Valley Emperor

The navy is too lazy to refit the early steam steel warships. This does not mean that their hulls are too old. In fact, the hulls have been used for more than ten years or even twenty or thirty years without any problems.

The main reason why the navy does not want to refit is that the early design ideas of warships are incompatible with the current ones, which leads to the difficulty and high cost of refitting, and the combat effectiveness after refitting is not good.

After all, when the early steel battleships were designed and built, they were still in the era of muskets.

Although the front-loaded rifled guns were equipped for several years in the following years, the front-loaded rifled guns have never become mainstream in the Tang Army and Navy, not only artillery, but even muskets.

Front-loading rifled weapons are very typical transitional weapons. From their appearance to their replacement, the duration in the middle is only four or five years.

The front-loaded rifled weapons have many similarities with smoothbore weapons, so it was barely feasible to upgrade the warships equipped with smoothbore guns to front-loaded rifled guns.

This is why the Datang Navy upgraded many early warships to front-loaded rifled guns.

However, if it is to be equipped with a rear-mounted rifled gun, the changes will be too great, the hull will need major surgery, and the combat effectiveness will not be able to play.

In addition, a key point is that the shipbuilding technology of the year was still relatively slag, especially the steam engine. The early steam engine actually seemed to have good performance, but the failure rate was generally high.

The Datang steam battleship that served in Xuanping 30 years ago deliberately pursued high performance under limited technical conditions. For example, there are small horse-drawn carts in the steam unit, and there are still certain problems in the rivet technology of the steel hull. Therefore, in the early stage The high failure rate of steam turbines, difficult maintenance, and various minor faults often appear on the hull of the warships.

The high number of day-to-day failures also means that the day-to-day maintenance costs are very high.

The Navy upgrades the guns of old steam warships, and the hull modification can naturally solve these problems, but you have to know that these problems are actually the design problems of the hull.

The upgrade and modification of this old warship is a major operation, and the cost of this upgrade and modification is enough to build more than half of the new tonnage new warships.

If an old Shanxi-class armored belt cruiser needs to be upgraded and refitted, it needs to be replaced with a steam unit, a new rear-mounted rifled gun and many other auxiliary equipment, and even many parts of the hull need to be re-strengthened. The project is too large, So that the total cost is about 300,000 constant yuan.

As such, the Navy might as well directly purchase the Gehe-class dome cruiser, a reduced version of the West India-class protected cruiser.

Although the Gehe-class dome-armored cruiser is a shrunken version of the West India-class, its combat effectiveness is still good, and it can hoist a large number of old warships only by relying on its speed and high-speed guns.

And the cost of the ship is only 350,000 constant yuan. The most important thing is that this shrunk version of the cruiser thinks that a large number of mature and stable technologies are used, not only the cost is cheap, but also the maintenance cost is also cheap.

The navy is quite fond of the two current warships with low cost and lower maintenance costs, namely the Gehe-class cruiser, a shrunk version of the West India-class Dome-class cruiser, and the Sanhe-class frigate, a shrunk version of the new Antarctic frigate.

At present, these two reduced versions of warships are under large-scale construction. The Navy plans to use these two warships to completely replace the earlier ironclads, armored cruisers, frigates, etc., to form the main ocean-going ships of the subsequent Datang Navy. For this reason, the number of Gehe-class cruisers scheduled to be built has reached more than 20 ships.

The number of Sanhe-class frigates is expected to reach more than 40.

Relatively speaking, although the West India-class cruisers and the New Antarctic frigates have more advanced performance and stronger combat effectiveness, the number of constructions has been cut. In the end, only six West India-class cruisers and twelve New Antarctic ships were built. Their follow-up ships The construction plan was changed to a new scaled-down version of the battleship.

This has to be said to be a kind of irony. The Datang Navy managed to toss out a cruiser with excellent performance like the West India class, but it was because the enemy was so weak that its performance was excessive. Build lower performance Go River class cruisers.

But this in turn proves the invincibility of the Datang Navy!

Nowadays, the navy builds new warships with cheap warships, and there will be waste of money to upgrade and refit those old antiques.

Under such circumstances, the Datang Navy was reluctant to perform large-scale refit operations on warships that had smoothbore guns installed in their initial design thirty years before Xuanping.

At most, it is to change the front-loaded rifled gun or something. As for the power system, don't count on it.

In addition, a small number of hulls are in relatively good condition. Old warships with no major problems with their hulls can get the opportunity to install guns after refitting, but the number is very small, and most of them are not used to perform front-line tasks after refitting, but will be used. Acting as a training ship, giving naval cadet officers and recruits access to rifled guns after training.

As for other early steam battleships with many problems, once the navy felt that the maintenance cost was too high and it was not cost-effective to use, they would often be directly sealed.

In a few years, it will be dismantled and sold for scrap!

The Jiangnan-class ironclads/cruisers of that year were decommissioned one by one.

Now it's the turn of the Shanxi-class cruiser and several other old warships.

According to the plan of the Datang Navy, they expect to completely upgrade the warships in the next ten years, and completely retire all the warships built before Xuanping 30 years ago.

The four old warships that returned to the mainland from Europe have different fates waiting for them. The three frigates will be directly decommissioned and sealed, and they will be sold and dismantled directly in a few years.

A Shanxi-class cruiser is lucky, and will return to the mainland to upgrade and replace a few rear-loaded rifled guns, while removing other unnecessary front-loaded rifled guns and use it as a training ship.

The fate of these four warships after returning to the mainland is naturally not known to those on the New Atlantic, especially Elizabeth. At this time, she was looking at the warships in the distant sea, with faint white smoke accompanying the foreground.

There is no curiosity or doubt, just watching, because those battleships have been navigating nearby for many days, and the excitement and curiosity that I saw at the beginning have long since disappeared.

In the vast sea ~www.wuxiaspot.com~ Standing on the deck of the first-class cabin, Elizabeth wore a white sand soft-top hat and looked sideways at the east, although the east was nothing but sea water.

But she knew that the far east is the Tang Dynasty!

The Tang Dynasty, which Elizabeth was looking at from afar, was still calm at this time. Even the imperial diplomats, the army, and even the businessmen were constantly making troubles around the world, causing most of the world's regions to be turbulent.

Let the word "Datang" spread to every corner of the earth, and make every aboriginal tremble from the heart.

However, in the mainland of Datang, there is no turbulence at all, and people are obsessed with study and work.

When there is time, some people will also pay attention to the recent popular polo game.

Discuss which team will win the championship this year.

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