I want to be emperor

Chapter 371

In the Great Chu Empire, not only the army and guards, but also the navy were the big players who used artillery.

In fact, the number of artillery used by the navy is also quite a lot. In the future, there will be a demand for thousands of artillery pieces, and these artillery pieces are mainly medium and large caliber artillery pieces.

After all, a battleship of a few hundred tons needs twenty or thirty guns, and even an inland warship of only about a hundred tons needs several guns.

And the number of warships needed by the navy is not one or two, but tens or hundreds of ships. The naval guns needed by these warships alone are thousands of pieces.

And these artillery are mainly long barrel, medium and large caliber naval guns.

For example, many Daye-class warships under construction have been classified as frigates. They are planned to be equipped with nine-pound naval guns, and a small number of fourteen-pound naval guns. Such a thing requires 22 long barrels. naval gun.

In addition, the design has just been completed and is expected to be built at the newly established Navy First Shipyard in Songjiang Prefecture. The large battleship Xiangyang-class cruiser that is really used for sea combat, that is, the second-class cruiser classified by the Navy, is expected to have a displacement of more than 32 tons , Equipped with [-] cannons.

Frigates, cruisers, these are the titles after the warship classification standard issued by the navy.

For example, a warship with fleet decisive battle as its main combat mission is called a battleship.

The main tasks of long-term cruise, escort, and reconnaissance, while undertaking secondary artillery tasks are called cruisers.

With auxiliary tasks such as simple reconnaissance and harassment, those known for their speed are called reconnaissance ships.

A frigate whose main mission is to do odd jobs.

Although the above four types have different missions, they all belong to the ocean-going warships.

In addition, there are offshore battleships for offshore defensive operations, highlighting defensive performance and firepower, and patrol ships for patrolling offshore and inner lakes.

There are also inland river gunboats for inland river and lake operations.

Finally, there are supply ships, troop carriers, medical ships, engineering ships, repair ships, etc. for non-combat purposes.

Some of the ship types may have relatively large spans, but they are simply classified into first, second, and third classes based on size and firepower.

For example, battleships, the Great Chu Empire Navy has a relatively high vision, and directly set the standard for first-class battleships at more than one hundred artillery pieces.

Even a third-class battleship requires 64 naval guns.

Those below this number are not included in the scope of battleships.

There are also cruisers. First-class cruisers need to carry more than [-] artillery pieces, and second-class cruisers need to carry more than [-] artillery pieces.

For reconnaissance ships, first-class reconnaissance ships have more than [-] cannons, and second-class reconnaissance ships have more than ten cannons.

The frigate is similar, and more than [-] ships are first-class frigates, and more than ten ships are second-class frigates.

In addition to the four types of ocean-going warships mentioned above, there are also specialized offshore warships, inland river warships, and so on.

At present, the large-scale warship that the navy plans to build in large quantities and is capable of building is the Daye-class frigate currently under construction.

This kind of warship with a displacement of about 350 tons and equipped with 22 naval guns, although the protection is not good, the amount of supplies carried will not be too much, and the living space per capita is relatively small. It is destined to be difficult to perform missions in the ocean for a long time.

But the firepower is very powerful, and the maneuverability is relatively flexible. It is not a big problem to use it as the main battleship of the Great Chu Empire Navy in the short term.

As for the Xiangyang-class cruiser, this is a new attempt of the Great Chu Empire Navy. To build a large-tonnage ocean-going warship, not only has more powerful firepower, but more importantly, it has higher requirements for seaworthiness and speed. Also very high.

And these two kinds of warships adopt western-style soft sails to enhance their maneuverability.

At present, the Great Chu Empire Navy is building these two warships on a large scale!

The construction plan of the Daye class frigate has been expanded to twenty ships.

The construction plan of Xiangyang-class cruisers has also planned eight ships.

And this is just the current plan.

Even according to the current plan, the major arsenals of the Great Chu Empire need to prepare at least several hundred naval guns for these warships, and all of them are long-barreled naval guns.

This put great pressure on the artillery production capacity of the Great Chu Empire Arsenal.

Not to mention that in addition to the need for naval guns for battleships, the major river defense and coastal defense forts in the Great Chu Empire also needed a large number of artillery, and these artillery had larger calibers and longer barrels.

For example, the first batch of [-]-jin naval guns produced by the Heavy Artillery Factory under the Hantian Armory was actually used on forts, and will serve as important firepower for a series of important forts such as Wusong Fort and Jiangyin Fort.

After all, the fortress artillery used in the fort basically does not need to consider the weight and mobility issues, as long as the caliber is fired, the barrel is long and powerful.

The huge demand for artillery by the army and navy has overwhelmed the current Hantian Arsenal in the Great Chu Empire. As for the artillery factory under the Xiangyang Arsenal, its production capacity is even lower.

The Great Chu Empire urgently needs to expand the production capacity of artillery.

Coupled with the urgent need for Sui-fire rifles, the production capacity of the existing arsenal of the Great Chu Empire is simply unable to meet the military needs of the Great Chu Empire.

In this way, the construction task of Dangtu Armory is more intense.

No matter how urgent it is, it will take time. After all, the expansion of the arsenal is more difficult than other factories. It takes time to train skilled craftsmen and technicians, and to build and install high-precision machinery.

The original Hantian Armory did not hesitate to pay any price, but it took more than half a year to reach a certain production capacity, and it will take a year to reach the design production capacity.

Dangtu Arsenal can't go there either.

At present, only a part of the early-stage projects of the Dangtu Arsenal are completed and put into production, and the production capacity is very small, mainly for the purpose of training early-stage skilled workers.

If we want to wait for mass production, it is estimated that it will be in the summer, and if we want to reach the design capacity, it is estimated that we will have to go next year.

The Dangtu industrial base with Dangtu Arsenal, Dangtu Mining Bureau, and Dangtu Iron Works is the same model as the Daye Industrial Base.

The core goal is to supply a large number of advanced guns to the army.

Around this core goal, there are these core factories and a large number of auxiliary factories supporting these core factories.

Ultimately, Dangtu will be built into a super-large comprehensive heavy industry production base.

-

According to the industrial planning of the Great Chu Empire, the planning of the entire Dangtu Industrial Zone will be very large. The planned industrial area alone will reach more than 20 square kilometers.

The industrial zone includes dozens of supporting factories directly invested by the Ministry of Industry, as well as a large cargo terminal and a medium passenger terminal.

Luo Zhixue wants to directly build this place into the pearl of the empire's heavy industry!

In the future, there will be a super-large steel plant: Taiping Iron Works!

According to estimates, after the completion of the Taiping Iron Works, the mold will be even larger than that of the Daye Iron Works, and the designed annual production capacity will reach [-] tons. The Jiangnan and Jiangbei regions with huge markets even supply civilian iron materials to farther places through canals and sea transportation.

According to the plan, Dangtu Armory, together with Hantian Armory, will become one of the two super-large comprehensive arsenals of the Great Chu Empire, with the production capacity of muskets, artillery, ammunition, cold weapons and other weapons.

Luo Zhixue attaches great importance to this, and has repeatedly instructed the Ministry of Industry to pay attention to the construction of the Dangtu Industrial Zone, so that they are forward-looking and reserve space for future development.

Well, this is why the Dangtu Industrial Zone had such a huge area when it was first planned...

It is purely to reserve space in advance for future development.

-

However, in the past few months, the Great Chu Empire had been unable to launch large-scale military operations due to the cold winter, so it barely fought a battle in Hezhou, Jiangpu and other Jiangbei areas.

Most of the time, they are still dealing with their own internal affairs, especially busy with establishing effective ruling local yamen in the newly occupied area, and have dispatched a large number of garrison troops and even the main force to carry out military operations in the areas under their own control, especially in the newly occupied area. Large-scale suppression operations to eliminate all kinds of messy bandits, water bandits, illegal local/landlord armed forces, Ming army routs, and other messy illegal armed forces.

On the one hand, the Great Chu Empire suspended its large-scale military operations against the Ming army because of the weather, on the one hand, because of stabilizing internal needs, and on the other hand, because it took time to restock a large amount of ammunition.

This is also an extremely valuable respite for the Ming court, but the Ming court did not make good use of the precious time of these few months.

In other words, even if they are given a few months, it is difficult to make any effective changes in such a short period of time. Is not too big.

And there is another thing that caught the attention of the Great Chu Empire, or surprise.

That is, Song Zushun, the governor of water transportation and governor of Jiangbei, who had caused a lot of trouble for the Chu army on the front line of Hezhou and blocked the fourth division for several months, retreated without a fight because of the loss of Hezhou and abandoned Jiangpu, Liuhe, etc. land, and lost more than [-] troops.

Being impeached by a group of people for being cowardly and cowardly, fleeing without authorization, losing troops and generals, losing cities and lands, not killing is not enough to anger the people...

Chongzhen was also very angry when he heard the news... As a result, an imperial decree deposed Song Zushun as the governor of Water Transport just a few months ago.

But this time Chongzhen retained a little reason, at least he knew that Song Zushun still had a Jiangbei new standard army under his command, so he didn't take off his Jiangbei governor's hat...

Immediately afterwards, Chongzhen remembered Yang Sichang who had been imprisoned in the sky prison by himself, so he issued another imperial decree to restore the military affairs of Governor Yang Sichang in Shandong, Baoding, Henan, and Nanzhili.

It's just that Yang Sichang in the dungeon didn't agree immediately after receiving the imperial decree, but was struggling with whether to refuse it.

He, Yang Sichang, doesn't want to be a villain!

(End of this chapter)