African Entrepreneurship Record

Intervening in the Russo-Japanese War was just a minor move by Ernst, ultimately belonging to a smaller path. Apart from the warring parties, the countries that benefited from the war were certainly the Three Kingdoms of the UK, the US, and France, with East Africa ranking afterward.

Therefore, in the absence of the Russo-Japanese War breaking out, Ernst still had to focus on the development of his country’s industry, economy, and military.

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Bajamojo Port.

At this moment, a celebration was being held at Bajamojo Port, where Vice Admiral Kain Math of the East African Navy raised champagne and launched it towards the bow of a gigantic ship.

The champagne bottle shattered upon hitting the bow, the ship sounded its whistle, the dock gates opened, and East Africa’s fourth new domestic battleship slowly moved out of the dock and berthed at the pier.

So far, among East Africa’s primary surface combat ships, there are already four battleships, and during the first five-year plan, the East African Navy continued to develop steadily, without expanding naval power as extravagantly as other countries.

Looking at this newly launched battleship, Vice Admiral Kain Math was in an excellent mood. Although it was an experimental ship, the launch of Bajamojo meant that East Africa’s number of battleships reached four.

Now the era of battleship development has entirely returned, the Ironclad Ship has become a thing of the past, but among East Africa’s main surface combat ships, Ironclad Ships still dominate.

Therefore, any new battleship is warmly welcomed by the East African Navy. Although the specific data and reliability of Bajamojo cannot yet be assured, East African Navy is already very satisfied.

The designer of Bajamojo, Handonio, addressed the crowd: ”Starting from the 1890s, with the advancement of large-caliber naval gun technology, the power, range, rate of fire, and accuracy of naval guns have significantly improved. The progress in aiming technology also leads to an increasingly high long-distance hit rate. However, small-caliber naval guns’ long-range firepower is weak, and differences in trajectory, rate of fire during dual-caliber main gun firing, observation of impact points, and fire control can’t be unified, affecting long-range hit rates.”

”Major naval powers worldwide observed this issue, and many have proposed building a new generation of battleships to solve this problem, coming up with numerous solutions.”

”The appearance of Bajamojo is precisely our navy’s response to this, a new type of experimental ship, with significant adjustments made in gun caliber, position, ship structure, etc., equipped with the latest electronic devices, including external radio systems and internal command telephone systems.”

”In terms of protective armor, bold innovations were made, adopting the latest technology steel, significantly increasing Bajamojo’s weight, with a total displacement level directly reaching 14,000 tons.”

”The only regrettable part is that the latest domestic steam turbine technology is not yet mature, so Bajamojo still adopts the traditional steam power mode. Therefore, Bajamojo’s speed cannot be effectively increased and must be tested on the next experimental ship.”

”However, I believe Bajamojo can withstand the navy’s test. Even placed among global navies, Bajamojo’s advancement is beyond reproach.”

Regarding Handonio’s comments, Kain Math said: ”Bajamojo’s design is bold, but its combat power ultimately depends on subsequent developments. For such bold attempts with new warships, the results may not be entirely positive.”

Handonio: ”The General’s words hold some truth, but I have confidence in my product. Even if some minor issues arise, we can promptly correct them.”

On this point, Kain Math naturally agreed because even if Bajamojo’s overall practical effect is not ideal, it does not affect the application of these new technologies. Even if not suitable for Bajamojo, they can provide East African Navy with substantial experience.

East Africa’s Bajamojo is the first battleship completed during the first five-year plan, already possessing some characteristics of the Dreadnought from past lives, but still belonging to pre-Dreadnought.

Currently, there is no concept of the Dreadnought in the world; its birth in past lives was due to the UK’s forecast of naval warfare development direction during the Russo-Japanese War, thus launching a new type of battleship.

Although ideas about the ”Dreadnought” have been proposed worldwide, no country has achieved this goal.

East Africa can only be said to strive toward the ”Dreadnought”, but this does not mean East Africa can achieve results first.

The main reason being Ernst’s relative unfamiliarity with ships in past lives, so the East African Navy had to develop independently, and Ernst couldn’t provide any effective advice.

However, Ernst knew the general direction of development, such as large caliber, high speed, high firing rate, and strong armor, should be correct. With the maturity of prominent technologies like radio, the East African Navy developing in this direction was definitely without issues.

For East Africa, achieving large caliber is not very difficult, as East Africa itself possesses the technology for producing large-caliber naval guns, with only minor differences compared to other countries, but not significant enough to impact greatly.

High speed is more challenging. Currently, East Africa’s development direction is to use more efficient steam turbines to propel the battleships’ speed, but mastering related technology is rather difficult for East Africa.

Steam turbines appeared as early as the 19th century, but Ernst knows nothing about them. Therefore, using steam turbines to break through the current world warship speed limits is entirely the East African Navy and East African shipbuilding technology personnel’s own experiment without Ernst’s intervention.

Yet, East Africa lags even in ordinary reciprocating steam engines, and thus faced some difficulties in steam turbine development. Fortunately, the principles of steam turbines are not complicated, and various countries’ navies do not yet focus heavily on them, allowing the East African Navy to begin researching new domestic steam turbines in the nineties. Although no finished product exists now, once completed, they should gain some first-hand data and accumulate experience. Thus, even if the first new domestic steam turbine encounters issues, East African technicians are confident in timely correction.

East African Navy and military shipbuilding industry’s daring attempt is actually also a compelled choice, as during the nineties and the first five-year plan, East African military industry was not the primary development focus, making it impossible for the East African Navy to engage in an arms race with other countries.

In such circumstances, the East African Navy could only focus energy on warship development, and this research indeed led the East African Navy to invent many new items.

Regarding this, Ernst held a supportive stance. Although Ernst did not want to invest much in ”pre-Dreadnoughts”, without the technological accumulation of ”pre-Dreadnoughts”, East Africa might be blindsided upon the actual emergence of ”Dreadnoughts”.

Therefore, during the first five-year plan, Ernst allowed the navy to build two to three experimental battleships, with the primary goal of integrating advanced technology currently available in East Africa’s military shipbuilding industry.

Based on this, constant breakthroughs were achieved in new technologies like large-caliber naval guns, steam turbines, radio, new armor, and hull structure design.

Because of this, Bajamojo, as East Africa’s fourth new battleship, is entirely different from the three relatively conventional battleships produced by East Africa in the nineties.

Although they are all battleships, Bajamojo has already extensively applied some new key technologies mastered by East Africa, bringing Bajamojo closer to the direction of past life’s ”Dreadnought”.

But it is just an approach; East Africa is not a country able to lead naval military revolutions. Among global nations, only the UK possesses this capability.

Without the UK’s ”Dreadnought” as a blueprint, the East African Navy had no ”imitate” method to implement and could only try to explore on its own. The three battleships before Bajamojo are actually imitations.

Thus, Bajamojo represents a product of epoch-making significance in the development history of the East African Navy and military shipbuilding industry.

It completely escaped the past of copying and imitating other countries’ warships’ styles, becoming East Africa’s first independently researched and built innovative large-scale surface main battle warship, employing a large amount of self-developed new technology.

The reason it is termed a large-scale surface main battle warship is because East Africa’s submarines entered the self-developed stage earlier than surface vessels; there were no relatively mature submersibles worldwide for East Africa to reference when developing submarines.