Volume 4: Hot! The whole world is a warring state Chapter 726 Ottoman Warships
The conversation with Ma Shiying made Zhu Youdong feel very relaxed.
Since he took office as regent, Fang Congzhe, Wen Tiren, and Yuan Keli successively assisted in the administration. These people had all experienced the mid-Wanli period, when the country was in deficit and on the verge of financial collapse. So they instinctively disliked debt, and in terms of the court's financial policy, to put it nicely, it was prudent, to put it bluntly, it was overly conservative.
But Ma Shiying was different. When he entered the government, the Ming Dynasty's finances had completely turned around. While the salaries of officials and soldiers were greatly increased, there was also a surplus every year. Therefore, Ma Shiying, who had never experienced the pain of spending more than his income, did not first cut spending when the country was short of funds, but instead considered borrowing to develop.
Well, this is what Zhu Youdong wants: as a loser in the 21st century, is it reasonable for him to not have a mortgage of tens of millions of yuan? In his opinion, debt-based development is a natural thing.
In short, after more than three years of war between China and Europe, both sides, who suffered heavy losses, needed to temporarily stop and adjust and take a breath. On Philip's side, he further strengthened centralization in politics, allowing the independence of countries in the European Union to continue to weaken. Economically, he took advantage of India and controlled the sea power in the Indian Ocean to cut ties with the Ming Dynasty in an attempt to reverse the trade deficit of the past years. As for the military, although the tone of propaganda was very fierce, it was only to cooperate with the political power-the real military action was just a five-year shipbuilding plan and the dispatch of ten Casti divisions to America. Launching a large army to the East again? That would have to be a long time in the future.
As for the Ming Dynasty, politically, it didn't have to do much: the vassal system was still stable. In terms of economy, facing the loss of the large Indian market and the severance of European trade, it turned its attention back to the country, hoping to overcome the difficulties by expanding domestic demand - the population currently controlled by the Ming Dynasty was still the largest among the three major groups, and as long as domestic demand could be increased, it would not be a problem to survive the next few years. As for the military, in addition to starting a five-year shipbuilding plan, it also sent three divisions to America.
This is the case with the Ming Dynasty and Europe. So, what is the other time traveler, Ibrahim of the Ottoman Empire, doing?
On April 20, 1642, the anniversary of the death of the Holy Crescent, after reciting scriptures with many imams of the Sunni and Shia sects in Baghdad all night, Ibrahim arrived at the port of Kuwait in the early morning of the 21st via the newly opened Baghdad-Kuwait railway.
This place has been a famous port since the Arab Empire in the seventh century. The Ottoman Empire did not extend its tentacles here in the early years. In fact, in the historical plane, it was not until 1871 that the Ottoman Empire began to establish a county here.
However, in this dimension, when Ibrahim was in his teens and served as the Pasha of Baghdad, he took this place under his command. After serving as the Grand Vizier, he focused on building this place - but now Kuwait is not a commercial port. On the contrary, the entire Kuwait Port is tightly . Outside the sea, there is also the newly built Ottoman's only 5,000-ton ironclad warship leading a group of sailing warships. All of this is because this is the largest shipyard built by the Ottomans with all their efforts.
The Middle East, known as the land of three continents and five seas, is the most important and core land and sea transportation hub in Eurasia. But for Ibrahim, it is naturally a bit awkward to develop a navy in this place.
There is only one reason for the frustration: the Suez Canal is not in the hands of the Ottomans. Although in peacetime, it is no problem for Ottoman merchant ships and warships to pass through the Suez Canal. But what if the two sides fight one day?
Therefore, if the Ottomans wanted to revitalize their navy, they had to build two fleets - these two fleets had to be fully prepared so that once a war broke out, they would be unable to communicate and support each other and would have to fight independently.
However, the Ottoman Empire was the weakest compared to Central Europe at that time. Even Ming and Europe felt great financial pressure to build battleships and needed to make a five-year mid-term plan. For the Ottoman Empire, it was an absolutely impossible task to build two naval fleets that could compete with the main fleets of Central Europe at the same time.
Therefore, after repeated consultations with civil and military personnel, the Ottoman navy, with limited financial resources, decided on a naval development strategy: to build a torpedo fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, with two or three heavy cruisers as the backbone, mainly composed of a large number of fast destroyers. Because the eastern Mediterranean, especially the Aegean Sea, has many islands, it is convenient for small ships to hide and ambush. Once the war between Europe and Austria breaks out again, the task of this fleet is to rely on the geographical advantage to conduct asymmetric torpedo operations against the main European fleet.
In the Persian Gulf, the Ottomans will build a main fleet composed of four battleships as the backbone, with some heavy cruisers and light cruisers. The combat mission of this fleet is: if the Ming Dynasty has the upper hand in the war between China and Europe, then this fleet will stand on the side of the European Union to help the European Union resist the Ming Dynasty Navy. Ibrahim sees it very clearly that as long as China and Europe are in a balance or the European Union is slightly weaker than the Ming Dynasty, Philip will not dare to do anything to himself. But in the same way, if the European Union is beaten too badly by the Ming Dynasty and completely loses India. Then the Ottomans will be the first to be hit by the Ming Dynasty on land. Therefore, when the European Union Navy can't stand the Ming Dynasty Navy, it is for their own safety to pull the European Union Navy.
Of course, it is also possible that in the future, the EU will have a clear advantage over the Ming Dynasty. At that time, Philip will have evil intentions towards Ibrahim. Therefore, this Ottoman main has a second combat mission: if the EU and Austria go to war, the mission of this fleet is to attack from the Persian Gulf and cut off the connection between India and the EU mainland.
However, the country's national strength is limited, and it has to take both ends into consideration. Therefore, compared with the Central and European countries, the number of battleships will increase to nine or ten in the next five years. The Ottoman shipbuilding plan has shrunk by more than half: six years, four battleships.
Just looking at the number, I guess Zhu Youdong and Philip would be "snorting" in contempt. But if these two people could really enter the Kuwait shipyard at this time and see the dazzling light and scattered steel flowers everywhere in the shipyard, they would definitely shout in unison: No way, my shipyard is still using sledgehammers to smash rivets to do riveting, and you actually figured out welding? You cheated!
Ibrahim would probably shrug coquettishly and spread his hands: I majored in materials, welding technology? Sprinkle some water.
In short, due to the advanced technology, the four Ottoman battleships named after the four caliphs of the Arab Empire, although with a standard displacement of only 12,000 tons, can be equipped with nine 305mm main guns directly - welding technology alone can save hundreds of tons of rivet weight and thousands of tons of repeated riveted steel plates. Therefore, with a displacement of more than 10,000 tons, the Central European battleships can only be equipped with six main guns, while the Ottomans can be equipped with nine...
In addition, welding technology makes the hull more complete and the speed higher. Moreover, after the widespread use of welding technology, the hardness of ship steel is no longer limited by the quality of rivets. (To drive the rivets in, the rivets must first be heated to soften them, and then driven into the steel plates while hot. This means that the material of the rivets will not be too hard. But if the rivets are not hard enough, the steel plates themselves cannot be too hard either, so the hardness of the steel plates is limited using riveting technology.) This gives Yiplash more room to play in materials science. The armor steel of the Caliph-class battleships was newly "developed" by him. It is Vickers armor steel with a small amount of rare earth raw materials added. Its anti-ballistic performance is much stronger than that of existing battleships in Central Europe.
Of course, as a time traveler majoring in materials, Yiprahin also knows that riveting has better shear resistance but poorer tensile resistance. Although welding can withstand both tension and shear, it is afraid of tearing. And from the perspective of quality assurance, riveting is much more reliable than welding - after all, in the absence of X-ray machines, unless there are obvious holes in the weld, it is not easy to see any problems with the weld just by looking at it with the naked eye. As for riveting, the quality can be checked with the naked eye. In addition, in terms of changing the material properties of parts, the residual stress deformation problem of welding is much more serious than that of riveting. Therefore, the Caliph-class battleships did not completely abandon riveting - but the welding of a large number of homogeneous armors has already given these four Caliph-class battleships an advantage.
"Sir, as you can see, after practicing with their first heavy cruiser, the children are now much more skilled in building the Abu Bakr battleship than before."
“What’s the progress of the project now?”
"The part below the waterline has been roughly completed. After the engine is hoisted in, the power unit of the ammunition feeder will be installed. Then the welding of the armor below the waterline can be completed. It is estimated that in another year and a half, the battleship can be launched."
"Where's the Omer in the back?"
"Sir, this is too early. The keel was just laid last week. It must have been at least two and a half years."
"Okay. I don't have too many requirements for the construction period, as long as it can be completed on time according to the plan. As for confidentiality..."
"Please rest assured, sir. To get to where we are, except from the sea, we have to walk through at least a hundred kilometers of uninhabited desert. After crossing the desert, we have to face repeated searches by an entire division of elite army. If European spies can sneak in even with this, then all of us present here must be asleep."
"Well, in any case, we must do a good job of security. That Philip is a shameless scum. If he finds out that we have new welding technology and new armor steel, who knows, he might shamelessly come to us to ask for them again."
"Yes, sir. I will continue to remain on high alert and never let European spies discover what we are doing here."
"Oh, shipbuilding, people can definitely guess it. As long as we can ensure that the new armor steel technology and welding are not discovered by the Europeans, it will be fine."
After circling the Abu several times, Ibrahim reluctantly left the shipyard and took the train back to Baghdad. It was planned that after arriving in Baghdad, he would take a four-wheeled carriage to Ankara, and then change trains in Ankara - there was no other way, as the Ottoman Empire had not yet had time to completely connect the railways between Istanbul and Baghdad.
Sitting on a train traveling at 40 kilometers per hour, Yiprahin placed his elbows on the window chords, looking at the desert outside which was constantly receding but with almost no change, and fell into deep thought.
This country, through its own efforts, has completely reversed its decline. Its actual control area stretches from the Balkans to the Indus River, and its population is nearly 70 million - such a great achievement has far exceeded that of previous sultans.
But unfortunately, facing Spain, which unified Europe and owned all coastal areas of India, Africa and most of the Americas, and Ming Dynasty, which dominated East Asia and reached across the Pacific Ocean and into South America, Ottoman Empire was still a younger brother.
Where should a country that is in an absolutely weak position and sandwiched between two major powers go?
