Chapter 102: As Long As It Fits The Era, Big Ships And Giant Cannons Aren’t Bad
He heard that Naval Minister Marshal Tirpitz was also at Potsdam Palace to see the Emperor, and Lelouch had connections to link up with him, so Gustav immediately rushed over eagerly.
His driver drove the car very fast, covering the twenty-kilometer road in just half an hour.
Gustav naturally couldn’t discuss business directly with Lelouch in the palace, but there were plenty of high-end conference venues near Potsdam Palace. Gustav directly booked a venue and ordered a luncheon.
After a while, when Your Excellency the Naval Minister finished talking, the Emperor probably wouldn’t stay for dinner. Your Excellency the Minister’s lunch could be hosted by Gustav; it was his honor.
After booking the venue, Marshal Tirpitz hadn’t finished his audience yet, so Gustav first invited Lelouch alone for tea, chatting idly while waiting.
Lelouch happened to have business about three-phase electric arc furnace steel to discuss with Gustav, so he took advantage of this time window to handle it first.
“Mr. Gustav, have you seen the three-phase electric arc furnace steel sample and performance report that I had my sister deliver to you?”
Gustav: “I’ve seen them all. If you can sell three-phase electric arc furnace steel to us Krupp at 1500 marks per ton, we’re very satisfied with that price.
The quality of this new steel is indeed very good; we can use it for gun barrel steel and manufacturing high-end cannons. Even if the cost per ton is 2.3 to 2.4 times that of traditional open-hearth steel, the Corps Headquarters will surely pay for the better performance.”
The wholesale price Lelouch quoted to Gustav for three-phase electric arc furnace steel was 1500 marks per ton.
This price was the total cost of the entire production process starting from iron ore smelting, with no profit.
However, Lelouch had his own sources of scrapped ship steel and didn’t need to purchase production raw materials, only some pre-processing costs, which could save 400-500 marks per ton in production costs. The resulting steel quality could even be a bit better.
This was Lelouch’s own unique cost advantage, unrelated to Krupp, so he still sold it externally at 1500.
Compared to the previous single-phase electric arc furnace steel with no market competitiveness at 4000 marks per ton cost, 1500 was already very cost-effective now. Whether anything is good or not can’t be judged in isolation; it must be compared to the previous generation product.
In the future, if Lelouch could gradually improve production technology and further reduce costs, he could earn more.
If he could produce even better quality steel, he would have the confidence to raise the price again.
The main cost of a cannon lies in processing technology; the steel itself only accounts for a small portion. Even if gun barrel steel price rises to 2.4 times, the full cannon selling price would increase by at most thirty percent, not too exaggerated.
After Gustav acknowledged Lelouch’s quote, he immediately changed the subject:
“However, the demand and application scenarios for this premium steel are still somewhat limited right now.
Even if we accept this procurement unit price, we can’t buy too much volume. Currently, the most suitable scenario I can think of for using this new high-priced steel is just the gun barrels for 150 mm cannons with high caliber multiples and long range.
These anti-artillery cannons benefit greatly from better gun steel: the higher the chamber pressure tolerance, the greater the range, which can bring qualitative changes to combat effectiveness.
For other heavy howitzers, range and accuracy aren’t that critical, so there’s no need to use electric furnace steel—it’s too expensive; open-hearth steel works just as well.”
Gustav was very frank, not hiding at all that his expected procurement scale was small.
Fortunately, Lelouch had anticipated this, so he didn’t mind.
When any new thing is just born, users from the old era always fail to think of many application scenarios or underestimate what it can do.
Since that was the case, Lelouch would help the customer think of a few more application scenarios:
“Mr. Gustav, why haven’t you considered finding application scenarios for three-phase electric arc furnace steel in the field of naval guns?
How big is the volume for the Army’s anti-artillery cannons? The Navy has so many large barrels; if performance and quality can be improved in this area, even if each battleship costs a few million more marks, the Navy might buy it.”
But Gustav had obviously thought about this too, so he wasn’t swayed upon hearing it and immediately countered:
“Have the Navy use your gun steel? The Navy’s light cruiser naval guns and battleship secondary guns don’t need to worry too much about their own weight, nor do they need to pursue extreme range, right?
As for battleship main guns, they do need high chamber pressure and long range, but can you even produce them? Battleship gun steel requires at least ensuring that the steel for each layer of the gun barrel is poured from the same furnace of molten steel.
How many tons is your electric arc furnace single-hearth capacity? For a Baria-class battleship, a single finished gun barrel weighs 70 tons, and the raw steel billet before forging and machining is at least 150 tons or more.
Even considering the three-layer liner structure of the gun barrel, the longest inner tube finished product is 20 tons, requiring over 40 tons of raw steel. The previous electric arc furnace could only produce 10 tons of molten steel per furnace… wait, no! You’re doing three-phase furnaces now! Could you directly increase single-furnace output to 30 tons?”
Lelouch then smiled: “As expected, you know your stuff. And we have some other technical optimizations; now we can not only achieve 30 tons per furnace, but 50 tons! Give us a bit more time, and in the future we can reach 70 or 80 tons per furnace!”
Gustav’s breathing finally became slightly heavier; he clearly saw a much larger market.
“If battleship main guns can all use better steel, it would definitely bring significant improvements to the Imperial Navy’s combat power; that’s a good thing for the country and the people.
It’s just a pity that simply changing the gun steel without adjusting the design would be a bit wasteful. Good gun steel can withstand higher propellant chamber pressure, driving heavier artillery shells.
But that also requires design adjustments, increasing the chamber volume, at least adding space for one more charge bag, to make all this effective.
Enlarging the chamber makes the gun breech heavier, and the gun barrel caliber length probably needs to be extended by two or three calibers. This wouldn’t be sortable in less than half a year…”
The more Gustav spoke, the more regretful he became, immersing himself in his own world without realizing the solution was right in front of him.
According to his estimate, even just fine-tuning the design would take months. If developing a new gun from scratch based on the new gun steel, it could take one or two years.
Fortunately, Lelouch beside him remained very clear-headed and patted Gustav’s shoulder at the right moment, pulling him back to reality:
“What’s so difficult about that? We’re here to see Your Excellency Tirpitz today; isn’t this the perfect chance to discuss it? If there’s a better design, just change it. Anyway, only the first two Baria-class battleships have been launched; the latter three haven’t even started on the ship hull.
The launched ships still need about a year of construction time; the turrets can be installed later. As long as it doesn’t affect the wiring and the warship’s overall weight distribution, delaying the turret installation by half a year is fine—half a year isn’t enough for you to experiment, adjust, test, and produce?”
“Right, you dare to think big…” Gustav finally stopped dwelling on it, but what followed was even greater shock. “You… you actually have the confidence to convince Your Excellency Tirpitz to accept design changes and additional budget?”
“How will we know without trying—look, Your Excellency Tirpitz is here. Perfect timing for the three of us to sit down and have a good chat about naval guns.”
As Lelouch spoke, he saw Minister Tirpitz had arrived and quickly stood up first to greet him.
Gustav also hurriedly followed behind Lelouch to greet him; he was very curious how Mr. Lelouch had connected with the Naval Minister and even earned his favor.
“Minister Tirpitz, it’s an honor that you’ve made time to meet us.” Lelouch spoke first to greet him.
Marshal Tirpitz nodded and shook his hand:
“I should thank you instead. Minister Baden told me that during the Parliament discussion on the Navy’s additional budget that day, the speech draft supporting the Navy was written with your help? You actually helped Minister Baden steady Burns and Kautsky and those guys.”
“The Navy’s budget proposal was reasonable and should have been passed anyway.
It was also Minister Baden’s patriotism and sincerity that moved those wavering members of Parliament. I just wrote a speech draft; what merit is there in that?
I met Mr. Burns and Mr. Kautsky a few days ago and chatted a lot with them; they both support my views on war.”
Lelouch smiled humbly, not taking credit at all, but his words hid a sharp edge: he was already a rising star in military circles with appreciation from several members of Parliament.
And Gustav beside him finally fully understood the grudge at this moment:
No wonder Marshal Tirpitz, who had never met the kid before, was so amiable to him.
It turned out Lelouch had also contributed a little to the Naval Ministry’s fundraising issue, at least swaying a few members of Parliament to vote in favor.
Of course, to be fair, the budget proposal put forward by Marshal Tirpitz at the time didn’t just barely pass; there was still some margin in votes.
In other words, even if that small group including Burns and Kautsky had voted against it, it wouldn’t have stopped the wheel of history.
But in a country with a parliament, ministers are generally polite to brokers who can influence members of Parliament.
Even if these few votes didn’t matter this time, who knows about next time? Offending someone could turn help into hindrance, leaving one weeping without tears.
After being humble, Lelouch immediately changed the subject and struck while the iron was hot:
“Your Excellency the Minister, it’s rare for you and Krupp’s Mr. Gustav to both be here today. We were just discussing a recent advancement in metallurgical technology that can be used for gun steel.
Would you be interested in hearing about it? It might improve the artillery combat effectiveness of the Empire’s warships still under construction.”
For such matters, talk directly to the big boss.
As Naval Minister and the long-time actual helmsman of Imperial Navy construction, Tirpitz was most enthusiastic about improving naval gun combat effectiveness and was immediately drawn in.
“Tell me the details first…”
Lelouch started from the point of new battleship main guns, reiterating the views he had just shared with Gustav.
Tirpitz listened very attentively and finally made a decisive call: “If the performance is indeed improved and passes testing, this timeline is acceptable, and additional budget can be considered.
However, you Krupp must ensure the first two Baria-class battleships are completed on schedule!
In my view, you should at least produce 16 extra gun barrels as spares, so even if the new gun barrels ultimately fail, the warships can still enter service on time.”
——
PS: There will be two updates today, but the second one will be at least after class this afternoon. And both updates today can only have three thousand words.
