Preparing for War

The power of a gun increases roughly eightfold when its caliber doubles.

Therefore, the 800 mm-caliber railway gun we are developing can deliver at least eight times the firepower of the 406 mm main guns of the battleship Albion.

The problem was that increasing a gun's caliber did not increase only its firepower.

The larger the gun became, the more exponentially the platform required to carry and move it also grew.

That was because an eightfold increase in a gun's firepower meant that the shock of firing also grew nearly eightfold, so the platform had to be larger to withstand it.

Accordingly, the railway gun's final weight, as presented by the Design Bureau, came to nearly 1,400 tons. At that scale, it was fair to call it the largest weapon ever to roll across the ground.

To transport such a massive weapon, tracks were already being laid through Central.

The publicly stated purpose was railway development to improve Central's logistical transport efficiency.

In truth, the railway running through Central to the North would be essential once I had completely conquered the Empire, so it was not merely a cover story.

We were already building the epitome of an inefficient weapon in the railway gun; wasting money on tracks that could be used only once would have been too painful...