New Ming Empire mixed in America

Chapter 322 The warships and artillery of the Orientals are our future

The battle at the port ended quickly. Song He was very good at blocking the port.

After two rounds of shelling sent the Mexican forts into the sky, the landing ship that was converted from the merchant ship of the National Defense Force quickly docked.

The first thing is to take over the Dutch ship that is undergoing overhaul, and the two British third-class ships.

Part of the purpose of Song He's visit this time was these battleships. Although they needed major repairs, if they were dragged back to the Royal Battleship Design Bureau in Jinling and converted into iron-armored battleships, they would become the main ships in the Royal Navy of the New Ming Empire.

For the current Xinming Empire, these battleships are very important during the transition period of the navy.

After taking over the battleship, the only ones left were the navy soldiers.

But it is a pity that the officers staying here are all low-level officers. The captain, first mate and others have already followed the fleet to unknown places.

In addition, Na San's fleet is still stationed off the coast of San Francisco, so Song He's fleet cannot conduct expeditionary searches yet.

But the port cities that block Mexico's Pacific direction can still have their hands free.

In the next few days, Song He was busy at major ports in Mexico, spending a lot of ammunition to help the Mexicans dismantle those old forts and docks.

After nearly two weeks of fermentation, the news of the failure of the British expeditionary fleet finally reached Europe.

This naval battle, which originally only attracted the attention of a small number of people, quickly made the headlines in London newspapers within one day.

'Shocked, the expedition fleet was so unbearable. One of the two commanders died and the other was captured...'

"The secret that I and the Eastern fleet have to tell..."

"The British navy soldiers expressed their capture: The food of the Orientals is really good..."

Of course, the above three items are obviously manuscripts transmitted from the Xinming Empire. It is unknown which author did not want to be named.

In addition to the above-mentioned news that obviously scorns and beautifies the Xinming Empire, there are more others such as:

'The defeat of the Royal Fleet of Great Britain and the situation in America...'

‘Yellow peril strikes again…’

'The duel of the ironclads, the defeat of Great Britain...'

With the report about the defeat of the Ironclad Black Prince in the Pacific, everyone in the British Admiralty looked not very good.

"Our defense-class ironclads should speed up. The intelligence sent back shows that the Easterners have at least six ironclads!"

An official of the Navy Department expressed his opinion. He was one of the people who strongly supported the shelving of the Warrior-class ironclads and the conversion of the Defense-class ironclads.

It was the persistence of these people that reduced the two Warrior-class ironclads, Warrior and Black Prince, which were originally the most powerful battleships in the world, to frigates.

But Isaac Watts, the chief naval architect of the Admiralty, expressed a different opinion.

"It can be seen from this Pacific naval battle that the old sail warships were promptly installed with steam-assisted power and iron armor, and they were no match for those Eastern ironclads."

"I think the Warrior-class construction plan should be restarted!"

Almost all officials chose to ignore Isaac Watts's speech.

The construction cost of the Warrior-class ironclad is really prohibitively high, and there are no measurable results.

"You have also seen the performance of the Black Prince. It was also unable to fight back when facing the Oriental ironclads."

Another Navy official stood up and retorted before coming up with his own plan:

"Although the Easterners' armored ships are powerful, they are not without their weaknesses, that is, their number of warships is very small, so I think we should expand the number of defense-class ships, and then rely on their numerical advantage..."

But before he finished speaking, he was interrupted by other officials, and the person who interrupted him was none other than the Minister of the Navy.

"When did our Royal Navy of Great Britain decline to rely on numbers to win?"

After finishing speaking, he threw a new piece of information on the conference table and said:

"Look at this evaluation data. The Eastern ironclads not only make all our naval guns obsolete, but also provide the direction for the future development of warships!"

"Their armored ships have obvious defensive advantages, and their guns can fire very fast, and their speed is far higher than any of our current warships."

Having said this, he looked at Isaac Watts and said: "I hope you can come up with the design drawings of a new type of ironclad ship. Its performance must exceed that of the Eastern warships!"

The current strategy of leading the British Navy is very conservative, preferring that other countries' navies or private shipyards try new technologies, and then rely on their own strong shipbuilding industry to achieve overtake.

But now the Eastern ironclads have opened a precedent for them, that is, relying on the ironclads, they can completely abandon all existing wooden sail warships.

In the last Pacific naval battle, it was demonstrated that the number of artillery pieces is no longer an important reason for a battleship's victory.

The Oriental's battleship only had four main guns, but the report showed that the Oriental defeated the Black Prince, which was also an ironclad ship, by relying on four ship-borne main guns.

And the Oriental artillery shells are even more frightening. The photo of the unique warhead that was sent back is regarded as a treasure by the development team that developed the Armstrong artillery.

"This is a cannonball that broke through 50 millimeters of iron armor and penetrated a 60 centimeter wooden ship hull."

"If it hadn't happened to get stuck in the steam pipe after piercing the boiler, maybe it could have also made a hole in the side of the ship on the other side!"

Holding the photo, Sir William Armstrong, the leader of Armstrong’s team, said excitedly:

"Although the Orientals on the west coast are brutal and dictatorial, they have designed a new type of cannonball that can easily penetrate iron armor!"

In fact, what he didn't know was that Sir Palliser had already begun to develop this kind of artillery shells at this time, and had already achieved initial results.

"We should imitate this kind of artillery shell. I believe that with this kind of artillery shell, our artillery can be sent to more warships!"

Armstrong was very excited. He seemed to have seen the Royal Navy equipped with naval guns that fired such shells and would beat the shit out of the Japanese or Orientals.

"Sir, I regret to tell you that the Admiralty is very dissatisfied with our naval guns. Some soldiers reported that after multiple firings, the tail bolt of the breech-mounted naval gun was cracked..."

A member of the development team gave Sir Armstrong some cold water.

Now Sir Armstrong has not established his own weapons company, he only designed the Armstrong artillery.

And now the patent for this artillery has been bought by the Royal Navy.

However, due to the "raw wheat incident" that occurred during the campaign, the British battleship equipped with Armstrong artillery was beaten by the Satsuma clan by relying on the old fort.

And the blame for the failure of this battle was passed to the Armstrong cannon, saying that there were frequent problems with the Armstrong cannon during the battle.

Several artillery pieces developed various problems (jamming, delayed firing) after firing 28 times in a row and were unable to continue firing.

What was particularly bad was that an Armstrong gun on the flagship Eurasian exploded, and the flying breech bolt caused heavy casualties to the gun crew.

Moreover, this accident caused the largest casualty of the British army in this battle.

Post-war investigations revealed that there were many problems with the manufacturing process of the Armstrong gun, especially the tail bolt and locking bolt.

The locking bolts on almost all the guns had cracks, and the locking bolts of some guns were broken. This made the British Admiralty doubt the reliability of the Armstrong gun.

Of course, in Sir Armstrong's view, this statement is simply the manipulation of some people with ulterior motives. Otherwise, why would everyone say that the artillery sold to the Americans is good?

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like