According to the long-term development plan of the Imperial Navy proposed by Marshal Pei Yunsong, Minister of the Navy, in the next 10 years, the eight major fleets of the Imperial Navy will successively replace the old capital ships that are approaching the end of their service life with a powerful fleet consisting of eight new battleships, eight heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, and eight destroyer detachments.

This was the so-called "48 Plan" he proposed in the 301 year of the Republic, which was supported by the Ministry of National Defense and approved by Prime Minister Lee Kum Tong as soon as he took office.

The purpose of Chang Yuebin's visit to the University was not for the battleship that was being built in the dockyard, but to guide and evaluate the process of refitting the experimental auxiliary aircraft carrier carried out by the Imperial Navy, and to provide them with some experience in the use of aircraft carriers from the training for the designers' reference.

In the dockyard of the Lushunkou Naval Shipyard, the fast cruise ship "Xinjinzhou", which won the Blue Ribbon Award in Republic 296, has been demolished from the superstructure, and only a bare hull remains.

This 36,000-ton fast ocean liner originally belonged to the Imperial Northern Mail Shipping Company, due to the impact of the decline in passengers after the economic crisis, the Northern Mail Shipping Company began to reduce the number of cruise ships in the company, and it happened that the Imperial Navy also needed to buy merchant ships for modified aircraft carrier tests, so it bought two fast mail ships at a very cheap price.

As for whether there is any shady background in this transaction, no one can say for sure.

In March 296, the fast cruise ship "Shinjinju", equipped with a cruiser's steam turbine, sailed across the Pacific Ocean in a record hour and 16 minutes, and sailed from the port of Gangju to Sillacheng in the New World, reaching an average speed of knots, for which it won the Blue Ribbon Award.

The ship itself is equipped with a power system for the Imperial Navy to test new marine high-temperature and high-pressure steam turbines, it is equipped with three 35,000 horsepower marine steam turbines, with a total power of up to 105,000 horsepower, which is very suitable for conversion into a training auxiliary aircraft carrier.

Since the power system did not need to be significantly modified, the entire retrofit project saved nearly one-third of the project schedule. After the demolition of the superstructure, two levels of hangars were erected on top of it, and a continuous through deck was laid, while the original two upright chimneys were dismantled and merged together, diagonally out of the deck from the starboard side, and finally combined with the right side of the ship island to form a whole.

The Imperial Navy has been debating internally whether to spend a huge amount of money on building a heavy cruiser to build an aircraft carrier, and the construction of these two auxiliary aircraft carriers is also the result of a compromise between the two sides, which will enable the Imperial Navy to accumulate the conditions for the development of aircraft carrier technology and the training of carrier-based pilots, as well as accumulate a lot of experience in the use of aircraft carriers.

The Imperial Navy established its own naval aviation unit during the last "counterinsurgency war", and it also achieved good results during the war. After the war, the Navy has retained the formation of naval aviation, and has conducted a series of experiments on the problems of possible naval and air operations in the future.

Unlike countries such as the Kingdom of East and West Francia and the Byzantine Empire, which formed independent air forces, the plan to form an independent air force has never become a reality because of the strong opposition of both the army and the navy, and the army aviation units have coveted naval aviation. However, in order to compete for the very limited funds for air force construction and research, there have long been profound differences and contradictions between the army aviation and the naval air force.

It is precisely because of the contradictions between the naval aviation and the army aviation, and because of the differences in the operational objectives targeted by the two sides, that the Imperial Army Aviation and the Naval Aviation have completely developed two different styles of military aviation equipment systems.

The development of aircraft carriers in the Imperial Navy was hampered not only by the traditional forces within the Navy, but also by the current severe economic situation. The Technical Committee of the Imperial Navy is currently conducting a demonstration of the design of a new aircraft carrier, which of course excludes, of course, the two modified aircraft carriers that are being tested.

Another important practice of this "modified aviation training ship" is to verify a kind of "floating flight deck". That is, in order to expand the area of the flight deck as much as possible, the upper flight deck should be extended beyond the hull, which is beneficial for loading more carrier-based aircraft and increasing the combat capability of the aircraft carrier.

This is the conclusion that Vice Admiral Chen Shiying has come to in the practice of using aircraft carriers.

The number of aircraft loaded on an aircraft carrier increases by a factor of the airframe for the improvement of combat capability, that is to say, if the number of carrier-based aircraft is doubled, then its combat capability can be increased by 3 to 4 times. Moreover, the aircraft carrier must be equipped with a fighter formation that can protect itself and cover the bomber formation, and it also needs to be equipped with reconnaissance aircraft and torpedo aircraft, so that if an aircraft carrier wants to have complete combat capability, it must be equipped with at least one fighter squadron, one bomber squadron and one torpedo squadron, that is, at least an aircraft carrier capable of carrying more than 46 carrier-based aircraft.

This, of course, requires a larger hangar and a larger flight deck.

In the next few days, Chang Yuebin and Ling Wencha, on behalf of the Ninth Fleet, persuaded Rear Admiral Guo Yantao to accept Vice Admiral Chen Shiying's views and adjust the original aircraft carrier modification plan. The new proposals they are proposing will increase the budget, but not by much. If the island is moved to starboard by another three meters, the flight deck and hangar on the port side can be extended outward by another ten meters, and after such a modification, the flight deck of the aircraft carrier will actually increase its width by more than 14 meters, which is equivalent to an additional flight runway.

Ling Wencha was mainly responsible for the deployment of carrier-based aircraft, and it took him five days to compile a list of carrier-based aircraft and an explanatory plan.

Chang Yuebin read the plan submitted by Ling Wencha very carefully.

"Every aspect is very detailed and the instructions are very clear!" Chang Yuebin is a very serious person and does things in a proper manner, "However, there is one thing I don't quite understand, why replace the horizontal bomber with a dive bomber?" ”

Ling Wencha nodded slightly, and then said: "A friend of mine is now the commander of the Southwest Theater Air Wing, and he has repeatedly mentioned to me that horizontal bombers are very inefficient in bombing moving targets. You know that the Imperial Army is currently conducting experiments with armor and mechanization, and he says that dive bombers are much more effective than horizontal bombers against fast and mobile mechanized units, which is one of the main reasons why the Army Aviation began to equip it with dive bombers not so long ago. ”

He paused a little here: "Actually, our HNA has to learn from the Army Air Corps in this regard. ”

It's a taboo remark that he wouldn't say in public......