Chapter 325: The Bloody Battle in the Pacific (2)

The same is true for equipment. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 infoMaintaining a large military force in peacetime is not only a cost of construction, but also a very staggering expense for daily consumption of fuel parts and various maintenance costs.

In addition, with the continuous progress of science and technology, many times when the equipment has just come out, the technology is not bad, and it will gradually become backward after a few years. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Navy.

From the beginning of the sail era to the emergence of rear-loading artillery, from the hull wrapped with copper to resist artillery bombardment to the use of military steel plates to realize ironclad ships, from sail navigation to the era of power technology. The continuous progress of science and technology also means that the technical equipment that previously consumed a lot of money, materials, manpower and material resources will be quickly eliminated.

Japan bought the Americans about two years. In the past two years, the Ming Navy was exhausted by the Japanese and was unable to launch effective attacks and threats against the American continent. The Americans took advantage of this time to quickly convert national power into military production, greatly expanding their armed forces and training a large number of combat personnel.

By the end of 1941, the U.S. Navy had 22 battleships in active service. Ten of them were old super-dreadnoughts, and three batches of twelve new-style fast battleships. Like the Japanese Navy, the main target of these new fast battleships was also the new provincial capital class battleships of the Ming Navy.

Among these battleships, the old Nevada-class battleships Nevada-class and USS Oklahoma were placed in the Atlantic Ocean to serve as escort ships for the North Atlantic route and naval training ships. The other twenty battleships were deployed on the west coast.

Including the USS Pennsylvania, USS Arizona, USS Tennessee, USS California, USS New Mexico, USS Mississippi, USS Idaho, USS New York, these eight vintage superintrepts. The eight battleships were essentially used as an artillery fleet, and their speed and firepower, as well as a variety of other technical indicators, could no longer keep up with the actions of a modern naval fleet.

The main fleet of the Navy can accompany the Colorado, West Virginia, North Carolina, Washington, South Dakota, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Alabama, which were built to deal with the new provincial capital class of the Ming Navy. Later, when the Ming Navy launched the new provincial capital-class battleships again, the US Navy urgently revised its shipbuilding plan and launched the latest Iowa-class battleships. The first four ships of the USS Iowa, the USS New Jersey, Missouri

and Wisconsin have officially entered service. And in the Navy shipyard, four more are under intense construction. However, it has ended everywhere, and neither the Ming nor the United States has the idea or action of continuing to build new battleships. The sea of the future no longer belonged to battleships.

In addition to this, four other battleships of the U.S. Navy were sunk in previous wars. One was an old super-dreadnought battleship that was sunk by the Ming Navy's ocean-going submarines while escorting a shipping fleet in the North Atlantic. The other three old super-dreadnoughts were destroyed by the Ming Navy during several previous fierce naval battles that had erupted around the Hawaiian Islands.

The three super-dreadnoughts that were sunk in the naval battle were technologically backward, and their speed was far from keeping up with the aircraft carrier formation. After being discovered by the Ming naval aviation, groups of fighter formations sent tens of thousands of tons of warships to the bottom of the sea with massive armor-piercing shells and aviation torpedoes.

It was the loss of these three battleships that forced the US Navy to decide to convert all the old super-dreadnoughts into shelling warships and no longer join the ranks of ocean-going naval operations. These behemoths, which cost countless money and materials, were reduced to heavy shallow gunboats, waiting to play a role when the Ming army launched a landing operation.

In addition, after the United States switched to wartime production, many warships that had been started before the war were quickly produced. At the same time, more battleship keels were laid out in various shipyards. In just over two years, the Americans raised the number of their regular aircraft carriers to forty.

Except that the Langley and Raider remained in Norfolk as training carriers. All of the U.S. Navy's regular aircraft carriers are deployed on the West Coast.

Like the battleships, the U.S. Navy lost nearly 30 aircraft carriers in several fierce battles with the Ming Navy in the past, and now there are 31 regular aircraft carriers that can be put into battle. However, they also have a number of aircraft carriers in the shipyard that are laying keels or outfitting.

The U.S. aircraft carriers deployed on the West Coast include two Lexington-class, three Yorktown-class, one Wasp-class, and twenty-five Essex-class fleet carriers built to counter the Daming Naval Lake-class aircraft carriers. In addition, the U.S. Navy is advancing the construction of a new aircraft carrier, and the construction of a new president-class regular aircraft carrier is on the agenda.

In the previous brutal naval and air battles with the Ming Navy around the Hawaiian Islands, all nine ships of the U.S. Navy were independent. The Li-class light aircraft carrier and nearly twenty escort aircraft carriers were sunk. This led the U.S. Navy to believe that light aircraft carriers, with slow speeds, weak armor and low aircraft, were not suitable for a full-fledged naval battle. Therefore, they sent all the remaining escort carriers to the Atlantic to escort the convoy.

This approach of the US Navy is similar to that of the Ming Navy. After the baptism of storm in the early days of the war, the aircraft carrier has officially established itself as the supremacy of the sea, driving the former king battleships into an extremely embarrassing situation.

And the war during this period showed that only regular aircraft carriers with high speed, strong armored defenses, and a large aircraft load were able to join the naval battle. The other so-called light aircraft carriers and escort aircraft carriers converted from various ships are basically nothing more than cannon fodder.

During the decisive battle with the Japanese Navy, the Ming Navy sent escort aircraft carriers several times, and almost every time they were completely annihilated. This made the Ming Navy determined to abandon this temporary product with low cost, fast production speed, but very weak viability. All escort carriers were redeployed for training purposes and escort convoys.

So far, in the Pacific theater, the escorts of both sides have hardly joined the official battlefield. The vast Pacific Ocean became the domain of large regular fleet aircraft carriers.

In addition to these main warships, the US Navy has deployed more than a hundred light and heavy cruisers on the west coast. Including Cleveland-class, Atlanta-class, Brooklyn-class, Omaha class, Oakland class, Alaska class, Baltimore class, New Orleans class, Portland class, Northampton class, Pensacra class and many other types of cruisers with a total number of more than 100.

In the past two years, these warships have undergone large-scale renovations, installed new anti-aircraft firepower, radar and other advanced equipment, and greatly strengthened their combat capability.

Especially when the battle with the Ming Navy for the Hawaiian Islands was fiercely fought before, and it was severely repaired by the proximity fuse shells suddenly equipped by the Ming Navy. The Americans were determined to develop their own proximity fuses and equip all their capital warships with new artillery.

The time that the Japanese bought for the Americans was not wasted. The Americans have seized this precious time to improve their strength in all aspects. Moreover, before the defeat of the Japanese, they also handed over all the valuable experience they had gained from fighting the Ming Dynasty to the Americans. One of the most important is anti-submarine.

Because of Zhang Cheng's guidance, the submarine unit of the Ming Navy was in absolute technological and tactical leadership from the beginning.

From the application of silencing tiles to snorkel technology, from high-performance battery packs to sophisticated underwater detection equipment. Coupled with advanced tactics, the submarine force of the Ming Navy has become a discolored sea wolf force among the allied navies.

Since the beginning of the war, the Ming Navy has a total of 210 submarines of various types. In total, they sank more than a thousand Allied ships of all types, with a total tonnage of nearly seven million tons. Most of them were Japanese ships as well as American transports transporting supplies for the allies. There are also quite a few warships.

Because of the advanced technology of the submarine force of the Ming Navy, the navies of the allied countries were helpless against these elusive submarines many times. And the Japanese, after suffering a major blow, passed on to the Americans the experience they summed up, prompting the Americans to improve their anti-submarine technology.

The newly designed and produced destroyers of the Americans, as well as those reconstructed, have been able to gradually threaten the advanced Daming submarine forces.

At this moment, under the restriction of the upper limit of the scientific and technological level, Daming's submarine technology has actually gradually climbed to the pinnacle of science and technology. Unless there are breakthrough technologies such as nuclear power technology, submarine detection radar and sensitive sonar, submarine-launched missiles, etc. Otherwise, the current Daming Navy submarines are already at their peak.

The U.S. Navy has deployed hundreds of destroyers with strong air and anti-submarine capabilities on the West Coast. In addition to the Fletcher-class destroyers used as the main force, they also have hundreds of destroyers of various types such as Mahan-class, Porter-class, Sims-class, Sampson-class, Gridley-class, Farragat class, Summers-class, Bagley-class, Benson-class, Livermore-class, Sumner-class, etc. These destroyers closely guarded the entire west coast.

At this time, most of the submarine units of the Ming Navy had been dispatched to the submarine bases in North Africa, especially Casablanca and Rabat, to attack and block the Atlantic route. Most of the Daming submarine units left in the Pacific region are trump cards among aces, and their main opponents have also become warships of the US Navy.

Because there are not many freighters in the Pacific Ocean that can hunt at the moment, and most of them sail near the coastline of the Americas. If you run over and attack, you will basically lose more than you gain. As the Ming gradually turned to the advantage, the role of the submarine was slowly decreasing.

On the contrary, as the Ming Dynasty regained its original front after defeating Japan, its own maritime supply lines were exposed. The Americans began mass production of submarines to attack on the supply line of the Ming Dynasty. (To be continued.) )