"Admiral, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my design."

Kuniberti looked at the head of the navy in front of him, and reiterated his attitude once again.

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

Regarding the words of chief designer Kuni Berti, Admiral Yagier expressed his concerns. And they were talking about the design of the first Italian battlecruiser, the Taranto-class battlecruiser.

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

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

From all aspects, the performance of this battleship is very good. However, one thing that has made the navy criticize is that in order to ensure that the ship's performance meets the standards, Viscount Kuniberti has greatly reduced the ship's armor.

It doesn't mean that the armor has been reduced. In the key core area, the armor is quite thick, and it has not been reduced. But in the non-core area, Kuniberti drastically reduced its armor, and even canceled the armor in many areas.

As a user, the Italian Navy is somewhat dissatisfied with this practice of canceling the armor in 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 Kuniberti's side, listening to Admiral Yagier's remarks, he said helplessly. "Admiral, the navy requires that the ship not only have the firepower of a new type of battleship, but also have a speed difference of 3-4 knots faster than the Dante class, and the cost should not be much higher than that of the Dante class. Such harsh requirements, I We can only think of a way from the armor."

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

Someone may ask, why is there such a big price gap between the Genoa-class battleship and the Garibaldi-class cruiser? That's because the construction costs of these two warships are not high, at least compared with the new main battleships.

In the case of a limited budget, the new battlecruiser must have sufficient firepower, so its weapon cost will not be low, at least it will not be much lower than the purchase cost of Dante-level weapons (a little less secondary guns).

Weapons are fairly easy to solve, but the most terrible thing for battle cruisers is the problem of high speed. First of all, if you want a 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 obtain high speed, the shape of the warship can also help. The slender hull can help the warship achieve higher speed.

And this also causes the hull and power system to account for a higher proportion of the weight of the battleship than the new battleship. The remaining percentage is what the armor gets.

In this case, the same approach as pepper noodles is absolutely not acceptable. This will lead to insufficient armor. It seems that they are protected, but in the end they are not 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 sea battles, 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 shell is not sour.

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

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

Admiral Yagier didn't want to answer Kuniberti's words. Don't look at the Navy's sale of ships and get 400 million lire, but if you don't save a little money, it will be gone for you in a few clicks. 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 stuck, these ship designers can let themselves go and pile up a new gadget with excellent performance but high blood pressure for you.

In addition to new technologies, the purchase 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 things, the Navy also needs to invest funds to verify whether they are suitable for the needs of the Navy and so on.

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 strict about the extra funds in his hands, and will not be easily persuaded to take them out. The construction of the Taranto patrol 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 lire made it impossible for Admiral Yagier to continue to increase funds for this model, which won the most expensive battle cruiser in Italy.

Since he didn't want to pay, General Yagier couldn't speak in the face of Kuniberti who put the problem in front of him. However, Admiral Yagier had an idea, maybe this battlecruiser can be shown to Tirpitz, and the Germans may also appreciate this warship, so they can charge a fee for the construction of other warships.

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

As the chief warship designer, Cuniberty certainly knows the various warships built by the Navy, and the Piedmont-class cruisers that Admiral Yagier mentioned are the products of new era technologies.

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

"I haven't said this class of cruiser before. It's very good. This new cruiser designed by Giuseppe Orlando takes into account all aspects. It is a general-purpose cruiser suitable for the needs of our navy."

And this Piedmont-class cruiser he praised ~lightnovelpub.net~ has a total length of 147 meters, a beam of 16.1 meters, and a draft of 5.2 meters. The standard displacement of the ship is 5120 tons, and the full load displacement is 6380 tons.

Equipped with 4 double-mounted 152mm guns, 4 105mm single-barreled guns, 6 75mm single-barreled guns, and two quadruple-mounted 533mm torpedo launchers. The 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 maximum 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 it is designed by Kuni Berti himself, it will not be better than this. After all, he was used to designing large warships, so if he was asked to design small and medium warships, he might not be as good as other excellent designers.

Of course, he also heard the news that this excellent cruiser is not cheap at all, with a construction cost of 12 million lire, this is Admiral Yagier's determination to decide how many ships to build. However, there is news that the Ministry of the Navy really likes the ship. Some say it plans to build 6 ships, and some say it will be 8 ships. However, no matter how many ships, this is a headache for the admiral.

Please remember the first domain name of this book: . :