My Italian Chapter 490

Remember [New] for a second,! "Admiral, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my design."

Kunibatti looked at the head of the navy in front of him and reiterated his attitude.

"However, the armor of the non-critical parts of the battleship is weakened or even cancelled, which will make the battleship more vulnerable and may cause greater casualties."

Admiral Yagier expressed his concerns about the words of the chief designer Kunibati. And they were talking about the design of Italy's first battlecruiser, the Taranto-class battlecruiser.

According to Cuniberti's design, the Taranto-class battlecruiser is 210 meters long, 28.9 meters wide, and has a draft of 9.1 meters. The ship's firepower uses the same eight 305mm main guns and 12 105 caliber secondary guns as the Dante class. And the power uses 24 naval oil-fired boilers, two steam turbines, and four shafts, with a maximum output of 56,000 horsepower and a maximum speed of 26.5 knots.

The ship has a standard displacement of 20,480 tons, a full-load displacement of 23,600 tons, and an endurance of 8,100 nautical miles/14 knots. The waterline armor belt is up to 250 mm, the compartment armor is 70 mm; the deck armor is 76 mm, the turret is up to 280 mm, and the turret is up to 250 mm; the conning tower is up to 250 mm.

In all respects, the performance of this warship is excellent. However, one thing that has been criticized by the navy is that in order to ensure the performance of the ship, Viscount Cuniberti greatly reduced the armor of the ship.

It is not to say that the armor is reduced. In the key core areas, the armor is still thick, and it has not been reduced. However, in the non-core area, Cuniberti drastically reduced his armor, and even in many areas, the armor was directly cancelled.

As a user, the Italian Navy is somewhat dissatisfied with this practice of canceling the armor of the non-core area. Because the boundary between core and non-core is not so clear. In addition, the non-core area does not mean that it is not important, and the non-core area has been hit too many times, and there is still a risk of sinking.

On Cunibody's side, listening to Admiral Yagier's remarks, he said helplessly. "Admiral, the Navy not only wants the ship to have the firepower of the new battleship, but also needs the ship to be 3-4 knots faster than the Dante-class to form a speed difference, and the cost cannot be much higher than the Dante-class. Such harsh requirements, I We can only think of a way from the armor."

What Cuniberti said is the helplessness of this reality. First of all, the Italian Navy has limited shipbuilding funds, and it is impossible to arbitrarily increase the construction cost for a single warship. And this Taranto-class battlecruiser also took into account its huge role, so it was able to get 10% higher than the construction cost of the Dante-class battleship.

Some people may ask why there was such a big price gap between Genoclass battleships and Garibaldi-class cruisers before? That's because neither ship is expensive to build, at least compared to the new capital ships.

In the case of a limited budget, if the new war cruiser has enough firepower, then the cost of its weapons will not be low, at least not much lower than the procurement cost of Dante-class weapons (a little less secondary artillery).

Weapons are still easy to solve, but the most terrible thing for the battle cruiser is the high speed problem. First of all, if you want high speed, you need a sufficient power system, and these large boilers and steam turbines take up a lot of space. In addition, if you want to achieve high speed, the shape of the warship can also help, and the slender hull can help the warship gain higher speed.

And this also leads to the hull and power system, the proportion of the weight of the battleship will be higher than that of the new battleship. And the few remaining proportions are what the armor gets.

In this case, the same method as sprinkling pepper noodles is absolutely not acceptable. This will lead to insufficient armor, which seems to be protected, but not fully protected.

Therefore, key protection is an inevitable choice. Only by giving priority to the armor of the core area, can the battleship avoid fatal damage. Although this will make it suffer more losses in the naval battle, it is the best choice. After all, the navy itself requested that the ship return to the battle line if necessary, and not protect the core area. The power of this large-caliber artillery shell is not a sour shot.

"However, isn't the 4,250-ton armor ratio too low?"

"Yes, I also think it's a bit low. Otherwise, the navy will increase the construction cost of this class a little bit, and only need to increase it by another 10%."

Admiral Yagier didn't want to accept Kunibatti's words. Don't look at the 400 million lire paid by the Navy for selling ships, but this money is not to be spent, and it can be done for you in a few minutes. For example, the development and verification of new technologies, as well as the construction of warships. If the shipbuilding cost of the battleship is not blocked, these ship designers can free themselves to pile up a new thing with excellent performance but high blood pressure.

In addition to new technologies, the procurement of new equipment also requires a lot of money. For example, the procurement of aircraft and airships, as well as new radios, mechanical calculators, large optical telescopes, etc. In addition, for some emerging maritime affairs, the Navy also needs to invest funds to verify whether it is suitable for the needs of the Navy.

It can be said that as long as you are willing to spend money, the Navy can find hundreds of legitimate reasons to spend it all.

Therefore, Admiral Yagier is very concerned about the extra funds in his hand, and he will not be easily persuaded to take it out. The construction of the Taranto cruiser this time is more to make up for the lack of large high-speed warships in the Italian Navy. However, its cost of 47 million liras makes it impossible for Admiral Yagier to continue to increase funds for this war cruiser, which has won the highest cost in Italy.

Since he didn't want to pay, then Admiral Yagier was not good at speaking in the face of Kunibatti, who had problems in front of him. However, Admiral Yagier had an idea, maybe this battle cruiser can be shown to Tirpitz, and the Germans may also appreciate this battleship, so they can charge a fee for the construction of other battleships.

Speaking of other battleships, Admiral Yagier said immediately. "Cuniberti, what do you think of the Piedmont-class cruisers?"

As the chief warship designer, Cuniberti of course knows all kinds of warships built by the Navy, and the Piedmont-class cruiser in the mouth of Admiral Yagier is the product of new technology in the new era.

The ship is used as a fleet reconnaissance and escort, and if necessary, it can also serve as the important task of defending one's own side or destroying the enemy's sea line of communication, so the ship has excellent endurance, firepower and speed.

"I haven't said this class of cruisers before~www.mtlnovel.com~ It's very good, this new cruiser designed by Giuseppe Orlando has taken into account all aspects and is a general-purpose cruiser suitable for the needs of our navy. cruiser."

And this Piedmont-class cruiser, which he praised, has a total length of 147 meters, a ship width of 16.1 meters and a draft of 5.2 meters. The ship has a standard displacement of 5,120 tons and a full-load displacement of 6,380 tons.

Equipped with 4 twin 152mm guns, 4 105mm single-barrel guns, 6 75mm single-barrel guns, and two quadruple 533mm torpedo launchers. Its waterline armor belt is 52 mm, the deck is 24 mm, the turret is 80 mm, and the conning tower is 100 mm.

The power output is 28,000 horsepower, the top speed is 27 knots, and the endurance is 2900 nautical miles/15 knots.

From the data point of view, this cruiser is already very good, even if Kunibati designed it himself, it will not be better than this. After all, he is used to designing large warships, so he may not be as good as other excellent designers if he designs small and medium-sized warships.

Of course, he also heard the news that this excellent cruiser is not cheap at all. The construction cost of 12 million liras is the determination of Admiral Yagier who has been unable to decide how many ships to build. However, there is news that the Ministry of the Navy really likes this ship. One says that it plans to build 6 ships, and the other says that it is 8 ships. However, no matter how many ships, this is a headache for Your Excellency Admiral.

Chapter end