The war has been fought until now, including Tan Renhao, no one doubts the strength of the Imperial Navy, perhaps, in normal times, Tan Renhao did not notice how powerful the Imperial Navy was, and when he saw the detailed information of the various fleets given to him by Gan Yongxing, he could intuitively understand how strong the Imperial Navy was at this time.

Compared with the situation at the outbreak of the war, in addition to a slight reduction in the number of battleships, and all the battlecruisers have withdrawn from the battle sequence of the Navy, the number of aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, etc., has reached three to five times the size before the outbreak of the war. It was only a little over four years, and in these four years, the Imperial Navy had lost a large number of warships, and if those lost warships were counted, then in these four years, the Empire had built warships that would have taken at least 20 or even 30 years to build in peacetime. In other words, the strength of the Imperial Navy was in fact a direct manifestation of the Empire's strong industrial and shipbuilding capabilities.

In the afternoon of the same day, Tan Renhao went to the Guangzhou shipyard with Zheng Guanhua and other senior officers in the fleet. The Guangzhou Shipyard was originally located in the port of Guangzhou, a suburb of Guangzhou, near the mouth of the Pearl River, and was originally located in the port of Guangzhou, a suburb of Guangzhou, after the end of the last war, because it needed to undertake the construction of more large warships, and the port of Guangzhou had to undertake more commercial activities. So the shipyard collectively moved out of the port, and a new shipyard was built more than 50 kilometers downstream, and after more than ten years of construction, the new shipyard has become the largest and most well-equipped shipyard in the empire. What's more, the Guangzhou Shipyard had the only large slipway in the empire that could build a 100,000-ton warship at that time, but. At that time, there was no need to build such a large battleship.

In terms of scale, the Guangzhou Shipyard belongs to the "A" class shipyard, which is one of the first four shipyards that can undertake the construction of capital ships (there are now six "A" class shipyards), and the "Lake" class aircraft carrier and the "New Provincial Capital" class battleships are partly built in the Guangzhou Shipyard. Other than that. Because the Guangzhou Shipyard was located in the southern part of the empire, it was the main base of ships supporting operations in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and the port of Guangzhou was the home port of the Fourth Task Force, so the importance of the Guangzhou shipyard can be imagined.

At that time, the Guangzhou shipyard had a slipway for the construction of battleships. One slipway for building an aircraft carrier, four slipways for a cruiser. In addition, there are six dry docks that can serve large warships, with a total length of more than 8,500 meters. Counting the temporary maintenance points, it is enough to provide normal repair and maintenance operations for all warships of a task force at the same time. In comparison, no other port, or forward repair point, can support the fleet with comparable levels to shipyards.

In fact, this is the importance of rear bases. In peacetime, most of the shipyards are responsible for the construction of civilian ships, while in wartime, they are mainly responsible for the construction of military ships. In addition to the construction of a large number of warships, the Guangzhou shipyard also undertook the construction of a large number of standard freighters. Almost every day, Shinkchi ships are launched. Almost every day, officers and men of the Navy come here to receive the ships that have been built.

When Tan Renhao and the others rushed to the shipyard, they were also stunned by the busy scene here. Because Zheng Guanhua greeted him in advance, the shipyard specially arranged for a senior engineer to accompany Tan Renhao and them to visit the shipyard, of course, the focus was to inspect the maintenance work of the warships of the First Task Force.

"Mr. He, do you have 100,000 workers here?" I saw so many workers busy. Tan Renhao was very curious.

The engineer who accompanied Tan Renhao was called He Jin, a middle-aged man in his thirties, who seemed to be a relatively important engineer in the shipyard. "General Talk, before the war, we had 80,000 workers, and in the past few years, we have been expanding every year, and now we have about 180,000 workers, and we plan to do it by the end of the year. The number of workers will increase to 200,000, otherwise. There are simply not so many tasks assigned by the Navy! ”

"Two hundred thousand!?" Tan Renhao's eyes widened and he looked at He Jin next to him, he couldn't believe his ears.

The combined officers and men of the five main task forces of the Imperial Navy were only more than 100,000. According to the current regular establishment of the Marine Corps, 200,000 workers can form at least 14 Marine Divisions, and a Marine Corps Group Army in Yan Guozhong's hands is only a maximum of 12 divisions. That is, if these 200,000 workers are armed, their size is more than one Marine Army! The Imperial Navy also had three large shipyards of comparable size to the Guangzhou Shipyard, and the two large shipyards newly qualified as Class A shipyards would not have much fewer workers than the Guangzhou Shipyard. Counting other medium-sized shipyards, small shipyards that are mainly responsible for the construction of destroyers, submarines, etc., and ordinary shipyards that are mainly responsible for the construction of cargo ships, there are more than 30 shipyards in the empire, and there are 2 million workers in these more than 30 shipyards! In addition, how many factories would have to supply these shipyards with steel, rubber, electricity, etc., and how many workers would they have to have?

"And that's just the direct participation in shipbuilding, and if you count the other factories in the surrounding area, there are about 250,000 workers now."

"Other factories around?" Tan Renhao was no longer surprised by the numbers.

"Yes, shipbuilding is actually a systems engineering." He Jin is also interested, probably rarely encountering a layman like Tan Renhao. "For example, some special spare parts needed on battleships need to be manufactured separately, which were previously contracted to other small manufacturers, but now in order to ensure the speed of the construction of warships, we have set up a separate relevant manufacturer. In addition, the alloy steel used on the battleship, especially the armor steel and cannon steel, is different from ordinary steel, and we have cooperated with several large steelmaking factories to open a new steelmaking plant in Guangzhou, so that we can use the best steel at any time without having to compete with other shipyards for the capacity of the steelworks. There is also electronic equipment, at the end of last year, the Nanjing Electronics Factory opened a branch on our side, mainly to produce radars for warships. There are also ammunition factories, and these are the basis of the support of the fleet. ”

Tan Renhao nodded slightly. This makes sense, if these factories are separated in different places, the transportation work alone will have to consume a lot of manpower and time.

"Talking about the general, please go ahead." He Jin walked towards the dock in front of him first, "This is one of the largest dry docks in our province. A few days ago, the battleship 'Guangzhou' of the Third Task Force completed its repair work here, and now it is carrying out repairs to the aircraft carrier 'Hongzehu,' which is the site of the First Task Force. The water was drained only yesterday, and now the workers are checking the overall condition of the aircraft carrier, and when the inspection is completed, we will determine the most reasonable maintenance method. Then the repair starts immediately. ”

"What kind of process is this?" Tan Renhao is indeed a little curious.

If calculated in terms of volume, the aircraft carrier can be regarded as the largest single weapon. And the aircraft carrier itself is made up of millions, if not tens of millions, of spare parts. In order for this "weapon" to exert its combat effectiveness, it is necessary to ensure that every spare part can be functioned normally. It's like millions of people doing the same thing. Maybe it's not quite right, but it's intuitive enough. If something goes wrong with one of the important spare parts, I'm afraid the weapon won't work properly. It is not easy to determine which spare part is the problem.

"In general, it is divided into three steps, one is a comprehensive inspection, that is, we are doing it now; the second is targeted maintenance and repair; The third is the final test. After completing these three steps, you will be able to take over the carrier. Of course, each step is actually divided into many smaller steps. In the past, in order to ensure that the battleship was repaired as much as possible. Each small step is separated, and now in order to buy time, many small steps are carried out at the same time, which requires us to invest more manpower, which is one of the reasons why the shipyard has to expand its staff. ”

"So, how much time does the inspection take?" Tan Renhao stood in front of the nose bow of the aircraft carrier. When the aircraft carrier is at sea. He didn't feel that the aircraft carrier was so huge, and now the aircraft carrier was parked in dry dock, and in front of him it was a hill of steel.

"We plan to complete the examination in five days, and the initial examination will probably be completed this evening, followed by a more detailed examination and diagnosis. It's like treating a patient, if we don't find the cause, we can't get the right treatment. ”

Tan Renhao looked up at the aircraft carrier, and he was also secretly shocked in his heart. When he returned to the fleet. He organized the maintenance work of the "Yangtze River". At that time, the "Yangtze River" had already completed dock repairs. Other maintenance work is being carried out next to the pier. And then Tan Renhao returned to the naval headquarters, and Hao Dongjue was in charge of the specific maintenance work, so at that time he didn't see how big the aircraft carrier was that was completely out of the water, but now he saw it with his own eyes.

He Jin also looked up at the aircraft carrier, and then continued: "After the inspection is completed, it will take us about two days to determine the specific maintenance work and arrange the relevant maintenance personnel. Judging from the current situation, if we want to ensure that the aircraft carrier can be restored to combat effectiveness as soon as possible, we must prepare at least three maintenance teams! ”

"So how much time does it take to make repairs?"

"It depends on the situation." He Jin hesitated, "We can't give a clear answer now, but judging from the results of the preliminary inspection, the damage to the aircraft carrier is not very large, most of them are minor problems, and it is not very troublesome to repair, it will take about half a month to repair." ”

"Ten days!" Tan Renhao turned his head, "I believe General Zheng has already told you that we must receive the aircraft carrier in early June, and if the final sea trial time is removed, you only have ten days to repair the aircraft carrier." ”

"This ......"

"Mr. He, the damage to the aircraft carrier is caused by weather factors, not combat damage, I believe that the difficulty of maintenance should not be very great, right?" Zheng Guanhua walked over, "And most of the maintenance work can be carried out at the same time, if there are not enough people, then you should organize more personnel to participate in the maintenance work." ”

"I will consult the chief engineer for this, we can understand the requirements of the army, after all, the war waits for no one, and time cannot be delayed." He Jin made a detour, "Don't worry, we will do our best to repair the aircraft carrier within ten days." As General Zheng said, the aircraft carrier was not damaged in combat, which is probably the luckiest, and if there was combat damage, I am afraid it would have taken several months to do a full repair. ”

Tan Renhao did not make any further requests, and the "Qiandao Lake" aircraft carrier was being repaired in another dry dock, and judging from the information obtained by Tan Renhao, it was already very good that the aircraft carrier could recover its combat effectiveness before the end of the year. Most of the warships of Task Force 1 did not have combat damage, and even if a few battleships had combat damage, it was caused by some unexpected factors, such as the explosion of large mouth light anti-aircraft guns on two cruisers, which was an accident during training, and this was also counted as combat damage.

"General Tan, let's go somewhere else!"

Subsequently, Tan Renhao and others, accompanied by He Jin, went to several other docks, as well as those warships docked next to the docks for maintenance, to inspect the situation. Because of the need for officers and men to cooperate with the shipyard in carrying out maintenance work, there were some officers and men on each warship who did not take a vacation. In addition, the officers and men of the Marine Corps, who were responsible for protecting the safety of the warships, did not take any vacation, and they all consciously stayed.

When leaving the shipyard, Tan Renhao repeatedly thanked He Jin and the Guangzhou Shipyard, and he did not forget to tell the middle-aged engineer again, and hoped that the shipyard could do its best to repair the warships of the First Task Force.

"What do you think of the shipyard arrangement?" After getting into the car, Tan Renhao asked Zheng Guanhua.

"It is roughly the same time as we planned, and the shipyard has made assurances that the delivery of these ships to us in early June should not be a big problem."

Tan Renhao pondered for a moment and said, "After I go back, organize a group of officers who have returned to the team and let them be responsible for the maintenance of the battleship." ”

"It's putting pressure on the shipyard, and it's supposed to be the back of office, so if we get involved, will it have a bad impact?"

"What do you do with so much? We're just going to put some pressure on the shipyard, I'll contact the headquarters, you just need to keep an eye on the shipyard! ”

Zheng Guanhua didn't say anything more, and now ensuring that the fleet recovers its combat effectiveness is the most important task.