Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1008 Battleship
Although different reactionary academic authorities have pointed out various unforgivable shortcomings of front-loading rifled guns, especially the "fatal" problems of front-loaded guns: such as slow firing speed and large footprint, etc., the Planning Institute believes that , at the current stage, these shortcomings do not pose a danger of "life and death" for the Navy in combat.

Armstrong's breech-loading guns, which are currently produced in small quantities by the ordnance department and equipped with threaded bolts for coastal artillery, are not ideal in actual use, especially because the bolts are difficult to lock. In addition to being breech-loading, there is no obvious advantage over Dahlgren rifled guns in terms of loading speed, artillery range, and accuracy, but the complexity of production is much greater.

As for the mature and reliable broken thread bolt, it is bound to touch the rubber and asbestos that the industrial sector has always felt powerless-used to make air-tight plugs.

Although someone has proposed a new plan: the breech mechanism uses a transverse wedge bolt and a metal gas-closing ring.It does not require rubber and can be produced with existing industrial capacity.But again, the Dahlgren cannon wins out in terms of simplicity of workmanship and simplicity of materials.Although the Planning Institute finally approved the experimental manufacture of two guns using a transverse wedge bolt and a metal gas-closed ring bolt, it is obviously not ready to be mass-produced in the near future.

Sun Xiao, the representative of the Planning Academy, explained the reason why the Planning Academy chose the Dahlgren rifled gun at a meeting of the General Staff’s Armament Department. I don't think it would be a big problem to use rifled guns with far better range and accuracy than smoothbore guns on hybrid warships."

Behind the miserliness of the Planning Institute lies the bottleneck of production capacity in the iron and steel industry. Although the blast furnace and open hearth furnace of the Mariao Iron and Steel Complex have been put into operation, the production status is not satisfactory.The lack of qualified workers and administrative personnel seriously hinders further expansion of production capacity.

Lin Shenhe stopped the car outside the shed and put it on the frame.He saw an entire row of newly produced Dahlgren cannon barrels on a special rack in an open space. Although the barrels were cast iron, the surface of the barrels was regular and smooth. Lin Shenhe stopped his bicycle and touched the gun barrels. The lower body barrel and muzzle, and observed the rifling inside the lower body barrel by the light of the headlights.The technology in the mechanical and metallurgical departments is getting better and better.

The Ma Niao Industrial Complex is now able to produce high-quality pig iron ingots, and then use the reverberatory furnace to refine the molten iron, and can produce excellent-quality molten iron for casting guns-in the past, when Lingao did not have its own blast furnace, casting The imported pig iron used in the cannon was refined through reverberatory furnaces.

Farther away, there are piles of gun mounts, rails, and metal parts for installation, faintly shining with metallic light under the faint light.

When he walked into the shed, it was full of smoke, and there were drawings spread out on the table in the shed.Several people are discussing around the drawings.

Lin Shenhe greeted Zhou Ke and others.

"It's really inconvenient to load the front-loading guns." Although Zhou Ke is not a naval talent and doesn't know much about weapons, he only needs to go around the deck and look at the blueprints of the artillery and the deck to know the front-loading guns. The problem is now.

After firing the front-loading gun, the muzzle must be returned to the deck before it can be reloaded by the sailors. Therefore, the size of each exposed fort is larger than the length of the gun body and the gun mount, and the diameter of one gun position is at least 5 meters.The footprint is much larger than the breech gun.

"It doesn't matter, no matter how many problems there are with the muzzle-loading gun, it is also rifled. Besides, the gun is easy to modify." Lin Shenhe said, "Right now, the Dahlgren gun can be used, as long as it is enough."

"I can understand that the Planning Institute is trying to save money, but it should be considered one step at a time, and we can't always upgrade technology..."

Lin Shenhe smiled softly: "It's still one step away. Let's put it this way, if everyone's voices for grenades, rifled guns, and fixed-load rifles were not so loud, the Planning Institute would probably prepare 12-pound smoothbore guns and Mini rifles to conquer the world. "

"Good savings..."

"I can understand Wu De's thinking," Lin Shenhe said, "Everyone just wants to have fun, no matter how cool it is and what to do when it's over - he is saving money and making a revolution now."

"Yeah, I didn't expect you to have an overall perspective." Zhou Ke said.

"Where, where, where do I have an overall point of view, just talk about my impressions."

Zhou Ke said: "Let's go to the boat and check the situation." He picked up the phone and shook it twice: "Turn on the lights on the Navy Pier."

A few minutes later, all the electric lights on the entire Navy Pier were turned on, and the lights were bright.Although the intensity of the light is not enough to illuminate every angle of the ship, at least it allows people to roughly see the outline of the object, so as not to stumble.

Seen from the light, it can be seen that the surface of the hull is irregularly light black-this is the result of unskilled painters applying asphalt paint.The hull is made of lychee wood imported from Guangdong, Vietnam and other places, which is very strong.It can't be seen from the outside that the ribs and keel inside are made of iron-all are covered by the outer hull plating.

On the deck, three masts stand tall. The three composite masts used in the 1630 class are shorter than its prototype-the navy can't train so many sailors who can climb the mast and retract the sails on the mast, so its sails are simplified as much as possible, and steam Auxiliary engine retracts and releases sails.

The sails were all installed, the white canvas was rolled up, and the jute sails were criss-crossed, each one looking black.Lin Shenhe casually wanted to touch it.

"Don't touch it, it's covered with tar!" Zhou Ke hurriedly reminded him.

Lin Shenhe was startled, and quickly withdrew his hand.The same color tar was applied to the deck as well.Even so, it can be seen under the light that there are beautiful patterns on it.

"It's made of imported Southeast Asian teak." Zhou Ke said, "It's really luxurious."

On the contrary, Lin Shenhe didn't take it seriously - teak was not uncommon for warship decks in the past, and battleships and aircraft carriers in the 20th century still used this precious wood to lay their decks.

The layout of the 1630 class is in the shape of an island. The only chimney is located in the middle of the island. The black chimney is painted with a yellow marking band, which is the only bright color painting on the whole ship.

The base of the exposed turret has been installed at the location where the artillery is scheduled to be installed, and it is only waiting for the rails, gun mounts and barrels to be installed early the next morning.

Since the 1630 class is a sail-steam hybrid battleship, the existence of three masts severely limits the firing range of the artillery, and the front mast and the rear mast are just in front of the muzzle of the main gun.This makes it impossible for the two main guns to shoot in the front and rear directions—for consideration of the hull structure and center of gravity, the exposed turrets of the two main guns are located on the deck closer to the center of the ship.Therefore, the 0-degree firepower at the bow and stern is provided by the secondary guns arranged on both sides.The only way to maximize the firepower of the 1630 class is still broadside salvo.

Lin Shenhe knew the position of the artillery well: he was one of the participants when discussing the artillery layout.At that time, there was a heated debate on the artillery layout of the 854 and 901.The finally decided 854 modification plan still refers to the layout plan of the blueprint of this model, with slight modifications.

The layout of the artillery of the whole ship is that the bow deck and the stern deck are equipped with an exposed fort along the center line, and each is equipped with a 130mm caliber Dahlgren rifled gun.A gun profile is installed on the left and right sides of the bow, middle and stern of the ship, and one 1mm Dahlgren rifled gun is installed, with a total of 75 secondary guns.The auxiliary weapons are 6 typewriters, which are installed on the decks on both sides of the ship's side.The artillery adopts a circular track to rotate, a slide rail to retreat, a manual level machine and a height machine.

According to the destructive power test of black powder conducted by the navy and ordnance department on the shooting range, in order to effectively destroy the oak hull of the Galen ship at that time and at the same time take into account a certain bombardment power on the opposite shore, the charge of the shell should be about 2 kg of high-density suppressed black powder , with the loading factor, the grenade fired weighs 25 to 35 kilograms, corresponding to a caliber of 120mm or more, so a 130mm rifled gun was finally selected.

The exposed turret itself did not consider the installation of armor, and only used steel enclosures-only the ammunition depot in the entire 1630-level ship has a thin layer of steel protection. As for the boiler room, it is protected by the coal bunkers on both sides.

Usually the exposed fort uses a foldable canvas shed to shelter from sunlight and rain, and it is removed during combat.

"The 1630 level is still a bit small, otherwise we can use a fully sealed turret and install mechanized loading equipment." Zhou Ke said regretfully.

Lin Shenhe also felt the same - the small tonnage of the ship actually limited the size of the naval artillery.According to Lingao's current industrial capacity, it is not difficult to manufacture front-loading rifled guns with a diameter of more than 200mm.In addition, since the shells of the 130mm artillery are the limit of human loading, no matter how large the artillery is, a mechanically assisted loading system is required: this also requires sufficient space for the ship.

He walked into the bridge, where most of the equipment was already in place.However, some advanced nautical equipment is still "under development", and only the installation position is reserved.The nautical clock is still used and brought from the old time and space.He noticed that there was a special shooting command tower on the 1630-class bridge, and he climbed up to see that it was empty, with no fire control equipment except tables and chairs.

Zhou Ke said: The original plan was to install artillery observation mirrors, range finders, calibration devices and mechanical ballistic computers.

"What——" Lin Shenhe couldn't close his mouth in astonishment. He thought he was just planning to build a few "fire control equipment" such as telescopes and rangefinders. He didn't expect that there would be "advanced equipment" such as ballistic computers. "——It's really a thousand miles a day.

(End of this chapter)