 The conning tower had further plating some thick, while the 5.9 in guns were each in turrets whose armour was somewhere between thick.Completed in early 1883 and 1884, respectively, "Dingyuan" and "Zhenyuan" were to be sailed to China by a German crew, but delays—primarily from France following the outbreak of the Sino-French War in 1884—kept the ships in Germany.A German crew took "Dingyuan" out for a firing test at sea, causing glass to shatter around the ship, along with damage to a funnel.