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Chapter 772 New Technology
However, this Swedish ship designer did not become rich or famous because of his genius sail design. The reason is simple: he was born at the wrong time.

It was the end of the 19th century, and the steam engine for ships had gradually matured, making sails a dispensable decoration. Before his design could be popularized, steel behemoths with large chimneys belching thick smoke were already galloping across the sea.

But his invention was not without value. Hong Tao used it 200 years in advance. In order to commemorate this genius designer, Hong Tao named the new sail Gothenburg sail. Don't ask who is Gothenburg, he won't answer even if you ask. The emperor is so willful!
The combination of the 18th century sailing battleship and the 19th century sail type in the early 17th century must have been extremely advanced. However, as a warship, it is far from enough to just run fast, turn flexibly, and have good seaworthiness. The most important thing is the performance of the weapon.

The Han class doesn't seem to have anything special in this regard. Compared with the Qin class, which has a displacement more than half lower, it still has only one full-length gun deck, and the number of gun ports has decreased instead of increased, with only ten on each side.

The muzzle was not ideal either, only slightly thicker than the 2-inch guns equipped on the Qin class, and seemed to be 3 inches, definitely not 4 inches. When Hong Tao, who participated in the design, saw it just now, he also complained in his heart.

It's like building a 5-ton battleship in World War II, with a top speed of 35 knots, a cruising speed of 20 knots, and a range of 10 nautical miles. The performance is amazing, but the ship is only equipped with 120 mm guns, which looks like two rows of toothpicks!

Of course, it only looks funny on the surface. In fact, these twenty naval guns are still very fierce. To know how fierce they are, we need to carefully study its various parameters.

It is true that the caliber of the newly cast naval gun is only 100 mm, which is equivalent to more than three inches, but the barrel is 3000 mm long, which means the caliber reaches 30.

In order to cast such a slender barrel, the Luanzhou Industrial Base spent two years to finalize the materials and process. The Haihe Machinery Factory also spent almost the same amount of time to make a longer processing equipment based on the original boring machine.

What are the advantages of a large caliber? High chamber pressure, high initial velocity, long direct firing distance, and strong penetration. These advantages are very suitable for naval warfare. For example, the trajectory of Spanish naval guns is very dispersed at more than 100 meters, and it is basically pie in the sky at 300 meters.

The 100mm cannons equipped on the Han-class battleships are much more accurate, but in normal sea conditions they can only maintain a 300% to % hit rate against small boats of the same size at a distance of meters.

If one wants to significantly increase armor penetration thickness and hit accuracy, simply lengthening the barrel is far from enough, so the craftsmen came up with the idea of ​​using a muzzle-loading rifled musket to improve shooting accuracy.

Then, they developed a large-scale scraping and grinding equipment from scratch, imitating the method of scraping and grinding the rifling of a musket. They scraped out two symmetrical rifling lines in the barrel, turning a breech-loading smoothbore cannon into a breech-loading rifled cannon.

But with the rifling, the original cast iron ball was not easy to use. So the Royal Gunpowder Factory began to manufacture new shells, but it took a short time, just over three months to successfully produce them.

What does the new shell look like? Anyone who has used the Yangyang Nine-style musket can tell at a glance that the shells of the new naval gun are a bit like the Minié shells used in muskets, except that the warheads are longer.

That's right, the Royal Gunpowder Factory did not develop anything new, but simply enlarged the Minié bullet used in muskets. If there is any innovation, it is that the bullet material and shape were changed from the lead badminton shape to a pointed cylinder.

In order to reduce the friction loss of the bullet on the barrel, three lead rings were added to the cast iron bullet. The bullet is slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the barrel, making it easier to load. When the gunpowder is ignited, the high-pressure gas will instantly squeeze and deform the lead rings, thereby sealing the barrel and forcing the bullet head to move along the rifling trajectory.

The flight trajectory of the rotating pointed shells is more stable than that of the spherical shells, and the penetrating power is also stronger. The spherical shells fired by the breech-loading smoothbore guns of the Qin-class warships have a very low hit rate at a distance of 300 meters, and even if they hit, they cannot penetrate the 30-centimeter-thick hull of the Qin-class warships. However, the round-headed shells fired by the breech-loading rifled guns of the Han-class warships can penetrate 500-centimeter-thick wet teak at a distance of 60 meters. If they hit the Qin-class warship, there is a certain probability that they can penetrate it.

Since it is so powerful, why not replace the Qin-class battleships' guns with new breech-loading rifled cannons? It's not that they don't have the money or the goods, but that they can't install them.

The breech-loading rifled cannon has the advantages of long range, high accuracy, and strong armor-piercing ability, but it also has insurmountable disadvantages: it is heavy and long.

A 100mm breech-loading rifled cannon weighs more than three 2-inch breech-loading smoothbore cannons, and its length reaches 3 meters. The Qin-class warship can neither carry nor fit them, and if a few can be stuffed in, the strong recoil may cause structural damage to the hull.

Therefore, the Han class, which has a larger displacement and a stronger structure, only has one gun deck, and the guns are reduced to the safest number. Even so, it cannot fire unilaterally, but can only fire in sequence.

How does this new type of artillery perform in actual combat? There is no data to support this. The 001 is the first Han-class battleship, and it has only undergone sea trials for more than a month and has no chance of actual combat.

Now Hong Tao will use it as the flagship and lead the long-distance fleet to the Cape of Good Hope. If he is lucky, he may catch up with the opportunity of actual combat, use data to verify that this set of naval warfare theory is correct, and at the same time dispel some opposing voices among the naval generals.

That's right, there are both positive and negative opinions in the navy regarding the weapon configuration of the Han-class battleships. Most battleship commanders still prefer to equip more artillery and win by firepower projection density.

Technical officials and craftsmen from shipyards and machinery factories believed that the new artillery was more powerful. One gun was worth three and could hit the enemy from a distance. So why bother rushing to a close range to spray each other?

"Your Majesty, although the navy has never been to the Cape of Good Hope, with the help of the sextant and the lunar calendar, we can always find it. Building a port is not a matter of a day or a night. With the war raging in the north, we can only feel at ease with Your Majesty in charge. If..."

Seeing the transport boat getting closer and closer, Yuan Keli seized the time to make one last effort, trying to persuade the emperor not to throw away the watermelon for the sesame seeds and leave the center to sail to Africa at the critical moment.

"Hush... Not many people know about the Cape of Good Hope. If you don't tell me, I will just go to the Luzon Special Zone and Da Nang Base for inspection. As for the construction of Kaipingwei, we have the experience of Fuyu City. We just need to follow the procedures. What's the difficulty?
The only thing you and Ziliang need to focus on is not to trust Bai Hong and Bushitu easily, prohibit anyone from approaching the army, always be prepared for the worst, and arrange for logistical supplies.

Leave the affairs of the court to Wang An, he knows how to handle them. I will be back in four months at the least, half a year at the most, all right, don't send me off. Wang Chengen, follow me aboard!"

Before Yuan Keli could finish, Hong Tao covered his mouth with his hand. They had agreed to inspect the southern region, but there was no Cape of Good Hope. That's right, this time Hong Tao was going to use his most powerful ability again, to make up a lie. He wanted to hide it from the whole court and secretly lead the fleet to sail to Africa.

(End of this chapter)