In the open conference room, Fang Yan was explaining his ideas to these senior officers in detail.

"For Great Powers such as Britain, France, the United States, and Japan, cruisers were undoubtedly a key part of their maritime power. The lack of numbers and speed of battleships made cruisers the de facto masters of sea power: they were active in all the main routes of communication in the ocean, and their presence was present in every part of the ocean. Even in times of war, these cruisers can be an ideal backup for the safety of their own merchant ships due to their rapid deployment. ”

Fang Yan paused, and said in a calm tone: "However, for Germany, the situation has changed fundamentally. Due to the disadvantage of our geographical position, the difficulty of maintaining our Atlantic shipping in times of war will increase exponentially: the French fleet can directly put its sharp sword at the throat of our fleet, while our fleet must make a detour to the north of Scotland and go 1,000 nautical miles before entering the depths of the North Atlantic for reinforcements. Therefore, it is almost impossible to maintain a sufficient force to defend shipping lines in the Atlantic for a long time during the war. And because of this, the cruiser's greatest strategic importance - the maintenance of sea power - has ceased to exist, and only the secondary value of tactics remains. ”

Hearing this, Rao is Gu Ze had long understood that the young man in front of him was by no means an ordinary captain, and he couldn't help but sigh strongly in his heart. As for Raeder's order to pull Fang Yan into this committee, Gu Ze no longer had any doubts. Faintly, Gu Ze even felt that this was the result of Raeder wanting to ask Fang Yan's advice, and deliberately doing so; After all, the book of the rise and fall of the High Seas Fleet written by this young man in the past illuminated a glorious path to the glorious temple for the German Navy at its darkest and hesitant time!

"And in the tactical field, the role of cruisers has become less and less. With the advent and development of carrier-based aviation, the cruiser, as the vanguard of the fleet and the traditional task of conducting fire reconnaissance, has been almost completely replaced by aircraft with an observation radius of more than ten times; Unless it is in bad weather that is not suitable for aircraft sorties, the cruiser will have a chance to play a valuable role - and then its reconnaissance effectiveness will also be greatly reduced by the effects of bad weather. Therefore, for the German Navy, the value of the cruiser was only to counter the enemy's ships and provide support for the destroyer. At present, we have 3 Deutsche class and 6 Königsberg class in service. These high-performance warships are more than capable of taking on this mission. Fang Yan said unhurriedly.

"Most importantly, the cruiser was too expensive to build per unit, which made it far less cost-effective than a battleship of large tonnage. The total price of a 12,800-ton Deutschland-class pocket cruiser is as high as 85 million marks, while 170 million marks is enough to build a 42,000-ton heavy battleship, and given the peculiarities of the German naval strategy, the choice of 2 cruisers or 1 battleship is undoubtedly obvious. In order to spend every mark as much as possible, there are no cruisers in my proposal. Fang Yan said solemnly.

"And what about the destroyer, I can understand the ocean-going attributes that you give to it, but what are the considerations for laying the armor? I heard that you also have the qualifications of a ship designer, you don't know what a heavy price it takes to make a destroyer armored, right? Gu Ze asked again.

A confident smile appeared on Fang Yan's face. "You're right, because of the light weight of the destroyer, the addition of armor will inevitably cause its displacement to change drastically than that of a large ship, which in turn will directly affect the speed that is crucial for it. However, since I have proposed the concept of an ocean-going armored destroyer, I am already well prepared at the technical level. Under the gaze of everyone, Fang Yan quickly unfolded a design blueprint from the package and firmly fixed it in front of them with four magnetic plates.

"In 1924, the French Navy first created a super destroyer with a standard displacement of more than 2,500 tons, although this was the onset of their romantic thinking, and they made a test object that was not favored by the world. But it showed the German Navy a viable path. Since our fleet needs to fight in the open ocean, this requires our destroyers, who can also follow the main battle ships into the ocean and provide escort for them, and only large-tonnage super destroyers can achieve this task. Based on this idea. I then improved on the French destroyer and after a lot of calculations, I finally settled on this design. ”

"This type of destroyer has a standard displacement of 3,050 tons, and still has a short bow freeboard of 6 meters when fully loaded at 3,860 tons; This gives it the basic conditions to sail in the rough North Atlantic. At low cruising speeds, there are almost no waves in the bow. Although the design power of 56,000 hp is low, with a bulbous bow, a large square tail, and a newly developed tail plate to reduce drag, it can still maintain a normal speed of 34.5 knots when fully loaded. The ship can carry up to 685 tons of oil. The range of up to 6,500 nautical miles at 16 knots qualifies it as a destroyer for safari cruises in the open ocean with no overseas bases. ”

Fang Yan smiled even more and said, "And in terms of combat performance, this ship is also capable of outperforming all its peers, including the French. It was armed with four twin 128 mm L42 guns, two five 610 mm torpedo tubes, and eight guns and 10 mines on a single port firepower that would make any enemy fearful. Its power compartment, magazine, and bow and tail waterline are tightly armored boxes composed of 60 mm main armor and 25 mm deck with a 20-degree inward inclination, which is enough to resist semi-armor-piercing shells fired by enemy destroyers' main guns at normal engagement distances. This last point is not to mention destroyers, and even the treaty re-patrol has also failed to do it. ”

With the end of Fang Yan's introduction to this armored superdrive, the entire venue resounded with a low and noisy discussion. None of the officers who were able to enter this special commission were mediocre, and they quickly understood Fang Yan's original intention in designing this armored destroyer: that is, to use the tonnage increase caused by the armor to prop up its ocean-going seagoing capabilities. Although this 3,000-ton super destroyer is enough to build two 1,300-ton ordinary destroyers, the latter's range and freeboard are far from enough to become a trustworthy ocean-going partner for the main warship!

Although the removal of armor and the use of the saved weight for freeboard and fuel loading can better improve the warship's ocean-going capabilities, the role of armor is even greater. The entire waterline of this type of superdrive is armor protected, which makes it much less waterless than an unprotected destroyer after being hit; For German warships, which had no overseas bases but were about to carry out an ocean-going attack, the speed of the reduced water intake was undoubtedly crucial. It is precisely because of this consideration that the Königsberg-class and the German-class built in the past have forcibly squeezed out the already extremely edible tonnage for laying light armor in the first and last areas.

"Perhaps the only drawback of this type of warship is that the price to pay in the event of a lightning strike may be greater than that of an ordinary destroyer. If the enemy hits a large-caliber shell causes irreparable wounds, then we will lose a 3,000-ton ship, not a 1,300-ton ship. As a conscientious salesman, Fang Yan does not deliberately conceal the flaws of his design, in fact, this flaw is the inevitable law of cause and effect. However, Fang Yan's next words made everyone in the venue change their hearts: "But gentlemen, don't worry, it won't be long before I can eliminate this deficiency through the innovation on the torpedo." ”

Although Fang Yan's expansion plan was not approved immediately, and the members of the committee still needed to weigh many specific details in depth, they had already approved of Fang Yan's plan for the new generation of destroyers in the German Navy. After 4 years, this young man once again passed a design blueprint, declaring his unshakable lofty position in the industry; What he showed was not only his skillful and exquisite ship design skills, but also the enlightening wisdom that bloomed from the height of the times and the overall strategic situation.

As for the design of medium-sized submarines, Fang Yan, who was not familiar with this, did not pretend to be good at it, but only put forward rough requirements in terms of tonnage and performance according to the VIIC class of the historical plane. Historically, this submarine is an absolute classic of the German Navy: it has a displacement of 750 tons on the water, a top speed of 17 knots when using diesel engines and 8 knots when using electric motors, five 533 mm torpedo tubes in the layout of the front 4 and 1 in the rear, 14 mines, and a cruising range of 8,700 nautical miles / 10 knots. Although it is not very impressive in all its indicators, the most attractive thing is its cost: after the formation of mass production, it can be won for only 2.4 million marks! The German Navy also lived up to expectations by building more than 700 submarines, accounting for more than 60% of its total production of 1,152 submarines. It can be said that this type of submarine is the T-34 in the water, which fully explains what is the great wisdom of war economics.

In the active preparation of the members of the committee, 1934 quietly came to its end; Except for Fang Yan, no one in the navy could have predicted that the great opportunity they had been thinking about would be happily sprinkled on them like a divine rain of light in just half a year. (To be continued.) )