Chapter 58: Hard Not To Admire
Gustav explained in detail why they initially chose the pulley system to hoist artillery shells instead of an electric motor—
This was not cutting corners; it was simply that the gun barrel elevation was too slow, making it useless to speed up other parallel processes.
Even if the other tasks were finished first, they would have to wait idly for the gun barrel to slowly level out before proceeding with the next steps.
But now Lelouch had proposed a new scenario and new requirements, so these issues were worth reconsidering.
After pondering for a moment, Lelouch commented: “You’ve already made some preparations beforehand, which is good and saves a lot of preliminary work. However, the situation and requirements have changed now. What we need is no longer bombardment across the strait to hit the enemy city opposite. Instead, it’s flexible deployment and near-shore bombardment to stop enemy warships.
So, the high-elevation function can be omitted, and the elevation mechanism can be greatly simplified. We still only need a maximum elevation of around 20 degrees, just like on a battleship. The range requirement can also be greatly relaxed, scaling back from 46 kilometers to within 30 kilometers.
In this case, can you build a loader that allows loading at 10 or 20 degrees elevation without needing to level the gun barrel back to horizontal? Because skipping the most time-consuming step of leveling and then re-elevating the gun barrel would greatly increase the rate of fire. And adding an electric winch to the shell hoisting step would also be much faster than a manual pulley system.”
As Lelouch spoke, he continued to sketch and annotate on the drawing with a pencil, making some illustrations.
Even Gustav, who was highly specialized in his field, could not help but be captivated.
Regardless of this captain’s detailed design abilities, his guidance on the technical direction was at least extremely precise and visionary.
He could easily identify the bottleneck issues and then make the most of the available resources at hand to compensate around the shortcomings.
Such technical project coordination ability was not something an ordinary person could possess.
Gustav made a quick assessment, then solemnly picked up the telephone to summon the professional project manager and core engineers. After discussing together, they reached a conclusion:
“Captain Lelouch, your suggestion is indeed feasible and could increase the firing rate several times! However, there are some challenges to solve and some inevitable costs.”
Lelouch: “Let’s talk about the costs first; I think they can all be accepted.”
The summoned technical person in charge listed them one by one: “Naval gun barrel life is generally 200~300 rounds, after which bore erosion reduces accuracy. After conversion to a railway gun, the originally reduced rate of fire and improved barrel cooling environment allowed accuracy for 800 rounds. Now with the speed increased again, the life will shorten back to 300 rounds…”
Lelouch: “These are irrelevant; these are cost issues. Compared to battle results and victory, money is not an issue!”
It was just a matter of spending more money on consumables, and the military was willing to pay.
The Krupp people raised a few more points, requiring additions like specialized sloped rails for “20-degree elevation loading,” which also needed to be foldable to move away before firing.
These could also be solved by spending more money.
By the end of the discussion, only a few sticking points remained—mainly the final step of ramming the shell, where the artillery shell was already positioned on the rails, and a group of artillerymen would normally use manpower to hold and push the rammer rod to slide the shell straight into the breech.
But now with sloped loading, the shell had to be pushed upward at 20 degrees. Pushing an 800-kilogram shell upward by manpower was extremely difficult; even with multiple people it was prone to accidents. And because it was upward, they couldn’t use overly slippery lubricant on the rails to ensure sufficient friction.
This problem was not difficult, but they hadn’t encountered it before and thus hadn’t solved it.
Lelouch just glanced at it and recalled a video he had seen in his previous life on Bilibili of the Missouri battleship main gun loading, where by World War II, even the final “ramming” step for these giant cannons was done by electric motor.
“Then just add another motor. Make the ramming step with a dedicated motor too. When the hoist positions the shell, place it directly on the rammer’s baffle, and the rammer pushes it in.”
Lelouch casually described the scene he had seen in his previous life, making it sound very understated.
But this single reminder opened up new ideas for the Krupp engineers.
Indeed, they were already using three train cars to service one giant cannon; having an adjacent motor car handle additional power loads didn’t seem like much.
Hoist, rammer, two motors to handle it.
“This suggestion is excellent; we’ll proceed along these lines. This way, we can guarantee at least doubling the firing frequency! The original 45-degree elevation cannon took 5 minutes per shot; reduced to 20 degrees, it’s 2~3 minutes per shot. Plus fixed-elevation ramming, within 1.5 minutes per shot!”
After a simple assessment, the Krupp engineering team believed the new plan could raise the rate of fire from 10% of battleship main gun level to 40%, though sacrificing range and adding one more car.
Although still a clear gap compared to naval guns, it was already very good. On land, for a non-fixed giant cannon, this was unprecedented.
The military and Krupp thus finalized the final requirements and technical path; next was for the Krupp people to work diligently.
At the same time, since Krupp had been working on repurposing those 380 naval guns since October, this was just a temporary adjustment of purpose and plan. With this preparatory work, the entire project timeline could be shortened further.
Krupp promised to deliver 4 new 380-millimeter railway guns within one month.
If given a bit more time, they could also process some previously inventoried 280-millimeter old battleship barrels into railway guns, as long as the locomotive and electric motor suppliers could deliver.
For this, Lelouch, who was fully in charge of coordinating this project, naturally stepped up.
He telephoned Siemens that same day and flew there the next day for face-to-face coordination.
Siemens was also very cooperative. Hearing that the previous “portable radio” had played a major role at the front line and earned praise from Duke Rupprecht, with large follow-up orders to come, Siemens was increasingly confident in this cooperation and willing to invest resources.
Lelouch spent a full three to five days coordinating in the middle of it all, finally pulling the whole thing together, while also building connections and getting familiar with many faces.
During this time, various courtesies were naturally inevitable. Fortunately, Duke Rupprecht had approved a 500,000-mark budget before he returned, so Lelouch did not lose face and properly hosted all the key contacts—
He didn’t need to fawn over anyone, but while the king of hell is easy to see, the little devils are hard to deal with. For such a complex project to ensure smooth progress, it wasn’t enough just to have good relations with the big bosses; he also needed to ensure the project managers and technical persons in charge below didn’t slack off.
So Lelouch ended up spending tens of thousands of marks out of his own pocket. Another portion was gifts of captured British Army 3rd Army supplies from the Battle of Bailleul.
Due to the wartime sea blockade, flannel and British woolen products had become hot commodities within Germania, and many engineers’ and businessmen’s families couldn’t buy imported fabrics for clothes.
Lelouch offering captured goods as gifts quickly won over many mid-level managers and key technical staff at Krupp and Siemens.
Moreover, during this process, Lelouch didn’t forget to take the opportunity of this brief return to sell off the remaining captured British Army supplies. Besides the portions for gifts, there were six or seven carloads of flannel and woolen products. After selling them all, the total value was nearly two million marks.
Adding the previous 800,000 from selling cigars, coffee, and chocolate luxuries, the duke’s 500,000-mark reward, and this time’s proceeds minus expenses and consolation money for comrades, Lelouch calculated he had nearly 3 million marks left.
……
After handling the railway gun matters almost completely, Lelouch was about ready to bid farewell to Krupp.
In just a few days of interaction, Gustav Krupp had a very favorable impression of him, feeling that his vision for future military industry trends far exceeded most officers in the Empire Staff Department.
On the day Lelouch’s group was leaving, Gustav even made time to host a family banquet for Lelouch and Bock at his home, and introduced Lelouch to his wife and children.
Gustav’s wife, Bertha Krupp, was 15 years younger than him. At the start of the war, the Empire’s 420-millimeter “Big Bertha” howitzer used to smash the Belgian Liège Fortress was named after this Bertha.
Actually, Bertha was the legitimate third-generation heir of the Krupp family, while Gustav was a “son-in-law” who joined as a professional manager and took his wife’s surname after marriage.
Bertha was only 30, so their eldest son, Alfred Krupp, was just a 10-year-old boy.
After brief interaction, Lelouch discovered that little Alfred was very martial-minded.
So he vividly recounted many front-line sights and sounds, thrilling battle examples. After hearing them, little Alfred became a fervent admirer of Uncle Lelouch, impossible to restrain.
Especially after hearing how Uncle Lelouch decisively and boldly used an initial company of troops to prevent friendly forces from drowning in a great flood, expanded to a battalion, held off several enemy divisions’ breakout, and ultimately achieved annihilation.
A child had never heard such gripping bloody battle tales, especially since they were true. Lelouch could even show him the medal from that campaign and point to his own reddened left eyeball, telling him it was reddened by enemy tear gas in that battle.
When Lelouch finally said goodbye, little Alfred privately found a chance to tell him: “Uncle Lelouch, if you have any more brilliant ideas about giant cannons that you’re not convenient to tell my father directly, you can tell me first, and I’ll pass it on.”
Lelouch ruffled his hair: “Thank you; if there are, I’ll trouble you then.”
Early the next morning after the family banquet, Lelouch boarded a train, made a detour to DWM Company to resolve some minor issues just encountered by front-line friendly forces these past few days, and then prepared to return to his troops.
