March 1914, Danzig, Friedrich Royal Shipyard. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Under the watchful eyes of a handful of hundreds of naval officers and crew members, the armored cruiser Bismarck, painted light gray and creamy white on the deck and above, moved very slowly into dock P. After the dock gate is closed, 12 high-horsepower pumps start working at the same time, and they will be drained about 4 in 30 hours. 50,000 cubic meters of seawater, and then more than 400 shipwrights entered the dock to work, except for a small number of people who are responsible for cleaning and overhauling the hull shell, the rest of the personnel will work day and night shifts to modernize the 10,000-ton warship for a period of three months. During the refit, all construction and supervision personnel received double salaries, on the condition that they were not allowed to leave the shipyard and that no information about the modification of the battleship was revealed in correspondence or telephone contact with their families.

The old ship refit project, with a budget of 12.6 million marks, was led by Xia Shu himself from planning, design to construction, and the core technical team composed of 7 engineers, only 2 of whom were 40-year-old senior ship experts, and the rest of the faces were young engineers who had only emerged in recent years, and a number of power engineers from Hubert Aviation worked together throughout the process. The purpose of the entire refit project is very clear, that is, to convert the first generation of warships named after "Bismarck" of the German Navy into the world's first through-deck aircraft carrier!

The main reason why Natsuki chose the "Bismarck" has nothing to do with the name of the ship. The idea of converting an old warship into an aircraft carrier has been around for a long time, and 10 years ago, Natsuki began to draw technical drawings for aircraft carriers. However, the European powers are paying close attention to the innovation and application of naval technology, and it is difficult for any country's new moves to hide people's eyes, and in the case that the strength of the German shipbuilding industry is not dominant, Natsuki intends to hide the secret weapon of the aircraft carrier to the end, and to have an aircraft carrier in a short period of time, retrofitting the old ship is the lowest cost and the fastest way to achieve results.

Looking at the list of ships of the German Navy, there are not many suitable for converting aircraft carriers. The old ironclad ships lacked length, the protective cruisers lacked width, and the newer armored cruisers and battleships all had their own value and mission, and the "Bismarck", which was less than 20 years old, was the most suitable candidate for comprehensive conditions. Construction began in 1896 and commissioned in 1900, and at the time of design and construction it was classified as a cruiser of the first class with a standard displacement of 1. 070,000 tons, with a length of 127 meters, 20. The 4-meter-wide hull was initially armed with the same 240 mm rapid-fire guns as the Wichersbach-class battleships. When the Reichstag approved its construction budget, the purpose of the "Bismarck" was clearly "to carry out overseas assignments", so the high freeboard design was adopted. After entering service, it traveled from one colony to another, withstanding all kinds of bad weather conditions, but the intensity of the voyage accelerated the wear and tear of the ships, and the overseas colonies lacked the same maintenance conditions as their home ports. After serving with two Scharnhorst-class armoured ships, the Bismarck was freed from the hectic cruising duty, and in 1910 it returned to China as a reserve ship for training at the Mine School. In 1912, the "Bismarck" returned to the Kiel Naval Shipyard, where it was built, for routine maintenance, and Xia Shu appointed a team of naval engineers to conduct a comprehensive assessment of it.

It was decided to use the "Bismarck" for the refit of the aircraft carrier, and Natsuki immediately began to make preparations. technical design, he personally grabbed the knife and calculated the data only from a few young engineers from the Friedrich shipyard and Hubert Aeronautics; In the autumn of 1912, he instructed the Friedrich shipyard to build two new 20,000-ton docks. Construction of the first new dock began in November of that year and was completed in April of the following year, and the workers then engaged in the construction of the second new dock, and in August 1913 the second 20,000-ton dock was completed. Amid widespread speculation that the Friedrich shipyard would expand into the larger ship construction market, Natsuki submitted a proposal to the Naval Technical Committee to modernize 15 former dreadnoughts (Deutsche class, Braunschweig-class and Wiecchersbach class). In the program, the refit of all warships was to be completed by July 1914. Since the construction of dreadnoughts or battle cruisers is being carried out in the large dockyards of the major shipyards, these modifications will be carried out at the Friedrich shipyard and the Shuoxiao shipyard, with 6 ships being built by the Friedrich shipyard and 9 by the Shuoxiao shipyard.

The technical committee voted for a minority in favor and a majority against this large-scale refit of two King-class battleships, which was equivalent to the total investment in building two King-class battleships, and Tirpitz did not agree with this plan, he felt that the strategic deterrence of an old battleship that had been modernized and converted was not much higher than that of an unmodified battleship, and that 15 old battleships that had been refitted were not as good as two brand-new dreadnoughts in terms of psychological significance and actual combat value.

Upgrading the old ship or chasing the new one, Natsuki has his own understanding and firmly believes in his own judgment, since the conventional route cannot be passed, he brings his own plan to the Kaiser, and explains the gains and losses face to face. Five Wiecchersbach-class ships were built between 1899 and 1904, five Braunschweig-class ships were built between 1903 and 1906, and five Deutschland-class ships were built from 1903 to 1908, that is, these 15 warships were built intensively in just ten years, which was the golden period of Wilhelm II's life from 40 to 50 years old. It was precisely because of this special human sentiment that Natsuki succeeded in gaining the support of Wilhelm II, and under the political system of the Second German Reich, the will of the monarch was often decisive - Germany did not add two dreadnoughts that would take at least three years to build before the outbreak of war, but opted for the conversion of old ships that took less than a year to complete.

In September 1913, the first ships to be modernized, the Wicchersbach, Swabian and Vidding, Mecklenburg, and Zaringen, arrived at the two major shipyards in Danzig. They both belong to the same displacement 1. The 180,000-ton Wiecchersbach-class battleship was the last class of battleships in the German Navy to use 240 mm rapid-fire guns as the main gun, and it was also the first German battleship to use Vickers carburized steel armor technology. Because of the continuation of the design ideas of the German capital ships of that era, such as strong firepower, heavy armor, and slow speed, Wiecelsbach was still listed as an "ironclad ship" by the British Navy, but their speed was not inferior to that of the battleships of various countries of the same period, except for the Swabian which was only 16 due to design defects. 8 knots, and the maximum speed of the remaining four ships is around 18 knots. The most important content of this modernization and modification is to convert six of their 12 coal-fired boilers into oil-fired boilers, to change one-quarter of the coal-fired tanks to oil-fired tanks, to replace the three old reciprocating steam engines with new models with a greater success rate and basically unchanged in operation mode, to eliminate all their underwater torpedo tubes, and to upgrade their radio equipment and optical sighting equipment by the way.

Thanks to the operation of the shipbuilding alliance, the two Danzig shipyards chose to cooperate strategically rather than compete independently, and the win-win model brought tangible benefits to both them and the German Navy. Three and a half months later, all five battleships were refitted, and when they re-tested, these steel battleships, which had not kept up with the pace of the times, were at least rejuvenated in terms of power, and their top speed of nearly 18 knots and long cruising speed of 12 knots gave them the ability to cooperate with the main fleet.

In January 1914, five Braunschweig-class battleships arrived at Danzig as planned. They were modified in the same way as the Wicchersbach class, 6 old round boilers were replaced with oil-fired boilers, 6 water-tube boilers were retained, but they were thoroughly cleaned and refurbished, limited by the completely different structural configurations of steam turbines and reciprocating steam engines, 3 reciprocating steam engines were only replaced with new models with greater output power, which was not conducive to increasing speed and had certain combat defects, and all the underwater torpedo tubes were canceled, and with the widening of the Kiel Canal coming to an end, The Brunswick class will also be no longer in service with the problem of the position of the side secondary guns, and the mobile gun mount can be changed back to fixed, thus reducing the risk of the secondary guns losing their combat effectiveness due to mechanical failure.

Thanks to the experience gained by the technicians and boatmen in the refit of the Wicchersbach class, the Friedrichsyard, which is known for its efficiency in the construction of ships, completed the scheduled refit in only 63 days and 65 days respectively for the "Hesse" and "Prussia" for the Q dock. In the ensuing sea trials, they ran out of 18 like tigers descending from the mountain. Verse 4 and 18. The maximum speed of 6 knots has almost reached the level of the new service, and it is important to know that after many years of sea navigation, the speed of the ship usually decreases significantly. It is worth mentioning that the Braunschweig-class battleships originally set up a fire command room on the combat mast, but this time the fire control system was installed and the optical sighting equipment was upgraded, and the theoretical accuracy of its 11-inch naval guns should be significantly improved.

According to the original refit arrangement, the five German-class battleships were supposed to enter the dock by mid-April, but due to the start of the "Bismarck" program, the "Pomerne", which was originally scheduled to undergo refit work at the P dock, had to be transferred to the Shuoxiao shipyard next door for refit.

The German class, which was quite "long-lived" in the history of the original, was the last first-class battleship built by the German Navy before entering the Dreadnought era. Thanks to the improvement of mechanical technology, without increasing the tonnage, its comprehensive performance has been improved to a certain extent compared with the Braunschweig class, and the maximum speed has exceeded 19 knots. In the modernization plan developed by Natsuki for them, the repair and improvement of power is still the first priority, followed by new fire control observation and sighting technology, including the expensive ship-wide unified azimuth fire command system already used on dreadnoughts.

……

Over time, the decorated old ship in dock P soon became unrecognizable. Under the action of gas welding and cutting equipment and large cranes, its bridge, mast, chimney, and main turret disappeared one by one, and the hull was empty, almost returning to the state it was in when it was first launched. Then, the workers cut open the amidship deck and the internal compartments, hoisted out the boilers, turbines, pipelines, and shafts inside like cleaning the belly of a fish, installed new supports inside the hull, hoisted the brand-new, relatively small and lightweight oil-fired boilers and steam turbines into it, placed the separate smoke exhaust lines on the right side of the hull, and then restored the internal compartments one by one, and installed two elevators in the amidships that went directly to the lower cabins. After the construction surface was returned to the deck, the workers used riveting machines and welding machines to build a strange steel frame structure on the upper deck, and installed a smoke exhaust port on the starboard side - instead of simply putting down the original chimney, the new smoke exhaust line extended diagonally down to the side of the gunwale, and the total smoke exhaust volume was much smaller than the large chimney when the original coal-fired boiler was used.

In the final two weeks of construction, workers began laying double teak planks above the steel-framed structure, and up until this point, most of the technicians and boatmen involved in the construction had failed to understand the purpose of this bizarre modification, but not everyone was general. From the installation of elevators on the ship and the layout of the lower deck, Hubert Aviation engineers had to board the ship every day to inspect the technical construction standards, and some technicians saw the "clues" from this, and the flat and open upper deck was obviously not intended for racing cars or ball games.

On the other hand, in accordance with the training arrangements of the General Staff of the Navy, the boys of the 2nd Air Group of the German Navy are conducting special take-off and landing training day after day - the field has changed from a large open lawn to a 120-meter-long, 20-meter-wide area paved with wooden slats. In the event of a crosswind, even the best pilots can hardly guarantee the distance and position of takeoff and landing, and most people, with the exception of a few officers, are very puzzled by this strange way of training. If you want to equip the ship with an airplane, the existing modes of catapult take-off, water landing, and hoisting and returning to the ship are simple and convenient, and you can even equip a special seaplane carrier like the British.

Since the modernization of 15 old battleships and the technical modification of the armored cruiser "Bismarck" cost a total of nearly 100 million marks, some congressmen and naval officials have been questioning since the budget was forced to pass, and this questioning is different from the technical arguments of the past. At the beginning of 1914, Natsuki had to defend his plan at the Reichstag and the top level of the Navy, and even came up with internal data from the Friedrich shipyard to prove that the conversion of six old ships made only a very small profit for the shipyard.

The reason for this is related to the political structure of the Second German Reich and, more importantly, a series of personnel changes in the German Navy have quietly changed the original power structure within the Navy: the former commander of the High Seas Fleet, Admiral Herzendorf, retired, and von Ingnoll was transferred from the General Staff to the High Seas Fleet, taking over the post of Fleet Commander. Admiral von Bohr, who advocated the "doctrine of the existence of the fleet", became the leader of the General Staff of the German Navy, responsible for the formulation of naval combat plans and the distribution of forces in various sea areas, while Admiral Müller, the chief of the naval cabinet, was also a supporter of the "doctrine of the existence of the fleet", and he held the power of appointing officers and personnel transfers within the navy, while Tirpitz's naval theory belonged to the "doctrine of naval combat", and the construction of ships, the training of the fleet, and the appointment and dismissal of personnel were all prepared for war. There were fundamental differences in naval doctrine, and in recent years it was a high-risk period of frequent war crises, and Bohr, Müller, and a large number of fleet existence doctrines in the top echelons of the Navy deliberately elevated the founder of the German Navy to the position of Secretary of State for the Navy, and limited his actual power to the field of naval organization and material support.

In the eyes of everyone, Natsuki had a very close relationship with Tirpitz's teachers and students, and his strategic opinions and theoretical articles were typical of the naval combat doctrine, even though he was a direct member of the German imperial family and deeply trusted by Kaiser Wilhelm II, he was still affected by this power struggle and exclusion. And Natsuki and Tirpitz, the master and apprentice who have differences and cooperation, have a clear understanding of this situation. However, Wilhelm II attached great importance to the naval fleet, and at the same time feared the British navy, and subjectively preferred to accept the theory of naval existence, so they had to wait for a chance to prove themselves in silence and concession.

After the refit of the "Bismarck" was completed, Natsuki met with the Kaiser and petitioned him to be relieved of his posts as director of shipbuilding in the Navy Office and head of the technical department of the Naval Staff, and to be transferred to the High Seas Fleet as a naval lieutenant and become a full-time combatant. Wilhelm II, apparently aware of the factional strife within the navy, hesitated, but finally agreed to Natsuki's request and personally signed an order to promote him to the rank of colonel and transfer to the command of the High Seas Fleet.

On June 10, 1914, on the recommendation of Admiral von Ingnoor, commander of the High Seas Fleet, Natsuki was appointed Chief of Staff of the Fleet's Operations, a position where he listened to the approaching pace of war.

(End of chapter)