Chapter 220: One Pit Unfilled, Digging Another
When Emperor Wilhelm wanted to summon Brigadier General Lelouch for an audience, Lelouch himself was on the train heading to Wilhelmshaven.
One day later, on the morning of January 28, Lelouch arrived in Wilhelmshaven.
Admiral Franz Ritter von Hipper, deputy commander of the High Seas Fleet, personally welcomed him along with Gustav from Krupp Company.
“I’m really envious of you, assisting Your Highness the Duke in achieving such monumental merit on the Southern Front. Three months ago, I thought the Empire’s victory in the Baltic Sea direction was already the greatest achievement of the year, and Marshal Mackensen and I were surely the brightest stars in the Army and Navy last year.
I never expected that just in the last three months of the year, the gains in the Black Sea Theater on the Southern Front would surpass the Baltic Sea War Zone on the Northern Front.”
As soon as they met, Admiral Hipper spoke these jesting words about competing for merit without any reservation, not worried at all about being gossiped about, and without any polite hypocrisy, saying whatever was on his mind.
Lelouch also knew that the other was treating him as an insider, but he still had to say some formal words:
“What’s the difference between Southern Front and Northern Front? They’re all against the common enemy. It’s just that a country like Lusha is too vast, destined not to be completely conquered in one or two years.
Since that’s the case, we must pressure them economically to seek peace as much as possible. Given Lusha’s cold climate, starting from the south would definitely be more effective and better at disrupting its civilian lifeblood.”
After some pleasantries, Lelouch smoothly asked about Admiral Hipper’s recent situation and whether there had been any changes in the Navy’s top leadership lately.
Because Lelouch noticed something unusual today: in Wilhelmshaven, Hipper was clearly the one hosting the new ship commissioning ceremony, handling everything personally, and everyone in the Navy came to him for instructions on any matters.
But in the distance, there was a large group of idle officers and social dignitaries gathered around an old man in a wheelchair, who was also wearing the uniform and epaulets of a Navy admiral.
Lelouch couldn’t see the man’s face clearly from afar, but he could roughly guess his identity.
Seeing that he had asked, Hipper explained in a low voice: “You’ll be attending the ceremony later, so you should go pay your respects. Admiral Pohl’s health has been very poor since winter, and he has decided to formally retire at the end of the month.
It’s just that when he heard the ‘Baria-class’ battleship was commissioning, the Imperial Navy’s main force battleships were finally jumping from 12-inch guns to 15-inch guns in one go, he was so excited that he insisted on personally hosting the commissioning ceremony.”
Although Lelouch was a military enthusiast in his previous life, he couldn’t possibly remember all historical details.
He didn’t know that in the Earth plane, Admiral Hugo von Pohl formally handed over command and retired on January 24, 1916, transferring the High Seas Fleet commander’s position to Admiral Reinhard Scheer. He passed away shortly after retirement as his condition worsened.
In this plane, Hugo von Pohl had already held on for 4 more days than on Earth without retiring, mainly because witnessing the commissioning of this epoch-making battleship kept him going. Once this wish was fulfilled, he could retire with peace of mind.
So today, Admiral Pohl was pushed in on a wheelchair, forcing himself to endure.
However, in this plane, Admiral Hipper, thanks to teaming up with Lelouch earlier and having Lelouch help him plan all along, had clearly secured his position. Once Admiral Hugo von Pohl retired, he could take over as High Seas Fleet commander. Reinhard Scheer, with less merit, would only be deputy commander.
“Then I really have to congratulate you. I’m sure that after succeeding as High Seas Fleet commander, you can lead the fleet to even greater achievements. In the first half of this year, once the two ‘Baria-class’ battleships achieve combat effectiveness, we might be able to make some big moves against the Britons.” Lelouch smoothly congratulated him.
Hipper helplessly mocked himself: “I’d like to make big moves, but the enemy has to take the bait and engage. Otherwise, if we’re confident but the enemy isn’t and refuses battle, it’s useless. When the enemy feels fully prepared and ready to fight, I won’t want to engage anymore. Great sea battles aren’t that easy to provoke.”
Lelouch: “That’s hard to say. To lure the enemy into battle, there are just two tricks. One is to light a fire somewhere else, drawing part of the enemy fleet that has to defend globally to split forces and handle it, weakening their home fleet.
The other is to deliberately show weakness at the time, spread false intelligence, like delaying the commissioning and sea trial progress of some of our key warships. For example, this ‘Baria-class’ ship definitely can’t be hidden. Commander Hugo von Pohl is advanced in age and set on seeing the warship formally commission with his own eyes; you can’t dampen his spirits.
But the future second ‘Baden’, that should commission during your tenure as commander. If the timing is right, with less than one or two months apart, a single sea trial voyage can conceal it. Then you can completely find ways to hide the progress of key warships before wanting a decisive battle, making the enemy mistakenly think it hasn’t achieved combat effectiveness yet.
Even more so, in the future we could say that Krupp Company’s new process main gun has some issues, the technology is immature, the plan too radical, and there’s a small problem requiring repairs and re-testing. At the same time, to avoid dock congestion, it can be towed to those small shipyards in East Prussia for maintenance at ordinary docks.”
Lelouch’s words were quite conservative, not involving any specific plans, just some open-ended assumptions, so the confidentiality level didn’t need to be too high. With a third person, Gustav Krupp, listening nearby, it was fine.
Moreover, if such intelligence deception were really implemented in the future, it would definitely require Krupp Company’s cooperation. After all, this would be splashing dirty water on Krupp’s business reputation in exchange for showing weakness to lure the Royal Navy. If Krupp was uninformed and jumped out to refute when the Navy internally reported it that way, it would ruin things.
So, today’s words were most suitable to say precisely because Lelouch, Hipper, and Gustav Krupp were all present, and just the three of them.
In a word, it was to give Gustav a heads-up so he knew: although it’s unknown if or when the Navy would splash dirty water on Krupp, as long as he remembered to obediently take the blame when the Navy did, never refute, and cooperate in acting it out.
Perhaps this basin of dirty water wouldn’t be splashed until the war ended, but remembering this mindset was right.
After Gustav figured out the reasoning, he first drew in a slight breath of cold air, then lowered his voice and smiled bitterly:
“Alright, since it’s Brigadier General Lelouch’s intention, we’ll cooperate fully. In the future, no matter what negative news the Navy spreads about Krupp, I won’t refute it, even if you say Krupp’s new 48-caliber electric furnace steel gun barrel plan was too radical, with thinner barrel walls unable to withstand high chamber pressure and bursting, I’ll accept it…”
Gustav’s words were just unwilling grumbling based on his professional instincts.
But this excuse sounded like heavenly music to Lelouch’s ears, clearing his mind—this pretext was too detailed, too realistic, and perfect to use; if needed later, this was it.
“Good, then it’s settled.”
The three chatted a bit more about prospects for laying groundwork for future naval battles, and the commissioning ceremony over there was about to start, so Admiral Hipper made a gesture of invitation, asking Lelouch and Gustav to board the ship.
The group followed behind Admiral Hugo von Pohl in his wheelchair, successively ascending the gangway to the warship.
Only after getting close did Lelouch realize that the “Baria-class” was not larger than the Derfflinger-class battlecruiser he had been on before.
It was indeed 1 meter wider than the “Derfflinger-class” and drew slightly more water, but it was nearly 20 meters shorter. Ultimately, their light displacements were similar; fully loaded, the “Baria-class” was just over a thousand tons heavier, mainly because the supplies needed for 380 mm main guns were much heavier than for 305 mm guns.
“Today’s warships take up too much tonnage and size for speed requirements. To boost the maximum speed under forced conditions from 23 knots to 28 knots, with the same 8 main guns, the caliber has to drop from 380 mm to 305 mm, the belt armor from 350 mm to 300 mm, and horizontal protection from 100 mm to 25~50 mm.”
Standing on the open observation tower of the “Baria” bridge, overlooking the familiar Wilhelmshaven, Lelouch couldn’t help but sigh inwardly.
At the end of World War I, to achieve battlecruiser speed, the other performance sacrificed was really too much. This era’s propulsion technology had reached a bottleneck; to increase speed, countries could only pile on boiler numbers and shaft counts, but the main force warships’ propellers were already spinning at high RPMs. Increasing power and RPM further didn’t help propulsion much.
So stacking speed with existing technology had reached a critical point where marginal returns were diminishing very obviously.
With current technology, even piling quantities to the extreme, it was hard to stack out battlecruisers or battleships over 30 knots.
“Is there any good way to solve this problem?” Admiral Hipper didn’t understand technical details well and casually asked Lelouch.
Lelouch: “We must develop a gearbox that can be used for battleship main engine-level power sources, reducing the output RPM from the current high-RPM low-torque steam turbines to relatively low-RPM high-torque.
Then, we can increase propeller diameter and blade pitch. Large-diameter low-RPM propellers have far higher propulsion efficiency than high-RPM small-diameter ones.
Otherwise, no matter how much power the main engines have or how fast the propellers spin, with countless bubbles stirred around the blades, the blade-water contact area shrinks, the water-pushing area shrinks, and actual thrust can’t increase no matter how fast. Underwater propeller RPM has a limit for thrust help; beyond it, faster is almost useless.
This relies on progress in materials science from metallurgical companies and precision gear manufacturing processes from mechanical processing companies; both indispensable, so slowly build up the industrial base.”
Admiral Hipper’s gaze also fell on Gustav; the task of metallurgical new gearbox gear steel still had to be shouldered by Krupp.
Gustav braced himself and stated: “Brigadier General Lelouch mentioned this to me. Last year in the second half, when chatting about new applications of three-phase electric arc furnace steel in the Navy, he brought it up. We’ve already started a parallel project at Krupp.
But in mechanical processing, especially for large-diameter, high-strength, multi-tooth gears, Krupp isn’t specialized; we don’t make precision gears. You’ll need to find experts elsewhere for this.”
Hipper looked at Lelouch again: “Do you know companies in this area? I haven’t heard of any; this field is entirely new.”
Lelouch was good at networking, mainly as a transmigrator familiar with famous industrial companies of later eras, so he immediately gave Hipper a tip:
“I’m very familiar with Minister Baden of the Occupied Area Affairs Department. I talked to him about it last year too. He took it seriously and said that in the Duchy of Baden’s Friedrichshafen, a new precision transmission company named ZF was just established last year.
I told him that with high-quality electric furnace steel in the future, high-precision large gears would have great potential, so he had the Baden royal family invest and reorganize the company, accelerating its technical development. If Mr. Gustav is interested, you can pursue deep technical cooperation with them.
You provide them gear steel, they give you targeted material optimization requirements, and you break them in together. I’ll just make the introduction for you.”
Germania’s famous gear and transmission systems, gearbox giant ZF, was also established in 1915 on the Earth plane, spurred by the war as the Empire needed high-power transmission gearboxes for “increasing torque, reducing RPM,” leading the Duchy of Baden to set up this company.
However, on Earth, ZF truly shone in the 1930s. At inception, with no three-phase electric arc furnace steel in Germania, and post-war Versailles Treaty sanctions preventing metallurgical upgrades due to lack of funds, it languished for years. Only after the 1929-1933 Great Depression ended, with Germania’s metallurgy and processing returning to peak, did ZF shine.
But now, with Lelouch’s influence plus his vision and resource integration ability, Krupp refining high-quality three-phase electric arc furnace steel in 1915 provides good materials. With Krupp giving ZF some special attention and willing to do “custom optimizations” for this small client’s small orders, it should at least let ZF skip a decade of detours.
He believed that within a year, Germania’s gear transmission and gearbox technology level would surpass the Earth plane’s 1924 post-gold mark crash recovery level, achievable.
Within two years, by the end of this war, reaching the Earth plane’s 1933 post-Great Depression level was possible.
Of course, even reaching the Earth plane’s 1933 gearbox tech level, producing Scharnhorst or even Bismarck propulsion systems would be impossible. Scharnhorst used 1936 gearbox tech; Earth plane 1933-1936 were years when Germanics frantically caught up on tech gaps without slacking.
So, Lelouch estimated that starting full networking for gearbox tech today, by 1918, achieving something like the Earth plane Franks’ 1931 Dunkirk-class transmission tech should be doable.
By 1921~1922, striving for Earth Scharnhorst-class transmission. Then, keeping this tech secret would ensure Empire warships built for future wars led enemy nations by at least one tech generation in propulsion systems.
Simply put, this gap was roughly “same total tonnage and propulsion system tonnage, Germanic faster by 3 knots than British or ugly systems.”
（Note: Steam turbine battleships with first-gen reduction gearboxes are generally 2~3 knots faster than same-power-tonnage non-gearbox ones, roughly “Dunkirk-class” level for that gen. With second-gen reduction gearboxes, another 2 knots under same conditions, roughly Tirpitz level）
Gustav Krupp had never even heard of ZF, this small company just established last year. Indeed, several startups in Germania, smelling new electric furnace steel, were starting high-power gear gearboxes, and giants like Krupp didn’t know which would win the race, so naturally wouldn’t contact or cooperate early.
But now with Brigadier General Lelouch giving guidance and making introductions, the situation was completely different. Krupp couldn’t lag; it had to get done.
And when ZF heard about it, they would surely be grateful to Lelouch, also doing a favor for the Grand Duke of Baden.
