Empire Conquest

Chapter 613 - 609: New Style High-altitude Gun

Bai Zhizhan, during his visit to the "Huai River" class, was given a special introduction to the radio proximity fuzed shells by the shipyard’s technicians.

In order to test this new type of ammunition, the Empire’s Navy had already converted a long-range cruiser, equipped with 130mm and 80mm high-altitude guns, into a test ship. The main modification was to adapt the high-altitude guns to be able to fire radio proximity shells directly.

As for the test targets, they were remote-controlled airplanes.

The results indicated that the main value of radio proximity shells lay in long-range interception.

Simply put, when engagement distances were between 5 and 15 kilometers, radio proximity shells could intercept incoming enemy aircraft more effectively. The biggest advantage this brought was that it forced enemy aircraft to disperse before entering attack range, thus preventing them from launching organized attacks on carriers.

This one point alone was enough to make radio proximity shells favored by the Navy.

According to statistics gathered by the Empire’s Navy, nearly all hits on carriers in previous battles had come from swarm attacks.

In other words, the threat posed by enemy aircraft attacking individually was negligible.

Moreover, it was definitely easier to intercept a single aircraft than a group of them.

When engagement distances were reduced to 5 kilometers, the 130mm high-altitude guns, due to a lack of firing speed, experienced a significant decrease in combat efficiency, and even with radio proximity shells, the hit rate was not very high. The more complex loading procedure actually decreased combat efficiency.

When the engagement distance was reduced to 3 kilometers, the effectiveness of the 80mm high-altitude guns firing radio proximity shells also diminished significantly.

That is to say, to deal with approaching enemy aircraft, one still had to rely on 40mm and 20mm machine guns, using dense barrages to destroy the enemy aircraft.

It was for this reason that on large cruisers, the 80mm high-altitude guns replaced the 130mm high-altitude guns.

More accurately, they supplanted them.

Due to strong opposition from fleet officers and sailors, a temporary modification of the design plan was made during construction, preserving four twin 130mm secondary guns, or rather dual-purpose high-level guns.

However, the number of 80mm high-altitude guns increased to 32, which is 16 twin turret mounts.

Additionally, the number of 40mm machine guns reached an astonishing 72, with a total of 18 four-barrel mounts.

Interestingly, the number of 20mm machine guns was cut by more than half, only 22 were retained, with the option to add 4 to 8 more if needed.

Here, another type of new anti-aircraft weapon, yet to be officially equipped, was involved.

In actual combat, the Empire’s Navy had already discovered that in close-range anti-aircraft warfare, precision and power were not as important as firing speed.

In most cases, they actually relied on barrages to intercept enemy aircraft.

The key was only one: in intense combat, even the best gunners may get nervous and their reaction speeds might not keep up.

Most of the time, gunners actually aimed roughly, which means they would open fire immediately upon spotting enemy aircraft.

As for precise aiming, that happens after they start firing.

This led to the conclusion that high-altitude guns needed to have a sufficiently high rate of fire.

And therein lay the problem.

Increasing the firing rate of high-altitude guns was no easy feat.

For small caliber high-altitude guns like the 20mm, it was slightly easier; as long as the ammunition supply problem was solved and a heavier barrel was used, a firing rate exceeding 600 rounds per minute could be achieved, with a continuous firing time of more than 10 seconds, which was already sufficient in actual combat.

However, with a slightly larger caliber, the problem became very complex.

For example, the widely equipped 40mm high-altitude guns in navies around the world, the limiting factor for firing rate was not overheating barrels, but rather the shells were too heavy for the feed mechanism to keep up!

The traditional solution was simple and crude, which was to install several High-altitude Guns in parallel, increasing the number of High-altitude Guns to enhance firepower density.

The standard equipment was already in quad mounts, and the Bulan Royal Navy even had versions with eight-barreled mounts!

However, this did not fundamentally solve the problem.

The key issue was that space on Battleships was extremely valuable.

The deck space occupied by the Empire Navy’s quad-mounted 40 millimeter High-altitude Guns was nearly the same as that of the twin-mounted 80 millimeter High-altitude Guns, equating to seventy percent of the twin-mounted 130 millimeter High-altitude Guns. The total weight of the system even reached 20 tons, hence its usage and the number of units were strictly limited.

Even for Fast Battleships, the number of mounted quad 40 millimeter High-altitude Guns was around 60.

Any more than that, and there would not only be no room for installation, but it would also lead to an increase in the Battleship’s center of gravity.

It was because they were too large and heavy that many Destroyers built before the war were equipped with the twin-mounted version and did not carry the quad-mounted version.

The issue of overheating remained the number one challenge for small-caliber High-altitude Guns.

Take the Empire Navy’s 20 millimeter High-altitude Guns, for example, the design rate of fire for the latest models reached 900 rounds per minute, but the combat rate of fire was less than 150 rounds per minute, primarily because the barrels would overheat quickly during sustained fire, limiting them to short bursts.

As for the multi-barrel 20 millimeter machine guns, they were of little significance.

The reason was simple, the 20 millimeter machine guns were introduced to replace 13 millimeter heavy machine guns, with very limited range and altitude.

In actual combat, the primary value of the 20 millimeter machine guns was to deal with the ones that slipped through the net.

Moreover, the deck space occupied by turret deployments was considerable, whereas there was no such issue with gun positions.

That was precisely why the Empire Navy considered increasing the number of gun barrels to improve the rate of fire.

In other words, they were considering machine guns based on the Gatling principle.

However, because it was so complex, with operation and control also being very troublesome, it could not be handled manually, nor could it be aimed by gunners. It had to be driven by hydraulic or electrical power and equipped with optical aiming assist devices, resulting in a very high ready-to-operate weight, so the development difficulties were considerable.

Even before the outbreak of the great war, the Empire Navy had begun developing Gatling Machine Guns.

The initial design was based on an internal power principle, that is, the gun barrels were driven by the gas produced upon firing the rounds, eliminating the need for an external power source.

After completing the concept design, the Empire Navy abandoned this more feasible scheme and opted for the more difficult externally powered mode. This involved rotating the gun barrels by an electric motor to complete the series of actions like loading, firing, and breech retreat, thus allowing for more effective control of the rate of fire.

Due to the high difficulty of development, there were still only a few prototype guns in existence.

The most critical issue was still miniaturization.

According to the introduction, the prototypes weighed at least 12 tons each, occupying deck space equivalent to a quad-mounted 40 millimeter High-altitude Gun. With the same weight and deck space, it was possible to deploy more than 10 20 millimeter machine guns in a dense configuration.

Clearly, the combat efficiency of a single Gatling Machine Gun setup couldn’t match that of a dozen or more 20 millimeter machine guns.

Furthermore, 20 millimeter shells really fell short; not only was their range short, and altitude low, their destructive effect on aircraft was also less than satisfactory. Especially against large aircraft, such as heavy Bombers, 20 millimeter shells often couldn’t achieve the effect of one or a few shots being fatal.

Moreover, reliability was also a significant issue.

According to the technical staff, as long as the reliability issues were solved and the ready-to-operate weight was reduced by about 30%, then there was a chance of receiving purchase orders from the Navy.

If possible, they might opt for a new caliber, such as a 30 millimeter shell, a size between 20 millimeter and 40 millimeter.

By that time, there would probably only be two calibers of High-altitude Guns.

However, no one knew when that day would come.