At the mouth of the Rio del Grande del Sul (Río de la Plata), the sky is overcast with scattered snowflakes falling on the sea. Although it was early in the morning, visibility was still not high due to light fog.

This Tang Empire task force sailed for two days on the route near the South American coast, lined up in a pre-dawn battle formation on the sea - this is a habit left over from the battleship era, but since the shipborne radar has been widely equipped on warships, due to its increasingly advanced performance, the detection range has long exceeded the visual distance of people, so adjusting the formation seems to be suspicious.

After Admiral Chen Shiying had breakfast, he slowly came to the bridge.

Everything is going according to plan.

His appointment as commander of this task force and his promotion to the rank of admiral can be seen as a great victory for the "aviation faction" in the navy. The Reich's North Atlantic Fleet, with its sixteen battleships, suffered heavy losses in a raid launched from an aircraft carrier, which can also be seen as the arrival of the era of aircraft carriers.

In addition to this huge Tang fleet, there were no other ships in sight on the sea, and even if they encountered a neutral merchant ship that was sailing, with advanced radar equipment, they avoided it in advance.

Admiral Chen Shiying likes to stand on the bridge and admire his battleship, and every time he feels its strength, he feels a sense of pride from the bottom of his heart.

The 35,000-ton ship is certainly one of the world's most devastating weapons, with a dark grey livery that gives a sense of majesty and majesty, while the four massive 330mm main turrets will make the blood of the men who ride it boil and the hearts of all who oppose it.

The integrated tall tower bridge of the "Yunling" is obviously also in line with the aesthetics of the ordinary people of the Tang Empire, and this design draws on the ideas of some Byzantine navies in terms of shipbuilding, although it is not as tall as the Byzantine battleships, but it is more stout and solid.

Standing in the operations command room on the fifth floor of the bridge and looking down on the battleship was indeed a very pleasant thing. The millimeter main gun is majestic and exudes full domineering, which will make every imperial naval officer and soldier can't help but be filled with invincible fighting spirit in their hearts.

However, to the regret of the officers and men on this battleship: According to the battle plan, the main force in the operation to break diplomatic relations this time was the few aircraft carriers with a huge flying armor on top of them, and even two of them were converted merchant ships, that is, the "Jeju Island" aircraft carrier, which was now sailing on the right side of "Yunling" and had weak defenses.

The crew of the battleship dared to guarantee that if it was within 15 nautical miles, they would definitely be able to kill this "flat-deck merchant ship" in half an hour. But the problem is that the other side will not give him this opportunity at all, the MSRSeeT-3D radar has a sea detection range of up to 35 kilometers, and those aircraft carriers will basically be able to quickly escape within the effective range of the battleship's main guns, and then open up the distance and attack him with carrier-based aircraft.

Although the "Jeju Island" has a huge displacement of 42,000 tons, it itself is transformed from a merchant ship, and its hull structure and armor protection are very far from the officially built military ships.

According to calculations, this "modified merchant ship" can only withstand two torpedoes below the waterline, but in the process of refitting, due to its large displacement, the flight deck, hangar, and upper deck are equipped with a layer of horizontal armor, and the ability to resist horizontal attacks has been enhanced a lot.

However, it is also an indisputable fact that the "Yunling" and "Qinling" formations have repeatedly lost to two "converted merchant ships" during several exercises. There is no shame in this, the "Yanshan" and "Hengshan" and other "Wuyue" class cutting-edge battleship formations have also lost to this same opponent many times, which is also a major reason why this class of cutting-edge battleships returned to the shipyard after less than half a year of service and carried out retrofitting with anti-aircraft firepower and enhanced horizontal protection.

Such dismal results have made those worshippers of the "giant ship cannon" both love and hate the "Jeju Island" and "Bukdo" in their hearts, and they always jokingly call it "converted merchant ships" in their mouths. The problem is that this "converted merchant ship" has to let the main battleship, which costs more than three times as much, act as a frigate for it, which makes many people feel very unbalanced in their hearts.

Admiral Chen Shiying's Commander of the Screen Fleet, Vice Admiral Huo Xunchi, is of course one of these "unbalanced" members.

At present, this sea area has gathered almost all the capital ships that the empire can dispatch in the waters around the Atlantic. But for a long time, the development of the Imperial Navy was plagued by funding and battleships, and it was not ahead of the navies of European countries in the development of aircraft carriers.

The Admiralty's development plan was to replace the old ships in 309 and equip the main fleet with two fleet aircraft carriers, but they were now forced to fight in advance.

The Jeju Island and the North Island are currently the only two converted aircraft carriers of the Imperial Navy with full combat capability, and they are also one of the most powerful aircraft carriers in the world. It is armed with 116 combat aircraft of various types, with three fighter squadrons, four bomber squadrons and one reconnaissance fighter squadron. On its huge deck there are now three squadrons of 48 combat aircraft, and there are 68 combat aircraft of various types in the hangar below it.

The carrier-based aircraft models of aircraft carriers are basically the standard configuration of the Imperial Navy, that is, the "Sea Hawk" fighter produced by the Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Company and the "Sea Harrier" multi-purpose bomber developed by the Shenzhou Aircraft Manufacturing Company.

The other two aircraft carriers of the North Atlantic Fleet, "Qiongzhou" and "Yizhou", were the first batch of fleet aircraft carriers built in the Imperial Navy, and their displacement was only 22,500 tons, and because they had just been modernized, the Third Air Fleet of the Imperial Navy, which was mainly composed of these two fleet aircraft carriers, was currently in a state of training and did not yet have full combat capability.

Now the construction of aircraft carriers is the highest priority in all the construction projects of the Navy, and it can be seen from the supply of materials that the top of the Empire has high hopes for the Navy's air fleet.

Admiral Chen Shiying is now full of ambition, and his fleet is powerful, but he has some expectations for a great battle at sea with the enemy.

"Left rudder 10, course north-northwest, speed 18, fleet lifted early morning combat alert!" Chen Shiying glanced at the "Jeju Island" outside the side porthole and gave a new order to the fleet.

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