The morning glow was brilliant, the sky was clear and blue, and more than half an hour before the launching ceremony began, a dense crowd was already gathered on both sides of the K. slipway at the Brom-Forss shipyard. People excitedly pointed at the 22-meter-tall behemoth, which was the focus of attention with its smooth bulbous bow, wide, beveled deck, and huge diameter main propeller. An atmosphere of enthusiasm and pride quickly spread between this heaven and earth, and they were all extremely proud that their country had such a huge ship like a mountain!

On the 8-storey viewing platform, Fang Yan, who was in a straight military uniform, looked at the figure of this giant ship whose deck height was already at the same level as his line of sight. In June 1935, the brand new fleet carrier, along with her sister ships, laid the keel in her shipyard; After 20 months of intense construction, the first ship finally ushered in her moment of launch. By the end of next summer, she will be fully completed and delivered, and the German Navy will also get another phased improvement in its own strength because of her participation!

Although as early as the Republic when Hitler had not yet come to power, the German Navy had successively started construction of three Hipper-class aircraft carriers, but because the Versailles contract was still tightly restricting the development of the German Navy at that time, Fang Yan had to design this class aircraft carrier as a 13,000-ton lightweight, and her final performance was far from his ideal standard.

However, with the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935, the German Navy's tonnage limit per ship was removed; And Fang Yan can finally let go of his hands and feet and plan the standard aircraft carrier he likes on the design blueprint. At this time, the warship that was about to be launched was the product of his single-handedness; And under the dominance of Fang Yan, a traverser, her main performance has undoubtedly reached the peak of the current era.

The aircraft carrier, named "Zeppelin", has a standard displacement of 30,000 tons, and the only companies in its company are the Lexington sisters, which were converted from capital ships, and the Japanese First Air Combat Pair. Able to surpass in tonnage. Compared with these half-way goods, the Zeppelin class, which was born for aviation, has reached perfection in almost all fields. Her flight deck is 270 meters long, and its width is also extremely open due to the addition of the angled deck, which makes her even more aggressive than Lexington in flying fighters, making her the most formidable existence in the aircraft carrier family. If you can give the logistics staff enough time to prepare. Then theoretically, she can fly 60 carrier-based aircraft at a time just by sliding, which is twice as many as the Hipper-class light aircraft carrier!

In terms of the carrying capacity of aircraft, the Zeppelin class has also made a qualitative leap compared with the Hipper-class because of its huge inherent tonnage. Even if it is equipped with 3 centerline lifts, the total area of her upper and lower hangars exceeds 5,300 square meters; This allows her to be stuffed with as many as 98 Go-152 fighters or Go-388 torpedo bombers with folded wings in the hangar alone. If you add the deck mooring, she will have no problem with a total of 130 aircraft. Although this terrifying aircraft capacity is largely due to the excellent wing folding capabilities of the two carrier-based aircraft launched by the Gotha company, the foundation of this type of aircraft carrier itself is also crucial.

In order for such a sea fortress with unprecedented strike capabilities. can fight for a longer time on the front line of the ocean, and Fang Yan also laid extremely strong armor protection for her. The Zeppelin class was the first to open an armored flight deck, with its 156-×20-meter upper hangar top, which was tightly protected by homogeneous horizontal armor up to 100 mm thick; This makes it impossible for normal bombs to deal effective damage to the carrier hangar and the flight deck above.

For an ordinary aircraft carrier without an armored flight deck, one hit of a bomb in the hangar means a loss of combat effectiveness. Because even if the core module in the traditional sense was not damaged, the extensive destruction of the hangar and the large holes that were blown out in the flight deck made it impossible for the damaged aircraft carrier to become an aircraft carrier platform at sea. It is important to know that the charge coefficient of the bomb is an order of magnitude more than that of the shell. Even an ordinary bomb of the 250kg class can blow up a thrilling hole in the unprotected deck that the damage control personnel simply cannot make up for at sea.

If this happens. The center-flowering aircraft carrier had no choice but to withdraw from the battlefield and return to port for repairs, because its vital aviation mission no longer existed.

If, as in the case of the Zeppelin class, armor was laid on the flight deck above the hangar, then the situation would have been radically improved. As long as the power of the bomb could not shake the armor defenses, even the rest of the aircraft would be blown up to the surface of the moon, and the entire hangar and a section of the flight deck would be intact. It can still take off and land fighters to play their role. The previous Hippert class could not solve the problem of a large increase in the center of gravity after the installation of an armored flight deck, so it still used the traditional configuration; Now that the tonnage of the Zeppelin-class has been fully liberalized, Fang Yan wants to put into practice this design that can greatly improve the survivability of the aircraft carrier's combat effectiveness.

In addition to this flight deck, the Zeppelin-class's main deck is equipped with 80 mm of armor, which brings her total horizontal defense to a whopping 180 mm. In order to block the horizontal bomb "skylight" caused by the installation of an armored flight deck. Almost 50 mm vertical defense was set on the sides of the entire double-decker hangar. Like its predecessors, the Hippers, the Zeppelins also had a light armor belt that ran the length of the ship to protect the buoyancy of the reserve. Her underwater mine protection system has also made great strides over the Hipper class, with the depth of mine protection not only increased to 5.5 meters, the thickness of the inner armor increased to 60 mm, but also the outer compartment used to absorb the energy of the explosion has been increased from 3 to 5 layers. Even with conservative estimates, her underwater defense system can withstand an explosion of 650kg***.

As the core force of ocean-going offensive operations, the Zeppelin-class is also extremely superior in speed and range. With a design power of 150,000 horsepower, she is expected to reach a top speed of more than 33 knots, and a range of 15,000 nautical miles at 16 knots makes her look at it even in the depths of the Atlantic.

Although Fang Yan had participated in the launching ceremony of the warship many times, and he was no longer as excited about the inherent process as he was when he first experienced it, he couldn't help but feel a heartfelt excitement when he witnessed the island-like giant aircraft carrier hull slowly moving in the dry dock and finally rushing into the dock. Obviously, today's launch of the Zeppelin is just the beginning, and there will be ships of the same class sailing from the slipway to the deep sea one after another. So far, the German Navy has ordered domestic shipyards to start construction of a total of 4 aircraft carriers of this type, and their excellent performance will soon be on the core naval battle stage in the future.

Seeing the empty deck of the unfinished aircraft carrier, Fang Yan suddenly found that there were still many things that needed to be practiced by himself. First of all, the formation of the combat effectiveness of aircraft carriers is by no means just about building a platform to make everything right, and the construction of an air force is also very important: even if an aviation platform is strong and immortal, if it does not have a sufficient number of well-qualified pilots, it can only be reduced to a chopping block to be slaughtered. Based on the capacity of the Zeppelin-class aircraft, if she wants to maintain her combat effectiveness for a long time in wartime, then at least 400 skilled pilots should be trained as a guarantee. Otherwise, it will not be possible to compensate for the human losses incurred after the outbreak of war.

Second, reliable sea and air detection radars must also be installed on aircraft carriers as soon as possible. Among them, the sea detection radar can enable the aircraft carrier to maintain the detection of the surrounding situation in the dark night or in bad weather when other aircraft cannot be dispatched, so as to avoid the bad luck of being attacked by enemy surface ships. As long as its sea detection range exceeds 25 kilometers, the German aircraft carrier battle group can monitor the sea around it at all times, and can quickly evacuate at the first time if an unfamiliar ship intrudes.

The air detection radar, on the other hand, is a timely and life-saving early warning for the entire fleet in a sunny day when aircraft are suitable for sorties. During World War II in the historical plane, excellent World War II ship-to-air radar could detect enemy aircraft attacking in large groups from a distance of 150 kilometers; This means that before the attack planes loaded with high-risk explosives fly overhead, they have nearly 30 minutes of precious time to deploy their air defense formations and take off fighter jets to intercept them. Not to mention anything else, if the Japanese aircraft carrier formation during the Battle of Midway had had an anti-aircraft detection radar, none of its four main aircraft carriers would have suffered a catastrophic end that would have killed the entire army!

In the end, the tragedy of the decipherment of the German Navy code in history will no longer be staged on the plane of Fang Yan. Due to the traitor's betrayal leaks, Poland in the historical plane was given a complete German military Ennig cipher machine before the outbreak of the Great War; The machine was soon delivered to the British, and the absolute secrecy of which Germany was so proud was no longer a secret. Although it was difficult for Fang Yan to prevent the cipher machine from falling into the hands of the enemy, this accident was mixed with an inevitable situation, but he felt that there must be other ways to solve it.

After a period of time, Fang Yan wrote down these considerations into a long report and submitted them to the Navy Headquarters through his boss. He pinned his hopes on the Navy's top brass to attach importance to it and make corresponding policy preferences. Among them, Fang Yan also mentioned some solutions to the problem. For example, intensify intervention in the Spanish Civil War, so that naval aviation pilots can accumulate experience in actual combat attacks on ships and ground. (To be continued.) )