waited until Bai Huawei arranged the task before Liu Zunling walked over.

"We have overlooked a problem before, these deployments of the Nuland Navy, or this series of attacks, are actually not to lay down a perennially frozen island, even if there is a military base on the island that is quite complete and can deploy hundreds of combat aircraft."

"Coming at us?" At the beginning, when Bai Huawei deployed the task, Liu Zunling guessed a rough idea.

Bai Huawei nodded and said, "The primary purpose of the Nuland Navy is to recapture the Howaii Islands, so we first need to seize sea supremacy, and we must be killed." Before destroying us and gaining absolute sea supremacy, the Nuland Navy will never rashly launch a landing operation. ”

"This ......"

"Even if there is a landing fleet, an aircraft carrier battle group is needed to support the landing force, especially in the initial stage of landing operations. Besides, the window of time left for the Nuland Navy is only 1 week, a maximum of 10 days. Even if there is no delay, it may not allow the landing force to gain a firm foothold on the beachhead. ”

Hearing Bai Huawei say this, Liu Zunling's brows tightened.

It's not that he doesn't believe Bai Huawei's inference, it's just that in his understanding, it is not easy to eliminate the 41st Task Force hiding in the rear. In other words, if it weren't for the Nuland fleet commander who wanted to destroy Task Force 41, he would have been able to do it.

By this time, the staff officers had already marked the key information, that is, the deployment of troops, as well as the tactical tasks assigned to the various units, on the charts.

It's a bit messy, but it's clear at a glance.

In order to explain his judgment more clearly, Bai Huawei drew a route on the chart, but it was not the route of the 41st Task Force.

Crucially, the route is south of the island of Jotun and turns north after entering the Middle Eastern Hai Basin.

Because the patrol planes deployed on Yotun Island were all sent to the north of the Howaii Islands, and there were less than 10 patrol planes to operate in the south, and even fewer were able to make sorties, so from the night of the 4th, a hole appeared in the waters south of Yotun Island that was enough for the fleet to pass.

To the south of Jotun Island, the nearest military complex is on Christmas Island, 2,000 kilometers away.

In addition, there are only a few seaplanes over there.

On the island of Telayina, north of the Laine Islands, there is a small port controlled by the Imperial Navy, but only a few patrol boats with a displacement of less than 1,000 tons are deployed.

Obviously, it is possible for the Nuland fleet to enter the Middle East basin from the south of Yotun Island.

Because there are no islands behind the island chain defense line where military bases can be built, there are few long-range search forces available in the Middle East diaphragmatic basin.

The Nuland fleet would pass through the Middle East basin and appear south of Task Force 41.

That's not a good thing!

All along, Task Force 41 focused on the threat from the north, not to the south, or even to the south.

After pondering for a while, Liu Zunling still couldn't hold back and asked, "This shouldn't be possible, right?" ”

Bai Huawei didn't say anything, still pondering.

"Even if the patrol force south of Joton Island is equal to nothing, and the enemy can take advantage of the weakness, where will the Nuland Navy get a second fleet?"

"Is there any intelligence on the Royal Bran Navy and the Yamaman Navy?"

Liu Zunling was stunned, and then called the staff officer in charge of intelligence.

A few minutes later, the intelligence staff officer gave a definite answer.

At the beginning of the month, three large aircraft carriers of the Royal Bran Navy were in the Luxin Sea, while three large aircraft carriers of the Beiman Navy set off in the North Sunset.

Because the 51st Task Force has been heavily damaged and the Posha Bay War has not ended, it is very likely that the Commander Navy will send the fleet to Lu Xinhai in the near future to assist the Royal Navy of Bran in seizing the sea supremacy of Lu Xinhai, and may even launch a combat operation to enter the Xifan Canal in the near future.

From the perspective of safeguarding their own interests, before the Xifan Canal was conquered, the Bran Kingdom and the Hindan Empire would never send aircraft carriers to fight in the Guia.

It was for this reason that, after the 51st Task Force suffered heavy losses, the Imperial Navy intensified its efforts to break diplomatic relations in the Sunset Ocean, sending more large attack submarines to the North Sunset Ocean, and began to indiscriminately attack all ships heading to and from the ports of the Western Continent.

Escort operations and the protection of strategic shipping routes have become the primary task of the navies of the countries of the Western Continent Group.

It is precisely in this way that the Empire sent the fleet out to the North Sunset Ocean, and used three aircraft carrier task forces to escort the fleet to and from both sides of the Sunset Ocean.

Although a large attack aircraft carrier is not an ideal escort warship, there is no better option for the Western Continent Group until the escort aircraft carrier converted from a cruise ship enters service. To put it bluntly, if the fleet is sent to another place to carry out combat missions, the North Sunset Ocean Landing Route will be cut off by Imperial submarines.

With the current situation, that is, the offensive momentum of the Western Continent Group in the continental battlefield has slowed down, even if the allies such as the Empire of the West have been at full speed, the Western Luosha Army may not be able to complete the set strategic tasks before the arrival of winter, and whether it can maintain the offensive momentum next year depends on the performance of the Nuland Republic. In other words, whether the North Sunset Ocean Shipping Route can be guaranteed to be unimpeded in the next few months.

At the strategic level, it will continue until at least the second quarter of next year.

The reason is also very simple, it will take at least half a year to transform a cruise ship into an escort aircraft carrier capable of carrying anti-submarine patrol aircraft.

In the Second Global War, submarine-based diplomatic operations were all played in the Sanyang Battlefield, so after the end of the war, all countries attached great importance to anti-submarine escort. In the period that followed, the Imperial Navy also converted many aircraft carriers built during the Great War into escort carriers.

It's just that the Riman Empire and the Bran Kingdom obviously don't have so much capital.

Probably disgusted by unrestricted submarine warfare, the Bran Kingdom took the lead in exploring escort tactics after the war, or rather looking for a suitable escort combat platform.

Choosing and choosing, the final choice is still the escort aircraft carrier.

The difference is that the Royal Navy did not spend money on escort carriers, but took advantage of the rapid development of cruise ships after the war.

Compared to other transport vessels, fast cruise ships are an ideal platform for transforming into escort aircraft carriers.

Before the Second World War, the Narrow Navy did this. It's just that the narrow-minded navy has greater ambitions, trying to transform fast cruise ships into fleet aircraft carriers. Actual combat has proved that cruise ships built in peacetime, even if they are strengthened in accordance with military requirements, are difficult to be competent for high-intensity combat missions. The few aircraft carriers named after "Eagle" in the Sayi Navy did not end well.

In order to improve the efficiency of mobilization, the Royal Navy also established a shipping company after the war, specializing in the shipping business across the ocean, with nearly 20 10,000-ton fast cruise ships at its peak. Although the company went bankrupt and reorganized soon after due to poor management, the Bran authorities passed legislation before that ensuring the Royal Navy the right to requisition civilian ships without compensation in times of war.

Crucially, the Royal Navy of Bran indirectly controlled the ship design units.

The fast cruise ships built in the Kingdom of Bran all leave redundancy for the transformation into escort aircraft carriers.

In order to ensure that these modified escort carriers could be used in wartime, or to make it easier to retrofit, the Royal Bran Navy also insisted on using propeller anti-submarine patrol aircraft. Because of the lower take-off speed required, these patrol aircraft do not need to use catapults and only need 24 knots of deck wind to lift off from the 200-meter-long deck. With this, the escort aircraft carrier only needs a direct deck and a few blocking cables to carry dozens of anti-submarine patrol planes to carry out anti-submarine missions in the depths of the ocean thousands of kilometers above land.

Of course, the first modified escort aircraft carriers will not be commissioned until the second quarter of next year.

Until then, the Sairiku Group must hold the all-important North Sunset Ocean Route.

In addition, in just 4 days, the 6 aircraft carriers of the Western Continent Group will definitely not be able to arrive.

"The five aircraft carriers of the Nuland Navy are all in the North and East Ocean, and even if a loophole is found in the south of Yotun Island, it will have to bypass the Howai Islands, and it will take about 1 week to maneuver to the south of Jotun Island." Liu Zunling said as he marked the possible route of the Nuland fleet on the chart. "Let's not talk about whether we can be caught at that time, the commander of the Nuland fleet will definitely not delay this precious one week."

Bai Huawei pondered for a while, and suddenly said, "Do you remember He Jingteng?" ”

"Who?" Liu Zunling obviously didn't react, after all, he was talking about combat operations, but what Bai Huawei mentioned was a completely unrelated person.

"He fatty, He Jingteng. When he was a kid, he liked to follow behind our butts, and you called him a butt and used to make fun of him. ”

"Of course I do, but ......"

Halfway through his words, Liu Zunling closed his mouth and showed a look of great surprise.

He Jingteng is He Pengfei's grandson, a generation shorter than Bai Huawei and Liu Zunling, but only a few years younger than them. Although he did not inherit He Pengfei's business talent, what he heard and saw since he was a child made him the most talented in the empire today and the most famous naval engineer after Zhao Yu. He not only participated in the design work of the "Xue Yuanzheng" level as an assistant to the chief engineer, but also the leader of the second batch of improvement design project teams, that is, the actual chief engineer. After Zhao Yu's retirement, he was promoted to chief engineer of the Imperial Navy's Ship Design Institute.

It's just that he is not an all-round talent like Zhao Yu.

In terms of personal ability, he focused more on the design of large ships, especially aircraft carriers, and his specialty was systems related to aviation.

In addition, his luck was not as good as Zhao Yu.

Strictly speaking, in fact, the "Xue Yuanzheng" class was very successful, and many design concepts even surpassed the times, and the second batch also solved the shortcomings that were not many. Even if the Imperial Navy put forward the need for improvement in response to the problems that still existed, there would be a third batch, but there were not many changes that needed to be made, and after the outbreak of the Great War, the number would definitely have to be guaranteed, and there would be no need to design new aircraft carriers in the short term.

In fact, after the completion of the design work of the second batch of the "Xue Yuanzheng" class, the Imperial Navy canceled the design work of the new supercarrier.

According to the plan at that time, at least nine aircraft carriers of the "Xue Yuanzheng" class were to be built to replace all aircraft carriers except the "Chen Bingxun" class, and the construction period was several decades. When the third batch of construction is completed, it will be more than 20 years later, and there is no need to rush to design a new aircraft carrier.

In addition, no one knows what kind of adversaries will be faced in more than 20 years, and what kind of aircraft carriers will be needed at that time.

However, the Imperial Navy did not stop its work because of this.

The key is to retain the design team through the relevant projects to ensure that there are enough engineers to complete the design of the new aircraft carrier in a few decades.

It is in this context that He Jingteng proposed to refer to the practice of the opponent to plan and build large civilian ships with military use.

Among them, the most critical is the aviation combat platform.

Of course, what He Jingteng is going to do is not a fast cruise ship for the Royal Navy of Bran.

Comparatively speaking, the requirements of the Imperial Navy for escort were not high.

Whether in the Western or Eastern Guiat, or in the Fanyan Ocean and the Southern Sunset, the Imperial Navy had enough military bases to rely on to protect shipping routes. Besides, the core areas of interest of the empire are the Guia Ocean and the Fanyan Ocean, both of which are far away from the main enemy countries.

It is precisely in this way that the Imperial Navy has built the world's largest fleet of anti-submarine patrol aircraft, and has also invested in the development of the world's most advanced anti-submarine patrol aircraft.

What He Jingteng wants to engage in is actually a regular aircraft carrier.

After Zhou Yongtao moved into the residence of the first assistant, the proposal to build a "quasi-aircraft carrier" was taken seriously, after all, this was an effective way to rapidly expand the size of the fleet in addition to using mothballed aircraft carriers, so that the navy could gain a military advantage in the early stage of the war, and it would not require too much investment.

Since then, He Jingteng has submitted several sets of design proposals.

He chose not fast cruise ships, but fast container ships that were just emerging.

Compared with cruise ships used to carry passengers, container ships not only have a stronger hull, but also have a large compartment structure similar to an aircraft carrier.

As for the specific method, it is to combine modular construction technology to transform container ships with a displacement of more than 50,000 tons and a speed of more than 20 knots into aircraft carriers. The core of this is to install two sets of catapults, so that this kind of aircraft carrier converted from a cargo ship can carry and operate carrier-based aircraft.

This scheme looks promising.

Theoretically, a 50,000-ton container ship can be transformed into an attack aircraft carrier capable of carrying 40 25-ton carrier-based aircraft in just six months. Two such aircraft carriers have the same aviation combat capability as one "Xue Yuanzheng"-class supercarrier. On the other hand, the construction of 2 container ships, and then the cost of renovation is less than 40% of the cost of 1 "Xue Yuanzheng" class.

It is a pity that after full arguments, the Imperial Navy abandoned the project.

The reason is also very simple, this kind of modified aircraft carrier, due to speed limitations, cannot carry and operate heavy carrier-based aircraft such as the "Zhan-9".

There is no doubt that this is a flaw that cannot be ignored.

The Imperial Navy has always attached great importance to offensive capability, and the basis of its powerful offensive capability is the "Attack-5" and "Battle-9" heavy carrier-based aircraft of more than 40 tons. The aircraft carriers of the Imperial Navy are getting bigger and bigger, and fundamentally speaking, they are designed to carry and operate heavier and heavier carrier-based aircraft.

Of course, there are other problems with the transformation of aircraft carriers with freighters.

All in all, the Imperial Navy ultimately chose to shorten the service life of the aircraft carriers and mothball the decommissioned aircraft carriers rather than build freighters that could be converted into aircraft carriers.

It's just that the design plan proposed by He Jingteng has not been buried.

()