Chapter 564 of the New History of China in the First Sino-Japanese Period: Long-distance artillery bombardment experiment

The performance of the new dreadnought Longxing class can be described as quite good. After crushing the old dreadnoughts with absolute superiority, the Longxing class is about to challenge the next goal today, which is to see how much the new fire control system can reach to the ground. It's a pity that the Germans didn't have so many target ships to continue to shoot at mobile targets, and at the same time, with the increase in distance, the artillery walked bigger and bigger, maybe a shot hit the ship in front of the tow, which was not what the Germans wanted to see, so the next stage of the strike was a fixed target.

Considering that the Longxing-class battleships had an amazing hit rate on moving targets 8KM away, the design distance was directly adjusted to 11KM after consultation between the two countries. The firing method is still 12 guns divided into 3 groups for comparative firing. After the distance increased by almost half, the shells of the 12-inch 45L main gun gradually drifted a little. Walks have increased dramatically. After 6 rounds of continuous firing, not only did it not hit the target, but it did not even form a crash. The shells will fall to the left and to the right. One will fall in front of the target...... Once it falls behind the target, it just can't form a crash.

"The shells were too scattered to form a crushing shot, and the walk of the shells increased dramatically at long distances. 4 shells are no longer suitable for comparative fire under the existing technical conditions. After stopping the shelling, Liu Buyun said with some discouragement..........

"If we can form a more shot, even if the walk is larger, we can still get a good hit with the density of fire from up to 12 guns, and since there are many errors in ranging and lateral direction due to technical problems, why don't we increase the number of more shots? For example, divide the 12 guns of the entire battleship into two gun groups and alternate them. From the original three-stage to the two-stage excessive? Deng Shichang thought for a while and said.

"This one can be a bit of a hassle. But now, you can still use this backup plan, command. Two guns, 1 and 3 in turret No. 1 and turret No. 4. and the No. 2 guns of the No. 2 and No. 3 turrets, a total of 6 guns were grouped together for the first salvo, and the remaining 6 guns were responsible for the second calibration. Liu Buyun ordered.

And after the redistribution, the performance of the Longxing class was indeed much better than at the beginning, and after 3 rounds and a half volleys, it finally succeeded in clamping the target. A crash shot was formed, followed by a successful 12-inch shell on the target in the third round after firing at full speed. Immediately after that, two more shells were hit in the sixth round of fire. Overall, the performance is still good.

BUT WHEN THE TARGET DISTANCE IS SET AT 14KM. The Longxing was finally defeated by the not yet mature fire control and the huge walk of the shells! The walk of the shells has reached an intolerable level, and the collapse shot is very easy to form, because the walk at this time is about 500 meters, and it is easy to catch the target. But there is no point in such a clip. The fire control system is not able to reduce the target distance from the observations. The first round of design is sandwiched, and then the distance is shortened by 300 meters, and the distance is set farther or sandwiched! As a result, you can only get caught and not hit! Shooting is completely meaningless!. …。

After firing hundreds of shells, Liu Buyun and others came to the conclusion that at this stage, the farthest engagement distance of the battleship is 12KM, and if it is far away, it is basically equivalent to catching blind! But this is not bad, at least the effective combat distance is 7% farther than during the Sino-Russian war! That's a good step forward.

Finding the results is not the end goal of the entire test. The naval elites of the Chinese Republic and Germany also need to understand why this is the case. And the first problem to be found is the problem of the artillery itself. In order to better compare and find the reason, the naval officers of the two countries did not only compare the two large-caliber naval guns that participated in the experiment. Even the data on the Krupp gun factory and other available artillery were compared. And when comparing the firing parameters of the second-class main gun caliber naval gun, Liu Buyun and others really found some ideas. …。

BECAUSE THEY FOUND THAT THE GERMAN 280MM40L HEAVY GUN WALKED BETTER THAN THE GERMAN 240MM HEAVY GUN, AND THE 240MM HEAVY GUN WALKED BETTER THAN THE 210MM GUN. That is, the more large-caliber artillery walks at long distances, the better. "At long distances, a walk with a larger caliber of artillery will be better than a smaller-caliber one." Sippel wrote.

Subsequently, after comparing the land test walk data and the sea test walk data, the navies of the two countries also found a problem to some extent, that is, at sea, the battleship itself is an unstable platform relative to the land, and the roll of the battleship has a great relationship with the walking and hitting of the artillery, while in the non-anchored state, the Longxing class has a larger hull, greater weight and more reasonable design...... Its stability is better than that of Westminster-class battleships, so it hits better ..........

At the same time, after comparing the hits of the same battleship at different nodes of the roll cycle, the two navies still believe that firing while the hull is in the center is the most conducive to firing. Of course, this center is a range value, and it is not necessary to fire when the normal hull is positive, as long as it is within a certain range, which is what was later called the firing window.

The artillery can find the problem, then the rest is the fire control system, how to say, under the current historical conditions, the difference in fire control ranging by more than 5% is considered normal, what does this mean, a hundred meters is 5 meters away, and a kilometer is 50 meters away. At about 15 kilometers, it is more than 750 meters away! Such a huge gap is absolutely a waste of shells fired by any artillery! And this situation is really impossible to solve, we can only pray that Zeiss can produce better optical lenses, and pray that the Raeder system can be successfully developed as soon as possible.

In the end, the Huaxia Navy and the German Navy discussed the issue of coordinated operations of capital ships in fleet operations. In the tests, the three Westminster-class battleships simply could not play to the advantage of up to 18 11-inch guns, and in the case of coordination, all three battleships would be unobservable because of the clutter of the water column, then in real combat, this situation will be even more obvious, if it is a dreadnought engagement. Each battleship had more than 8 main guns. Add to this the chaotic battlefield situation, and the actual fight will be even more chaotic. Therefore, in actual combat, at most two warships will flank one battleship, and it is necessary to stop shooting after fighting for a period of time and redistribute firepower, otherwise it will not be able to hit the target ......... at all.

And this was good news for the Germans, after all, if the opposing battleships could not convert the huge numerical superiority into a firepower superiority in the actual engagement, then the inferior side with fewer numbers could make up for it. And this strengthened Tirpitz's courage to face the British Imperial fleet in future battles!

Thank you to the book friend Hell Queen, lx731209, Tianji Scholar, and the monthly pass support of Drunken Smile ~~~. (To be continued......) ……,。