While Stalin was worried about the possibility of a fierce German attack on the soft underbelly of the Soviet Union, Field Marshal Raeder, commander-in-chief of the German Navy, was in a good mood and full of passion.

In mid-December, the Sedlitz (Admiral Hipper), built to the standards of a heavy cruiser, was put into sea trials, and in good condition in all respects, the new main engine adopted by the lessons learned did not suffer from the usual problems of the Prinz Eugen (the latter was only completely repaired at the end of October), and the top speed of the trial ran smoothly at 32.9 knots.

On January 13, the construction period was as long as 6 years, and the aircraft carrier Count Zeppelin, which had suffered repeated setbacks, was completed and delivered ahead of schedule, and the warship that Speer regarded as the number one project of the Navy poured everyone's attention, not only the shipyard workers consciously worked overtime to rush to work, but the Air Force specially dispatched two fighter groups to protect it in order to ensure safety (it was unimaginable in the Goering era), Hoffmann and Speer personally attended the delivery ceremony, and the old marshal was so excited that he burst into tears at the delivery ceremony, and stayed on the ship until the day before the meeting.

The new aircraft carrier has canceled the 150mm naval guns that are in the way, improved the center of gravity of the whole ship, and the aviation deck covered with 60mm thick armor can fully resist the attack of 250 kg of aerial bombs, and after optimizing the cabin structure and canceling the naval gun ammunition magazine, the carrier-based aircraft has risen from 42 at the time of design to 58 commonly used + 6 reserves, after the successful development of the new carrier-based aircraft, Zeppelin will build a new carrier-based aircraft formation, and the original Bf-109T and Ju-87C have all been relegated to the second line as training aircraft.

In addition to the early delivery of the Zeppelin, the outfitting project of the Aquila aircraft carrier, which Italy handed over to the German Navy, is also in full swing, and it is expected to be officially completed and delivered by the end of March.

Two days later, the Führer's lieutenant told Raeder that he was preparing for a naval armaments meeting and revealed that the Führer might restart Project Z, which made him so overjoyed that he couldn't sleep for several nights in excitement.

In fact, the old marshal should be even more glad that he escaped: according to the original course of history, the battle of the Barents Sea that broke out on December 31 would be a disaster day for the German Navy, Germany not only failed to intercept the convoy that set off from Britain to take the Arctic route, but was defeated and defeated, Hitler stopped the construction of all surface ships in a fit of rage, and even Raeder himself was swept to the end, bidding farewell to the German Navy completely. Now due to the smooth progress of the war in North Africa and the Middle East, the British troops have been defeated, Churchill is reluctant to send very valuable tanks and planes to the Soviet Union, coupled with the blockade of the Indian Ocean route, Britain's own materials have also begun to be in shortage, and many of the materials on the fleet have been misappropriated and replaced by unused or outdated materials or equipment, and then the British in order to fill this gap, once again stretched out their hands to the United States, and the fleet has not left the port for a long time.

There were not many people attending the naval armaments conference, except for Hoffmann, Keitel, Speer, Raeder, and Dönitz, only a few people from the naval armaments department, and the commander of the naval aviation, Admiral Richthofen, was also a participant, but he was leading the main force of the naval aviation to fight in Africa, and he said that he would return to China to board the Zeppelin as soon as the war in Kenya was completed.

After the meeting began, before Raeder could explain the ideas on the H-class and O-class battleships in the original Z plan, Speer had already opened his mouth with a smile: "The Japanese side told us that except for the third ship of the Yamato-class (Shinano), which is currently stepping up construction, the Japanese Navy is no longer ready to start construction of new battleships, and even heavy cruisers with a long construction period are not planned to be built. Therefore, the restarted Plan Z will also follow this line of thinking. ”

Raeder's face froze there suddenly, and he didn't know how to answer for a long time, and after thinking for a while, he reminded tactfully: "Judging from Japan's practice and the Battle of the South Solomon Sea, super battleships can play the best effect even in the naval battle mode dominated by aircraft carrier duels, and our officers boarded the Musashi this time, and they deeply felt ......."

Hoffman waved his hand: "We currently have the Tirpitz, plus the Reich, which the Italians have transferred to us and will be completed in July, and we can count on the assistance of the existing Italian battleships, so it should be said that there is no shortage of battleships." Battleships, especially super battleships, have been built for too long, basically more than 4 years, do you think the war will take so long? ”

"It's ......," Raeder was speechless.

Admiral Karl Wiesel, the head of the Naval Armaments Department, smiled awkwardly at the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, he knew a little bit of the inside story before Raeder, but he was unwilling to directly pierce this layer of paper, so he said: "According to the instructions of the Führer, the focus of the restarted Plan Z is determined to be aircraft carriers, light cruisers, destroyers and submarines. ”

In real history, due to Hitler's halt to the construction of large German surface ships, Wiesel and another admiral, Wilhelm Wren, were appointed as the director of nuclear weapons research, but now the "Super Bomb" project is directly supervised by Speer, and the two are still responsible for the development and production of naval equipment. Now the navy has more things to develop, not only the technical information on ships, torpedoes, and extra-large submarines from Japan, but also a large number of internal improvement plans, plus the restart of Plan Z.

"This is a Dunkirk-class battlecruiser from France, which has been completely repaired and rebuilt in the Italian shipyard, so far, the repair work is nearing completion, the aft deck is being dismantled, and it is expected that all the demolition work will be completed by the end of this month, and the ship's rebuild design is ......"

"What is this?" Raeder saw a design on the slide that was difficult to understand with his years of naval common sense, and immediately exclaimed, "Didn't you say that it was converted into an aviation battleship, how did it become like this?" Did the Japanese come up with it? ”

Keitel, Speer, Dönitz and others also saw such a strangely shaped warship for the first time, and they showed suspicion one by one.

"Your Excellency Marshal, due to the unique shape of the Dunkirk class, with two 4-in-pack guns on the foredeck, and therefore the inherent advantage of being converted into an aviation battleship, we initially intended to dismantle the aft facilities and use them all for decking. However, after precise calculations and field investigations, the length of the reconstructed deck is only 120 meters, and even if a certain degree of drift is considered, it can only barely reach 127 meters. Rear Admiral Carl Schubert, designer of the Armaments Bureau, showed the original idea of the remodeling through a slide show - the first half of the ship gun fire and the bridge, and the back of the aviation deck.

"Theoretically, due to the presence of catapults and multiple hydraulic arresting cables, the deck of more than 120 meters is enough for carrier-based aircraft to take off and land, but in practice it is very risky. Judging from the experience of using Japanese aircraft carriers, there is a certain probability of failure due to the fact that the aircraft landing cannot be hung up on the arresting cable, and in the era of slow and light biplanes, the landing failure is also recovered by the arresting net, and now the use of this recovery method will cause the fuselage to suffer irreparable losses, so the landing failure is usually solved by go-around, our initial design is not able to go back to the fly, and there is no very good solution after asking the Japanese side -- the advice they gave is that the air battleship should only take off and not land, Or simply recycle after a forced landing on the surface. Schubert shrugged, "It's a pity that the conditions in the Atlantic Ocean are too poor, and unlike Japan, which has many islands in the Pacific Ocean to land, planes must land on ships." ”

In order to solve the problem of landing failure and go-around, the designers of the Navy Design Bureau tried several brain-opening schemes, including multiple light blocking nets linked layer by layer, and opening emergency passages under the bridge to facilitate go-around, but the effect was very poor, and the landing seemed to become a dead hole for the air battleship and was difficult to overcome.

In the face of everyone's confusion, Schubert smiled slightly: "The Führer has always paid close attention to the improvement plan of the air battleship, and after learning of the dilemma, he gave us enough inspiration with a hand-drawn drawing - since a semi-enclosed deck is not enough, then change it to an unobstructed deck, so we made a large-scale adjustment of the design scheme and began to use this beveled deck ......"

The beveled deck in the design scheme is at an angle of 11 degrees with the main deck, according to the idea, the aircraft will land from the beveled deck part, until it stops at the stern, and then enter the hangar through the elevator and recover, at the same time, taking into account the hull balance and reasonable deck length, it is proposed to dismantle the second group of 4 guns of the ship, and transfer the bridge to the right of the dismantled turret, because there is only one turret left, the requirements for observation and command are greatly reduced, and the bridge can be miniaturized and changed from a tower to a strip close to the Zeppelin aircraft carrier, The space of the original No. 2 turret ammunition depot and turret seat was expanded to become an aviation ammunition storage area. Since there is no boiler position adjustment, only part of the flue adjustment is required, so the overall rebuild time pressure is very small.

"The length of the main deck after the reconstruction can reach 166 meters, the beveled part is about 176 meters, the widest part of the deck is 46 meters, the narrowest part is 27 meters, and there is a lift (load of 8 tons) at the end of each body, from the current main carrier-based aircraft of the Navy, there is no problem with take-off and landing, the thickness of the main deck armor is 90mm, the length of the core coverage area is about 135 meters, which can resist the attack of 1000 pounds of aerial bombs (454 kg) commonly used by Britain and the United States, due to the reduction of the weight of the turret and bridge, the overall center of gravity of the whole ship has even improved slightly, The vertical stability is good, the only regret is that the number of carrier aircraft is small, and take-off and landing cannot be carried out at the same time......" (To be continued. )