A few days later, Fang Yan began arranging for Hitler to meet his cheap father. Rudolf was extremely surprised by Fang Yan's sudden political interest this time, because the current German army has always maintained the bottom line of not getting involved in politics, whether it is officers or soldiers, they only exist purely for national defense!

However, Rudolph did not object to Fang Yan's thoughts. Because for the Brom family, there is indeed a need for a strong support that can be taken care of by the government: Fang Yan's grandfather, Leo, was ready to let the brothers Rudolph and Walter develop in business and politics respectively, so that the family's power can be mutually reinforcing. Although the National Socialist National Workers' Party (SNB), which Fang Yan introduced to him, was only the smallest party in the National Assembly, Rudolph's idea of tearing up the Treaty of Versailles and rearmament and restoring Germany to its pre-1914 territories made Rudolph feel quite appetizing. Putting aside the rise and fall of the country and the general righteousness of the nation, as long as Germany can rearmament, then for the Brom, a family of heavy industrial giants, it will be a huge number of orders and wealth!

Under Fang Yan's "matchmaking", Rudolf and Hitler met smoothly. Hitler did not miss this opportunity, and in the two-hour meeting he succeeded in impressing the industrial magnates in front of him with a gritty and wise impression, and allowed Rudolf to generously donate his fortune of up to 300,000 marks. In addition, Hitler received a promise that he would give the National Socialist Party a monthly grant of 50,000 marks. When Hitler left Hamburg, his heart was full of excitement and cheerfulness, and there was no more loss or worry.

At the same time, Fang Yan, who is in Kiel, is also constantly advancing the progress of his paper called "The Age of Sea and Air". After another month, Fang Yan, who had finally completed the work, immediately submitted this 80,000-word long article to the naval officer's internal journal "Navigation". Compared with the previous book on the rise and fall of the high seas fleet based on the strategic level, Fang Yan's article starts from a completely tactical point of view: the full text expounds the irreplaceable role that naval aviation can play in the fields of breaking diplomatic relations, reconnaissance, and decisive battles in three aspects, and gives detailed steps of war games as examples. In order to enable the German Navy top management to complete the thinking transformation from two-dimensional artillery combat on the surface to three-dimensional coordination of sea and air, Fang Yan definitely spent a lot of effort!

At the end of the article, Fang Yan put forward a strong proposal for the development of regular carrier-based combat aircraft. At present, naval aviation is divided into two types: one is the seaplane, which can take off and land on the sea surface through a huge pontoon installed under the fuselage, and it can be retracted and released as long as it is used by a crane; This means that battleships, cruisers, and ordinary merchant ships can all have the ability to carry such weapons. However, this type of aircraft has a fatal drawback, that is, the presence of pontoons greatly destroys the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft, so that the speed of the seaplane cannot reach the ideal level at all. If it encounters the enemy's regular fighters, then the seaplane can only be a fish on the chopping board to be slaughtered, and the combat mission it shoulders will be impossible to talk about at all!

Therefore, the only thing that really deserves to be relied on is the regular fighter planes that take off and land from the flight deck. Without the constraints of the pontoon, it can pursue combat performance to the greatest extent, and this will undoubtedly make the fighter in the confrontation of aviation forces, showing irreplaceable excellent effectiveness. Although it has to rely on long-distance gliding for take-off and landing, which means that it can only be carried by an all-deck carrier, and the investment cost is much higher than that of a seaplane, there is obviously no reason to resist this kind of business where a penny can buy two cents. In terms of the objective situation, Fang Yan also gave a justification for Germany to build aircraft carriers: the French Navy, the main hypothetical enemy of the German Navy, had completed the conversion of the unfinished battleship "Béarne" into an aircraft carrier in May 1927, with a standard displacement of more than 22,000 tons [Note]. Then since the French have such ships, the German Navy should also pursue a-for-tat following strategy!

Based on the great success of the previous Apocalypse of the Rise and Fall of the High Seas Fleet, Fang Yan's new work has also attracted the attention of almost everyone in the industry. With Fang Yan's dedication, although this "Age of Sea and Air" failed to make a huge sensation like the previous book, it is definitely a good sequel that is highly anticipated. Immediately, there was an upsurge of discussion within the German Navy about the specific path to be chosen for future development, and the aviation forces, which were not allowed to be possessed by the Allies, were placed in an unprecedented position of importance and studied in depth.

"We can't build a fleet with only surface warships!" After continuous deduction and research, this voice began to be recognized by more and more people within the German Navy. Although the effectiveness of the current aircraft-to-ship attack is still not recognized by the majority of people because of its own technical objective reasons, in other fields, there is no suspense about the effectiveness of the air force. As for the planes and pilots, the top brass of the Navy headed by Raeder did not worry about their origins at all: their own technical team, which was temporarily avoiding foreign countries, was also developing military aircraft, and there were no technical obstacles at all to making them physically available. The flying clubs in Germany that run in the name of racing undoubtedly provide a rich reserve of personnel for fighter pilots.

Fang Yan also gave his own opinion on how the German Navy could possess this type of warship under the strict restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles: that is, to circumvent the restrictions of the peace treaty on the surface by talking to himself, referring to the division of ships into horses, and using the method of playing the side ball. The Entente did not allow the German Navy to develop aircraft carriers, so the German Navy divided them into 10,000-ton capital ships that were allowed to be built, or simply supply ships. The Entente did not allow the German army to have combat aircraft, so the unarmed civilian seaplanes that were in service on this type of warship were claimed to be carried for the purpose of maritime search and rescue. Today, Britain's revival of German military power has long since turned into a tacit and even supportive attitude, and even if everyone knows that it is boring, Fang Yan can still be almost 100% sure that the ship will not cause a violent storm.

In fact, there was definitely an example of this kind of thing in the plane where Fang Yan was originally located. The so-called "helicopter destroyers" of the Izumo and Hyuga decks of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force are typical examples of their self-described circumvention of the post-war constitution's ban on aircraft carriers: anyone with a modicum of common sense will see what these two things are. In particular, the Izumo-class, with a full load displacement of up to 26,000 tons, was still classified as a destroyer by the Japanese, which simply brought tears to the eyes of the Kirov-class nuclear-powered cruisers!

"If you want to do it, you can do it!" After receiving the letter written by Raeder to himself with worry and hesitation, Fang Yan gave an extremely domineering and strong response. He originally envisioned the construction of cruisers with high-speed light guns, and then converted into aircraft carriers in the future; But now that the economic crisis is imminent, and the entire Western world will be mired in the quagmire of self-care, where can Britain and France care about this little move with the German navy. Of course, in order to dispel the concerns in Raeder's heart, Fang Yan wrote a long text after this, telling Raeder and Pan that he had grasped the success of this adventure in his heart. Now that Raeder is in charge of the entire navy, Fang Yan, who is still only a lieutenant, can only communicate with him through letters.

At a time when the paper "The Age of Sea and Air" continued to ferment within the German Navy, Fang Yan finally ushered in the promotion he dreamed of in April. Although he has only been a second lieutenant for a year and a half, and there are many people who have stayed up in this position for seven or eight years, Fang Yan's standing out is definitely well deserved: his performance during this period of time is excellent, whether it is the business performance during his daily service or the scoring results of many professional examinations, it is enough for his superiors to give him the green light for promotion. The acquisition of the Iron Cross of the Second Degree, as well as the writing of the apocalypse of the rise and fall of the High Seas Fleet, had the icing on the cake, so that the last residual discomfort in everyone's hearts also dissipated.

With his eyes flowing and his eyes pitying himself, Fang Yan was pleased to find that on his originally empty pair of silver straight epaulettes, there was already a golden four-pointed star in the center of it at this moment. This was the hallmark of a lieutenant in the navy, and his rank was promoted from an ordinary navigator to a co-navigator. In terms of age and speed, Fang Yan broke Heydrich's promotion speed - the blonde demon had been promoted to lieutenant as early as last year, but even if he was extremely talented and energetic, it took him 2 years to accumulate before he climbed from the second lieutenant to the high seat of lieutenant. When Linna at the end of the month ushered in her birthday again, Fang Yan, who came to celebrate, expressed his heartfelt gratitude to her; As the person concerned, Fang Yan could obviously feel that Lina had definitely used her power, which was still secret in Fang Yan's eyes, to create a lot of opportunities and help for Fang Yan during his service.

At the beginning of May, another large warship, codenamed B, laid a keel at the Germania shipyard, which was controlled by Rudolph. It is still the sister of the A-ship, which began construction last year, a pocket battlecruiser built to replace the old dreadnought. Seeing that the top brass of the Navy loved his gunboat plan so much, Fang Yan really felt that he had lifted a stone and shot himself in the foot. However, Raeder's letter gave him some comfort, and after the construction of two orthodox gunboats began one after another, the navy began to seriously consider the feasibility of building aircraft carriers.

[Note]: The Béarne belonged to the Normandy-class battleships that France started before World War I, which was unfinished and converted into an aircraft carrier after the war. With a speed of only 21.5 knots, its presence is never noticeable.