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

In the fiscal year 1910-1911, the navy received 343 million lire in financial funding, 46 million lire more than the 297 million lire in the previous year.

Regardless of the large amount of money, it seems that several super dreadnoughts can be built in one go. But the money cannot be calculated in this way. First of all, the navy needs to pay salaries. Last year, the navy spent 64 million lire just to pay salaries. Don’t think it’s expensive. You need to 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. Without patriotic enthusiasm and nationalist education, they start at least 150 lire a month to find a job. After all, the navy is a technical service, and naval officers and soldiers need to understand more or less technology.

Moreover, the salaries of the Italian navy are already very low among the major powers in various countries. After all, the Italian government is not very rich in finances, and if it wants to maintain the navy's shipbuilding, it can only find a way from other expenses.

In fact, the largest expenditure in the navy is the maintenance cost of warships. It includes maintenance, training, military 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 cost of maintaining its combat effectiveness is 2.16 million lire.

Last year, the navy spent 79 million lire on the maintenance of warships alone. 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, construction costs for shore facilities and equipment, 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 lire. The price of the thousand main gun shells is almost catching up with its warships.

The price is so expensive because 90% of its mass is an armor-piercing body made of high-performance alloys. The process of manufacturing a shell that weighs hundreds of kilograms is extremely complicated. Therefore, in general gunnery training, the main guns of battleships should be fired as little as possible to save the cost of shells.

This is why later generations of the Japanese Navy attached a 150mm gun to the main gun of the Yamato to simulate the training of the 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 procurement. Most of them are spent on ammunition for small and medium caliber naval guns. (Naval guns with a caliber of 200 mm or more are considered large caliber)

In addition to the purchase of ammunition, the purchase of fuel is also a big part. As long as the battleship is started, it must use fuel, and anyone can calculate how much fuel is consumed with thousands of horsepower.

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

Who is so rich, dare to use gasoline on warships. (Japanese navy, sit down)

Oil is okay, but because coal is much less efficient in burning coal, in order to ensure the performance of warships, navies of various countries choose the best anthracite.

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

In addition to these, the construction cost of onshore facilities is not low. The construction of onshore facilities is mainly the construction of military ports and docks, as well as construction work such as various warehouses, oil storage tanks, and dormitories.

At present, the Italian Navy has 54 military ports, including 26 third-level military ports (auxiliary military ports, which can berth various warships below 5,000 tons, and can perform simple repairs and maintenance work, and 8 are limited by conditions and can only berth Warships under 3,000 tons)

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

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

6 special military ports (capable of accommodating all main battleships and serving as an anchorage for the Italian Navy.)

The construction and defense of so many military ports is not easy at all. Not to mention that many ports are used for both military and civilian purposes, so there are more things to consider.

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

Among these expenses, more than half of the expenses are spent on defense. The construction of coastal defense facilities is very expensive. For example, the purchase price of a 305mm coastal gun has reached 300,000 lire. You just need the gun, you need to build a fort to install it, and you need to train officers and soldiers who can operate the gun, all of which require expenses.

So at present, the 305mm shore artillery, in addition to the main ports in Italy (including Libya and Albania), only Massawa and Pontianak.

The main reason is that this gun is not only expensive, but also the shells are expensive, and the Italian navy can't afford it very much.

At present, the 305mm is the ceiling for shore artillery specially built in Italy. It is not that it cannot be manufactured, but it is not suitable. It is too expensive and does not meet the actual national strength of Italy.

In fact, not only Italy, the maximum caliber of coastal defense guns in European countries basically stops at 305mm. 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 close attention to the trends of various new technologies. In addition to paying attention, new technologies that are beneficial to warships also need to be researched. In this regard, the Italian Navy is very generous. Even if the funds were 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, etc. These expenses add up to nearly tens of millions of lire. These expenses add up to 210 million lire, and these are essential expenses.

So last year ~lightnovelpub.net~ the navy could only spend nearly 90 million lire on shipbuilding. This looks like a lot, but do the warships still under construction in the dock need funding, among which three Cavour-class super dreadnoughts were allocated more than 30 million lire last year. In addition, other cruisers, destroyers, patrol boats, torpedo boats, submarines, and special ships divided up more than 30 million lire.

Although the remaining more than 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 battleships need not be built. In the end, the navy gave up the construction work of the Milan class, and used more than 20 million lire as the cost of the two Verona-class cruisers No. 3 and No. 4, as well as six destroyers, sixteen patrol boats, torpedo boats and other ships. construction costs.

Among them, the Verona-class cruiser is an improved version of the Piedmont class, which mainly improves the ocean-going capability. In addition, a dual-mounted 150mm main gun is added to the firepower. Of course, the displacement has also increased from the standard displacement of 5120 tons to 5800 tons. Since the power system has not changed, the speed has been reduced from 27 knots of the Piedmont class to 26.5 knots. However, officers and soldiers generally responded that the Verona class is more comfortable, and it is also better in wind and wave resistance than the Piedmont class.

Now that there is more money that can be flexibly controlled in the hands, then the Milan-level battle cruiser can be arranged.

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