Chapter 402 New Ship Launched
"Ken, bring the new version of the blueprints here quickly. The Lord is coming to inspect it."
"Which edition?"
"New version!"
"I know, it's the new version 1.0, the new version 1.1, the latest version, the latest version, the latest version that will never be revised?"
"ah?"
Ken looked up from the filing cabinet, his face full of helplessness: "These were all drawn by Master Tata yesterday while working overtime. They are all new versions."
The house fell into chaos again.
This is the design institute affiliated with the Castel Shipyard.
Generally speaking, design institutes are not located in manufacturing plants, but Castel's shipyard currently does not have a mature shipbuilding system, and almost everything is still under trial and error, so Tata simply set up the design institute directly in the factory.
After the engineers have drawn up the drawings, they can open the door, turn left and walk into the workshop for three minutes to try production. They can then see the finished products and analyze problems on the spot.
It has to be said that this is extremely efficient, and ship designs are iterating at a very fast speed.
As soon as Ken returned to Castel, Tata asked him to come over.
Ken had received advanced training and had sailed many times with the Black Pearl, so he had extensive sailing experience. With Jeremiah's generous teaching, he also learned a lot about hydrology and other knowledge.
At that time, Xius sent this group of people out to accumulate shipbuilding experience, and now is the time to reap the rewards.
Ken did not disappoint, he had solid mechanical knowledge and most importantly, he had a lot of actual overseas experience, which was what Tata, a designer from the mainland, lacked the most.
When the shipyard was being established, Hughes had no one available, so he had to pull out Tata. He was originally a researcher at the Fire Moth. A considerable part of the design of the cathedral came from him, and he was also the chief designer of the stellar furnace.
Although Tata had some knowledge of mechanical principles and architectural design, he had little experience in shipbuilding. In addition, Castell's shipyard was set up out of thin air, and it did not even have much experience in designing sailing warships.
There were a large number of shipyards in Gem Bay, but the skilled workers were buried at the bottom of the sea along with the Pirate King, leaving only some difficult-to-understand blueprints.
This industry has a very high threshold to begin with, and the result of exploring it from scratch is that there are one shipwreck after another at the Castel Northern Test Site, and the scrap steel can be piled up into a lighthouse.
However, the loss of steel during recycling is not that high. When we have enough of it, we can collect it together and put it back into the furnace, and then it can be reused.
Therefore, Hughes did not impose many restrictions.
But there had been no significant results, and both Tata and the shipyard were under great pressure. When they heard that the lord was coming to inspect, Tata dragged Ken to work overtime that night and stayed up late to produce the drawings.
So when Xius walked into the design institute, he was stunned when he saw the blueprint bags piled up almost to the ceiling.
"My Lord, this is our latest battleship design. Please take a look at it. If there is no problem, we will put it into production."
Ken handed over the drawings somewhat nervously.
There were thousands of blueprints of a ship, large and small, enough to bury two people. What he looked at was a rendering of the exterior, with a cross-section drawing for a brief introduction.
"Where's Tata?"
"He has gone to the shipyard to monitor the process. Now the basic construction of the ship has been completed and it can be launched within a week at the earliest."
If we go on an expedition to the North, it will definitely be too late to build ships now, so we can only use the ships built before.
Since the drawings are iterating very quickly nowadays, these ships are already outdated when they are built. But there is no way. If they don’t build them, they will never have any experience, and they will have to make the necessary mistakes.
Even though ships were sinking every day north of Castel, Hughes endured the pressure and did not hold anyone accountable, allowing them to do what they wanted without worrying about it.
Xius took the drawing and looked at it for a long time, only to find that he could hardly understand anything.
If he was given the engine design drawings, he could still study them, but he had no idea about the hull and the watertight compartments.
It's not just a casual saying that different trades have different worlds. He knew basically nothing about shipbuilding. He could only say that the ship looked fat and was obviously not small in size.
"Well, this ship is designed to be used as a main battleship. It has heavy armor that can withstand the concentrated detonation of explosive packs. There is a ram at the front, explosive pack launchers on both sides, and a landing platform on the top deck."
"Wait, wait a minute!"
Xius rubbed his eyebrows. What kind of nonsense had he heard?
"Let's not talk about anything else for now. What is this horn?"
Ken scratched his head and said, "This was suggested by Nini. We referred to her naval combat experience. It is said that gun shooting is not very effective at sea, so we..."
"You just used the ram?!" Xius felt a headache. "What's the point of referring to Nini's experience? The naval battles she fought were all in the water. How could she have fought a battle on a ship?"
".That makes sense."
"Your ship is so wide, can it turn quickly? If the turning speed is not fast enough, will the ram be useful?"
Xius looked at the collision corner on the drawing and was speechless.
You know what, this ramming horn looks quite handsome, and combined with the heavy and tall shape of the ironclad ship, it is quite intimidating.
Yes, or should I add it?
"Well, I'm not a professional at naval warfare, so you can judge for yourself. What is that trebuchet?"
"It's not a trebuchet, it's a dynamite launcher."
Hughes looked down at the several energy-storing structures on the design drawing. This thing looked a bit like a hybrid of a ballista and a catapult, but was it used to throw explosive packs?
There is a kind of beauty of using chips as arrows.
"How is the artillery research going?"
"Mr. Richard is in charge of those. It is said that there have been some breakthroughs, but there are still many problems in miniaturization."
"It doesn't need to be miniaturized. You can use it on the ship, so it doesn't matter if it's bigger. A larger caliber is not a bad thing." Hughes smacked his lips, and suddenly an idea came to his mind: "And we don't necessarily have to think about miniaturization of artillery."
"ah?"
"We can make the firearms larger, with larger calibers and bullets. Since there isn't much logistical pressure on the ship anyway, we can upgrade the Gatling gun directly to a Gatling cannon, and there's no need to worry about recoil when it's fixed for use."
This type of machine gun does not pose much threat to ships, but it can effectively kill personnel or provide some fire suppression.
Theoretically, it is more suitable for air defense, but there is no other air force except Castel, so it cannot be used for the time being.
"Okay, let's talk about this later. I'll contact the military factory."
Hughes pointed to the huge platform on the blueprint.
"Is this the flight deck?"
"Yes!" Ken nodded quickly.
"Then what is flying? Did you build a plane?"
"What's a plane? This is used to park the airship."
“.”
"You mean, this is an aircraft carrier equipped with rams, trebuchets, and Gatling guns?"
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
