The spring sun of the Mediterranean lazily shone into the room, and early in the morning, several "visiting" guests came to Admiral Chen Shiying's ward.

Admiral Chen personally commanded the battle on the destroyer "Wuhu" during the defense of Zhenjiang, but was seriously wounded, and due to the medical conditions in the Wuhan hospital, a piece of shrapnel in his chest could not be removed, so he had to be transferred to Europe, and he underwent surgery again in the Imperial Navy Hospital in Trieste to remove the shrapnel in his chest.

General Chen was not idle while recuperating in the hospital, and he had been keeping an eye on the progress of the construction of the two domestically built aircraft carriers that the Italian side was outfitting. In the battle to defend the Yangtze River, he had enough of the hardships of the Japanese military planes and turned into an out-and-out "aviation victory" figure.

"According to the opinion of the Austro-Hungarian naval engineering and technical personnel, the flight decks of the 'Jiangsu' and 'Fujian' need to be extended, the hangar and the entire superstructure have been greatly changed, and the entire renovation period will take about a year and a half to complete. However, the Italians did seem to be loose, and no matter how tight the deadline was, the shipyard workers never refused to work overtime. An Austro-Hungarian engineer said that the Italians would have to rebuild the two aircraft carriers long enough for the Austro-Hungarian shipyard to build two new aircraft carriers. Han Yuheng, who is in charge of the aircraft carrier construction project, is reporting the progress to Chen Shiying.

"If we want to defeat Japan completely, we need to build a strong navy, we need to have more aircraft carriers, and the Japanese now have nine aircraft carriers, and it will take us a long [time] effort." Chen Shiying said, "After the Admiralty's vigorous efforts, the government has agreed to allocate about 700 million marks of the funds raised from Germany and Austria to the navy for the purchase of warships from the two countries, and I mean all of them will be purchased as aircraft carriers." "The Qinzhou shipyard has already started production, capable of building two 20,000-ton warships and four 6,000-ton warships at the same time." We were able to build frigates ourselves, the problem now is that we can't build capital ships yet. ”

"I've inquired about this, and the cost of an aircraft carrier of the same displacement in the Austro-Hungarian Navy and the 'Jiangsu' class is about 93 million crowns, but I heard that they are preparing to build a larger aircraft carrier." Han Yuheng said.

"It's a pity that we have limited funds, so I would like to ask President Wang, Ambassador He and Ambassador Yang to contact the German and Austrian governments first to see their attitude. Such a large-scale arms deal could not be concealed from others, and they dared to secretly support our war of resistance, but they were not necessarily willing to openly oppose the Japanese. ”

Chinese naval aviation is currently training with the Austro-Hungarian Navy's "Attila", for which the aircraft carrier has postponed the refit program. The Austro-Hungarian Navy in the "von . The USS Archduchess Golden" experimented with a new type of extended flight deck, with the upper hangar and flight deck tilted outwards to the exterior of the hull, so that anti-aircraft guns, various pipes, cables, and elevators were installed in the outward extension of the hangar. Not only did it expand the capacity of the hangar, but it also made it possible to expand the area of the flight deck by almost a fifth.

This is a major breakthrough in aircraft carrier construction technology, and after practice, such an improvement has indeed achieved great results," said v. The number of aircraft carriers on the USS Archduchess has increased from 72 to 106, and the flight deck has been extended by 6.8 meters to the front and rear and widened by 7.6 meters, making it more conducive to aircraft take-off and landing operations.

After the real yàn has the exact result. The remaining two aircraft carriers of the same class of the Austro-Hungarian Navy also returned to the shipyard for the renovation of the deck and superstructure. At the same time, four new heavy aircraft carriers were built at the shipyard with corresponding changes. As a result of such changes, the construction of Chinese aircraft carriers has been delayed again.

However, such a transformation is also beneficial, and the number of carrier-based aircraft has increased from 54 to 76 after the transformation of the warships called by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and the combat power has been significantly improved.

Another important project of the modification of Chinese warships in Italy is the radar of air defense.

Radar is an electronic device that uses electromagnetic waves to detect targets. It emits radio waves outward and receives their echoes, which are displayed on the cathode ray tube to determine and discover targets, and to determine position, direction of movement, velocity and other characteristics.

The Italian Marconi first proposed the concept of the first echo positioning system on a merchant ship, but it is difficult to say who was the inventor of the first radar, and the Germans, Americans and British all carried out research in this area in the early days and achieved certain results. It is now widely believed that the first military radar to be put into practical use was developed by the British. Among them is the British scientist Robert . Watson-Watt played a key role. Watson-Watt, then director of the radio research office of the National Physics Laboratory in the United Kingdom, led the use of radio cathode ray tubes to receive and display radio echoes in the early 30s of the 20th century, and measured the time from the time of emission to reflection of radio waves, so as to determine the height of the ionosphere. In 1934, when he was commissioned by the British Army to study a device for detecting aircraft in the air using radio waves, he made full use of the research results he had obtained to quickly develop an experimental device for air warning radar. Watson-Watt put on a radar show for the leaders of the military department, and the radar detected aircraft at a distance of kilometers. Later improved, by January 1936, the Watson-Watt radar had a detection range of 120 miles. With the advantages of small size and long observation distance, in order to deal with German submarines floating at night, the British decided to put the radar on the plane. In July 1937, the world's first airborne radar was successfully developed by a research team led by British scientist Edward Bowen. Bowen et al. began developing airborne radar in 1935.

The radar of the German-Austrian military was also carried out almost simultaneously, and also achieved similar results as the British.

The Italians did not start late in the development of radar and ultrasonic detectors, as early as 1935, Professor Tiberto of the Institute of Radio and Communications began to lead a technical group to conduct research on radar, and in 1937 had already developed meter-wave and decimeter-wave radars that met the technical requirements, but the Italian military realized the role of radar during the exchange of intelligence with Germany and Austria, and began to equip the navy and air defense forces with this new type of radio detection equipment.

As the only equipment that the Italians could get their hands on and whose performance was not lagging behind that of Germany and Austria, the Italian Navy recommended their products to the Chinese at the behest of Mussolini. Since the Chinese warship is being refitted in Italy, the Navy has purchased two sets of radar and radio underwater listening equipment from the Italian company Ducati Radio Equipment for testing first.

Ducati is a company specializing in the manufacture of radio equipment, the main products are radio communication equipment, and has a good cooperative relationship with the Italian military, as early as 1934, Ducati cooperated with Professor Tiberto to begin to develop new radar and sonar equipment.

Ducati supplied two ECR-3 radars and three ECS-2 sonar systems, and although many technical flaws were found in the tests, they still showed a certain effect, and the ECR-3 radar was able to detect ships more than a dozen kilometers away and aircraft dozens of kilometers away in the dark light and night, which is simply not possible with the human eye. The stability of the ECS-2 sonar system is better, and the cruiser "Fuzhou", equipped with sonar, spotted a submarine submerging underwater in six out of ten tests, which is already a remarkable achievement. (To be continued......) R1292