Take the arsenal to Da Ming

Chapter 78 Armed Merchant Ships
As Tangning himself said, he will not forcefully interfere with the affairs of the chamber of commerce.

After all, he has already formulated the general policy and direction. As long as nothing is out of line, Tangning is willing to let the chamber of commerce develop freely.

Besides, the businessmen headed by Cheng Gong are a group of people who are really proficient in business in this era, and they must be better at doing business than Tang Ning.

Tang Ning's only advantage is that he knows some business concepts of later generations, but it is only limited to theory, after all, he has never actually done business himself.

And these later generations of business philosophy, he also instilled in Xiaohuan bit by bit.

Xiaohuan is now a relatively important member of the chamber of commerce. I believe she will gradually put these ideas into practice, and then truly test them again, discarding the bad and keeping the good.

Tang Ning tried her best to let go of the chamber of commerce, but this didn't mean he would be free, but instead suffered a lot.

Because Mr. Tang has never crossed the ocean in his previous life, he has to cross the ocean every day these days, making himself want to die.

There is no way, for the future ocean trade of the Chamber of Commerce, Shunfeng Escort must develop sea power.

So during this period of time, Tangning personally participated in and planned the construction of the sea power.

Being on the coast, as long as there is silver, ships are not difficult to get.

Now that the Chamber of Commerce has been established, as long as Tangning says a word, there is no problem with a hundred or ten ships.

However, how to arm these ships reasonably requires a lot of exploration.

At present, the concept of battleship and battle line has already taken shape, but it has not been formally proposed, and it is still in a certain state of evolution and ambiguity.

Therefore, the combat forces at sea are still dominated by armed merchant ships and warships, and the main weapons are red cannons.

Then the biggest difference is the different structures of the ships of various countries, through different types of ships, with different numbers of artillery.

For example, some countries take the route of large-scale, large ships, and then build several decks and equip more artillery, such as the Spaniards.

And some countries pay more attention to flexibility and quantity, such as the Dutch.

As for the Ming Dynasty, it seems that it has been abandoned by the times, and the ships tend to be smaller. The large warships are only 400 materials, but the displacement is about 130 tons.

There are not many cannons equipped, and most of them have less than ten cannons.

Western warships of the same period, because they had two or even three decks, had dozens of cannons, and it was not uncommon for them to have more than a hundred cannons.

Even the Dutch, who took the miniaturization route, took out a ship at random, and it was much larger than Daming's ship.

The main reason why Zheng Zhilong won the Liuluowan naval battle between Ming and He 11 years ago was that he had an absolute advantage in numbers, which was ten times that of the opponent.

Moreover, the number of Dutch warships is too small, only nine, and they are just small three-masted sailing ships equipped with more than a dozen artillery pieces.

Under this premise, winning is not worth boasting too much.

After all, the Far East is too far away from Europe, and this distance is still too dangerous for sailing ships.

It is really not worthwhile to risk such a large warship that he relies on to dominate so far. After all, the main competitor is still in Europe.

If you can't gain a firm foothold in Europe, no matter how many places you conquer, the gains will outweigh the losses.

Because of this, the military forces invested by European countries in the Far East are limited, almost all of which are small warships.

Therefore, the British, the Portuguese and the Dutch were successively defeated by the decadent Daming Navy.

Although the sea power of the West has already surpassed that of Ming Dynasty by a lot, Tangning still does not want to imitate the way of the West to build her first navy.

Is it interesting to install dozens or hundreds of red cannons on a warship?He, Downing, had no shortage of cannons in his arsenal.

It's just that there is no special naval gun, so it needs to be tested.

It depends on which types of artillery are equipped, so that one's fleet can have a strong combat effectiveness under the premise that the number cannot be guaranteed.

There was no way around this, after all, Tangning's foundation was still young, and he couldn't directly deploy a huge fleet unless Zheng Zhilong surrendered to Tangning.

Otherwise, he would neither have so many people nor so many boats, let alone afford to support them.

Now the possibility of cooperating with Zheng Zhilong or making him surrender is almost zero.

Maybe Zheng Zhilong was waiting for the right time to wipe out the new army in one fell swoop.

Off the coast of Chaozhou Prefecture, a no-navigation zone has been planned.

At this time, an armed medium-sized bird ship was shooting at a target ship at a distance of about 500 meters, "Boom boom boom..."

After ten days of continuous testing, Tangning had roughly figured out a set of equipment plans: machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and anti-tank guns.

Anti-aircraft guns are naturally not used for air defense, and anti-tank guns are not used to fight tanks.

Both of these guns were of the cannon type, with high muzzle velocities for direct-aim fire.

In the absence of special naval guns, practice has proved that it is a good choice to use these two guns instead.

As for the damage effect, there is no need to say more about the current wooden warships.

The machine gun uses the MG42 general-purpose machine gun. The main function of the machine gun is to prevent the opponent's fast approaching boat.

The pirate style of play headed by Zheng Zhilong likes to use large ships to contain them, and then use a large number of small ships to approach them crazily, and then burn or sink the enemy ships with hooks.

The Dutch were defeated by this tactic at the beginning.

Anti-aircraft guns, Downing is equipped with four calibers of 20mm, 37mm, 50mm and 88mm.

20mm and 37mm anti-aircraft guns can not only destroy approaching small ships, but also suppress and kill personnel on enemy warships.

After all, machine guns are mainly used to kill enemy personnel and cannot sink ships quickly, but these two anti-aircraft guns can play a supplementary role.

The targets of the 50mm and 88mm anti-aircraft guns are the opponent's large ships, which sink the opponent through artillery battles.

The most famous one here is naturally the 88mm anti-aircraft gun. During World War II, the Germans liked to use it to fight tanks.

Since it is good to fight tanks, it is not a problem to fight wooden warships. It only depends on how many shells are needed to sink the opponent.

As for the anti-tank gun, Tang Ning was equipped with a Type 40 anti-tank gun with a caliber of 75mm. It was also the main anti-tank gun of the German army in World War II.

These are the basic weapons, and the number of equipment varies according to the size and type of the ship.

However, a ship is generally equipped with two 88mm anti-aircraft guns, one at the front and one at the front.

The anti-aircraft guns can rotate 360 ​​degrees and attack in all directions.

For other guns, the number of equipment depends on the size of the ship, and they are evenly deployed on both sides to ensure continuous and stable firepower output.

Of course, in addition to these cannons, individual weapons such as MP40 submachine guns, 98K, etc. are naturally indispensable.

If these individual weapons are used, it means that they have been in close contact with the enemy.

The weapons are basically unified, but the warships are uneven. At present, bird ships and blessing ships are the main ones.

Tang Ning preferred bird boats more, because the original development of bird boats was mainly for commercial use, and was used by merchants for ocean-going trade.

Because of this, this kind of ship is much larger than ordinary official ships, and it is also more flexible and agile.

Due to the large and stable hull, more firepower can also be deployed.

In the past few days, the test firing effect is also the best performance of the bird ship.

Tang Ning has already decided that until there is no major improvement in the shipbuilding technology of her side, she will focus on bird ships, which can be used commercially or as warships.

Now there are ten armed merchant ships, two of which have a displacement of more than two hundred tons.

The ship is ten feet long, two feet wide, and has a draft of seven feet. It is equipped with two 88mm anti-aircraft guns, four 50mm anti-aircraft guns, four Type 40 anti-tank guns, and six 20mm and 37mm anti-aircraft guns.

There are ten machine guns, several other individual weapons, and more than 120 soldiers.

For other ships with smaller tonnage, the armed forces gradually weakened.

Although the number of artillery and staffing are average, but in terms of combat power, the officers and soldiers on board are still very confident.

These soldiers are deployed in a ratio of one to five for veterans and trained recruits.

They are all selected, and most of them grew up by the sea. Many of them were fishermen before, so they are very familiar with life at sea.

The supreme commander was Ye Dacheng, whom Tang Ning regarded highly, and he was promoted to battalion commander.

Touched by Tangning's trust, Ye Dacheng worked harder and practiced this small fleet almost day and night.

In order to familiarize himself with naval warfare skills as soon as possible, Ye Dacheng also specifically asked Tangning to send some people with more experience in naval warfare from South Australia to assist him, and Tangning immediately responded.

In this way, the first small fleet of the new army has been established, and the eye-catching flag of the Shunfeng Escort is planted on the ship.

At this time, the chamber of commerce screened out the first batch of members.

On the early morning of June 24th, two armed merchant ships, one large and one small, officially set sail with the mysterious mission that Tangning had given them.

(End of this chapter)