Chapter 20: Refitting German Warships

  Zhou Yu was very dissatisfied with his two 'Sachsen'-class armored battleships, A1 and A2.

  Why? Because the Sachsen-class armored battleship, in Zhou Yu's view, had too many defects: too small power, too low speed, extremely poor endurance, and an extremely unscientific overall structure. What was even more bizarre was:

  Saxony-class armored battleship, unexpectedly has four large smokestacks, so Zhou Yu prepares to forcibly modify the Saxony-class armored battleship, although he himself has no experience and neither do the workers.

  The knowledge that is always used in his mind, and Zhou Yu, who has a forward-looking vision, cannot tolerate the unmodified Sachsen-class armored battleship serving in his own naval fleet. 16kbook first update

  Since boarding the A1 command ship, Zhou Yu only exchanged a simple greeting with Zhang Long, Ye Fu, and Lü Han, before diving into the cabin, disappearing from everyone's sight. He didn't even go to the A2 ship, leaving Ye Fu and others extremely depressed.

  However, unlike Zhou Yu's dissatisfaction, Ye Fu and others were particularly excited because their troops also had giant warships and cannons. What a state that was! Those were truly ironclad giants!

  As they stood on the command tower, their eyes were brimming with tears, and with trembling hands, they carefully stroked every inch of the armored battleship's space, as if caressing their newlywed wife's delicate body. In their hearts, there was a mix of emotions, including a hint of bitterness. Our weak China finally has its own ironclad giant warship too. The principal's words have come true.

  In order not to disappoint the principal (now the officers and soldiers of the troops all affectionately call Zhou Yu our principal), on their way home, they practiced with their lives, in order to make their navy form a certain combat effectiveness as soon as possible.

  Under the rigorous training of German military personnel, the crew of the two warships quickly mastered the operation of the warship, which surprised the technical instructors from Germany!

  Everyone is secretly muttering in their hearts: 'The learning speed of the Chinese people is simply unbelievable, it's really too abnormal.'

  This also had very serious consequences: by the time the fleet arrived in Hawaii, the ammunition stores on both warships were almost completely depleted.

  Although with Zhou Yu's current economic strength, he can still afford it.

  If Zhou Yu found out, it would still be heart-wrenching. In these times, making a living isn't easy! I didn't easily swindle my way to this family business, did I? Being the underdog isn't easy either!

  By May, the fleet had arrived safely.

  Completely new, inside Pearl Harbor at the time. The fleet all the way was borrowing the German military flag, so it was quite calm on the road.

  Zhou Yu didn't even have time to greet the people who came to welcome him, Chen Fang and others were full of expectation, they exchanged pleasantries briefly, then directly rushed into Raval's steam engine laboratory.

  In the laboratory, Zhou Yu discovered that Laval's three-cylinder reciprocating steam engine had encountered its final problem: the condenser.

  Then Zhou Yu also followed suit and dived into research, Zhou Yu came up with a super-large air conditioner condenser based on the data in his mind. With red eyes and covered in oil stains, Laval excitedly spoke out in his hometown dialect:

  "Awesome, too awesome! Dear!" made Zhou Yu's skin crawl with goosebumps. In his heart, he thought, "This handsome guy is not good at this, you'd better give up! If you're interested, go take a look in Thailand instead! Just don't know if Thailand is now..."

  A shemale has appeared.

  However, Zhou Yu was eventually appointed to lead the development project of the steam turbine group and related technical data and drawings.

  The warship's power is now available, and the refinement of subsequent details has been left to Laval. I'm busy! No time. Someone comforted himself in his heart.

  Zhou Yu then spent a week creating a simple model of his own design for a new 'Sachsen' class armored battleship, and had Wei Han, Chen Zhaoqiang and others use the model, along with the drawings and technical data he provided, to perform major renovations on ships A1 and A2. Meanwhile, he himself went down to each production line to carry out necessary mechanical upgrades.

  For Zhou Yu's cross-era warship model design approach, Wei Han and others were full of praise. It also provided a advantageous method for the future construction of warships by the Zhou Yu Group.

  Zhou Yu also gave them the production drawings and technical materials of his self-developed quick-firing guns, including 12-inch/35-caliber, 234mm 40-caliber, 152mm 40-caliber, single-barrel 76mm and 37mm caliber.

  When Wei Han and others saw Zhou Yuxin's newly designed 'Sachsen' class armored war cruiser, they were stunned, with their mouths agape and foaming at the mouth. Why? Because Zhou Yuxin called it a 'Sachsen' class heavy armored cruiser, not a battleship, and its data was too exaggerated.

  In that era, who had seen a standard displacement of 8,100 tons, a battlecruiser. In the eyes of Wei Han and others, this battlecruiser was directly a porcupine ship, with reasonably arranged guns all over the deck.

  Next, Zhou Yu stopped producing ordinary carbon alloy steel at the Hawaiian Steel Mill and switched to producing his own designed alloy steel that met his current resource and technological conditions. For this reason, Zhou Yu also improved some of the processes.

  The alloy steel data provided by Zhou Yu is: the Q235B grade steel of later generations, which will be referred to as QB alloy steel here. Its tensile strength and yield point are very suitable for ship use compared to the late historical period.

  At that time

  Every country is still generally using refined iron armor, Zhou Yu uses QB-level alloy steel, it's simply super perverted.

  Zhou Yu handed over the relevant drawings, technical data, and professional books containing chemical element tables to Zeng Hongji, Zheng Qinglian and others, asking them to lead the small-scale trial production of new steel materials, requiring them to meet the specific requirements of QB-level steel before mass production.

  The displacement of A1 and A2 ships redesigned by Zhou Yu is 9,150 tons when fully loaded.

  Its length, beam and draft were all slightly greater than those of the Sachsen class.

  Cruising speed of 20 knots under normal power conditions.

  Zhou Yu greatly reduced armor in consideration of speed and adopted a focused protection layout. The hull used an external suspension structure.

  The streamlined hull not only makes the ship's lines smooth and flexible, but also makes the warship's side defense absolutely strong.

  The main armament consisted of three 12-inch (305 mm) guns, with a calibre length of 35, in a layout of two forward and one aft, all mounted in fully enclosed rotating turrets.

  Secondary armament: 4 × 204 mm (8 in) 40-calibre breech-loading guns, arranged in a layout of two forward and two aft, with semi-recessed rotating turrets.

  The turret guns were six single-barreled 40-calibre 152mm guns.

  Eight 76 mm (3 in) quick-firing guns were mounted on the deck and on the sides.

  Four twin 37mm anti-submarine autocannons

  Three 350mm torpedo tubes.

  The ship was equipped with triple-expansion steam engines in eight sets of three-shaft propulsion, and the main boiler was a Miyabara-style coal-fired water tube boiler in eight sets. There is also reserved space for installing high-power diesel engines.

  Estimated crew of five hundred and eighty people.

  Zhou Yu stopped and thought for a moment, only to find that the communication system of the warship was still very primitive. During the battle between the two armies, it could not even achieve synchronous firing of all elements, so he also designed an internal telephone communication system for the warship.

  There is also ranging. Under current conditions, radar and laser have not been developed, so Zhou Yu has to use the most primitive optical ranging method using trigonometric principles.

  The optical system is divided into two objective lenses on the left and right (i.e. the windows protruding from both sides of the turret), with the left and right light paths forming images on the upper and lower sides of the eyepiece respectively.

  In other words, when viewed from the eyepiece, the upper half sees the image of the right objective lens, and the lower half sees the image of the left objective lens.

  When observing a target with a rangefinder, two lines of sight form an angle. Different distances have different angles.

  As long as you know the size of the angle, you can calculate the target distance through trigonometric functions.

  At a distance of 20,000 meters, at an angle of view of 1', if the observer is slightly careless, and the angle of view deviates by ±1', it's a world of difference.

  If the angle is small 1', then the measured distance is 47821 meters; if the angle is more than 1', then the measured distance is 12644 meters.

  The error of this principle is how big

  Before the advent of photogrammetry and radar, there was no better way to replace it.

  Zhou Yu then listed out the trigonometric formulas and handed them over to Ye Fu and other naval commanders, teaching them how to use the trigonometric optical system for ranging. He asked them to practice repeatedly, as only by becoming familiar with it could they reduce calculation errors.

  Zhou Yu still

  Bombs and shells, as well as warship generators, also need to be updated in design.

  Zhou Yu was preparing to use the Thunderclap Explosive, and in later times it was proven that its unparalleled powerful force was indeed a fact.

  Tetrazene, a manufacturing invention of Zhou Yu, is white or light yellow needle-like crystals with no odor and hygroscopic. It is a relatively safe explosive that can withstand impact and friction, but any amount of sudden heat can cause an explosion.

  It is different and insensitive to friction, vibration. Even if it is subjected to gunfire, it does not easily explode. Therefore, an initiator is needed to start it.

  It does not react chemically with metals or absorb moisture. Therefore, it can be stored for many years. However, it reacts strongly with alkalis to form unstable compounds.

  Each kilogram of explosives produces 4.2 megajoules of energy. Notably, it releases less energy than fat and sugar but does so very rapidly because it contains its own oxidizer, not requiring atmospheric oxygen.

  Zhou Yu's and 1863 by T.J. Wilburbrand, in a failed experiment invented different, Zhou Yu's in some other components were added, such as adding the right amount of aluminum powder, phosphorus powder, etc.

  Adding a suitable amount of powdered aluminum to explosives will make the shrapnel speed, air burst, detonation velocity, heat and explosive power range all have a more significant, linearly increasing change, with enormous power.

  Phosphorus powder is the legendary undying fire - ghost fire, it burns whatever it touches, and even water can't extinguish it. It's a peerless sharp weapon in explosives and incendiary bombs.

  Sometimes Zhou Yu would have a wicked idea; whether he should put a component in the bomb that would make his enemies, who were fighting against him, busy digging holes and not have the energy to shoot.

  Because Zhou Yu's current warship is still very small, the caliber of the artillery is also small, and the shooting distance is very short. Therefore, Zhou Yu imitated the flat buttocks augmented projectile of later generations. This technology is still relatively simple, just need to do some technical processing at the back of the bomb, no need for any advanced technology.

  And Zhou Yu also came up with APC being capped with armor-piercing bullets, APC being capped with armor-piercing bullets, equipped with a more streamlined seven-inch bullet head, the bullet head uses manganese steel technology impact cap, greatly increasing the long-range penetration of armor-piercing bullets.

  Achieved the true meaning of thin skin and big filling, within 3,000 meters, a 250-kilogram armor-piercing projectile can instantly penetrate 16 inches of ordinary carbon steel horizontal armor deck.

  Battleship ship power generator, Zhou Yu is preparing to use a 500-horsepower ship power generator, which can only be used after being jointly developed with Tesla.

  It wasn't until Zhou Yu arrived at Tesla's laboratory that he discovered Tesla had not only invented a model of an alternating current motor based on the materials and drawings provided by Zhou, but also successfully created a rotating magnetic field through alternating current, which was also the basis for the large-scale application of alternating current motors later on.

  He also came up with a three-phase asynchronous motor and a bladeless fluid vortex generator. So Zhou Yu's shipboard generators were ready, no need to bother him anymore.

  This generator is small and compact, with an unusually high efficiency, it's a "invincible" device, far exceeding Zhou Yu's initial expectations. Zhou Yu now knows what it means to be a professional inventor, a scientific creation sharpshooter.