My Italian Chapter 546

1910 was much better than 1909, at least for the Italian military.

In the fiscal year 1910-1911, the Navy received 343 million lire in financial resources, which was 46 million liras higher than the 297 million lire in the previous year.

Regardless of the amount of money, it seems that several super dreadnoughts can be built in one go. But this money cannot be calculated like this. First of all, the navy needs to pay salaries. Last year, the navy spent 64 million liras for salary alone. Don't think it's expensive, you must know that there are currently more than 80,000 people in the navy, and the average annual salary per person is only more than 700 lire. Regardless of patriotism and nationalistic education, they can find a job at least 150 lire per month. After all, the navy is a technical service, and naval officers and soldiers need to know some technology more or less.

Moreover, the salary of the Italian Navy is already very low among the powers of various countries. After all, the Italian government is not very wealthy, and to maintain the Navy's shipbuilding, it can only find ways to deal with other expenses.

In fact, the major expenditures in the navy are the maintenance costs of warships. It includes maintenance, training, uniforms, food reserves, etc. of warships, and its cost increases with the number of warships.

Taking the current Italian dreadnought Dante as an example, the annual maintenance cost to ensure its combat effectiveness is 2.16 million lire.

Last year, the Navy spent 79 million lire just to maintain the warships. After all, the size of the Italian navy is currently ranked fourth in the world, second only to Britain, Germany and the United States.

In addition, the Navy also has ammunition procurement costs, shore facilities and equipment construction costs, fuel costs, and new technology research and development costs.

And these costs are not cheap. Taking ammunition as an example, the current price of a 305mm shell has reached 45,000 liras. The price of these thousand main artillery shells is almost catching up with its battleship.

The price is so expensive because 90% of its mass is made of high-performance alloy armor-piercing body, and the process of making a shell of hundreds of kilograms is particularly complicated. Therefore, in general artillery training, the main guns of battleships are not fired as much as possible to save the cost of artillery shells.

This is also why the Japanese Navy in later generations would attach a 150mm gun to the main gun of the Yamato to simulate the training of main gun firing, all because the cost of firing the main gun once was too high.

Last year, the Italian Navy spent 37.1 million lire on ammunition purchases. Most of this is the cost of small and medium-caliber naval gun ammunition. (Navy guns with a caliber of more than 200 mm are considered large-caliber)

In addition to the procurement cost of ammunition, the procurement of fuel is also a big deal. As long as the warship is started, it must use fuel, and anyone can count the fuel consumption of thousands of horsepower.

The training patrols of daily battleships are very expensive. The oil is good. The Navy can use the heavy oil after refining diesel gasoline, and its price is several times lower than that of gasoline and diesel. Although the efficiency is much worse than the above two, it is expensive and cheap!

Who is so rich that they dare to use gasoline on warships. (Japanese Navy you sit down)

The oil is fine, but the efficiency of coal burning is much lower, so in order to ensure the performance of warships, the navies of various countries choose the best anthracite coal.

Last year, Italy spent 12.6 million lire on fuel purchases, the lowest in three years.

In addition to these, the construction cost of land facilities is not low. The construction of land facilities is mainly the construction of military port terminals, as well as the construction of various warehouses, oil storage tanks, dormitories and other aspects.

At present, the Italian Navy has 54 military ports, including 26 third-level military ports (auxiliary ports, which can park various warships under 5,000 tons, and can carry out simple repair and maintenance work. 8 are subject to conditions and can only be parked. Warships under 3,000 tons)

13 secondary military ports (secondary military ports, which can berth warships below the 10,000-ton level, except for major repairs)

8 first-class military ports, (all current warships can be berthed, but limited to the capacity of the port, it cannot accommodate all of them, and all repairs and maintenance work can be carried out.)

6 special naval ports (which can accommodate all the main battleships and can serve as the anchorage of the Italian Navy.)

The construction and protection of so many military ports are not easy at all. Not to mention that many ports are used for both military and civilian use, and more considerations need to be taken into account.

Last year, the Navy spent 21.4 million lire on land facilities and equipment.

More than half of these costs are spent on defense. The construction of coastal defense facilities is very expensive. For example, the purchase price of a 305mm shore gun has reached 300,000 liras. You can't just have this gun, you also need to build a fort to house it, and you need to train officers and soldiers who can operate the gun, all of which require expenses.

Therefore, the current 305mm shore guns, in addition to Italy's main ports (including Libya and Albania), only Massawa and Pontianak.

The main reason is that this gun is not only expensive, but the shells are also expensive, and the Italian Navy does not use it very much.

At present, 305 mm is the ceiling of Italy's special construction of shore guns. If it goes up, it is not suitable for it to be manufactured. It is too expensive and does not conform to the actual national strength of Italy.

In fact, not only Italy, but also the maximum caliber of coastal defense artillery in European countries is basically stopped at 305 mm. If there are larger than this caliber, they are basically dismantled from warships and used for waste.

In addition, because the Navy is a technical service, it needs to pay great attention to the trends of various new technologies. In addition to paying attention, new technologies that are beneficial to warships also need to be studied. In this regard, the Italian Navy is very generous. Even if the funding was so tight last year, it did not treat the research and development of new technologies badly. Last year, a total of 23.5 million lire was allocated for the research and development of various new technologies.

In addition, there are various small expenses, such as publicity, training and education, which add up to nearly ten million liras. These costs add up to 210 million lire, and these are essential expenses.

So last year, the navy's spending on shipbuilding was only nearly 90 million lire. This looks like a lot, but the warships still under construction in the dock do not need funding. Among them, three Cavour-class super dreadnoughts were allocated more than 30 million lire last year. In addition to this, other cruisers, destroyers, patrol boats, torpedo boats, submarines and special ships have shared more than 30 million lire.

Although the remaining 20 million lire is enough to start the construction of a Milan-class battle cruiser, it is impossible for the navy to build only one battle cruiser, and other small and medium-sized warships do not need to be built. In the end, the Navy gave up the construction work of the Milan-class, and used more than 20 million lire as two Veronclass cruisers No. 3 and No. 4, as well as six destroyers, sixteen patrol boats, torpedo boats and other ships. construction costs.

Among them, the Veronclass cruiser is an improved version of the Piedmont-class, mainly to improve the ocean-going capability. In addition, a double-mounted 150mm main gun has been added to the firepower. Of course, the displacement has also increased from the standard displacement of 5,120 tons to 5,800 tons. Since the power system has not changed, the speed of the Piedmont class has been reduced from 27 knots to 26.5 knots. However, officers and soldiers generally responded that the Verona class is more comfortable, and the wind and wave resistance is better than that of the Piedmont class.

Now that there is more money at our disposal, the Milan-class battle cruiser can be arranged.

Chapter end