The combat effectiveness of the Imperial Navy comes not only from the brave soldiers, but also from the vast industrial base, shipbuilding foundation, and advanced technology of the Empire. War is like a catalyst, and many things that are unimaginable in peacetime become taken for granted in war. Moreover, during the war, science and technology, especially military technology, developed at an unimaginable rate. In order to achieve victory, not only the soldiers on the front line are fighting bloodily, but also in the rear, thousands of Imperial engineers are also silently making contributions.

What Tan Renhao picked up was the new shipbuilding plan of the Imperial Navy, to be precise, the new capital warship of the Imperial Navy, or the improvement plan of the old capital warship. At the top and most important of the document is the Imperial Navy's new aircraft carrier, which is preparing to start construction.

The strong combat effectiveness of the "Lake" class aircraft carriers has been recognized, and through actual combat comparison, the "Lake" class aircraft carriers are better than the "Essex" class, the best of the US military, in terms of survivability, aviation strike capability, anti-sinking ability, and even air defense combat capability, or at least equal. Although a number of "Lake" class aircraft carriers have been sunk, most of the injured aircraft carriers have returned to port. For a navy, injuries and losses are completely different, if you lose an aircraft carrier, you need to spend a lot of effort to build a new aircraft carrier, on the contrary, if the aircraft carrier is only injured, then it can be repaired, reducing the burden, and ensuring that more aircraft carriers will be put into service in a few months.

In the Imperial Navy, there was an unwritten rule. That is, if the battleship can come back, it must come back. In battle. First of all, avoid being discovered by the enemy, and if you are discovered by the enemy, you must avoid being attacked by the enemy. If you are hit by an enemy, you must avoid being hit hard.

If it is badly damaged, it must be avoided from sinking. Only as a last resort was the fleet able to abandon the battleship. In fact, this rule is common in the navy of any country, as long as there is a 1 percent chance of saving a wounded warship. That's 100 percent effort.

Just as the "Hulun Lake" aircraft carrier was almost completely destroyed, the navy still tried every means to drag the aircraft carrier back, repair it and continue to fight. In terms of overall strategy, the Navy must try to preserve every warship.

It is precisely for this reason that in the Navy's performance requirements for warships, survivability is the most important and a priority aspect. If a battleship only has a strong strike ability, but does not have a strong survivability, then it is a substandard battleship. And when the "Lake" class aircraft carrier was designed, it placed survivability second only to aviation strike capability.

is the most important technical indicator. But the problem is that the anti-strike capability of the "Lake" class aircraft carriers still does not fully meet the requirements of the Navy (during the war, the Navy's performance requirements for the main warships were extremely harsh).

That is, in this case. When the construction of the second batch of "Lake" class aircraft carriers was still continuing, and the production tasks of the third and fourth batches of aircraft carriers had been arranged, the Navy put forward a request for the design of new aircraft carriers, and this task was handed over to the Jiangnan Shipyard. Led by the Jiangnan Shipyard, together with three other large shipyards, thousands of the Empire's best warship ship designers gathered to begin the design of the new aircraft carrier. This time, the Navy did not adopt the method of bidding, but let several shipyards cooperate in the design, mainly to save time and cost.

At that time, the main way to improve the performance index of the aircraft carrier was to increase the displacement, so that the weight of the armor could be increased, and at the same time, a large number of backup facilities were added, so that the aircraft carrier would not completely lose its combat capability after being attacked. In addition, the new aircraft carrier was to receive new steel for increased strength (at that time, new armor steel was not even adopted on the third batch of battleships of the "New Provincial Capital" class, but was first considered for supply to the aircraft carrier). Finally, the designers also adopted a large number of new designs to improve the combat capability of the aircraft carrier in response to some problems found by the troops during operations. The most notable of these is the change in the layout of the flight deck!

Prior to this, all aircraft carriers had a straight-through deck layout, that is, the flight deck was actually a rectangular structure with a take-off zone at the front end and a landing zone at the rear. Under normal circumstances, the aircraft carrier can only receive the returning aircraft at the same time, or let the aircraft take off, and will not carry out these two operations at the same time, because the aircraft is likely to land without hanging the blocking cable, and the result is directly rushed to the front of the flight deck, if there are aircraft in the take-off area at this time, it will have catastrophic consequences (in actual use, there have been many such accidents). However, the problem is that during operations, aircraft carriers often need to release fighters and receive fighters returning home at the same time, that is, they must take off and land at the same time. This was also the most important problem reported by the combat units at that time.

If the previous design is still used, no matter how long the flight deck of the aircraft carrier is designed, this problem cannot be solved, and the length of the aircraft carrier cannot be extended indefinitely. And the designers came up with an ingenious solution, that is, to separate the landing zone from the take-off area, the flight deck of the take-off zone is still parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft carrier, and the flight deck of the landing zone is staggered by a certain angle from the longitudinal axis of the aircraft carrier, that is, from the flight deck of the take-off area. In this way, even if a fighter plane does not hang up a blocking cable when landing, it will rush out of the flight deck of the aircraft carrier diagonally, and will not crash headlong into the group of planes in the take-off area.

Initially, the designers came up with a scheme with an angle of only 5 degrees, but after demonstration and land testing (a test site was built on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier on a land airfield, where the aircraft could take off and land, the designers increased this angle to 8 degrees, and further optimized the design of the flight deck.

This is the world's first "beveled flight deck". It can be said that this is one of the two important symbols of modern aircraft carriers, and the benefits of the angled flight deck are not only the ability to take off and retract fighters at the same time. The area of the beveled flight deck is larger, which allows for more aircraft mooring points and increases the number of aircraft carriers on the ground. At the same time, it can also improve the efficiency of aviation operations on the aircraft carrier, so that the aviation service personnel have more space to use, and speed up the deployment of aircraft. More importantly. A catapult can also be set up at the nose of the landing zone, when the aircraft carrier does not need to receive fighters. The landing area can be used as a take-off area.

On the "Lake" class aircraft carrier there are only two catapults, which can only allow two fighters to take off at a time. In the first design scheme of the new aircraft carrier, the designers arranged a third catapult at the front end of the landing area, and when it came to the final finalization, the designers increased the external drift of the flight deck. And the angles of the catapults were cleverly arranged, two catapults were set up in the nose of the landing zone. As a result, there will be four catapults on the new aircraft carrier, and the rate of sortie of bombers will be almost doubled!

This is also the place where Tan Renhao attaches the most importance to it.

The take-off rate of bombers directly determines the size of the aircraft group, as well as the aviation strike force of the fleet, and if this rate is doubled, it can be arranged to double the number of bombers in a wave of bombers, and this can simply determine the life and death of both sides in the decisive battle of the aircraft carrier calculated in minutes and seconds.

Of course, there are many more features of the new aircraft carrier. Like what. It was the first aircraft carrier in the Imperial Navy to use a double-decker hangar (it was converted to a single-deck hangar after the war). This allows for more aircraft, and the larger hangar area allows for additional service points. More fighters can be adequately repaired and maintained on the aircraft carrier, which improves the ground attendance rate of fighters. The aircraft carrier uses a fully armored ammunition bay, and the ammunition bay is concentrated below the waterline (previously it was all dispersed, which was originally thought to reduce the chance of destruction). It has been proven in practice that the scattered arrangement increases the chance of being shot, and as long as any ammunition depot is hit, then the aircraft carrier is doomed). For the first time, the anti-torpedo barrier on a battleship was used to enhance the carrier's ability to resist torpedo attacks (a number of heavy fuel tanks were also set up on this barrier to increase the amount of fuel carried by the carrier, while freeing up internal space, which also enhanced the defense capability). A bulbous nose bow was adopted, which increased the speed of the aircraft carrier. In addition, for the first time, the elevator on the aircraft carrier was set on the side side (in fact, the first elevator to be designed on the side side was the "Essex" class aircraft carrier), and a semi-enclosed hangar was adopted to improve the navigation ability and combat capability of the aircraft carrier in bad sea conditions.

After the introduction of so many new technologies, the displacement of the new aircraft carrier increased to 48000 tons, and the full load displacement reached 54000 tons (after the post-war overhaul, it increased to 65000 tons).

And with the increase in displacement, the cost of a new aircraft carrier is two and a half times that of the "Lake" class aircraft carrier, that is, the price of building a new aircraft carrier can buy two and a half "Lake" class aircraft carriers, and this price is even close to the procurement cost of the "New Provincial Capital" class battleship!

Work on the design of the new aircraft carrier will be completed by the end of the year, and preparations for construction will begin at the end of the year, with the first batch expected to begin construction in the middle of next year. Due to a large number of new technologies, as well as increased displacement, etc., the shipyard had to make a complete improvement of the basic equipment, especially the capacity of the dock, and it was not possible to build a new aircraft carrier on the slipway of the "Lake" class aircraft carrier. Therefore, the construction of the "Lake" class aircraft carrier will not stop, and it will not be fully converted to the construction of a new aircraft carrier until the preparation for the construction of the new aircraft carrier is completed.

And this aircraft carrier was temporarily named the "Island" class, which was also the most powerful aircraft carrier built by the Imperial Navy during the war, and it can even be said that it was the most powerful aircraft carrier in the world at that time, while the similar "Midway" class aircraft carrier built by the US Navy was in service more than a year later than the "Island" class aircraft carrier of the Empire, and it did little in the war.

In addition to the new aircraft carriers, the Imperial Navy will continue to build the third batch of "New Provincial Capital" class battleships, and the fourth batch of "New Provincial Capital" class battleships has already been submitted, but it has not been approved for the time being, and the shipyard is also designing new battleships, but it is not included in the Imperial Navy's list of top priority construction.

After the completion of the construction of the last batch of "Li Jing" class air defense cruisers, the "Rui Beast" class air defense cruisers will be fully converted to the "Rui Beast" class air defense cruisers, and each aircraft carrier battle group will gradually be provided with one such cruiser to make it the core air defense force of the battle group.

The "River" class heavy cruisers were overhauled from the fourth batch, and the main improvement was the replacement of twin 240-mm guns with triple 200-mm guns. This may seem like a step backwards, but in fact it was a rather rational decision by the Imperial Navy. Initially, the Navy was going to replace the River-class heavy cruisers with triple 240mm turrets or add a twin turret, but in the end, it would bring an unsolvable problem: the structure of the battleship would need to be overhauled, and it would lead to hundreds of tons of weight gain on the ship. Perhaps, for a large warship of more than 10,000 tons, the weight of these hundreds of tons is nothing, but the problem is that these hundreds of tons of weight are above the waterline of the battleship, and adding a few hundred tons means that the stability of the battleship will become worse. Moreover, at that time, the Navy also planned to install better radars on cruisers, which would also lead to weight gains, and if the weight was increased by a few hundred tons, the sailing qualities of the cruisers would be greatly affected. And to reduce the weight, it is only possible to reduce the number of guns, or the upper layer of armor, and this is not feasible, the sacrifice is too great.

Under these circumstances, the Navy decided to install a 200-mm main gun turret for the "River" class ring triple, so that the number of main guns on the battleship increased to nine, reaching the average level, and the density of fire increased by fifty percent. More importantly, after the use of new armor-piercing shells, the 200-mm guns could be used against all the cruisers of the world at that time, including the American large cruisers of the "Alaska" class, could not block the blow of the new 200-mm armor-piercing shells, that is, it was not much necessary to install 240-mm guns for the cruisers.

Because of the long time of refit, and the fact that most of the cruisers at that time had a mission, the first three batches of "River" class cruisers were replaced with new turrets only later when they underwent major repairs, rather than immediately returning to the shipyard for refit.

Of course, the shipbuilding program of the Navy is very large, submarines, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, aircraft carriers, and even various auxiliary ships have relevant construction plans. And this is precisely the legitimate response of the Imperial Navy in the war according to the actual situation!