Strictly speaking, the Hindenburg-class battleships at this time were not even finished with design drawings, on the one hand, the level of German designers was not as good as the three naval powers of the United States, Japan and Britain, and the design requirements of the Hindenburg-class were too high. But the main reason is that as a "giant ship cannonist", he is a complete layman's mustache who frequently intervenes in the design of the Hindenburg-class battleships, and the designers and related enterprises dare not refute it, and as a result, time and resources are wasted.

For example, at the beginning, the design requirements of the Hindenburg-class battleship were 50,000 tons of displacement and 4 twin 403mm guns, and then the mustache felt that it was not powerful enough, so he increased the index to 60,500 tons and installed 420mm guns, even with Germany's solid industrial base, it took a lot of time to tackle key problems, and later in history, the mustache was crazy to increase to 80,000 tons, 480mm guns, and even 100,000 tons of standard rows, 800mm guns!

Designers of the Hindenburg-class battleships were overwhelmed by the ever-changing design requirements, and the ever-increasing hulls and main gun calibres made it increasingly difficult to design and build the Hindenburg-class battleships, eventually exceeding the limits of what the German shipbuilding industry could achieve, and the Hindenburg-class battleships became complete spectators on the slipway

But the two Hindenburg-class battleships that were arranged to be built in China at this time and space were much luckier, first of all, because "the sky is high and the emperor is far away", the mustache could not intervene too often, so that the designers gained more freedom and were able to consider the feasibility of the design more. At the same time, Hu Weidong, a BB party and Shijie's No. 1 artillery and armor expert (the latter is limited to this time and space), also provided a lot of valuable opinions and suggestions.

With Hu Weidong's encouragement, the designers of the Hindenburg-class battleships decided to ignore the unrealistic requirements of the mustache and try to design on the basis of a mature jishu. And when necessary, be more bold and innovate, and wait until the finished product comes out and report like a mustache, as long as the overall performance is excellent. Forgive him and don't be too harsh (focusing on results is one of the strengths of a mustache).

For example, the twin turrets that had been used by German warships for many years were finally replaced by triple turrets, so that only three main turrets were needed to obtain more firepower than the original four twin main turrets, and more importantly, the Hindenburg-class battleships no longer needed to be as long as they had historically. The relatively stubby ship type not only improves the stability of side-chord shelling and seaworthiness under bad sea conditions, but also greatly saves the design displacement, or improves the utilization rate of the design displacement. This, in turn, meant a reduction in costs and an acceleration of construction, which could not be overestimated for Germany, which could be drawn into a full-scale war at any time

Under Hu Weidong's repeated persuasion, the German designers finally made up their minds and made a significant adjustment to the armor arrangement in the original plan according to the idea of key protection. In some relatively minor (Note 1) areas, the thickness of the armor has been reduced to a fraction of the original size, or even the armor protection has been abandoned in favor of relying entirely on the damage management system (Note 2). On the one hand, this greatly improves the protection of key parts, and on the other hand, it saves a lot of load (in fact, the application of new armor steel contributes even more), and makes it possible to install a large number of anti-aircraft weapons on the Hindenburg-class battleships.

But its greater impact is also the substantial improvement of the protection capacity of key parts, which maximizes the role of the new armor steel. In contrast to the Bismarck-class battleships (before the refit), which had weak armor in the main turret. The armor protection of the Hindenburg-class main turret is so powerful that even the Japanese Yamato-class battleships with 460mm guns in history have to close the distance to within 10,000 meters to cause substantial damage, and their frontal armor is even more terrifying, even if the 460mm cannon is fired against it, don't even think about penetrating it (the reason why the standard is set so high is that the strength of the armor will decrease due to the fatigue effect after repeated hits). ）。 What's even more terrifying is that such a strong defensive capability is quite thin, of which the frontal armor is only 360mm (because of the use of new armor steel, the anti-penetration ability is not inferior to the Japanese armor steel with a thickness of 1080mm, the American armor steel with a thickness of 900mm or the British armor steel with a thickness of 720mm), which is not only far inferior to the 650mm of the Yamato-class battleships, but even the 495mm of the Iowa-class battleships. The two originally contradictory indicators of hardness and lightness were taken into account because of an excellent armor steel that was ahead of the times, in fact, even Hu Weidong at this time did not fully realize what kind of monster he helped the Germans create

In addition, the horizontal armor with a thickness of 150mm even exceeds that of the historical Iowa-class battleships, and its armor strength is far from being comparable to it, which makes the Hindenburg-class battleships easily resist large-caliber armor-piercing shells that fall to the deck at a large angle due to long-range shelling, not to mention the armor-piercing or semi-armor-piercing aerial bombs dropped by dive bombers and even horizontal bombers, perhaps only the historical British "goblet bomb" weighing more than 5 tons can penetrate the horizontal armor of the Hindenburg-class battleships, And because the Hindenburg-class battleships had additional armor up to 320mm thick above important positions such as ammunition depots, it was difficult for even a "goblet bomb" to hit the Hindenburg-class battleships with a single shot

Note 1: The criterion for judging is that being hit by a large-caliber shell or heavy bomb will not cause a significant decrease in the buoyancy of the warship's reserves, will not cause a significant decrease in the firepower of the warship, will not cause a significant decrease in the speed of the warship or oil leakage, will not cause a large number of casualties, and will not cause a fire or explosion that can endanger the entire warship. And due to the great threat of torpedoes, all parts of the water need to be protected intensively.

Note 2: The full name of damage management is "ship damage control", which is the measures and actions taken by ships to prevent, limit and eliminate damage in order to maintain or restore their own vitality. The main contents of ship damage management are as follows:

1. Anti-sinking and anti-sinking.

2. Fire prevention, explosion prevention and fire extinguishing, maintaining or restoring the vitality of weapons and equipment, jishu equipment; Prevent and eliminate damage from steam.

The damage management system has been developed by leaps and bounds after the war, becoming an important reason for warships to abandon strong armor, the most outstanding of which is the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of the United States imperialism, looking at the lack of too thick armor, but the ability to resist strikes is comparable to those super battleships during World War II (I personally think it may be stronger), there was a serious accident in which 11 planes on the deck caught fire and exploded, and they were able to drive back to repair (to be continued). )