On April 12, 1898, four giant airships arrived in the sky over Berlin after flying for nearly 8 hours, and the airship formation remained at an altitude of 1,000 meters during the flight, but after entering the city of Berlin, the airship formation that descended to an altitude of 300 meters through the regulating airbags inside the guò control zhì caused a huge sensation throughout Berlin.

For the first time such a spectacular flying object was seen, a huge airship hovered over people's heads, and all the citizens of Berlin took to the streets, gathered in the streets, and looked up to watch these behemoths descend.

Although Jochen wanted to board the airship in person and fly back to Berlin directly, he was dissuaded by everyone because he was not a gentleman and how could His Royal Highness the Crown Prince do such a dangerous thing, but Jochen could still imagine the comical scene of the crowd under the airship, and everyone looked up with their heads tilted and watched the airship slowly sail by.

Johen can imagine that for a period of time in the future, newspapers throughout Europe will carry out all-round follow-up reports on this brand-new aircraft, and even the newspaper headline Jochen can guess a rough idea, what miracle of human aviation technology, what sky hegemon, what Germany, master the core technology.

However, the common people are probably just looking at the excitement, but many people will be interested in this brand new aircraft, and Jochen is also ready to secretly push the hand, so that these people's interest can become actual investment. And the adoption of the German-military will be the best advertising and the best catalyst.

In the eyes of later generations, airplanes are the masters of the sky, and airships seem to be used to broadcast advertisements and propaganda over cities. But in fact, even in the 21st century, airships have not been completely eliminated in the military field. Its time and economic efficiency far exceed that of airplanes, so that this aircraft still has a certain use, and its huge carrying capacity has also made many people interested in the use of giant airships for strategic transportation research projects.

Of course, airships do have many problems, first of all, the speed is too slow, and the flight speed of the airship that has developed to the limit is only about 200 km/h, although it has a huge economic advantage. But too slow for military aircraft.

The second is the poor protection ability, the huge lift airbag is the best target for attack, even if you use multiple airbags, filled with helium, there is still no safety in the face of the bullets that come over.

However, at the beginning of the 20th century, Jochen believed that airships were still quite valuable, which is why he decided to spend a lot of money on airships.

First of all, the immaturity of the aircraft is the aircraft, and the power of this real sky hegemon in the early stage has given the airship a great living space.

After humans had the wings to fly into the blue sky. In the eyes of many people, an airplane is just a novelty toy. It is difficult to maneuver, there is no payload capacity, let them load weapons to fight, before there is a shooting coordinator, they will even break their own propellers, let them go to reconnaissance, but there is no means to transmit information back, have to ask the pilot to write a small note in a metal cylinder and throw the information into their own positions.

Therefore, in the first ten years of its existence, the airplane was just a racing tool that human beings continued to develop in pursuit of speed and the pleasure of soaring in the blue sky.

Airships, on the other hand, are different. In addition to the slow flight speed and poor protection, being attacked is basically a dead end, which is a hard injury. It is far superior to airplanes in terms of load, maneuverability and airtime, so it makes the airship with obvious shortcomings useful.

Jochen's plans for the airship's future are roughly set at four points.

The first point, of course, is to use it as a weapon, which is of course the most dangerous way to use it, but it is an option that cannot be used. Therefore, in this day and age, there is no more effective bomb carrier than an airship.

High-altitude bombardment is considered by Jochen to be a more effective and threatening means of attack than cluster shelling, first of all, a matter of power. In order for the shell to withstand the force of gunpowder, it must ensure sufficient strength of the projectile, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the thickness of the projectile body, and the space left for explosives will inevitably be reduced.

For example, the 420 mm caliber of the Great Bertha, the 420 mm caliber of the Great Bertha, weighed 820 kilograms, but the charge was only 50 kilograms. With a reload factor of just over 6%, the cannon easily destroyed the Dome of the Solar Fortress, which could withstand the bombardment of 210 mm heavy artillery, and played a huge role in opening the passage to Belgium for the Germans.

However, the Great Belsa weighs 42.6 tons, and the heavy artillery battery of two Great Berthor requires a huge force of 283 men to support its application. Due to the huge weight, it had to be disassembled into several parts for transportation, it had to be assembled using a crane, and the preparation time after reaching the artillery position took 6 hours.

It took 3 days from loading the two guns on the train to preparing them in Liege, and because there were only two guns, it took another 3 days to completely destroy a total of 12 fortresses in Liege, which made the German army blocked in Liege for 6 days without advancing at all.

However, in these six wasted days, the French were given enough time to accelerate their mobilization and lay the foundation for the miracle of the Battle of the Marne.

However, if an aircraft is used to carry out an attack, the situation will be very different, only preliminary preparations are required, and the aircraft does not need to waste time in the series of transportation, deployment, preparation, and attack, and the speed of the aircraft is much faster. As a result, it has mobility, flexibility and timeliness that are difficult to achieve in heavy artillery clusters.

At the beginning of World War II, the Germans' blitzkrieg was able to fight so smoothly not by the super cannon of the heavy Gustav, but by relying on the effective support of Stuka, the Germans were able to drive straight in, and the French and Soviets who fought in a coordinated ground and air force could not find the north. Otherwise, with the pitiful armor in the hands of the Germans, they really waited for the heavy artillery to be deployed before attacking, and then they would be taught the rhythm of life by the armor superiority and troop superiority of the French and Soviets.

Moreover, aerial bombs do not have many restrictions like artillery shells, and there is no need to overemphasize the strength of the projectile, and its charge can reach almost 70% of the heartbreak, so the power of the bomb is more than 10 times that of the same weight of artillery shells against unprotected targets. Even against protected targets, the gravitational acceleration of falling from a high altitude is enough to smash some less solid targets to pieces.

But the planes at this time were really inadequate, and the bomb load of those so-called heavy bombers was really miserable, even at the end of World War II. A classic Handley? The V/1500 four-round heavy bomber manufactured by Page in 1918 had a bomb load of only 3.4 tons, which was not worth mentioning in the face of the bomb load of airships of more than 5 tons.

So let the airship rain down from the top of the opponent's head with tons of bombs, and the huge explosion blooming on the enemy's fortress, the apocalyptic scene is enough to break the resistance of the most determined soldiers.

Of course, this method of use is obviously dangerous, because it is to ensure the accuracy of bombing. The flight altitude of the airship cannot be too high, so it is quite dangerous to face anti-aircraft fire or fighter jets, after all, the military application of the airship did give birth to the anti-balloon cannon as an early anti-aircraft weapon.

Therefore, if you don't want the airship to become a flower blooming in the sky, the application of the airship is also more restricted. Jochen's stupid idea of forming a sky fleet and then bombing Britain like Wilhelm II would not have thought about at all.

In World War I, whether Germany used airships or bombers, in addition to causing a certain amount of panic to Britain at the beginning, it became a monster to help the British territorial air defense force brush up on experience.

Therefore, Jochen's plan for the use of airships as weapons is to replace the super heavy cannon as a fortress with extremely high defensive capabilities. The effect of slow bombardment with heavy artillery is too poor, and if the airship is thrown down with a stupid big black thing weighing several tons, even if it is a solid iron lump thrown down, it is estimated that it can smash a big hole for the opponent.

As for how to ensure air supremacy, then it will still have to rely on the pile of wooden shelves in the real room now, when the Germans have more powerful engines, better aerodynamic shape design, and more perfect air combat tactics. It is believed that gaining air supremacy will not be a problem.

Another use plan is reconnaissance, and the planes of World War I have a short time in the air. This means that they often can't fly too far, and they can't fly too high, with airships having dozens of hours of airtime and a range of thousands of kilometers, and a ceiling of nearly 8,000 meters.

Early anti-balloon guns and early planes with a ceiling of about 2,000 meters were powerless against such a target, and planes that had to come down to refuel after flying for a few hours, and planes that did not have the means to transmit information back. The restrictions on reconnaissance missions are too great.

Then it is also extremely feasible to let the airship carry the radio station and then fly to the high altitude to do strategic reconnaissance, and this is also the longest work that the airship can do without being eliminated, in World War II. The U.S. Navy still uses airships to patrol coastlines, and even in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unmanned airships are still used for long-term aerial surveillance.

The third method of use is naturally transportation, of course, it is completely unreliable to use airships for strategic transportation or something, whether it is carrying capacity or transportation speed, and the number will also be a major bottleneck, but if it is used for small-scale tactical delivery, then the carrying capacity of airships is absolutely difficult to achieve by aircraft during the First World War.

As for the last plan, of course, it was used to trap people, and the Germans' airship troops used to make the British so frightened that they had to look up at the sky every day before going out, for fear that these flying behemoths would appear on their heads.

So as long as the publicity is done properly, so that Britain will also be interested in airships and invest huge material and financial resources to research and build giant airships, it is best to provoke a round of European airship competition, so that countries can invest a lot of resources in airships, then aircraft research will inevitably be affected.

If they can be misled into using airships as the main force of tactical ground support, as a treasure of the enemy, and then put into the most intense fighting between the two sides, when these slow-swallowing behemoths come with bombs to bomb at medium and low altitudes, in the face of German fighters who have gained air supremacy, then it will be a sea of fire! (To be continued......)

PS: Note 1: The most powerful siege cannon for railway mobility is the "Gamma Equipment" of the same caliber as the Great Bertha, weighing 150 tons. Although the Paris cannon was more famous and had a longer range, the shells were far less powerful than the "gamma device" R861