It was almost noon when Zeng Shiqi rushed to the No. 1 Naval Guest House.

Ling Wencha went with him to the dining hall of the officers' club for lunch, while waiting for the person who had been assigned a post to him by the Admiralty.

There was a buffet in the officer's cafeteria, and the two of them were eating lunch with a plate and chatting about the future. A middle-ranking officer of their age, if there is no accident, will not have the opportunity to hang a gold star on his epaulette. Officers like them, who come from civilian families, have to compete with the sons and daughters of members of the House of Representatives or senior admirals of the Navy, and it is very difficult to climb up in such peacetime.

"You're in the Navy Personnel Bureau, well-informed, can you know my latest arrangements?" Ling Wencha asked.

Zeng Shiqi shook his head: "It may be the Naval Equipment Bureau, Vice Admiral Xie Zhaokun's request, and I don't know the rest." ”

"Oops, how did our assigned friend end up here!"

"Why are you here, Lao Ling, they say you have a new home in South America."

Three or three naval officers wearing school-level military uniforms, Li Shize, Zhang Weihan and Song Hongwei, they were Ling Wencha's classmates at the Yingang Naval Academy, and these brothers appeared in front of them in a hurry, looking Ling Wencha up and down with a smile, and joking in their mouths, and sat down at their dinner table without waiting for them to agree.

Ling Wencha hadn't seen each other for more than two years, but these guys sat down with them casually with their plates, and then they started joking and chatting.

"Hey, don't be so close to me, I've made an appointment here." He said to Zhang Weihan, who was sitting next to him.

"Oh, really?" Zhang Weihan stood up and moved to a chair next to him, "It can't be a lady, right?" We usually do this at night. Lao Ling, you won't say that you meet the girls in South America at noon. ”

Several people were made to laugh out loud by this vulgar joke, and then Li Shize asked, "You haven't been assigned to work yet?" ”

"I heard that there is a possibility of entering the equipment department, it seems to be a new department." Song Hongwei said: "The navy has not built a capital ship for several years, and your dream of becoming a captain is probably about to be completely shattered. ”

Li Shize said: "Not necessarily, people like him who have been gilded in overseas bases hope to be bigger than us." I'm afraid that those of us will have to work in the navy until we retire. ”

Ling Wencha frowned when he heard this, he had a bad omen, if he entered the Naval Armament Bureau, then he might be in the Navy for the rest of his life. In his heart, he still hoped to be able to return to the sea, even if it was to get a light cruiser to be the captain on it.

As if to verify his fears, a young but unfamiliar voice came: "Is it Ling Wen Chaxiao?" I am Lu Jinyang, the adjutant of General Xie Zhaokun, and the director sent me to pick you up. ”

"Oh, where is the general now?" Ling Wencha wiped his mouth with a napkin, looked at the young captain and said.

"He's still in the office of the Armament Bureau." Captain Lu said.

"Okay, I'll go over it." Ling Wencha said hello to his friends apologetically, and followed Captain Lu outside.

The Bureau of Naval Armament and the Imperial Admiralty are housed in the same compound, but have a separate seven-story office building.

Since the leader of the Social Workers' Party, Lee Kam-tang, became prime minister in March, in order to get rid of the impact of the great economic crisis, the empire began to invest in the construction of a series of key national projects, and began to rearmament, the total size of the army has expanded to 3.1 million, and the navy also plans to speed up the replacement and construction of old ships.

The rebuilding of the Imperial Navy began, and the Naval Armament Bureau, which had been very idle, suddenly became very busy. When Ling Wencha saw some young officers who were still busy at lunchtime, he suddenly felt that he was already a little old, and the ambition and enthusiasm of his youth were gradually fading.

As the world's only superpower, the Imperial Navy is equipped with almost the same tonnage of ships as ships of other countries combined.

However, since the counterinsurgency war more than 30 years ago, the speed of updating the equipment of the Imperial Navy has slowed down significantly, and only six capital battleships of the first class have been built, and most of the capital ships have been in service for more than 25 years, which seems to be a bit old, and some cannot keep up with the development speed of the navies of European countries.

Vice Admiral Xie Zhaokun, director of the Naval Armament Bureau, has a very simple furnishings on the fourth floor, with a model of a "Zhenhai-class" battleship in a bookcase behind him. The nine battleships of this class played a mainstay role in the defeat of the combined fleet of the New American Union and the European Union in the Battle of the New Gulf of Tonkin in North America during the last counterinsurgency war, and four of them were decommissioned as meritorious battleships that became naval museums.

"Report to the general, Ling Wencha, an observer of the Southern Fleet's base on Fadao Island, has been ordered to report for duty!"

"Sit down, Lieutenant Colonel Ling." Xie Zhaokun pointed to the couch in his room and greeted his fellow villagers in Laizhou. He served as the commander of a destroyer during the war, participated in the Battle of the Plata Estuary, and served as the captain of the battleship "Yanshan" for a while after the war.

After signing two more documents, Xie Zhaokun put on the cap of the pen, then stood up and sat down on the small sofa beside Ling Wencha.

"You wrote the article "On the Application of Aircraft in Future Naval Warfare" published in the magazine "Ships"?" Xie Zhaokun then asked.

"Yes, I wrote that." Ling Wencha nodded and said.

In the later stages of the "counterinsurgency war", aircraft were more and more widely used in warfare, and also played a significant role in quelling rebellions in various parts of the empire. After the Great War, the Imperial Navy also formed its own naval aviation units. However, due to the short range of the aircraft, they could only carry out reconnaissance patrols in the waters near the port, and the naval aviation units were not subordinate to the fleet, but were under the command of the Port Garrison Command.

Ling Wencha was interested in airplanes entirely because he participated in an exercise organized by the Admiralty six years ago, and after that, he began to pay attention to learning aviation knowledge, and learned to fly airplanes during his time in the New Southern Province, and passed the pilot examination organized by the Naval Aviation Command and obtained a pilot certificate.

He himself studied a large number of domestic and foreign sources, and based on the study of some experiments, he found that although a single combat aircraft could not pose much of a threat to a battleship, even a battleship traveling on the sea could be sunk if it was attacked in formation. He wrote his experience into an article and sent it to the magazine.

That's just a conjecture that hasn't been verified.

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