Japan did not know at this time that Britain and the United States had drawn so many troops to deal with the Yamato-class, but due to the development of the war in the South Pacific, the fate of a series of warships also changed: the Yamato, which had been hit by five torpedoes, left the squadron and returned to China for repairs accompanied by three destroyers after Rabaul hurriedly replenished supplies, and the Musashi, which had been officially commissioned, was preparing to depart from mainland China for Singapore and prepare to serve as the new flagship of the Combined Fleet; Due to the sinking of the Fuso, Horikichi simply let the slow Yamashiro join the 8th Fleet from the 2nd Fleet, and asked the remaining troops of the 8th Fleet to maintain security in the South Pacific, which had been greatly reduced in strength (poor Mikawa Junichi); Since there were only three battleships left in the 2nd Fleet (Nagato, Mutsu, and Musashi), and considering the lack of strategic forces in the Indian Ocean, at his strong request, the Ise and Hyuga, which had been planned to be converted into aviation battleships, canceled the follow-up reconstruction mission, and urgently supported and transferred to the 2nd Fleet together with the Musashi.

The Hyuga in May due to the shelling training accident explosion of the No. 5 turret is still damaged at this time, because there is no time to repair can only hastily remove the turret and cover the opening with a steel plate on the new 25mm triple machine gun hastily go into battle, but in the past few months the two ships of the Ise class have not been profitable, the Hyuga tested and installed the 22nd sea alert electric reconnaissance before participating in the Aleutian Campaign, and when returning to Japan, it encountered bad weather and still kept the correct course for the fleet, Captain Chiaki Matsuda tried his best to advocate this, The Ise experimentally installed the No. 21 air alert electric probe, and the results are said to be good. Therefore, the two ships installed the No. 21 and No. 22 electric scouts before leaving the mainland, and only these two old ships of the hundreds of warships in the entire combined fleet reaped this kind of benefit.

The impact of the victory in the naval battle in the South Pacific on the subsequent development of the Japanese Navy was all-round: given the excellent performance of the Yamato in this operation. No one said anything about the plan that had been designed to take the third ship of the Yamato class (Shinano) to rebuild the aircraft carrier, but one by one they changed their stance and advocated continuing to build it as a battleship, and even Isoroku Yamamoto and Horiyoshi held this position. It was hoped that it would be completed by the end of June 1944, so the Shinano project, which was supposed to be stopped and rebuilt, not only did not stop, but also started construction as soon as possible. The two seaplane carriers Chiyoda and Chitose were intended to be converted into light aircraft carriers, but the discovery of the enemy by the seaplane reconnaissance planes in this campaign was of great significance to the entire campaign, so that the two ships, which had 24 seaplanes and could provide an additional 1,000 tons of fuel, suddenly highlighted their value to fleet operations, and the Ministry of the Navy finally gave up the idea of rebuilding; The Ibuki was one of the Suzuya-class heavy cruisers, which was originally intended to be converted into an aircraft carrier. Because the value of the heavy cruiser is not small, and the battle of Kuah Island in recent months has lost 3 consecutive Aoba/Furutaka-class heavy cruisers, so they simply abandoned the reconstruction task and continued to build according to the heavy patrol target.

The abandonment of a large number of rearmament tasks was not without resistance within the Navy Ministry. However, the attitude of Tsukahara 243, commander of the mobile fleet, was very clear: At present, there is a shortage of qualified aircraft carrier pilots and excellent carrier-based aircraft, and that it will be troublesome not to make a bunch of aircraft carriers without planes or pilots at that time. As a result, there were no carrier aircraft available at all. The aircraft carrier that was painstakingly built turned into a decoy in the end, which has to be said to be a huge irony.

After the cancellation of a series of halfway home renovation plans, the materials originally intended for the reconstruction of aircraft carriers have become rich, and at the same time, based on the huge value of aircraft carriers, the Ministry of the Navy has greatly increased the urgency of building the regular aircraft carrier Yunlong-class, and all materials are guaranteed first. Therefore, the construction of the three ships of Unryu, Amagi, and Katsuragi began to speed up, and according to the idea of the Military Command Department, it was best to be able to enter service by the end of 1943. To speed up the process. A group of people racked their brains for this, and since the drawings of the Yunlong class had been sent to the German side for reference, someone in the Harbour Master Headquarters had the whimsical idea that the German side could be entrusted with the manufacture of the components and prepare for the shipment back for installation after the Indian Ocean campaign. After being contacted, Hoffmann also agreed, because Germany was also preparing to start construction of a new aircraft carrier in an Italian shipyard with the Yunlong class as the master, and the two sides hit it off. According to the agreement between Japan and Germany, this kind of finished components are converted according to the ratio of special steel in the Japanese-German agreement at a ratio of 3:1 (that is, Germany can provide components according to one-third of the tonnage of special steel). Both sides have made a good calculation -- for Japan, this is for nothing, and for Germany, it was promised to provide to Japan, and the provision of finished products not only reduces the consumption of special steel but also accumulates manufacturing experience, in case Japan does not want it in the end, it will be fine, and it can be used by itself.

In the end, some people thought that if the aircraft carrier components could be handled by the German side, why couldn't the Yamato-class components, especially the armor belt, be handled by the Germans? The German Krupp company is very experienced in this, and Japan's construction level and experience are still learned from Germany, but there is still controversy about whether to provide Germany with drawings of the Yamato Navy itself (Hoffman said: Yamato is not rare, give a gale drawing for practical points)

The last to change the fate of the German luxury passenger ship "Scharnhorst", which was a fast cruise ship built by the North German company Lloyd, due to the outbreak of the European war the ship could not return to Germany and has remained in Kobe, the Japanese Navy had approached Germany to buy this ship and prepare to convert it into an aircraft carrier (agreed to pay after the war), since the other plans to rebuild the aircraft carrier were canceled, the ship naturally got rid of the task of rebuilding, and was used by the Navy as a troop carrier, and even the purchase procedure did not have to go, In the Japan-Germany agreement, it was agreed that Germany would give Japan 1 million tons of ship tonnage, which was converted into the first batch of 12,000 tons.

Because Japan's powerful destroyers at all levels in this naval battle and are famous for their outstanding lightning strike performance did not have much use except for searching and rescuing pilots who had fallen into the water, they found that the air defense force of the fleet was extremely weak, and in addition, in the early Kuah Island operation, the destroyers of various types not only did not find the feeling of night battles and thunder battles, but repeatedly gained the upper hand in playing the role of mouse express, so the development ideas of the Harbour Administration Headquarters were deviated. Unlike in history, due to the close bilateral relations between Japan and Germany, the Akizuki-class class went to the other extreme, and the main gun design was changed from 100mm to the German-made 88 gun, which was prepared to be used in both high and flat ways, and the torpedo tubes were completely abolished -- the whole improvement idea was called the Autumn Moon Reform. In addition, because Japanese ships have been repeatedly sunk by American submarines, considering the high-density frequency of trade and material transportation with Germany in the future, the Navy has put forward the construction requirements of anti-submarine special destroyers, and in accordance with the requirements of weak firepower, slightly inferior air defense capabilities, relatively prominent anti-submarine capabilities, average speed (the speed of escort missions is not very fast), and construction cost requirements are as low as possible (because large-scale batch construction is required), the development idea of D-type destroyers (that is, British and American escort destroyers) has been proposed. And it was decided to build Pine-class and Orange-class destroyers.

In the design process of the D-type destroyer, in order to adapt to mass production, the design of all parts has been simplified, for example, in order to reduce the difficulty of construction, most of the hull surfaces have been changed to a straight direction. In addition, the use of material grades has also declined, in the past, Japanese destroyers in order to reduce weight in the hull structure materials to adopt different strategies: the key parts of the use of DS steel (special steel), the thickness of the plate can be reduced must be reduced, but the productivity of DS steel is very poor and welding is difficult, in order to reduce costs and make way for other ships, D-type destroyers completely abandon the use of DS steel, a large number of HT steel (high tensile steel) to replace DS steel, and even HT steel can be saved, Its use is limited to the upper deck and part of the outer deck of the bottom of the boat, and the rest of the parts are replaced by MS steel (ordinary steel). Based on this stance and the need for large-scale transportation in the future, the Harbour Master Headquarters was also very interested in the will wheel that Germany was promoting and built, and on the one hand, it directly took the drawings and prepared to copy it, and on the other hand, it planned to carry out Japan's own simplified design according to this idea (Japan is famous for its slamming doors). In terms of construction period assessment, if the construction is based on German drawings, the speed of Japanese shipyards may not be as fast as that of Germany, but it is more than enough to exceed Italy, France, the Netherlands and other countries.

Originally, the Japanese Navy's "Five-Year Plan" could not take into account the large-scale production of new ships, the reconstruction of old ships and the repair of damaged ships at the same time due to the capacity limitations of the shipyard, resulting in far less new warships than the lost warships, but because the victory in the South Pacific Campaign changed history, Japan canceled a large number of reconstruction tasks and got rid of a large number of damage repair tasks of ships.

In addition to the warships, the aircraft situation has also undergone great changes, when the Ozawa trio sent back to China the news of the success of the Zero Combat Improved (Bf-119), the Naval Aviation Headquarters, which was deeply touched, immediately came to life, and immediately thought of the "Tianshan" ship attack and the "Comet" ship explosion, which had advanced indicators but could not be used on the ship, of course, the problems of the two are different: the problem of the Tianshan is that the weight is too large and it is difficult to take off, and the problem of the comet is that the speed is too fast. The landing became a problem (the comet often rushed ahead of the Zero in the Battle of the Marianas), and in the final analysis, the reason was the weakness of Japan's technological accumulation in the field of aviation development, so the drawings were immediately handed over to the German side, hoping to improve them by relying on external brains. (To be continued.) )