Saipan is the capital of Northern Mariana and has a large civil airport.

The "airship" passenger aircraft developed by the Jinyang-based Northern Aircraft Manufacturing Company can carry 72 passengers, and is the world's first four-engine all-metal passenger aircraft, with a range of more than 5,000 kilometers, and can fly directly from domestic airports to Saipan without needing to refuel on the way.

However, when flying to North America, you will need to land at an airport on Warwick Island or the Aleutian Islands for refueling.

After the plane landed at Saipan Airport, Ling Wencha carried his suitcase and walked out of the airport's tarmac with the passengers.

"Is it Lieutenant Colonel Ling?" A lieutenant officer in a white navy uniform saluted him and handed him an envelope, which he recognized with certainty from a crowd of travelers with three naval bars on his cuffs.

"I'm the adjutant of Colonel Chang Yuebin, deputy chief of staff of the Ninth Fleet, and he's waiting for you on another plane, sir." The young captain said.

"Oh, aren't you going to report to the fleet base?" Ling Wencha asked.

"Temporary mission of the fleet, please get on the plane first, and please hand over the file to me to help you handle it when the time comes." The officer said.

Ling Wencha got on another plane under his guidance.

"Hey, Vancha." Chang Yuebin greeted his colleague at the boarding gate, "I saw that your name was on the list of passengers on the passenger plane, so I waited for you for a while, and I was going to send a telegram to let you go directly to Luda City." ”

"What do you mean?" Ling Wencha shook hands with his former colleague in the Northern Fleet, and the two entered the engine room together.

"There are two boats allocated above, and we will go together to finalize the conversion plan." Chang Yuebin said, "Of course, in the end, it is the Admiralty that has the final say. ”

Soon the twin-engine military transport plane, which could seat 24 people, took off from Saipan again, carrying some experts from the Navy's shipbuilding technology department and some officers from the Ninth Fleet.

The weather on the sea in the middle of summer was not bad, and the flight of this military transport plane was far less smooth and rickety than that of the civilian airliner.

The plane landed once at Naha Airport in Liuqiu State, refueled on the way, and then flew over the Yellow Sea and landed smoothly at Golden State Airport. After getting off the plane, the group took six Dongfang cars that specially greeted them to the Northern Fleet Naval Base in Lushunkou.

Rear Admiral Guo Yantao, deputy director of the Imperial Navy's shipbuilding design bureau, had already rushed over.

Early the next morning, under the leadership of Rear Admiral Guo, the naval delegation set off to the shipyard for inspection and evaluation.

A sudden light rain has draped this military port on the Liaodong Peninsula with a hazy veil, and as far as the eye can see, this military port, which was originally the main base of the Northern Fleet and lined with warships, looks very deserted, and only a few old warships are moored near the wharf, and the two "Yingzhou-class" light cruisers newly entered service of the Northern Fleet are conducting sea trials on the Yellow Sea, while a four-formation destroyer fleet is traveling with them for routine sea training.

The rainy and cold weather in the north made these officers from the Central Pacific a little uncomfortable, and everyone changed into dark blue autumn clothes. Looking over the sea with raindrops from time to time, the building next to the huge dock of the Navy Shipyard on the south bank of the military port is still brightly lit, and the huge gantry crane above the dock and the tower crane standing on the side can still be faintly distinguishable in the gray sky.

The huge dock was busy, with the clanging sound of iron, dazzling flashes of electric welding, and the huge gantry crane across the dock constantly lifting some of the hull modules and equipment assembled in the workshop to various stations, whistles, shouts and all kinds of noises noisily together, all this has been going on for nearly nine months.

For the "Dunkerke" class battlecruisers of the East Frankish Kingdom, the "new type of battlecruisers" built in the No. 5 dock of the Lushunkou Naval Shipyard have begun to show their outlines, the hull construction has been completed by 25 percent, and the power equipment of the bilge has also begun to be installed.

Due to the development of welding technology, some hulls have adopted a new standardized modular construction method, and the overall construction speed of the hull has been reduced by about 30% compared with the past. In the past, the entire dock construction period of such a giant ship with a standard displacement of more than 35,000 tons took three to three and a half years, but after adopting this new construction method, it is expected that it will only take about two and a half years for the hull to be completed and the ship can be launched and outfitted.

"Ladies and gentlemen, despite the difficulties we have encountered in the construction of such a large warship, with the joint efforts of the Naval Equipment Planning Department and the various branches and suppliers of materials and parts, all the problems that have arisen have been properly resolved. As you can see, the installation of the power plant on the first ship has begun. According to the schedule, the first ship will be launched during the Republic month, but judging by the current construction progress, it is entirely possible that it will be able to be launched for outfitting around July 303. In the conference room of the shipyard, Lu Zhongmin, the general manager of the shipyard, briefed the head of the shipbuilding department of the Imperial Navy on the construction progress of the battleship currently under construction.

To tell the truth, the production efficiency of the empire's state-owned naval shipyards is far inferior to that of private shipyards, and during the last "counterinsurgency war", various problems of naval shipyards were exposed, and then after the war, the joint-stock system was reformed, and at present, the original naval shipyards of the empire have been transformed into state-owned joint-stock companies, and state-owned shares still account for 35 to 40 percent.

Still, this reform had an effect, reinvigorating several major naval shipyards.

Generally speaking, major high-tech core enterprises and military-industrial enterprises are not allowed to be located outside the central area of the Tang Empire, centered on East Asia.

Although Lu Zhongmin said it easily, Rear Admiral Guo Yantao, who was the deputy director of shipbuilding of the Imperial Navy, knew that the problems encountered in the entire shipbuilding process were not only some "small troubles", but should be a test of the overall shipbuilding industry ability and technology of the Tang Empire.

The main problems are concentrated in the power system, first of all, the power system is overweight, the volume of boilers and steam turbines is excessive, and the thermal efficiency of the boiler is insufficient. This was followed by insufficient alloy strength of the steam turbine blades and insufficient stability of the power system. This is one of the main reasons why Vice Admiral Cheng Mingkang, the director of naval shipbuilding, has been strongly opposed to the designers' use of three sets of steam turbine layouts, which saves some power weight, but causes the stability and reliability of the power system to decrease.

Since only large battleships of the first rank were built after the war, the entire empire lacked the technical reserves for the construction of large battleships,

At present, the metallurgical level of the empire is not enough to make high-strength alloy blades capable of overloading high-temperature and high-pressure steam turbines for a long time, and in fact, the rated output of each steam turbine will not exceed 35,000 horsepower. Of course, such a steam turbine can be overloaded, and can reach an overload power of more than 40,000 horsepower in a short time, but it can only be maintained for about 5 to 6 hours.

In general, due to the lack of experience in building large warships, the Tang Empire is not in a leading position in the technical level of large warship manufacturing compared with European countries at present.

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