth was already dry; He glanced at the Kaiser gratefully, took a glass of water and drank it empty. A strong wind blows, and the garment turns; Looking at Tirpitz's two large, half-foot-long beards flying in the air, William couldn't help but wonder. He smiled and helped him flick the water droplets off his beard, and said, "You also mentioned the power system before, and compared with four years ago, Germany's craftsmanship in this area should have improved." ”

Tirpitz hastily wiped his mouth and nodded, "That's true." Thanks to the development of thermal hydraulics and the progress of boiler and steam engine technology, we have also achieved a significant improvement in power technology. In this design, we used the latest water-tube boiler; Compared with the round boiler that was originally widely used on battleships, the cross-section of the water tube boiler inside the tube is smaller than that outside the tube, so the flow rate of steam and water is greatly increased, and the steam generated on the heating surface is immediately washed away, so the thermal efficiency of the boiler is greatly improved. In addition, the mechanical efficiency of the new three-expansion reciprocating steam engine is also higher than that of the previous simple reciprocating steam engine, because ......"

William stretched out his right hand and interrupted Tirpitz's speech: "Alfred, I don't understand these mechanical principles you said, and I don't want to listen to these things, you just need to say what the design speed of this scheme is!" Tirpitz paused for a moment, then said: "Yes, Your Majesty, to put it simply, this ship is designed to have a power of 12,000 horsepower, and if nothing else, she will be able to reach a speed of 17.5 knots!" ”

Hearing this data, William suddenly let out a puzzled "um", his brows furrowed slightly, a look of surprise flashed in his eyes, and said, "Alfred, are you sure it's section 17.5, not section 16.5?" I distinctly remember that the Brandenburg had 10,000 horsepower to reach a speed of 16 knots with 11,000 tons of full load and displacement; And this battleship has a standing displacement of 13500 tons, how can it reach a speed of 12000 knots with 17.5 horsepower? ”

Tirpitz had anticipated this question, and replied: "The speed of the new battleship is indeed 17.5 knots. When I was studying the Chiyoda and Olympia, the designers found that the underwater line of our German warships was quite rough, and the power output of the power system was wasted to a large extent. The new battleship improved the line shape under water, and the resistance it experienced was greatly reduced; According to the physical formula P=f×V, the drag decreases, and the speed naturally increases. (This is not a fabrication by the author, the historical fact that the underwater line of the German capital ship is indeed not very good, and the strong power brought by the small water-tube boiler is wasted.) ）