Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2184 "Bianliang"

On October 1692, 10, Qingdao Port, the new factory area of ​​Dayuhe Naval Shipyard.

A huge keel has been laid in place, and a large group of technicians from Dayuhe Works is putting the finishing touches on it.This keel is a steel keel. Because of its astonishing length, it was not forged in Heishan Industrial Company like other steel keels. The equipment is cast, forged, and then laid in the dock.

The equipment of Dayuhe Naval Shipyard is relatively advanced.Its new factory in Qingdao Port has its own melting furnace for casting marine keels.In order to improve the strength of the keel, they also urgently ordered the latest model of "Blacksmith" series hydraulic presses from Heishan Industrial Company to forge and press the cast keel, which can be said to have cost a lot of money.

Fortunately, the Ministry of Communications also knew the importance of Dayuhe Factory's mission.They allocated a special fund of 20 yuan to support Dayuhe Factory in purchasing various equipment including hydraulic presses and high-precision machine tools across the country.The Navy is not far behind. Although their military expenditures are tight, they have already prepared 20 yuan in funds at the beginning of this fiscal year and invested them all in the Dayuhe Factory.However, this was not invested in vain, but as the pre-construction funds for the "Bianliang" ironclad ship, which is equivalent to an advance payment made before the construction officially started, and it can also be regarded as a disguised support.

Yes, now we all know.What is being built on the berth of Dayuhe Factory is nothing else, but the long-rumored "Bianliang" ironclad ship, a big guy with a tonnage of nearly 4000 tons.In terms of tonnage alone, this warship can beat many small warships from all over the world. After all, even in England, France and Spain at this time, they have just begun to study how to produce large warships over 2000 tons. Worrying about ship materials, he had to go to the New World to find a way.

Within 3000 tons, it is basically the limit of a wooden ship, and if it is bigger, there will be more than two difficulties.One is that it is difficult to find the kind of wood that is straight through the body and of suitable strength in nature. Even if it is found, it may not be long enough to build a wooden boat that is too large.The second is the problem of structural strength, which is even more unsolvable. After all, the strength of wood cannot be compared with steel. When a large ship sails in the sea, the forces on each part are very large. If the strength is not enough, the structure of the ship is easily damaged. , and even fell apart on the spot in bad weather.

These two difficulties basically doomed the displacement of more than 2000 tons to be the limit of wooden ships.No matter how big it is, it is neither safe nor economical (the maintenance cost is too high), it is better to use steel!People on the east coast have long realized this, so even though they had the technology to build large wooden boats of 2500-3000 tons, they did not try.They would rather build medium-sized wooden ships of more than 1000 tons. Ships of this size are the most economical and reasonable on the east coast where timber resources are extremely rich. The favorite format of transportation companies.

However, with the change of the guiding ideology of maritime transportation of the Ministry of Communications, the shipbuilding industry on the east coast, which has a strong color of planned economy, has accepted a new task, which is to build ships of larger tonnage to adapt to maritime transportation under the new situation.In fact, not only the Ministry of Communications, but even the members of the executive committee have issued similar instructions. The chairman of the executive committee, Shao Yaoguang, even inspected several major state-owned shipyards three times in a year, asking them not to think about resting on their merits and eating their boats. "Build until the end of time", but to speed up the research and development of large ships, and put them into practical use as soon as possible.

There is no way, although several major captains have sold some of their shares to private individuals, they are still controlled by the state after all, and in the end they can only allocate funds for research and development.As an old state-owned shipyard, Dayuhe Naval Shipyard has even heavier tasks, because it is mainly responsible for the development of "Bianliang" class iron-clad warships, and the technical content of this is quite large.Ship hulls, armor, marine machinery, artillery turrets, etc., are all new things to them, and they have no rules to follow, so they can only explore slowly by themselves.

The people on the east coast have basically determined the policy of using the above-grade Brazilian sumac as the hull.This kind of wood has high hardness and strong flexibility. It has always been the first choice for naval battleships, and this time is no exception.Before the construction of "Bianliang", Dayuhe Works had collected a large number of such ship materials and selected the best of them to ensure reliable quality.

Armor is the top priority of the "Bianliang".According to the requirements of the navy, the "Bianliang", which is equipped with iron armor in important parts, must have the ability to approach and shoot enemy forts, which surprised everyone.You must know that it is one thing to confront enemy ships at sea, but it is another thing to approach and bombard forts.Warships are limited by factors such as tonnage, size, mobility, and rate of fire. The power of artillery cannot be increased without limit, but the fort is different!Because it is fixed on land, as long as the enemy is willing and able to overcome factors such as cost and technology, its artillery power can become very powerful, big enough to inflict heavy damage on enemy warships sailing on the sea with one shot!

For the navy to make such a request, it is simply not giving people a way out!The naval guns approached and bombarded, destroying the enemy's forts and fortifications, and then?Is it convenient for the army to land?Please, the number of our country's army is limited, and there is a high probability that it will not be an expedition. Why do you set such a high standard?Helplessly, the people in the Navy did not let go and did not want to lower the standard. In the end of the lawsuit, the superiors actually supported the Navy, which hurt the cadres and workers of Dayuhe Factory very much.

In the end, they had no choice but to bite the bullet!Dayuhe factory urgently contacted the Qingdao Port Fort, and then sent people to dismantle several powerful coastal defense heavy artillery, and went to land for experiments, trying each piece of armor to see how destructive it is!For this reason, the engineers of the Tieling Heavy Industry Consortium are also stationed in the shipyard, installing pieces of forged iron armor on a special test bench, and then accepting the solid shells of the coastal defense heavy artillery at different distances such as 1000 meters, 500 meters, 300 meters, and 200 meters. Iron egg bombardment, to see if the iron armor can meet the requirements.

The results of the initial trials were disastrous.It's okay at a long distance, the armor is not too obviously damaged, but at a short distance, there are many problems!Not only did the iron armor often break and collapse, but the teak wood lining behind the iron armor was also often damaged, and the hull structure was also damaged to a certain extent. The engineers of the Tieling Heavy Industry Consortium were so anxious that their mouths were bubbling.

They kept telegraphing the latest bad test results back to the factory.For this reason, the factory was also under tremendous pressure. It dispatched key technical personnel many times to study the formula and manufacturing process of the new high-strength iron armor, and then pulled the urgently produced iron armor to Qingdao Port by train to repeat the previous test. .

Such experiments are undoubtedly extremely expensive!But there is no way, now this has risen to a political task, not only the people of the navy are staring at it, but even the members of the executive committee often intervene, causing the Tieling Heavy Industry Consortium to stop many other projects and concentrate on developing high-strength military products armor.

Last month, the latest iron armor produced by the Tieling Heavy Industry Consortium finally withstood multiple direct bombardments from 24-pound naval guns from 300 meters away.Although the people in the navy are still a little dissatisfied, they also understand that when things have come to this point, everyone has tried their best. If they forcefully demand more advanced armor, not only will the research and development costs be seriously overrun, but there will also be huge technical difficulties—materials Learning has never been a subject that can be accomplished overnight, it requires a lot of time and money - so they reluctantly accepted that this so-called "No. 48 Iron Armor" (meaning the 48th batch of military iron armor produced) can be used in "Bianliang" ironclad ship.

Similar to the Tieling Heavy Industry Consortium, the Black Mountain Industrial Company, which is involved in the steam power part of the complex warship, was also dragged to the brink.The "Popeye-22" steam engine specially developed for the "Bianliang" was directly rejected by the Navy on the grounds that the thermal efficiency was not high enough and the coal consumption was too high.The military representative of the Navy directly said that the design of Heishan Industrial Company was "careless". Because the iron-clad ship "Bianliang" has a double hull and uses a lot of steel (including military iron armor, turrets, etc.), the hull is very heavy. , so the coal bunker will not be too large.If the thermal efficiency of the steam engine is not high enough and the coal consumption is too high, it will be a challenge to the endurance of the ship.

I have to say that the people in the Navy have a point.Over the years, the power of various marine steam engines produced by them is sufficient, but most of them are simple and extensive horsepower piles, and there is actually room for improvement in thermal efficiency.No way, the boss of Heishan Industrial Company decided directly, abandoned the original design plan, and redesigned a special steam power system for the "Bianliang", which was the "Jiaolong-1" steam propulsion system they later launched.

The design of this brand new power system has been completed, and the real thing is being manufactured in the workshop of Heishan Industrial Company.Once manufactured, they will first install it on a large cargo ship that is about to be decommissioned, and invite representatives of the Navy to board the ship to evaluate its performance.Undoubtedly, there will be various troubles when new things first come out, and the trial production of "Jiaolong-1" will not be smooth sailing, but as long as the direction is right, it will only be a matter of time later.

And if the Tieling Heavy Industry Consortium and Heishan Industrial Company are in big trouble, then the life of the Northern Arsenal, which has a large amount of technical reserves in its hands, will be easier. They are responsible for the artillery system on the "Bianliang" ironclad ship. According to the requirements, the "Bianliang" will not be equipped with too many artillery pieces, but its naval guns, which are heavily protected by armored turrets, must be able to fire conical shells. In order to create more trouble for the enemy ships.

This requirement is not a problem for Northern Arsenal.They have already developed this kind of naval gun with a long range and high precision, and it has passed the navy's acceptance perfectly.They even went a step further and developed a shell equipped with a collision fuze.When this kind of shell falls on the deck of an enemy ship, it will explode directly, and then severely damage its hull structure, causing the enemy warship to quickly lose its combat effectiveness.People in the navy are very interested in this, and they have specially allocated funds to ask them to improve it, increase its power and reduce its cost, so that it can be used on a large scale in the future.

Many other units participated in the design and production of the "Bianliang" iron-clad ship, such as Modern Special Shipyard, Ping'an Coal and Steel Consortium, Dayuhe Arsenal, Dong'an Precision Instrument Company, etc., almost each of which received a Or multiple technology research and development tasks.It can be said that the development and production of the "Bianliang" ironclad ship is a large-scale scientific and technological research activity involving the participation of all members of the East Coast Heavy Industry Enterprise. No matter what the future of this warship is, at least it will have a huge impact on the progress of East Coast industrial technology. positive impact.

Although the research and development expenses will definitely be greatly overrun compared with the original, but compared with the progress of technology, this seems to be nothing.After all, there are many military technologies. Once they are proven to be reliable and mature, and then find a way to reduce the cost, they can be transferred to civilian use in the future.Of course, the members of the executive committee are well aware of this point.And this seems to be the main reason why they quickly approved the various technology research and development funds involved in the "Bianliang" ironclad ship!

(End of this chapter)