The first generation of aircraft carriers has a straight-through straight flight deck, while the second generation aircraft carrier has a beveled flight deck as the main symbol.

The warships of the Tang Empire began to design the next generation of aircraft carriers when they built the Tianwang-class aircraft carriers in accordance with the rules of design, development and construction, and service.

The Doukui class is not as announced to the public, with a standard displacement of 30,000 tons, a speed of 33 knots, a deck length of 260 meters, and 100 aircraft. In fact, the Tang Army is also hiding its strength, deliberately weakening the tonnage of aircraft carriers so as not to provoke the great powers of various countries.

The design displacement of the Doukui-class aircraft carrier has actually reached 40,000 tons, the through-type straight deck is 270 meters long, the beveled flight deck is 200 meters long, the draft is 10 meters, and the starboard side of the ship is equipped with a trapezoidal octahedral bridge, 18 floors design, 13 floors above deck, 5 layers below deck, the trapezoidal octahedral bridge design has also become one of the signature symbols of various types of aircraft carriers of the Tang Imperial Navy in the future.

The armor is a highlight of the Doukui-class aircraft carrier, which is built according to the hull of the battleship, with the main armor of the waterline belt up to 300 mm thick and the horizontal deck of 280 mm, using HM1 hot-made special steel specially developed by Datang Iron and Steel Company for aircraft carriers, the special steel is forged using a 15,000-ton hydraulic press imported from Germany, and is made of deep-sea manganese nodules as alloy raw materials, which has many characteristics such as high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, and crit resistance. It is also the crystallization of the hard work of the R&D department of Datang Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. after taking the technology-based R&D route at any expense in order to get rid of the loss-making situation, and comprehensively surpasses the mainstream Krupp military steel in the world.

Such strong armor protection. It is also the main factor that caused the displacement of the Doukui-class aircraft carrier to reach 40,000 tons. The total weight of the armor is as high as 12,000 tons, including the hangar, ammunition depot, engine room and other key parts are also focused on armor protection, of which the armor of the ammunition depot reaches 450 mm. Prevent attacks on ammunition depots that lead to the detonation of aircraft carriers.

Of course, the allocation of 12000 tons of armor was not only for defense. Since the Doukui-class aircraft carrier is the first aircraft carrier with an oblique flight deck in Shijie, and all countries have no design experience in this area before, the warship designers of the General Administration of Ships of the Tang Empire have carefully considered that such a behemoth, an aircraft carrier is equivalent to the flight deck area of two aircraft carriers of other countries, and its nautical performance and wave resistance must be handled carefully. Otherwise, in the event of sea trials, there may be a danger of disintegration due to the crashing of huge waves.

After all, it is the first time, and there is no room for mistakes, after all, the Tang Empire and Japan have become mortal enemies. Both sides are engaged in a large-scale naval arms race, and the Datang Navy is currently two to three years ahead of the Japanese Navy, and if the Doukui-class aircraft carriers make a major mistake, the Japanese Navy will catch up. It will have a significant impact on the national security of the Tang Empire.

Even Zhang Meng listened to the opinions of the General Administration of Ships. It also said that it is steady and steady, step by step, anyway, Zhang Meng has robbed back tens of billions of dollars from Europe, and the funds for building ships are sufficient, and it is understandable to spend more money to buy security guarantees and accumulate experience in building ships. Therefore, on the issue of excessive armor protection of the Doukui-class aircraft carrier, Zhang Meng considered the importance of structural stability, and during the future dangerous Pacific War, one more inch of armor protection would have a better chance of winning. A design scheme for a significant increase in armor was approved.

According to the design speed standard of 33 knots, in order to drive this behemoth. The power system adopts 8 oil-fired boilers, 4 sets of steam turbine systems, 4 shafts and 4 propeller drives, with an output of 220,000 horsepower, 7,000 tons of high-quality fuel, and a cruising range of 8,000 nautical miles at 25 knots and 4,000 nautical miles at 30 knots.

The entire deck area of the Doukui-class aircraft carrier with an oblique flight deck can be divided into three parts: take-off area, standby area and landing area, and carrier-based aircraft such as Raptor or Hellfire can be taken off and landed at the same time to form a continuous combat cycle system, greatly improve the combat performance of the aircraft carrier, and shorten the combat readiness time, which is also one of the leading advantages of the second-generation aircraft carrier over the first-generation aircraft carrier.

In addition, the expansion of the deck area has also made the number of aircraft carried by the Doukui-class aircraft carrier one-third more than that of the Tianwang-class, with 54 Raptor heavy carrier-based fighters of three squadrons and 54 Hellfire heavy carrier-based bombers of three squadrons, 8 FC-1 torpedo reconnaissance planes, and 4 hangar reserves.

The number of catapults has been increased to three, two sets of axial take-off decks, and one set of beveled decks to provide rapid ejection missions in case of emergency. There are three elevators, one apron in front and one on the front and rear of the island, and one in the take-off area.

The most striking thing is that the Doukui-class aircraft carrier will be equipped with an air defense weapon system similar to the future Russian Kashtan close-in defense gun for the first time, codenamed MK1 Vulcan Phalanx air defense weapon system, which is a twin 7-barreled 30 mm caliber Gatling cannon, rotating turret design, firing range of 1500 to 5000 meters, firing height of 5 to 3500 meters, rate of fire of 3000 rounds per minute, reserve ammunition 1500 rounds, spiral chain feeding, external independent motor drive.

Since there is no fire control computer and electro-optical radar system at present, the Vulcan phalanx cannot automatically lock on to the target and fire, so it needs to be manually operated by five gunners. However, it is equipped with an advanced cast optoelectronic sight system, and the accuracy has been greatly improved.

This Vulcan phalanx system is a concept proposed by Zhang Meng, handed over to the gun designers of the Ordnance Department to develop, is still in the process of intensive testing, is expected to be completed before the launch of the Doukui-class aircraft carrier, will not affect the new aircraft carrier equipped with this powerful anti-aircraft weapon time.

The Doukui-class aircraft carrier is expected to be equipped with 12 Vulcan phalanx systems to form a powerful anti-aircraft fire network.

At the same time, the other escort warships of the Tang Army's aircraft carrier battle group will also be equipped with the MK1 Vulcan Phalanx system in the future to improve the overall air defense capability of the aircraft carrier battle group and improve the survivability of the battlefield.

The four ships, Chiyou, Lizhu, Yinglong, and Kuafu, which were announced to be super battleships, were nominally announced to be building battleships, but in fact they were next-class aircraft carriers, and their tonnage was much larger than that of the Doukui-class aircraft carriers, which was an enlarged version of it. However, the pace of construction has been deliberately slowed down, and the construction period has been extended by one to two years, staggered with the construction of the four Doukui-class aircraft carriers. The main reason is the lack of experience in the construction of second-generation aircraft carriers, and after the completion of the four Doukui-class aircraft carriers, Datang has the experience and jishu in building second-generation aircraft carriers, and then complete the construction according to the situation.

However, the eight main large aircraft carriers in the future also need to be matched with a large number of escort warships to form an aircraft carrier battle group, the Tang Empire's land area is limited, the large shipyard docks are insufficient, and several shipyard dock facilities built in the Fiji Islands are still under construction, and they cannot be put into use immediately, so the Tang Empire ordered warships from the European and American powers.

In order to appease Britain and France, and at the same time to alleviate the United States' concerns about the Tang Empire, Zhang Meng decided to continue to order 12 Lin Xian-class light cruisers from Britain, 40 Utopia-class destroyers from France, and 20 Gridley-class destroyers from the United States.

The Gridley class is a super-destroyer with 16 torpedo tubes, and the U.S. military reached a high speed of 40 knots during sea trials. Zhang Meng knew that this very successful destroyer had played a great role in night battles with the Japanese fleet, so he favored it and prepared to use it for night combat readiness patrols in fleets, ports, and naval bases.

The Gridley-class super destroyer has a full load displacement of 2,286 tons, a standard speed of 36.5 knots, and four single-barreled 5-inch high-level dual-purpose guns (the A and B main guns have turrets, and the X and Y main guns have no turrets), four quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes, four 1.1-inch anti-aircraft guns, and two anti-submarine depth charge catapults.

The surface ships of the Tang Navy are in full swing, but the development and design of submarines are difficult to deliver, mainly because in the current Pacific naval battle, the submarines of the Tang Army played a limited role, except for reconnaissance operations, did not participate in large-scale fleet operations, and did not suffer any battle damage.

In addition, the level of personal knowledge of the submariners also limited the enhancement of the combat strength of the submarines of the Tang Army to a certain extent, so Zhang Meng specially set up a submarine training center at the Longmen Naval Base, and specially invited internationally renowned submarine experts to give lectures to help improve the knowledge level of the submariners of the Tang Army.

The underwater submarine navigation of submarines has always been a key bottleneck that plagues the Tang Army's submarine fleet to enhance its combat effectiveness, Zhang Meng asked the submarine research and development department to design AIP submarines that do not rely on air propulsion, which is obviously a huge and difficult project, which belongs to pulling out seedlings and fueling it, and it is still impossible to complete it at present, at least the relevant supporting hardware facilities cannot do it.

Because submarines had no experience in major wars, the Datang Navy crushed the Japanese Navy with its aircraft carrier battle group, which made the submarine fleet have no achievements and was despised by various departments of the Navy, and in the end the Admiralty only approved the construction of 20 additional V-4 submarines at the San Francisco United Shipyard, and no new submarines were built.

However, Zhang Meng soon deployed a starvation campaign against Japan, one of which was to break the war against Japan, destroy Japan's resource supply, and also require submarines to mine down Japan's coastal waters and blockade Japanese ports and shipping lanes.

Zhang Meng was ready to fight with the Japanese devils, and submarines were an important part of it, so under Zhang Meng's special order, the Admiralty ordered an additional 40 V-4 submarines, bringing the total number of submarines in the Tang Army to about 120 in the next two or three years.

Although both the Tang Empire and the Japanese Empire were engaged in a large-scale arms race, Zhang Meng would not wait for the Japanese to build new warships to rebuild the combined fleet. (To be continued......)