German Empire, Imperial Capital, Imperial Palace.

In Berlin in October, the sky is high and the sky is light, the wind is beautiful, and the scorching heat of midsummer quietly recedes, replaced by a cool autumn breath. The clothes are thin, the water runs and the hands are moistened, and it is a rare time of year for temperature. Kaiser Wilhelm II, dressed in grey casual clothes, reclined on a wide chair; The afternoon sun is like a match, cut into irregular shapes by the dense foliage.

This is the garden of the Royal Palace, and the scenery is beautiful, and a huge ginkgo tree has thick branches and towering clouds. The breeze blows, the branches shake the leaves and dance, and the golden leaves are like green Luo cover umbrellas, which are magnificent and majestic, and make people sigh and praise. When William was in a good mood, he would choose this place to meet ministers or important guests.

"Whew!" The autumn breeze is blowing, warm and cool; William's ears moved slightly, and when he looked up, he saw a tall figure walking out of the corner dozens of steps away.

The man came with gray hair and blue eyes, and a strong body; Dressed in a blue navy uniform, he suddenly looked fierce and full of momentum. But the most striking thing is the beard on his jaw that is longer than his hair: the goat-like beard is not enough, but it also forms a middle part, which adds a bit of comedy to his thick image.

This middle-aged general, whose beard was longer than Santa Claus, was Colonel Alfred von Tirpitz, then Chief of Staff of the Navy and the future father of the Ocean Fleet.

Seeing the expected person coming, William slowly sat up from his chair; When Tirpitz saluted him, he smiled and waved his hand, then pointed to the chair next to him, which had already been prepared for him, and said, "Alfred, there is no need for so much etiquette between you and me, sit down." ”

The court of the Second German Empire was far less taboo and rule than the mite-clear; Tirpitz thanked him and sat down honestly and unceremoniously in the chair. Facing William's slightly puzzled look, he coughed and said, "Your Majesty, I have come today to show Your Majesty the new first-class capital ship that my German Navy plans to build; It is also hoped that His Majesty will persuade the parliament to allocate appropriate funds for construction in next year's naval budget. The steel output of our German Empire this year is expected to exceed 3.6 million tons, and it would be a waste of so much steel production capacity if we did not build some capital ships. ”

As soon as he heard the words "new first-class capital ship", William suddenly perked up, and the look in his eyes became excited and fanatical. In 1887, Wilhelm, who was still the grandson of the German emperor, was stunned by the steel fleet of the British Empire at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the accession to the throne of his British grandmother, Queen Victoria. Since then, the monarch has made no secret of his desire and pursuit of a blue-water navy; For the sake of his naval strategy, he even did not hesitate to dismiss Bismarck, the greatest helmsman in German history!

Tirpitz moved the chair under him forward so that he could get closer to the Kaiser; He opened the black wallet in his hand, revealing a wad of paper full of line drawings and data. A unique scent of ink emanating from paper wafts through the air. After a pause, Tirpitz selected one of them and handed it to the emperor; William took it, and as soon as he glanced up, his gaze was like a magnet attached to iron, and he could no longer move an inch from the picture.

"Your Majesty, please see, what is drawn on this map is a new class of large battleships planned and built by my German Empire!" Tirpitz apparently went down and was well prepared, and without thinking about it, he explained the cause and effect of this design to the Kaiser:

"Not long ago, the Qing and Japanese countries had the first naval decisive battle of the steam age at Dadonggou. Among them, although the capital ships designed and built by the German Imperial Navy have been tested in actual combat and demonstrated their superiority, they have also exposed some minor shortcomings. After Hannagan sent back a detailed battle report on the Battle of Dadonggou, our naval designers analyzed it for half a month, and became more and more certain of the conclusions they had speculated before. This design was born out of the Brandenburg, but all its shortcomings will be remedied in the new design. It is 130 meters long, 23 meters wide, 8.4 meters draft at full load, and has a design displacement of 13,200 tons. ”

William sighed, still buried in the drawings without looking up, and said, "Go on, I think this design is superior to the previous one. ”

"Compared with the Brandenburg-class battleships, the biggest improvement of the new battleship is the complete use of smokeless gunpowder as a projectile pack, and the turret structure is realized." At some point, Tirpitz had a foot-long wooden stick in his hand, which arced through the air and lightly touched the drawing.

"In the past, the main gun design of battleships was a simple turret, and every time the gun completed a round of fire, it had to be turned back to a fixed angle in the center to achieve reloading, and the slow reloading speed obviously limited the time for a new round of fire from the main gun. In addition, the propellant pack using the old gunpowder will produce a large amount of black smoke after burning, and it will take about 2 minutes to completely dissipate. During this period, the gunner's vision on the turret was obscured by black smoke, and he was unable to identify the position of the enemy ship, so he was naturally unable to carry out the next round of firing. Therefore, in the past, there were two factors that limited the rate of fire of large-caliber guns: one was the structure of the turret with fixed angle loading, and the other was the propellant that would produce a large amount of black smoke after burning. ”

William nodded, as a senior naval controller, he still understood the basics.

"And on the new first class battleship, both of these problems will be perfectly solved." A faint smile appeared on Tirpitz's face, and he continued, "The development of material mechanics and hydraulics has solved the inherent constraints of the turret structure; In addition, the designers worked day and night to finally overcome this major technical difficulty in the turret structure. The new turret structure allows the gun to be reloaded at any angle, instead of having to rotate to a fixed 0-degree angle in the bow as before; In addition, the introduction of a new type of bomb loser greatly reduced the reloading time of the battleship-class main guns. With the rapid development of our German chemical technology, the mystery of the ablation problem of smokeless gunpowder is no longer the exclusive domain of the British after the arduous research of our German chemists. On the next battleship, we will equip her with three twin 40x diameter 283mm turret guns; The rate of fire of each main gun will reach a staggering 2 rounds per minute! ”

"2 rounds per minute?" William was taken aback, a little uncertain, and said, "Alfred, are you sure it's 2 rounds per minute, not 1 every 2 minutes?" ”

Tirpitz nodded, "It's 2 rounds per minute, which is a full 4 times higher rate of fire than the traditional turret structure in Brandenburg!" Speaking of which, thanks to His Highness Ettele, if it weren't for what he said to me at the beginning, I would have stopped the industrial department when he came up with a twin 240mm turret. It turns out that this group of guys in the industrial sector has a lot of potential to be tapped. Speaking of this, Tirpitz couldn't help but smile slightly.

Hearing Tirpitz say the phrase "His Highness Ettel", William's heart moved, and a delicate and handsome face involuntarily appeared in front of him. Thinking of his son, who had traveled thousands of miles, for some reason, William had a little worry in his heart. After a moment, he suddenly reacted and couldn't help but laugh at himself; How did I become like Queen Victoria and start to miss that erection?

At this thought, William shook his head and said, "Alfred, you think too highly of that guy Ettel. There was nowhere else he could get his hands on but that face, and what could he expect him to do with a child who was not yet 12 years old? The turmoil he caused a year ago was just a matter of luck when his blind cat happened to meet a dead mouse. Who would have thought that this guy's nonsense would change the design concept of the entire shipbuilding community in the German Empire? I don't want him to have much success in the future, as long as he can set an example for his brothers and not cause trouble for me, it will be a blessing. ”

William Yun said lightly, but his face involuntarily showed a hint of smugness, and Tirpitz saw it in his eyes and couldn't help but pout secretly. Half a year ago, after many inquiries, I already knew who was the initiator of the turmoil; Unable to bear to see the Emperor being used as an after-dinner joke inside and outside the palace, Ettel was determined to find a similar warship to prove the feasibility of the Emperor's "lead duck", hence the events that happened later. For this child, although the emperor did not give up to him on weekdays, glaring and reprimanding him at every turn, he was extremely grateful to him for this behavior in his heart; The Emperor is just talking about it now, and when Etel returns, it's no wonder that he doesn't take this child to the sky!

At this thought, Tirpitz decided to follow the emperor's actual thoughts and said: "Despite this, it is undeniable that His Royal Highness Etel has indeed made an indelible contribution to the development of our German navy. Not to mention his concept of large-scale, just his proof that the 'lead duck' under His Majesty is feasible is a great leap. We have reserved too much redundancy in the structural strength, which greatly affects the overall cost and performance of the battleship. If according to our previous design, the tonnage of this new battleship would have exceeded 16,500 tons, and now we can achieve the same effect with only 13,500 tons. In this way, at least 4.5 million marks of construction costs will be saved, which is already the price of a small cruiser of 3,000 tons. However, the significant reduction in the tonnage of the ship is also inseparable from the fact that we have adopted a low-freeboard ship type. ”

PS: Well, since you don't want to watch that kind of plot, I'll quickly get straight to the point. Tomorrow night the unit will have a dinner party, and as a newcomer, I am ready to get drunk. So, tomorrow's update will be after 12 o'clock, so let's get up on Saturday morning and check it out

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