When he heard Qingying use such strange words to arouse Tirpitz's inspiration, which in turn triggered a series of huge butterfly effects. William II's eyes narrowed slightly, and a strange feeling appeared in his heart. Before he could carefully savor the mystery, Tirpitz's endless words pulled him back to his normal state of thinking.

"As the Second Highness said, the German Empire developed its naval forces to compete with old naval countries, especially with its old enemy, for land in the sun. To achieve this goal, the imperial warships must have strong firepower that can destroy enemy warships; if it is just to build a target that cannot be sunk, it cannot meet the needs of the empire! Therefore, the firepower we have ignored before should also be raised to the same height as armor; and this part of the weight increased by increasing firepower is compensated by the tonnage increased by a single warship."

Tirpitz paused and continued: "Due to the changes in this basic concept, the artillery development plan we have formulated before must be completely reshuffled; otherwise, there will be cases where large ships carry small cannons and seriously waste tonnage."

"Wait, Alfred." William II's thoughts had just returned to normal, and he had not fully understood what Tirpitz said for a while. He frowned and thought for a while, and slowly said, "I understand. Due to the increase in the tonnage of the warship, the cannons originally planned to be equipped for her seemed less powerful, so another cannon with greater power was needed."

Tirpitz nodded and said, "That's right. We planned to equip the next battleship with a 40-distance 240mm main gun on the next level of battleships. Now it seems that this plan has a big problem. Although the firing rate of the 240mm gun is very fast, and the Krupp military industry guarantees to reach 3 rounds per minute, its power is too small, and a single shell is only 140Kg, which is not enough to pose any fatal threat to the opponent's main battleship. Even in the Baltic Sea, where the combat distance is close, its high firing rate will be difficult to make up for the disadvantage of low power. In addition, Krupp's armor development results are changing with each passing day, and the armor's anti-aircraft performance has been almost doubled. If it is not equipped with more powerful artillery, in future naval battles, the German Navy's main battleship will face the embarrassing situation where the artillery cannot penetrate the enemy!"

"But, Alfred, the powerful main gun means a slow rate of fire. How should you solve this problem? At present, the combat distances in naval battles are not far, and the slow-firing large-caliber artillery plays an extremely limited role. If there is not enough fire density, even if it is powerful, what's the use of not hitting others? The reason why we gave up 305mm and chose 283mm guns to equip the four latest Brandenburg-class battleships was considered." William II said.

"I thought of this problem too." Tirpitz picked up the manuscript paper with various symbols and graphics drawn by him, pointed to one corner, and said with confidence, "My idea is to make a compromise between caliber and rate of fire!"

"The main gun with great power is what we hope for; and the high rate of fire is also what we hope for. Since the two are naturally opposite and cannot be taken into account, we will choose an intermediate caliber to take into account both power and rate of fire to a certain extent. At present, the power of the 283mm main gun equipped on our battleship is usable, so we can directly use this as the basis to let Krupp create a joint turret loaded at any angle of the cannon to increase the rate of fire of this type of artillery on the main ship. In this way, both the power will be taken into account, and the rate of fire will be increased several times due to the turret structure!" Tirpitz kept his gestures, and his mouth flew everywhere, as if he wanted to pour out everything he thought in his heart.

"Does the compromise caliber and the rate of fire..." William II murmured, frowned, and began to quickly calculate in his heart. In fact, William II's naval foundation is far less unbearable than the rumors of later generations, but has very profound attainments. After only a moment, he figured out the key. Germany's 40-diameter 283mm cannon was originally a retracted cannon, and it naturally met the conditions for rapid fire. In addition, the smokeless gunpowder problem has been solved. Only a turret structure that can be quickly recharged can be improved in a completely different way!

"Wait a minute... Since that's the case, why do you still hold the current 283mm gun? Just let Krupp Military Industry develop a larger caliber 305mm gun and configure a turret for this gun!" After this idea formed in William II's mind, he immediately trembled with excitement; but after thinking about it, he could only sigh and throw this idea out of the sky. Now, the German military industry has just completed the manufacturing of the 11-inch tube retracted gun, and there is still a lot of data and experience to be absorbed in the test; if the gun caliber is rashly increased, the development time will be slow, and it is very likely that it will be possible to produce a failed product in the end. This is something that William II and the German Navy cannot accept!

In addition, the development of turrets is also an unavoidable hard indicator. Although William II did not know the detailed structure of this thing, he knew one thing very well: that is, the difficulty of this thing in the manufacturing process and the bearing strength of the hull structure are proportional to the power of the cannon. At present, Krupp can only guarantee that it can produce a 240mm gun and a supporting turret structure in a few years. Tirpitz wanted to ensure that the caliber of the main gun remained unchanged, which was already a big step forward. If it was suddenly increased to 305mm gun, then the difficulty would not be a little bit!

Seeing the change of expression on William II's face, surprised, happy, longing, and then declining, Tirpitz knew that this young monarch who was very enthusiastic about his achievements was beginning to diverge his imaginary thinking that day. He tapped the table with his fingers a few times and said, "As for the larger caliber cannon... I am bluntly, your majesty, at this stage, I personally recommend that you not think too much. First of all, Krupp's technical conditions cannot be met, and secondly, the rate of fire cannot be balanced. What's more, in the caliber of 283 mm, our current cannon still has great potential to tap!

When this type of artillery was developed, in order to reduce the technical difficulty, the projectile was reduced to a high speed of 820m/s, and its bullet weight was compressed to only 240kg. This weight is a flash of extremely low weight, and the conventional bullet weight should be at least 300kg." In fact, William II's expression may also be a negative to the compromise concept, but Tirpitz did not think there was this possibility at all. In his opinion, his idea has been deduced by him in all aspects, perfect, how could there be any mistakes?

After being exposed by Tirpitz in person, William II was slightly embarrassed and said, "Forget it, let's do what you said. I will inject an additional fund into the Navy to use the additional bonus for the research of 283mm double turrets. Alfred, tell the Krupp military guys that I will only give them 40 months; if you can't create products with qualified performance within this, not only will the allowance not be obtained, they won't have to do it in this position."

"Yes, I'll do it tomorrow morning." Tirpitz took the order happily.

"Although you have a good time today, I will not care about you because you have a reason. But remember, let me not be an example!" William II changed into a serious expression and his tone became sharp. "You go back now and plan a naval development plan; three days later, I will still come to the study to see me in my old time. Do you understand?"

Tirpitz looked solemn and said in a deep voice: "Don't worry, Your Majesty, I will do my best to complete Your Majesty's trust, and it will not be like tonight."

"Naval Development Plan?" After hearing this word, Qingying, who had been pondering and listening, was shocked and his mind began to turn. It seems that he has triggered the butterfly effect of German naval construction, but he still needs to make some efforts in the naval development plan. If Tirpitz, the octopus head, formulated a crazy expansion plan and William II, the naval madman, passed it again, it is not a good thing for the current Germany. At this point, Qingying no longer hesitated; he suddenly raised his right hand and said, "I want to go too!"

Hearing this young child voice, William II and Tirpitz were both stunned. It turned out that there was a third person in this room, and they actually ignored the one who caused the whole incident. William II rolled his eyes and said angrily: "This is I want to discuss the national plan with the Chief of Staff. There is no room for a joke. What are you going to go? Stay honestly in the study and review your homework. If the test fails half a month later, I will see that I will not peel you off!"

Seeing that Qingying was scolded by William II, Tirpitz felt a little uncomfortable. After all, he could enter the house through his insight into the navy tonight, which was inseparable from the one in front of him. He coughed and said, "Your Majesty, just let the second highman go with you too. He is the son of His Majesty and has a deeper understanding of the navy than ordinary adults. If he could get in touch with something deeper as soon as possible, it would be good for him and this country!"

When William II heard this, he felt a little moved, and he agreed; but he still had to maintain the image of a strict father, how could he easily compromise? He looked bad and thought for a while, before he reluctantly said: "Since Alfred said so, then... Etel, come too."

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Chapter completed!