Valley Emperor

The Navy has implemented the steam steel battleship plan for a long time, and has already implemented the three-phase shipbuilding plan, but they are only limited to the scope of the main ships, and the auxiliary ships have always been stagnant, and a large number of wooden ships are still used. Sail battleship.

The main reason is that the cost of steam-steel warships was relatively high in the early years, the price of coal was also high, the maintenance technology was not mature enough, and the maintenance cost was also high.

As a result, the cost of construction and use of steam-steel warships is higher than that of wooden sailing warships of the same tonnage.

Therefore, although the main ships have been replaced a long time ago, the auxiliary ships have not changed.

However, this situation has gradually changed in the past two years. The most direct reason is that, with the increasing domestic steel production, the price of steel used in shipbuilding has also gradually decreased. At the same time, with the maturity of ship-based steam engine technology , the cost is also greatly reduced. In the early years, a ship-based steam engine with only five or six hundred horsepower cost tens of thousands.

Now, at most a few thousand yuan can be done, and the performance is even better.

This also means that unless you have to pursue the latest technology, otherwise, the price of ships powered by steel structure steam engines made by mature technology that appeared in earlier years and now has dropped significantly.

At the same time as the cost of construction has dropped, the price of coal has also gradually dropped, and the cost of navigation has further dropped. At the same time, the Navy has accumulated enough experience in the use and maintenance of steam-steel warships, which is also more convenient and cost-effective to maintain.

The drop in construction cost and use cost gives the Navy the possibility of full replacement.

It's just the same sentence. The scale of the Datang Navy is too large. Even if it has been replaced on a large scale in the past two years, don't expect it to be completed within a few years.

The Navy is not in a hurry, and plans to take it slow.

What makes them anxious is the capital ship, or more precisely, the 10,000-ton giant ship.

The navy urgently needs to get a warship that can really stir up the whole empire and make a show of it.

The Navy is doing this, and the Army is not to be outdone. They are also actively promoting armed trains to put large-caliber artillery on the train. At the same time, they are also thinking about equipping more medium-caliber breech-loading rifled guns.

It's just that this plan is impossible to achieve in a short period of time.

The rear-mounted rifled guns are still in the research and development stage. There are a few prototype guns, but it does not mean that they can be put into actual combat. If they are used in a hurry, there will be old incidents of the Hebei number. .

But on the army side, they soon found their own big toy!

what is it then?

Steam chariot!

This is not a project like a tank of later generations. At the beginning of the project, the army planned to let the armed train get off the rails and run directly on the ground.

Li Xuan soon learned of the army's plan.

After looking at the army's plan, he was speechless.

This group of army generals is less reliable than himself. He also had the idea of ​​steam tanks in the early years, but his reason told him that this thing could not be done, so he just thought about it, and did not really make any steam tanks.

But these army generals were actually going to pull out an armed train several hundred meters long and several hundred tons heavy, and pull it down to fight on the plain.

It feels so silly!

But it's not good to hit those people in the army too much, so after thinking about it, Li Xuan pointed out the army. Don't do this armed train with hundreds of tons or even thousands of tons. It's better to be realistic and do it. A smaller steam chariot or something.

When Li Xuan gave such instructions, he didn't actually expect to be able to produce a real steam tank. Even if he did, it wouldn't have any practical value.

He just didn't want to hit the Army's enthusiasm too much, and on the other hand, it was also related to his selfishness.

If you can really come up with a steam tank, even if the actual combat value is not large, it will be good to show it off, and it will be fun to satisfy your own bad tastes.

The Son of Heaven has said so, the people on the army side are naturally omniscient, and the armed trains with hundreds of tons and thousands of tons will not be built, and they are going to build a small steam chariot first.

Whether it can be successful or not is a matter of the future. Anyway, the relevant research and development has already begun.

The army and navy have been messing around in the past few months. Li Xuan let it go at first, but later, in order to prevent them from going too far, he beat him a little or two.

Just play around, don't overdo it.

The Son of Heaven personally beat, the navy and the army stopped the tit-for-tat confrontation that lasted for several months, but it only stopped on the surface, and they were still intrigued in secret.

As for the navy, Guangdong-class battleships are also continuing to be built, and the new generation of 10,000-ton giant ships continues to be technically demonstrated, and construction is expected to officially start next spring.

However, the navy is still playing, but it is still relatively clear, so in addition to the plans for these two warships, the navy actually has another shipbuilding plan.

And this plan is the true shipbuilding plan of the Navy, and it is also the plan approved and supported by Li Xuan.

This shipbuilding plan is not a battleship, but a full four battleships!

These four warships have different sizes and functions, but in the parallel shipbuilding plan, they are all ready to be built in large quantities to serve as the main warships of the Navy for the next ten years.

The first to bear the brunt is the battleship plan, but this capital ship is not a giant ship like the Guangdong-class battleship or the 10,000-ton giant ship, but is actually the follow-up ship of the current Shanxi-class battleship.

The tonnage is not large, and the estimated displacement is only 4,000 tons!

The hull is also relatively conservative, and the power system and other subsystems are all mature solutions, in order to control the cost, so that a large number of construction and service can be built. Together with nine Shanxi-class battleships, they formed the main battleship fleet of the empire.

The ship's artillery is also ready to use a new type of front-loaded rifled gun, not the old front-loaded smoothbore gun, nor is it still in development. At the same time, in order to control costs, the Navy made a comprehensive choice, and finally chose the front-loaded rifled gun that has been successfully developed.

And it is also preparing to change the front-loaded smoothbore guns on the Shanxi-class battleships to front-loaded rifled guns one after another.

Even the steam engine is still a mature steam engine, so the speed is not too fast, and in order to control the cost of use, the sail steam engine is still used together.

The new battleship is expected to be purchased at a unit price of about 800,000 yuan. The first ship is named Guangxi. It is expected to start construction at the Qingdao Naval Shipyard in September, and then several other large shipyards in China will also start to build this class of ships. The Navy's first order is for four ships, and the second batch will have five ships. The order for these nine ships has already been determined.

As for why not to build more, it is naturally because it needs to continue to be upgraded in a few years!

After the nine Guangxi-class battleships are built and commissioned, the empire's battleship fleet will have 18 new battleships.

As for why only 18 ships are mentioned, and the Jiangnan-class battleships and the previous sail battleships are not counted, that is because as the navy begins to promote the 10,000-ton giant ships, the more than 1,500-ton Jiangnan-class battleships and older The wooden battleships of the 1980s really can't be called battleships.

When the navy was reorganized this year, the above-mentioned ships were already incorporated into the sequence of cruisers.

Among the four types of warships in the new shipbuilding plan, in addition to the Guangxi-class battleships, there is also a main ship, the improved Changan-class cruiser of the Hangzhou-class cruiser.

The ship basically continues the design of the Hangzhou-class cruiser. The standard displacement is 2,000 tons, but it is also equipped with front-loaded rifled guns. In other respects, it has not changed much, and even the cost is not much higher than that of the Hangzhou-class cruiser, because a few years have passed. Since then, many technologies have become more mature, and the cost has also dropped accordingly. The initial estimate is that the cost of a single ship is only 450,000, which is very cheap.

This Changan-class cruiser and possible minor improvements later, the Datang Navy is going to build dozens of them, because compared to the huge and expensive battleships, these cruisers are actually the main ships of the Datang Navy.

Whether it is controlling various sea areas or conducting naval battles, what the Datang Navy has used the most is not battleships, but cruisers and frigates.

Because the number of battleships is relatively small, in many sea areas, the Datang Navy does not have battleships, and can only use cruisers as main ships.

The third warship is a frigate, which is also an upgraded version of the previous cheap thousand-ton frigate~www.wuxiaspot.com~ In order to control the cost, the tonnage is still controlled at more than one thousand tons, and it is also equipped with front-mounted rifled guns. Other aspects Well, basically, you can save as much as you can, and everything is to reduce costs, because this kind of frigate also needs to be purchased on a large scale, and it is just dozens of purchases.

In addition to the above three ocean-going warships, the fourth warship in the Datang Navy's shipbuilding plan is an offshore warship. Its main tasks are to carry out coastal patrols, port and sea **** protection, and when necessary, enter rivers and lakes to carry out fight.

Therefore, the draft is relatively shallow and the tonnage is not large, but the firepower is not weak.

At the same time, because the number of equipment is expected to be very large, the cost is also strictly controlled. Many of the technologies used are not the latest technologies, but seem to be backward technologies. The only new technology is the front-loaded rifled gun.

The above-mentioned four warships all have several of the same characteristics. One is that they still use sails, and they are all battleships that use both sail and steam engines. The other is to strictly control costs and use mature and cheap technical solutions as much as possible, especially the price. Expensive steam engine units prefer to travel slower, but also use old-fashioned steam engines with mature and cheap technology to reduce costs. One is to fully equip front-loaded rifled guns to improve hit accuracy, thereby extending the effective range of naval guns. One is massive build gear.

The four warships with the above characteristics are the core shipbuilding plan of the Datang Navy in the following years.

Those 10,000-ton giant ships seem to be mighty and scary, but the high cost and immaturity of technology are destined to make them only toys in a short period of time, and it is impossible to build and equip them in large quantities.

Li Xuan knew about this, and so did the senior navy officials.

So they fought against the army, but they still did what they had to do, otherwise Li Xuan would have pulled them all down long ago.