One day in late January 1947, next to the newly built pier 11 in the port of Murmansk, a brand-new aircraft carrier with the flag of the United Kingdom flying the flag on its flagpole slowly approached, and the name "Feniania" was prominently printed on the metal sign on its bow. The Legend www.biquge.info of Fenian is one of the most popular myths in Ireland and throughout Britain, telling the story of the heroic adventures of the great hero Finn McCool and his elite warband, the Knights of Fiona. The appearance of this aircraft carrier has made the dispute over the third-generation standard aircraft carrier of the Western Allies quickly end -- because of the revolutionary design of the beveled flight deck, which "eclipses all active aircraft carriers overnight," and the steam catapult system has been perfected on the basis of the Winner, the "Fenia" is considered by the authorities of the international naval circles to be a perfect work that easily crushes all the aircraft carrier designs of the same period. In fact, the Irish, with only a set of technical drawings, succeeded in convincing the German Navy to abandon the design of the standard aircraft carrier of the Weser type, which they had been pushing for, in favor of the design of the standard aircraft carrier of the Fenian. This means that Ireland will continue to occupy a dominant position in the standardization system of naval vessels of the Western Allied Countries, and will bring considerable economic benefits and corresponding development impetus to the Irish shipbuilding industry - according to the strategic planning of the Western Allied countries, at least 22 aircraft carriers will be built and put into service in the mid-to-late 40s to replace the first-generation standard aircraft carriers that are more than 20 years old, and gradually replace the main position of the second-generation standard aircraft carriers, with Ireland's existing shipbuilding capacity, It is not a problem to build 12-15 of them, and the rest are built at shipyards in other countries for a fee, such as technology licensing or joint construction.

(PS: The oblique flight deck is divided into two parts, the straight deck at the front of the ship is the take-off area, and the rear half of the oblique deck is the landing area, and the oblique intersection forms a triangular parking area, which has the advantage that the take-off and landing of the carrier-based aircraft can be carried out at the same time, and when the landing aircraft fails to hook the arresting cable, it can immediately pull up the go-around without colliding with the aircraft parked on the front deck)

Together with the "Feniana", they arrived at the port of Murmansk, a military center in the north of Soviet Russia, along with a light cruiser, four destroyers, and a supply ship, all of which carried the flag of the new United Kingdom with a green, white and yellow background and a Celtic red dragon pattern. Their visit was nominally a military visit and exchange, and they "carried by" escorting His Majesty Joachim I, who was visiting Soviet Russia, home. It is interesting to note that in the dome-type semi-enclosed dock a few kilometers from the berth of the "Fenian", the first aircraft carrier of the Soviet Russian Navy is at the stage of main construction. According to the original construction plan, this medium-sized aircraft carrier codenamed W should be commissioned on New Year's Day in 1947, but it was precisely because of the advent of the "Fenian" that the top brass of the Soviet and Russian Navy realized that their aircraft carrier was outdated before it was launched, and they decisively stopped the main construction of this aircraft carrier, so as to modify the original design plan and make it a new aircraft carrier that can keep up with the trend of technology.

For the Soviet and Russian Navy, which had no experience in the design and construction of aircraft carriers before, it was self-evident that it was difficult to build a medium-sized aircraft carrier with various modern elements as soon as it came up. Although the Italians are in the camp of the Western allies, they do not have a good impression of Germany and Austria-Hungary, two countries ruled by the Germans, so their principle is to collect money to do things, regardless of politics, as long as the Russian government has enough cash or cash, they can transfer the new technology that their own troops have not had time to use, and send their expert advisers to provide hand-in-hand guidance, this "selfless" international spirit has benefited the Soviet Russia's aircraft carrier project a lot in the initial stage, The angled flight deck was an unprecedentedly new design, and it took the Italians no less time to learn to digest and adopt it for their own purposes than the Russians to study it on their own. Therefore, the Soviet and Russian Navy organized a technical team to tackle key problems on the one hand, and asked Ireland for help on the other. Despite the unpleasant military confrontation with the Russians in the Nordic waters, the Irish government never regarded them as a formidable maritime rival - not with disdain, but with unwillingness to be an enemy, so after approaching the Russians, they quickly offered a deal that the other side could psychologically afford. After some bargaining, the Russian government finally exchanged copper and iron ore worth 2 million marks for the support of the Limerick shipyard in Ireland in aircraft carrier technology. Before Xia Shu arrived at the port of Murmansk, the Irish technical team that helped the Soviet and Russian Navy revise the aircraft carrier design plan had been here for more than three weeks, and through a large number of technical calculations and scale model tests, the modification plan was basically determined, which was half a month shorter than the estimated time of the Soviet and Russian Navy. Irish engineers have earned the respect of their Russian counterparts for their diligence and dedication, while some Italian engineers have long been notorious internationally for their procrastination......

The day after arriving at the port of Murmansk, Natsuki and his entourage, accompanied by Sverdlov and other Soviet and Russian leaders, visited the dock with its huge dome. The reason why the Russians spent a lot of money to build such a semi-enclosed dock was not so much secrecy, but the bad weather in the north. Murmansk does not freeze all year round because of the influence of the North Atlantic Warm Current, it is located in the Arctic Circle, the average temperature for seven or eight months of the year is below freezing, the Russians are of course known for their toughness, but even if the shipbuilders can withstand the severe cold and insist on working outdoors, in the continuous wind and snow weather, the shipbuilding progress and construction quality can not be guaranteed, so the time taken by the Murmansk shipyard to build a ship is usually about 70% slower than that of the Americans to build ships of the same tonnage, Semi-enclosed docks, equipped with artificial domes and shipbuilding facilities, were almost as efficient as the Germans.

The Soviet and Russian aircraft carriers presented in front of Xia Shu and his entourage, the hull of the ship was basically completed, the outline of the ship island had been seen, and most of the flight deck was laid. In the eyes of the unpainted, this pile of unpainted steel is magnificent, but there is no beauty at all, and in the eyes of an expert like Natsuki, who has read countless ships and knows how to do it, the ships under construction are like unarmed women, with bewitching curves in full view. Of course, although those Irish engineers who were sent here signed a confidentiality agreement with the shipyard, they would not hesitate to choose the latter when they could only choose between professional ethics and national defense and security, and when the Soviet Russian government decided to ask Ireland for help, it must have been carefully considered, putting the first place in catching up with and surpassing the world's advanced level in technology, and putting the secrecy of the aircraft carrier's performance in a relatively secondary position.

Before visiting Soviet Russia, Natsuki had a general understanding of the construction of the first aircraft carrier in Soviet Russia, and now he was able to observe it up close, and he knew about its condition seven or eight times out of ten. Even if it is equipped with an angled flight deck, the technical level of this Soviet and Russian aircraft carrier can be regarded as a second and a half generations at most -- there is a significant gap with the "Fenian" at the beginning of the third generation, but in any case, it is really not easy to go from zero to the second and a half generations. The look in the eyes of Sverdlov, Bubnov and even the deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, who was not in the pool, shows the Russians' yearning for the sea, and their self-esteem and self-confidence that they are not willing to play the role of a second-rate power on the international stage.

At the end of the dome dock, Natsuki stopped and looked into the distance, and in the middle of the huge harbor, there was a seemingly inconspicuous pier, where a number of "black fish" were moored. In the history of the old time and space, the Soviet Union and Russia have built many famous submarines, such as the Alpha, Typhoon, Akula, and Boreas, which are known for their cutting-edge performance in some areas and their fearsome deterrent, and are the sharpest swords in the hands of the Soviet and Russian navies since the second half of the 20th century. As far as the strategic situation and national defense strength are concerned, it is indeed a last resort for the Russians to focus on the development of submarines. Even if a W aircraft carrier is successfully completed and put into service, not to mention how long it will take for it to really form combat effectiveness, purely based on data, its appearance cannot change the ranking of Soviet Russia's strength in any surrounding sea area, and for a long time to come, the thighs that the Soviet and Russian navies can rely on will still be land-based aviation and submarine forces......

Among the group of "black fish" that Natsuki saw, there were four that could be called the "treasures of the sea" of the Soviet and Russian Navy, and they were also very few naval equipment that the Russians could really get their hands on in this era. Both internally and externally, they have only a simple class code such as K, they do not have their own separate ship names, and are only given the tactical number K1-K4, but they are the Soviet and Russian ships that Western countries pay the most attention to after the "Kirov".

Compared with the scale of 20 or 30 first-class submarines built by Germany, the United States, and Japan, it is very inconspicuous to build only four first-class submarines of one class, but no country or navy dares to underestimate these four K-class submarines. In an era when most active submarines had an underwater speed of no more than 10 knots, the K-class was capable of making an underwater sprint at 16.4 knots, and had an underwater range of up to 240 nautical miles at economic speeds, four to five times that of ordinary submarines.

In the mid-40s, there was still a big gap between Soviet Russia's industrial and military science and technology and the world's top level, and the foundation of the shipbuilding industry was not weak, but throughout the twenties and thirties, the strategic center of gravity of Soviet Russia was on land and air, and the investment in naval construction was pitiful. For example, the Kirov-class large cruisers built in cooperation with Britain were regarded as naval ace warships and naval combat weapons in Soviet Russia, and they were active in European waters for a long time, and were "frequent visitors" in the newspapers and news of European countries, but after they were put into the Far East battlefield, they were quickly sunk by the Japanese Navy. Realizing that the development of surface warships has been invested heavily and the results have been slow, the Soviet and Russian navies have established a strategic plan to give priority to the construction of naval aviation and submarine forces, and the K-class submarines are the outstanding works of the third "Five-Year Plan for the Navy."

Although in the eyes of authoritative figures in the international naval field, it was simply whimsical for Soviet Russia to rely on its own scientific research strength to come up with a "closed-loop propulsion system" necessary for the construction of underwater high-speed submarines, with the ingenuity and research spirit of the naval engineers and some technical data and technical equipment obtained by the intelligence departments from European and American countries, the research and development department of the Murmansk Shipyard completed the theoretical verification of the K-class submarine in 1943. It is only 10 months behind the joint research institutes of Germany and Ireland, and ahead of the three traditional naval powers of the United States, Japan and Italy. At the beginning of 1944, the Soviet-Japanese war was starting a new round of competition, and the Soviet Russian army had signs of victory, but if it wanted to completely defeat the Japanese army, it still needed huge manpower and material investment. It was this visit that enabled Soviet Russia to obtain a new type of high-strength steel developed and produced by Krupp in Germany, which laid a solid material foundation for the construction of K-class submarines. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the design and construction departments, the first K-class submarine was completed in April 1945 in a construction period of only 15 months and 10 days, and the other three were completed in June, August and November.

The K-class "underwater high-speed submarine" completed and put into service has a displacement of 1,870 tons on the surface and 2,410 tons under water, a self-sustaining period of 45 days at sea, a maximum of 60 days, a surface endurance of 18,000 nautical miles, and an underwater endurance of 300 nautical miles. The average depth of the Barents Sea is 229 meters (the average depth of the average marginal sea is about 100 meters), which is suitable for underwater use. In terms of weapons, the K-class is equipped with 8 533-millimeter torpedo tubes and 22 torpedoes; in order to ensure the speed of underwater navigation to the greatest extent, the submarines of this class are only equipped with two 25-millimeter machine guns at the rear of the conning tower, and once they encounter enemy anti-submarine aircraft, the most direct way is to flee -- according to intelligence, the training standard for the submarine force of the Soviet and Russian Navy for emergency diving is 90 seconds, that is, it takes no more than one and a half minutes from the discovery of enemy aircraft to the complete entry of the submarine into the water, while the training standard for K-class submarines is 30 seconds!

(End of chapter)