Nie Renfeng and Gan Yongxing want to talk about Renhao's handling of two captured battleships, not the two American battleships that were towed back from the Coral Sea, but the two unfinished battleships in the Japanese shipyard.

Immediately after the New Japanese Army conquered Honshu Island, the Imperial Army took control of key facilities on the island, including several large shipyards. This time, the biggest gain of the Imperial Army was the two battleships that were not fully built, the second "Musashi" and the third "Shinano" of the "Yamato" class battleships.

Before the outbreak of the war, Japan had planned to build a total of four "Yamato" class battleships, of which the second "Musashi" and the third "Shinano" had already started construction before the war, but the construction progress was not very fast. This is a concrete manifestation of Japan's national strength. Three years before the outbreak of the war, Japan had begun preparations for war and built a large number of new warships, but Japan simply did not have enough national strength to support a fleet comparable to the Tang Imperial Navy.

From design to construction, it took six years for the "Yamato" to be completed, and it was not until more than a year after the outbreak of the war that the battleship entered service. The construction of the second "Musashi" dragged on even longer, and was originally planned to be commissioned six months after the "Yamato", but the result was delayed until the Japanese Navy was completely defeated and its mainland was subjected to devastating strategic bombing, and the battleship was not completely completed. After the Japanese New Army captured the island of Honshu, the "Musashi" completed about eighty percent of the construction work and is in the final stage of perching. The construction of the third Shinano, proceeded even more slowly, and by the time it was taken over by the Imperial Army, the construction of its hull had just been completed.

When these two "half-finished" battleships fell into the hands of the Reich. Nie Renfeng immediately proposed to the prime minister that the navy take over the two battleships, and the prime minister immediately approved this request. Before Nie Renfeng approached Tan Renhao to discuss what to do with these two battleships. The personnel of the Navy went to take over the two warships and made a preliminary judgment on the situation of the two warships. Other than that. There was also a group of imperial ship engineers who went to Japan to make some preliminary preparations for the situation of the two warships.

At that time, there were many options before the Imperial Navy. For example, these two warships were built and then incorporated into the battle sequence of the Navy. Sold to the Allies, such as Germany. to strengthen the naval forces of the Allies. Remove its critical equipment and provide it to the troops who need it, such as sending its main guns to the Marines to arm fire support vessels. Or even tear down and sell scrap steel, etc., these are options for the Navy. Tan Renhao's task was to demonstrate the feasibility of completing the construction of these two battleships and providing them to the German Navy.

This can be said to be quite a troublesome thing, the biggest of which is whether there is a capacity to complete the construction of these two battleships, if any. So how much money and manpower are needed to complete the construction work. If all this can be done, then after the completion of the construction work, the maintenance of the battleship. and how to solve the problem of provisions. That is, it is a big problem made up of many small problems, not a single one.

The first thing that needs to be confirmed is whether the construction of these two battleships can be completed, and this involves whether Japan's industrial base can afford to build it. And the answer is definitely no.

During the war, Japan's industrial base was almost completely destroyed, not to mention the heavy industry that supported the shipbuilding industry, and even the civilian light industry, such as the food industry and the textile industry, were completely destroyed, and there was not even a decent factory left in Japan. How can you build a large warship without a steel plant, without basic transportation facilities, without a chemical plant, without a large machine tool, without a large hydraulic press, or even with a large crane?

In addition to the industry itself, the infrastructure of the Japanese shipyards that undertook the construction of the two battleships was completely destroyed, and the "Musashi", which was parked next to the dock at that time, suffered several bombs during the bombing, and the hull was seriously damaged. The Shinano, which was parked on the slipway, was also badly damaged, and by the time the Imperial Army took over, the hull had collapsed on the slipway, and it would have taken several months to straighten it out.

If Japan had relied on its own capabilities, it would have been impossible to complete the construction of these two battleships, and it would not have been possible to even restore them to normal condition. Then, it will be up to the Empire to continue the construction work. At that time, there were two options.

One was to tow the two battleships back to the Reich's shipyards and continue their construction at the Reich's shipyards. But there was an obvious problem here, the Empire did not have a dock large enough to accommodate these two battleships. In addition, the construction standards and construction techniques adopted by the Japanese Navy were different from those of the Imperial Navy, which required a lot of time to revise the construction methods of the Imperial Shipyards and train a new batch of workers. What's more, the Imperial Navy did not have any extra large slipways to accommodate these two battleships. The hull of the "Shinano" was so badly damaged that it could not be towed back to the Reich directly, at least the basic hull construction work had to be completed in Japan before it could be launched.

Another option is to continue the construction work in Japan, but the problem is that whether it is to ship spare parts built in the empire to Japan, or to help Japan restore some shipbuilding capacity and build spare parts in Japan, it means a huge expense.

There is also the problem of workers, and even if we can find a group of skilled workers in Japan, it will take a lot of time and a lot of investment to organize them and resume the construction of warships.

In other words, neither approach is practically realistic. Tan Renhao made a general statistic at that time, and finally explained this problem with data.

If the former option had been chosen, which had been towed back to the Empire's shipyards and completed on the Empire's mainland, the two battleships would have taken at least two years to build, and the cost would have exceeded the entire cost of building the four "New Capital" class battleships. But the problem was that at that time, the third batch of "New Provincial Capital" class battleships of the Imperial Navy was about to be completed. If the construction of the fourth batch of "New Provincial Capital" class battleships is started, it will only take a year and a half at most, and the cost will be much less. Other words. It was not at all cost-effective to invest on these two "half-finished" battleships.

If the latter option is chosen, it will take longer. It will take at least a year to restore only some of the shipbuilding capacity in mainland Japan. Then the construction of these two battleships was completed, and all the time was counted, it would have taken at least two and a half years. In addition, the cost of training workers and building infrastructure must be very huge. We also have to ship the raw materials to Japan. This would require more investment, and it would never cost much less than the former. More importantly, this was not in line with the Empire's attitude towards Japan, and the Prime Minister would never agree to help Japan restore its industrial base.

In fact, it was already decided that the construction of these two battleships would be difficult to complete. Of course, the situation with these two battleships was not exactly the same.

The construction of the "Musashi" was mostly completed, and although the battleship suffered a lot of damage, it was not troublesome to repair, and after the repair. You can go to the Empire's shipyard to complete the next construction work, and the investment is not very large, and the time spent can be controlled within a year. The situation with the Shinano was much worse. The battleship was actually just an empty shelf, the hull had been badly blown up, not to mention repaired, not even worth repairing. And. Even after the restoration, there is a lot of construction work that has not been completed, and the cost of completing this construction work is completely disproportionate to the reward.

Tan Renhao also made a separate analysis of the situation of the two battleships. The Musashi will take about a year to complete the repair and construction work, and the cost will be about 1.5 times the cost of building a new "new provincial capital" class battleship. In addition, most of the ship's construction work is perch, so there is no need to occupy the slipway. The Shinano would take about two years to complete the repair and construction work, and the cost would be at least 2.5 times the cost of the New Provincial Capital, and the ship would certainly occupy the slipway for a long time after being towed back to the Empire, and the existing slipway at the Imperial shipyard would have to be modified to meet the needs of the much larger battleship.

The problems are not limited to these, even after the completion of the construction of the "Musashi", there are still many problems.

Like, the question of spare parts for this battleship. When the battleship is in use and participates in combat operations, it will definitely be damaged, and this requires a certain reserve of spare parts, especially the spare parts of the key and vulnerable parts of the battleship, such as the barrel of the gun, boiler, propeller, etc., which must have a certain reserve. But the problem is that the technical standards of the Japanese Navy at that time were completely different from those of the Imperial Navy, that is, it was difficult for the Imperial shipyards to manufacture spare parts for Japanese battleships, and if there was any damage to this battleship, how could it be repaired?

The second is maintenance, the maintenance of Japanese warships is not the same as that of imperial warships, and it is inevitable that there will be various problems in use, and the maintenance work is done by the officers and men on the battleships, and the officers and men of the Imperial Navy obviously do not know how to maintain Japanese warships, if they are retrained, how much time will it take, and how many resources will be invested?

Finally, there is security. Battleships need to consume a lot of supplies and ammunition in battle. The fuel problem is also very easy to solve, after all, the fuel used by the navies of various countries is not very different. But the problem is that ammunition is difficult to solve. The Reich did not have a production line for 460-mm shells, so how much would it cost and how much time would it take to build a new ammunition production line? In addition, the production of shells for the main guns of a battleship was not very large, and if there were ten battleships, then it would not be a problem to build a line of shells, and it would be a waste to build a line for nine guns on a battleship? In addition to the main guns, there were also secondary guns, anti-aircraft guns, etc., and the ammunition of these guns could not be used in common with the Imperial Navy, and production lines had to be built.

Of course, these problems can be solved through relevant improvements, such as installing the power system of the Imperial Navy, replacing it with the guns of the Imperial Navy, etc., but the resources required to invest this are probably not much different from the investment in building several new battleships. Moreover, it is a question whether it can be renovated or not.

Take the battleship's main gun as an example, replacing the 460mm gun with the 400 mm gun of the Imperial Navy is designed to change the design of the turret, change the related equipment, such as the design of the gun's loafer, and change the design of the bomb bay. And these improvements, almost directly affect the design of the entire battleship.

In other words, even if the construction of the Musashi was completed and the battleship was put into use, the problems associated with it, and the cost of solving them, would be too high, and as a result, it would be better to build a few more "new provincial capital" class battleships, which would not only be cheaper, but would also not cause related problems, especially in terms of logistics.

It only took Tan Renhao two days to summarize these problems, and then sent them to Gan Yongxing.

"In other words, there is absolutely no need for us to continue the construction of these two battleships?" After Gan Yongxing read Tan Renhao's report, he also had the same idea.

"Yes, these two battleships don't mean anything to us, if we can, we might as well apply for the construction of the fourth batch of 'New Provincial Capital' class battleships."

"But the problem is that now the Germans already know about these two battleships." Gan Yongxing put down the document, "In the morning, Raeder went to the principal, and he talked about this matter. The German side was willing to finance the completion of the construction of these two battleships, and ......"

"Do they have too much money to spend?"

"It's not that simple." Gan Yongxing laughed, "It's not just the Germans who want to get these two battleships, the Persian Empire has also expressed the same intention, and they also want to get these two battleships." ”

Tan Renhao also laughed. "It seems that we are the only ones in the world who refuse to spend money on these two warships."

"But the question is, how do we convince Germany and Persia?"

Tan Renhao followed Gan Yongxing to stand up, and a new problem came again!