The moon is clear and bright, reflecting the magnificent Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin like a silver-plated veil.

In front of the wide desk, Qing Ying was looking at a battleship design drawing in front of him with a smile on his face, and on the light blue paper, Italian letters could be seen everywhere in the notes. As time passed, the demonic smile on the corner of his mouth grew thicker; After a while, he finally slapped it on the desk and let out a laugh full of joy.

According to the news from the relevant departments, the Italian Navy has officially restarted the modification project of the Caracciolo-class battleship, and the final result of its modification is the drawing in Qingying's hand. By any measure, this is a battlecruiser that best suits Fisher's original intentions, designed entirely to hunt down enemy cruisers. And the hangar and aircraft in the stern of the ship were completely reduced to the circumvention of the treaty, and if it were not for the title of "aircraft carrier", the Italians would not have wasted their precious weight on it!

In the original plan of Qing Ying, it was to take advantage of the second decade of the 20th century, when aviation technology was still in the ascendant, to lead aircraft carriers, which were also new things, to the traditional artillery level, so as to lay a solid foundation for the German Navy to occupy the commanding heights in the future. What he didn't expect was that the Italians would be so good at creating such a freak directly on the body of their high-speed battleship; If there is any ship in history that resembles it, it is the two air battleships that Japan rebuilt in the latter part of the Pacific War.

Once this form of aircraft carrier is born, its huge advantages over traditional cruisers in terms of firepower and speed will inevitably arouse great concern and follow-up from all countries. Even a handful of people have extraordinary sensitivity and foresight about the future trends of this ship class. It is determined that aviation is its main strength. But in the context of the trend of the times. Equipping aircraft carriers with enough artillery is still indispensable!

Compared to the artillery design of the Italians, the experimental aircraft carrier that the Germans started construction in November 1915 was much shabby. On the blueprints of the soon-to-be-named "Black Swan", the strongest firepower is the four 88mm anti-aircraft guns, which are as weak as a machine gun mounted on the chassis of a mouse tank compared to its standard displacement of 15,000 tons. In terms of external dimensions, the Black Swan has also changed the previous German warships tried their best to control the size of the ship to save the weight of the structure, but has become unprecedented fluent and flamboyant. At more than 230 meters long, the ship is nearly 30 meters longer than the 37,000-ton Bavaria-class battleship, while its width is 24 meters. The slender range of the body is second only to the high-speed torpedo boats in the German Navy!

For Qingying's ship design, almost all designers are puzzled. Because if he wanted to achieve the speed of 30 knots he required, it was not necessary to pull the battleship to such a long length; What's more, you also have a bulbous bow, a large square tail, and a tail plate, which are three fluid opening artifacts, and accelerating to 1.5 knots on flat ground is not a problem at all. Even for take-off and landing, this length is too large to be deserved: based on the experience gained on its predecessor the American Falcon, the Black Swan also uses an all-through deck that runs through the end and reaches a length of 220 meters, which is too extravagant for both take-off and landing.

However, Qingying's doing so is obviously based on deeper considerations for later generations. For an aircraft carrier. The most important thing is to have a strong enough sea and air attack ability, and a long enough flight deck. is the key to realizing this principle. Although Qing Ying's knowledge of the Barbarian Aircraft Carrier was far less than his knowledge of the orthodox gunboats, he also knew some basic knowledge: a longer flight deck would allow the aircraft carrier to have more aircraft on the deck to drive when launching an attack wave, thus greatly improving its combat effectiveness. Based on World War II estimates, if an aircraft carrier has a flight deck length of only 200 meters, it will only be able to deploy aircraft released in an attack wave on a deck length of about 80 meters in the rear. And if this length is increased to 220 meters, then the length that can be used to arrange the aircraft will be greatly increased to 100 meters, which is a quarter more than the former The ability to fly fighters!

In addition, the higher requirements for take-off distance of bombers and torpedo aircraft also give aircraft carriers a more considerable marginal effect on the length of the flight deck. Since only bombers and torpedo engines can pose a direct threat to the enemy fleet, theoretically more of these aircraft should be sent in the event of a sea attack, and because these aircraft have more flight distance, this undoubtedly makes an aircraft carrier with sufficient flight deck length have a far superior attack power to a short and small aircraft carrier. Also compared with the previous deck length, the 200-meter-long aircraft carrier only has about 40 meters of rear space for bombers and torpedo machines, while the 220-meter-long aircraft carrier has 60 meters, which is 50% more than the former! This is undoubtedly a decisive advantage for aircraft carriers with aircraft as the only weapon of attack.

In fact, as long as there is a factor of take-off distance, the factor of the length of the aircraft carrier's deck will always have a considerable marginal effect in terms of attack power. This effect will continue to intensify if a new aircraft with a larger take-off distance is introduced. Therefore, Qingying abandoned the traditional design style, and instead pursued the slenderness of the shape and the openness of the deck on the aircraft carrier. In addition to the reason of flying fighters, building a larger hangar for the aircraft carrier is also Qingying's intention to make the ship bigger; If the traditional battleship configuration is maintained, 37,000 tons is barely more than 200 meters long, then this hangar can accommodate only a handful of aircraft!

In terms of protection, the Black Swan naturally takes preventing strikes from the air as the only thing. Since the German designers have achieved flat acceleration fluid opening under the leadership of Qingying, this allows them to save a considerable part of the power weight for protection compared to the normal 30 knots. This was also a key factor in the greater performance of German warships than other ships. The horizontal deck of the ship's ammunition depot area has reached 50 mm, which can ensure that the battleship will not be directly killed by a single aerial bomb on a considerable distance; The power compartment can only run naked due to weight limitations, and the expectation of not being hit by enemy bullets will be the only hope for the sailors working in this area to survive in battle.

Due to the attack from the air and torpedo aircraft, Qingying also tried his best to lay an underwater TDS defense for this 15,000-ton experimental aircraft carrier. Also benefiting from the volume reduction caused by the fluid opening of the power system, the Black Swan has a considerable 3.5-meter-wide lightning depth relative to its tonnage, while Qingying erected a 35-millimeter-thick line of highly elastic homogeneous steel for it after arranging three levels of cabins. For less powerful aerial torpedoes, this TDS level can barely maintain the intake range of the battleship after the mine. And if you are hit by a torpedo fired by a submarine or destroyer, you can only expect that the hit position is not lethal enough, or that the damage control personnel can respond most effectively.

It is worth mentioning that the Black Swan was also the first German warship to massively use the method of integrating armor into the hull. Prior to this, in order to save weight, Qingying had already used this technique in the TDS of the Bavaria-class and Hanover-class treaty heavy cruises, that is, the part was no longer simply stored as armor weight, but was integrated into the hull and participated in the calculation of the structural strength of the battleship. On this experimental aircraft carrier, Qingying has promoted this method to almost all parts of the armor involved in a large area: in addition to the 35 mm TDS, the ship has also been used in the horizontal armor of the ammunition depot and the waterline armor. The waterline of the core cabin of the Black Swan is a light armor 2 meters high and 30 mm thick, which is integrated into the hull structure together with the upper and lower parts; In the event of a near-miss attack, this light armor can keep most of the bomb fragments out of the ship, greatly reducing the difficulty of draining and plugging leaks for damage control troops.

In order to provide technical reserves for ships to be built in the future, the ship is also preparing to implement technological innovation in some non-important parts instead of riveting with welding. Compared to the traditional butting with rivets, welding with molten metal can undoubtedly save a lot of structural weight: although the overall design level of the German Bismarck-class battleship was low, the structural weight reduction caused by the extensive use of welding is also one of its few bright spots. In the unfortunate case of building a hull that was significantly larger than its tonnage, its structural weight was only 27.06% of the standard displacement, which was almost the lowest of the new battleships of all countries!

In less than two years, the full-time aircraft carrier Black Swan will be completed and put into service, and the German Navy will enter a new aviation era. Feeling the vicissitudes of time, Qingying couldn't help but sigh in his heart, although time has a mysterious delay or even stop passing on the body of his traveler, but the promotion of this era is still unstoppable: his beloved orthodox cannon giant ship is about to enter the twilight, and it is time for him to study aircraft carriers and new types of sea and air operations in the future.

The moon was clear, the stars were shining, and scattered gray clouds fluttered quietly in the sky. Qingying put away the intelligence drawings on the table, pushed open the door instead, and walked towards his living room. Due to the delay in this matter, she worked several hours later than usual, and Sanya, the gluttonous princess creature, must have been waiting impatiently in the room, right?

While smiling to herself, Qingying suddenly noticed a small figure flashing around the corner of the corridor in front of her. Although the time was extremely short, he recognized his daughter Elena at a glance. Qingying, who saw this scene, was surprised, it was already after 10 o'clock at night, where was she going to go when she had already slept? (To be continued......)

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