My Pen Pal Zhu Yuanzhang

Chapter 324: Old Zhu who stayed up late to cultivate immortality
As for moving artillery onto ships, this is not simply a problem of artillery, but a systematic engineering problem that involves the design and improvement of the entire ship.

Otherwise, if the mosquito boats like those in the late Qing Dynasty appeared, it would be a real joke.

The mosquito boat is also known as the shallow water heavy gunboat. The design idea of ​​the mosquito boat is to install a cannon that can penetrate any armored warship on a limited hull. The design idea is quite consistent with Dai Qing's personality of being timid, playful, and wanting to save money and play tricks.

That is, they only defended against enemy fleets in the near sea areas, and did not dare to go to the ocean to compete with the great powers.

However, this design resulted in a small ship with large guns, an unstable center of gravity, poor seaworthiness, and inability to go out to sea for combat.

In addition, the gun is fixed on the hull and cannot rotate. When shooting, it is necessary to aim by adjusting the hull, making it difficult to capture the target quickly and accurately.

What's even funnier is that after this type of warship was built, firing a single shot could cause a serious shift in the stability of the entire ship. It was a typical top-heavy ship.

Of course, the construction plan of the mosquito boat also involved many corruption stories, such as the collusion between the Lord Zhongtang and British businessmen, who chose this type of design that was simply unusable for kickbacks.

This also made the Qing Dynasty, at the end of its decline, contribute a funny and cruel comedy to the history of world warship development.

For Li Han, this was absolutely unacceptable.

Li Han abandoned the design of sailing warships and side guns before the 18th century without even a second thought.

Apart from anything else, the firing method requires turning the entire ship around just for aiming, which is cumbersome and crude, and is only suitable for sailing ships. Considering the current shipbuilding development of the Ming Dynasty, it is already a seriously backward method.

Moreover, this shooting method is actually a preparation for boarding. Are we going to let the Ming Dynasty musketeers equipped with semi-automatic firepower and the pirates who are still in the era of broadswords and muskets engage in boarding warfare?

It's like it's the 21st century now, and everyone has integrated communications and firepower. Who would want to fight you against armor-piercing missiles?
Therefore, Li Han came up with a bolder idea that the Ming Dynasty should perhaps design and build a brand new warship from scratch.

A real warship is one like a cruiser or a battleship!
So, how can this be achieved?
Building a warship is not a simple matter of installing naval guns on the ship. Not to mention the stable firing of the naval guns, just fixing them is a big problem. There are also issues such as turret steering, aiming devices, shell storage and loading, hull armor, how to prevent shell explosions, etc.

For the Ming Dynasty, these are problems that need to be solved step by step.

Then Li Han slapped his head, thinking that he seemed to have thought too much and completely ignored the environment and actual situation of the Ming Dynasty!
That is the opponent of the Ming Dynasty. It has no decent firepower at all. When I was thinking about the ironclad warships just now, I was putting the environment of the Ming Dynasty into the bloody 19th century.

In the 14th century, Chen Zuyi did have cannons, but not to mention the accuracy of that thing, even the solid bullets were only powerful enough to kill people. Facing steel ships, even if they could hit the Ming Dynasty ships, it would only make a noise and at most scare the sailors.

It's impossible that Chen Zuyi could pierce the ironclad ship with one sword, right?
Such a Ming Dynasty is a world of advanced martial arts. No matter how powerful modern firepower is, it is useless. So don't even think about industrialization. It's better to just focus on refining Qi.

In other words, when building Ming Dynasty ships today, there is no need to consider issues such as armor and secondary detonation. What needs to be considered are the range, speed, maneuverability, and the firing rate and hit rate of the ship's guns.

Of course, range is also a key factor to consider, because Li Han also considered the issue of using naval guns to support ground combat.

In this case, Li Han had many ship designs to choose from, and the first one he thought of was the Zhenyuan. The Zhenyuan was built by the Vulcan Shipyard in Tantebred, Germany for the Beiyang Fleet, with a displacement of about 7000 tons and a cruising speed of 14.5 knots, which was far superior to the sailing ships of the th century.

This thing is not a military secret, but something that can be exhibited publicly, so it should not be difficult to get.

The power system of the Zhenyuan ship consists of two horizontal three-cylinder reciprocating steam engines and eight circular coal-fired boilers, with a power of up to 8 horsepower.

Judging from the technological level of the Longyu Tianji furnace, with the current level of the Ming Dynasty, it is not difficult to build a horizontal three-cylinder reciprocating steam engine. Moreover, with his own help, the Ming Dynasty's steel smelting technology has even surpassed that of Germany in the 19th century.

镇远舰的武器为克虏伯305毫米后膛双联装炮塔主炮 4门，副炮为克虏伯150毫米后膛副炮2门，75毫米克虏伯炮4门，37毫米五管哈乞开斯机关炮8门。

These naval guns are a big problem. It's not that the Ming Dynasty cannot produce them. The steel, gunpowder and shells can even be better. Li Han has already solved the problem of smokeless gunpowder. He found a method on the Internet to use nitrocellulose and nitroguanidine to make smokeless propellant for high-pressure artillery.

The difficulty lies in the design of these types of artillery.

Or, why not ask Xu Nian again?

Forget it. Gatling hasn't finished yet. If you add new tasks to him, this fat guy might think of hanging himself under a street lamp.

The design drawings of the Zhenyuan ship are easy to get. They are kept in the Beijing Military Museum. We can ask Li Momo and see if her family can use their connections to get a set of copies from the Military Museum.

If a photocopy doesn't work, a scanned copy will be fine. Even if that doesn't work, you can always go to Beijing in person and take photos in the museum.

But as for the various types of artillery on the Zhenyuan ship, should we trace back to the source?

Li Han was thinking, the former Krupp company has merged with another major European steel industry giant Thyssen to form the ThyssenKrupp Group. By the way, didn’t Lao Zhu study in Europe?
This Old Zhu was naturally his pen pal Zhu Yijin in Europe. On the envelope of Zhu Yijin's reply letter to him, in addition to the recipient information written in English, there were also words printed in other languages. Li Han could tell that it was probably German.

In this case, Zhu Yijin should be studying in Germany, although he never mentioned where exactly he was in Europe.

ThyssenKrupp Group has its own special exhibition hall, which must display the historical development of various types of products. Why don't we ask him to help see if he can find the design drawings of those types of artillery?
Thinking of this, Li Han quickly turned on the computer and opened the email mailbox that he had not used for a long time. After thinking about his account and password for a long time, he logged in.

This matter is quite urgent, so I won't write a letter with a pen. It's more convenient and faster to use email.

Zhu Yijin did tell Li Han his email address when he wrote to him for the first time, but neither of them used it.

While writing an email to Zhu Yijin, Li Han thought to himself that this was actually what Old Zhu should do. After all, he was helping his ancestors and he should feel honored.

After writing the email, I clicked send and searched for information about the military museum on the Internet. Unexpectedly, I received the email very soon.

My goodness, it should be early morning in Europe at this time. Is Lao Zhu staying up late to practice Taoism?
Did anyone get stuck in traffic during the National Day holiday? I am the most comfortable person, so I will write for you at home.
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(End of this chapter)