Four-five-nine starts!

"Your Majesty, you're finally here."

"Your Majesty, boss?"

He didn't expect that as soon as he stepped into the door of the Navy Ship Design Center, McKinson immediately looked aggrieved, grabbed him and didn't let go, as if he had been wronged, so that Emperor Li had goosebumps all over his body, and hurriedly asked: "Mike, what's wrong?" You are the lord of the empire, who dares to bully you? ”

"It's him. (Full text reading, all in. (.i. Want. Wen. "McKinson viciously pointed at Long Guozhang, who had just run out from behind, and his eyes widened angrily: "He actually asked me to get him a garbage cruiser"

"Junk cruisers? , when will our country be rich enough to use cruisers to transport garbage"

"Nonsense, that's an advanced cruiser" Long Guozhang also showed no weakness, shouting at each other.

Emperor Li hurriedly rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was wrong, one is the commander of the navy, the other is the full-time chief designer of the navy, the two of them are eyebrows on weekdays, if it weren't for the fact that the children of the two are too young, it is estimated that they will be directly arranged into a family of children, why do they turn their faces all at once?

"Ahem." Emperor Li exerted the majesty of the emperor, coughed twice and drove away the designers and researchers who were covering their mouths and watching jokes, and then pulled the two into McKinson's office, and scolded with a smile: "One is the commander of the navy, the other is the chief designer of the navy, even if you don't look at it, now you are still scolding the street, see what you have become?" ”

Emperor Li raised Erlang's legs and presided over justice: "Say, what is the matter?" ”

"Your Majesty." Although McKinson has lived in China for more than ten years, his Chinese is not very neat, and he was preempted by Long Guozhang when his mouth was opened, and he took out a stack of photos and pointed at him and said: "You come to judge the judge, I kindly showed him the photos and materials of the British cruiser, and he was good, and after looking at it twice, he said that it was garbage, and said that I was collecting garbage."

"I'll put up with that." Long Guozhang glared at McKinson fiercely again, and continued to complain: "But you want to say that the garbage should also take out good things for me to see?" This guy even ignored me, saying that it was highly confidential and must not be disclosed."

"It's a high secret, this is set by His Majesty the boss personally, do you have an opinion?" McKinson triumphantly pointed the finger at Li Mo.

didn't expect things to detour to him later, Li Mo couldn't cry or laugh, grabbed the photo that Long Guozhang took out, and asked, "Where did it come from?" ”

"Just got it back from the Armstrong Alvik shipyard in England, and we sacrificed an intelligence officer for this." Speaking of the loss of the intelligence officer, Long Guozhang also sighed, but it was precisely because of the loss for the first time that he felt that these photos were of great value, otherwise Britain would not have adopted such a strict secret method.

Li Mo was also secretly surprised, in history, Britain's naval secrecy before World War I was almost blank, otherwise there would not have been a farce like a joke of a few ordinary people mixing into dreadnoughts and proposing to buy them, so when he heard that the intelligence officer was sacrificed, he was also taken aback, and looked at the photos carefully.

The photo was taken from a good angle, you can clearly see the shape and size, compared with the person next to you, the calculation of length and width can be roughly calculated between 17,000 and 20,000 tons, this displacement is not unusual at this moment, but the four turret reserved openings in the bow and stern can be seen that the British have also solved the knapsack turret technology, and began to be used in a generation of warships.

"Could it be that Super Daring Do is going to show up early?" Looking at the four big holes, Li Mo racked his brains and didn't come up with the British warship in 1907 that adopted this layout, but the four chimneys made him feel familiar, and he couldn't help asking: "Is there any data?" ”

Guozhang immediately took out a small piece of paper and said: "The intelligence officer visually calculates that this warship is about 172 meters long, but the width is only 24 meters, which is relatively slender, so it is inferred that it is a type of cruiser, with a tonnage of about 17,000 to 20,000, and we checked the allocation records of the British Navy Boiler Factory, showing that 36 oil-fired boilers have been transported to the Alvik Shipyard in the near future, and they should all be installed on this warship, so we estimate that so many boilers, must be in order to enhance the speed, Mike calculated before, According to the current reciprocating steam engine technology in Britain, it should be close to 40,000 horsepower, and the speed is predicted to be about 25 knots. ”

"And judging from the size of the turret, it should be a twin 305-mm naval gun base, the layout is learned from our knapsack, and if the rangefinder can be installed, the combat capability has been greatly improved."

"In addition, the intelligence officer also roughly measured the armor, from the current point of view, the thickness of the armor is not very large, the main armor belt of the waterline is about 100-127 mm, the turret is about 180 mm thick, the conning tower is 254 mm, and the horizontal armor is also laid, and the thickness reaches at least 60 mm"

"From the point of view of armor, we think that it is an armored cruiser, and there is a great emphasis on speed, although we have not yet obtained specific model data, but according to overheard conversations, this is Fisher personally proposed and led LinkedIn designers to develop a type of ship, called a battle cruiser, the British believe that it can suppress all the current first-class armored cruisers in the world."

"Invincible-class battle cruiser" Emperor Li blinked, in fact, halfway through hearing it, he was basically sure what kind of warship this was, so after listening to it, he immediately stretched his waist easily, Fisher deserved to be a naval fighter after the British, and in the case of the dreadnought being behind, he still gritted his teeth and finally came up with his so-called "speed is the best defense" theory, and made the battle cruiser as he wished.

However, it is really an exaggeration to suppress all the cruisers in the world, except for speed and naval guns, other aspects are simply not enough in front of the Dalian-class heavy cruisers.

And the invincible class in history is different, the invincible class adopts its own first knapsack turret design, so that the ship layout can be more compact, and the firepower is also uniform, but from the number of 36 boilers, Britain still has not broken through the steam turbine technology, otherwise it will not be equipped with five more boilers than in history, this is because the big disadvantage of the reciprocating steam engine is that the utilization efficiency of steam is too low, so the large speed is one less section than history.

Originally, he thought that Fisher's battlecruiser would be stillborn without a steam turbine, but he didn't expect that people would still use the old-fashioned power combination to force up the speed, but then again, this is also due to the fact that he was the first to introduce the knapsack turret, otherwise relying on the old layout of putting the two main guns in the middle, it would not have freed up so much space.

However, the lack of power still had a great impact, and the excessive pursuit of speed made the main armor an inch less than the historical invincible class, although this could save more than two hundred tons of weight, but it undoubtedly greatly reduced the already low survivability again. (Full text reading, all in. (.i. Want. Wen. Learning Network)

It is no exaggeration to say that after adopting the full-body tube sleeve technology, internal chrome plating, and improving the strength of the barrel, the first-generation L52/152 mm naval gun used by the Yangtze River-class light patrol can use cap-type armor-piercing shells to penetrate the opponent's main armor at a distance of 10,000 meters, and the speed of 31 knots is beyond the reach of the opponent.

However, this is only compared to himself, after all, the power is the existence of the big * UG brought by his reincarnation, with the power of nearly 80,000 horsepower of the Yangtze River class, if it is to be used for the invincible class of 20,000 tons, it is nearly 28 knots

However, the emergence of the invincible class is not a bad thing, for countries such as Germany and France, they will find themselves lagging behind again, and Britain will also think that it has once again achieved a technological advantage over China, and will begin to encrypt the sound of clanging bells that permeate the world.

Seeing that Li Mo didn't speak for a long time, Long Guozhang thought that he also felt threatened because of the appearance of this type of warship, and hurriedly said: "Your Majesty, I suggest that you should immediately let Mike come up with countermeasures Although the armor of this kind of battle cruiser is insufficient, our capital ships can't catch up with it at present, and if you rely on light cruisers, the power of naval guns is seriously insufficient, so." ”

"So you're going to make garbage?"

Before Long Guozhang finished speaking, he was choked back by Li Mo's horizontal glare, and said, "Do you think that when the military funds are in hand, you can build thirty or fifty ships as you wish?" Fill up the Pacific Ocean first? ”

"Huh? How does the emperor know my thoughts? Long Guozhang was surprised, he was not stupid, he had already seen that the defense of this thing called a battle cruiser was too poor, so today I came not so much to introduce McKinson to the warship, but to put pressure on McKinson and let him take out something earlier, but he didn't expect to hit Li Mo squarely.

Li Mo didn't know what Long Guozhang was thinking about, this guy was more active in picking vegetables in his bowl than anyone else, but now he had 170 million US dollars, plus the proceeds from the sale of ships, he had already raised 200 million US dollars.

Moreover, Duan Fei also took out the proceeds of the 100 million US dollars of heaven bulk sales over the years, this demon he made is now the secret income of Huada, most of which is subsidized to the current Ministry of Intelligence and the International Security Agency, which also enables these two institutions to swell quickly without relying on state finances, and later he included it in military control in order to monitor whether the Ministry of Intelligence will abuse the money.

The surplus of the two major intelligence services has been pressed by him, and even if the domestic economy is in urgent need, it has not been used, just for today's needs.

This is a criminal 100 million US dollars, although it is currently obtained from abroad, but he cannot guarantee whether it will be introduced into the country, Hua Liguo announced the prohibition of drugs at the beginning of the country, but in fact, limited by the level of medical treatment, opium is still being used for medical treatment, and it is not completely banned, but this situation will change this year, the Ministry of Science and Technology has made morphine, so Li Enfu has proposed in this year's work plan to comprehensively ban drugs, including his own Heavenly San.

Therefore, in the future, this secret income is destined to be completely cut off, because with the improvement of the country's finances, the ** of intelligence construction has also passed, and it can basically guarantee their needs, and it can only be a scourge to keep it.

But now, it is undoubtedly a big tonic, 300 million US dollars, a full 420 million blue coins

Moreover, it is a huge amount of money that does not rely on the treasury and does not burden the country, and now with the emergence of the invincible level, it is time to invest it.

Li Mo put aside the Long Guozhang and asked with a smile, "Mike, is your design completed?" ”

Hearing that Li Mo finally agreed with his idea, McKinson, who also thought that the invincible level was a garbage design, immediately became excited, and pulled the two of them towards the confidential showroom of the design department.

This is a big office, Li Mo has been here, there are all kinds of drawings and large-scale ships, when he walked in with the two of them under the leadership of the security personnel, Long Guozhang, who came in for the first time behind him, drooled.

In the huge exhibition room, there are all kinds of large-scale models everywhere, from the coast guard ships equipped by the National Guard, to large supply ships, from destroyers to cruisers, and then to battleships, and even a model of an aircraft carrier that looks like a Nimitz in the future, but it was not made by the design department, but Li Mo was curious to make it out and put it on display at home, but he didn't expect McKinson to come back after seeing it last time and also imitate one that said he wanted to test the data.

Many of the models on display here have worn out their skins, which are the result of a long period of experimentation with the pool, indicating that they have been validated.

Hundreds of design and experiment teams are designing and experimenting with all kinds of ships almost day and night, and with this huge showroom, it is enough to see how wise it was to recruit McKinson and support him as the chief designer.

Especially after the Jinghai class, he began to follow Li Mo's train of thought in an all-round way, pestering Li Mo to explain the future planning of ship development when he had time, absorbing experience and ideas beyond this era, and finally after the establishment of the design institute, he immediately took out those ideas for preliminary experiments and design demonstrations, which has a naval ship design institute that is not lost to any country today.

In the past few years, there have been hundreds of engineers who have gone out from here and entered the major shipyards, which not only drove the shipyard's own creative ability, but also enabled Hua to develop a small scale, but efficient and far-sighted technical team.

McKinson, who has contributed a lot, is not satisfied, although many of the designs and models in it have passed the experiment, but they have not yet entered the engineering, mainly because the industrial capacity has not yet been reached, so his big dream has changed, from the original to design the world's strongest battleship, to build all the ships here.

After passing through the chaotic outer room, McKinson took the two to the inner room, when he turned on the electric light, several huge models immediately appeared in front of him, looking at the model, Long Guozhang's saliva flowed out directly, and roared: "Mike, you still have the face to let me invite you to drink, there are so many good things hidden, why don't you let me see it?" ”

"Because, it is." McKinson also rubbed his hands excitedly and spit out two words: "Top Secret"

"Dry"

Long Guozhang was completely speechless, every time this guy came to the navy to investigate, he dragged him to ask him for a treat, but he didn't expect to leave a top secret, there was a sentence that did not match the rules, he was the commander of the navy

Li Mo ignored Long Guozhang, who was about to go crazy, walked to a large triple warship, his eyes were bright, and he pointed and asked, "Is this it?" ”

"Yes" McKinson said excitedly, "Your Majesty, you are simply God, you know?" When the dragon took out those photos and told me the data, I thought of the battle cruisers that you proposed ten years ago, and I was crazy at that time, God, how the hell did you know that there would be such a warship? ”

"What? Ten years ago, "Long Guozhang jumped up suddenly, God, is the emperor really a god?" I discussed the battle cruiser with McKinson ten years ago, how did I not know about it?

No wonder both of them said that it was rubbish, it turned out that they started researching it ten years ago, and then looking for countermeasures

Emperor Li was also a little vain, pretending to wave his hand mysteriously: "It's not worth mentioning, it's just an accidental idea, let's talk about the design." ”

Accidental design.

Long Guozhang was speechless, and listened intently to McKinson's explanation.

The one in front of me can be said to be an upgraded version of the Dalian class, a strong version of the British battlecruiser, or simply a battleship with high speed.

The weakness of the battlecruiser Li Mo was very clear, so he never considered building it, and with the unique technology in terms of power, he admired the fast battleships of later generations.

Of course, the current power is not enough to push a 40,000-50,000 ton battleship to a high speed of more than 30 knots, but the third-generation power combination that appeared on the Yangtze River class has given him the hope of increasing the speed of the existing battleship again.

When the battleship meets the battlecruiser and has an advantage in speed, then the result is self-evident, so Li Mo had already quietly asked McKinson to design a generation of capital ships as early as a few years ago, when the third generation of power had progressed.

The waterline is 206 meters long, 27 meters wide, and has a draft of 92 meters.

The standard displacement is 23500 tons, the normal 25500 tons, and the full load reaches 26800 tons.

As the capital ship, the firepower is naturally not weaker than now, but although the 356 mm naval gun has been tested, but to install the 356 mm naval gun, the displacement will exceed 30,000 tons, in that case, the speed will drop a lot, not to meet the requirements of the war cruiser, fortunately, the armament department last year came up with a full triple L50/305 mm naval gun, which solved the big problem that plagued McKinson.

Compared with the L45 main gun, the L50 is not just a simple upgrade of the lengthened barrel, it can be said that it is almost redesigned, it abandons the old threaded bolt, adopts the transverse structure bolt, and increases the number of rifling from the original 68 to 76, especially after using the three key technologies on the 356 mm naval gun, the barrel life has been increased from the current 150 rounds to 220 rounds, and the life of the medicine room has also been enhanced.

From the very beginning, this gun was designed to match the shells, not only the large elevation angle was increased to 45 degrees, but also two types of 510 kg heavy armor-piercing shells and 430 kg high-explosive shells, the large range reached 35,000 meters, and the rate of fire was also significantly increased, with a rapid rate of fire of 3 rounds per minute and an average rate of fire of 24 rounds per minute.

The lengthening of the barrel, electroslag refinery and chrome plating technology have completely changed the strength and toughness of the barrel, and the improvement of the inert propellant has further strengthened the muzzle kinetic energy. According to experiments, at a distance of 25,000 meters, it can penetrate 230 mm of Krupp armor that is commonly used in various countries, and if the distance is shortened to 17,000 meters, then its penetration depth will reach 330 mm, and within 12,000 meters it will reach 400 mm

Hua's attainment in large electric motors also ensures that the rotation speed of the heavy turret can reach 5 degrees per second, and the pitch can also reach a high level of 12 degrees per second.

What makes McKinson excited is that although the barrel of this gun has been lengthened, but in the case of unreduced defense, the weight has not increased but decreased, compared with the weight of the L45 type used in the Jilin class has dropped from 960 tons to 890 tons, which is a full 70 tons of improvement, and when the three-door triple assembly is used, it can save 210 tons for the entire warship.

This saved weight allowed McKinson to calmly arrange the superstructure and other firepower, such as the secondary gun, which was increased from four twin L47/130mm rapid-fire guns to six, and eight deck-mounted 76mm high-level rapid-fire guns, which made it more powerful to defend against small, high-speed destroyers.

The 37-mm machine gun, which has been used in Huazao and has been improved many times, has also been greatly adjusted by the equipment department this time, from the six-seat double-mount of the Dalian class to the six-seat quadruple load, so that the firepower is encrypted.

In addition, McKinson also installed eight twin-mounted Mita Viper machine guns as a means of defense against air and torpedoes.

In order to manage and distribute so many naval guns, the fire control system has also been upgraded, the combination of ballistic mechanical computers and naval gun gyroscopes, plus two sets of 18-meter-long optical rangefinders, and the addition of several 12-meter-long secondary gun rangefinders, so that the fire channel and accuracy have been greatly improved.

After the major upgrade of firepower, speed became a key issue, even exceeding the requirements for firepower, but at this time a very critical technology was successful.

Turbocharging technology

This is a technology proposed by Li Mo very early, later generations of modern destroyers have this set of equipment, in the case of reading the drawings and repaired by hand, imitation design is not a big problem for him, the naval engineer, from 1894 began to develop the steam turbine when he came up with the preliminary design and drawings, but its requirements for processing are too high, especially the impeller curvature requirements, the equipment department has not been able to break through, until a few years ago with no wire from Germany in exchange for high-precision machine tools and processing technology, in the last year success.

Although there are not many senior skilled workers in China, but after absorbing foreign skilled workers, and after ten years of self-training, there are still some good hands, in fact, the traditional Chinese Confucian peace of mind, and the unique soft feel, so that the country has never lacked skilled craftsmen, otherwise Lu Ban is a foreigner.

What they lack is only experience and lack of understanding of high-tech processing equipment, in this regard, anyone must admire Li Mo, he uses a combination of theoretical learning, foreign teacher guidance, and hands-on operation, and sometimes even personally goes into battle to demonstrate to the technicians, and then scrapped thousands of tons, even Tang Xiao called it a waste of materials in history, and finally trained a group of senior technicians.

Compared with Europe and the United States, their number is still very small, but with the arrival of specialized technical schools and more and more highly educated young people, the scale is gradually growing, and it is with them who work hard day and night to make breakthroughs in the increase in turbines and the all-important star engine at the same time.

Compared with the star engine, which still has shortcomings and may have to drag on for a while in actual use, the turbocharger is quite successful due to its high design.

Although the turbo can increase the horsepower, the real effect is that it can greatly increase the starting speed, and the power of a modern class of tens of thousands of tons in later generations can accelerate from 0 to 32 knots in less than 2 minutes, which can be seen

Now the technology has not yet reached that kind of metamorphosis ability, but as a weakened version of the high-speed battleship, the maneuverability requirements for acceleration and high speed are very high, so the emergence of turbocharging has completely solved this annoyance, and after cooperating with a large area of cut rudder, the maneuverability can even be comparable to the Yangtze River class, and the starting speed is comprehensively surpassed.

Therefore, McKinson almost copied the power combination of the Yangtze River class, but installed two more Loongson III oil-fired boilers, so that the total power of the ten boilers reached 88,000 horsepower, the maximum speed reached 28 knots, and the endurance reached an amazing degree of 12 knots/15,000 nautical miles for the first time.

Compared with the British battle cruisers, which were filled with 36 boilers, McKinson was unique in power, which made McKinson think that he was more than calm, but he didn't expect to encounter ** trouble in protection and armor.

Power is not unlimited, at no time the designers have never completely solved the contradiction between speed, firepower and armor, because the distance of the sea battle is getting farther and farther, the requirements for horizontal armor are getting higher and higher, so Li Mo strictly requires that without reducing the main armor, focus on strengthening the horizontal protection capability, the horizontal armor of the key parts should reach at least 100 mm, this problem made him almost cry at that time.

The only way to increase the thickness of the armor was to increase the displacement, but when the displacement was increased and the speed had to be reduced, he could only seek advice from the real "design" master in his mind.

Li Mo couldn't solve this problem, but put forward the method of appropriately reducing the thickness of the main armor belt and using inclined laying, and for the first time put forward the requirement that no comprehensive protection is needed, but key protection, that is to say, the weight of the armor can be reduced in some secondary parts, and the key parts such as ammunition depots, oil tanks, power cabins and so on can be strengthened.

Historically, this concept was put forward by the United States after Jutland, and Li Mo was just borrowing flowers to offer Buddha.

Having received the "precious" advice, McKinson immediately began to study that in fact, the main armor inclined laying had already been tested in England, but on a small scale, and the design department also gained confidence from the experiments with the frontal inclined armor of the main turret. According to the experiment, at a distance of 15,000 kilometers, the main armor laid at a 15-degree inclination angle and the 320 mm armor laid vertically are almost equivalent, and then he found the naval artillery and armor materials department after repeated experiments, and finally adopted Li Mo's suggestion to lay the main armor belt at an inclination angle of 17 degrees, which not only saved a lot of weight, but also stretched the main armor belt up and down by half a meter for the first time, enhancing the defense capability of the whole ship.

After adopting the key protection idea, McKinson and the design department almost redesigned the hull, first of all, they had to ensure that the non-important parts would not lead to serious losses after being hit, which required the watertight cabin to play a key role, and a large number of non-essential armor were moved to the key parts, the balance of the hull also needed to be recalculated, and then it was also necessary to readjust the position of the five high-power generators to ensure that they could be discharged quickly after entering the water.

In addition to the 100 mm thick horizontal armor, the front of the ship's gun and the command tower reached 310 mm, the underwater torpedo protective wall reached 120 mm, and several important compartments such as power and ammunition were added, and an 80 mm thick layer of armor was added

And his overhaul was not in vain, and later this kind of protection design even became the standard for China's subsequent capital ships at all levels.

After listening to McKinson say that all systems have been designed and experimented, and after reaching the conditions for starting construction, Li Mo is also very happy, so to speak, in addition to radar, the naval gun follow-up system that represents the high ability of machinery, the four main technologies of anti-roll fins, and electric fire control, the technologies that Master Li, the BB party, knows are almost exhausted, and the future is only to improve and improve, and those four items are not up to the current technology, and the other two will take at least a few years. Therefore, this class of battleships is almost the extreme of China's industrial capacity

And this will be the first real domestically built battleship, the previous Jilin class and Dalian class have some foreign accessories, but after several years of training, all systems can be self-produced, so this time it will be completely domestic

However, the cost of such excellent equipment is also extremely amazing, according to McKinson's calculations, even if VH steel, electric welding and other time-saving and cost-saving technologies are used, its low cost is about 16 million blue coins per ship

This price made Long Guozhang gasp, you must know that the previous intelligence showed that the cost of the British battle cruiser was only about 1.7 million pounds, about 12 million blue coins, an increase of one-third

According to the Chinese tradition, if the construction is basically four, it will be a full 64 million, and the 420 million just gotten will be bitten in the blink of an eye.

And this is still the first batch, according to the schedule, the second batch to wait for half a year later

At this time, he really understood that in order to temporarily abandon the strategic point of the Nicaraguan Grand Canal with Li Mo, he would also get a sum of money from the United States, and this kind of arms race is not at all something that ordinary countries can afford to play

Looking at this class of warships specially designed to suppress the future war patrols of various countries, and it was also the first real fast battleship in his dream, although it hurt, Li Mo was still determined.

Start

According to the naval regulations, the battleship uses the name of the province, and the heavy cruiser is the name of the city, but these four ships are definitely battleships because of their special design goals, although they must be battleships, but their speed is greater than that of the British battlecruisers, so Li Mo thought for a long time and wrote down the names of four municipalities directly under the central government that were directly under the central government and had the same status as the province.

Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Hong Kong.