ps: Thank you for the monthly ticket voted by the book friend "Red Sun", and ask for a recommendation vote ^_^ by the way

And with the maturity of long-wave warning radar (long-wave can go forward around the earth's surface and is not affected by the earth's surface, but the detection accuracy is poor, and it can only judge the approximate direction and distance of the enemy ship, and the only role is to give early warning.\\) jishu, when it is used together with microwave radar, the latter's defects limited by the earth's surface are compensated, and the value of seaplane detection is even smaller.

As for letting seaplanes carry aerial bombs to carry out bombing missions, it is even more unreliable, a flight consumes a lot of fuel, but the bombs can't carry much, and with the snail-like slow speed of seaplanes, the enemy can easily shoot them down as long as they have a little air defense ability, which is far less convenient and cost-effective than directly using naval guns, and it must be known that the Chinese Navy is not facing an opponent like the Chinese army that lacks air defense capabilities like the devil's navy (so the seaplane has a larger attack range than naval guns has become an advantage)

Seaplanes are good for anti-submarine purposes, and objectively they are of great value, but the six water reconnaissance planes carried on the two heavy cruisers alone have a limited role after all, and if there are special anti-submarine ships to accompany them, then there is no need to let the two heavy cruisers take the risk of carrying seaplanes, because the requirements for the tonnage of seaplanes to carry ships are not much higher than those of carrier-based helicopters in later generations, and warships of two or three thousand tons or even smaller can be carried, while even if medium-sized ships are blown up, the losses will certainly be much smaller than those of heavy cruisers.

When it comes to helicopters, Hu Weidong naturally understands its value, but the manpower is limited. Jishu is not easy (the key is that it is difficult to mass produce and ensure reliability), for the time being, we can only focus on the introduction of ready-made jishu from Germany, although German helicopters were not used on the battlefield during World War II, but most of the jishu difficulties have been overcome, and it is far more cost-effective to improve on this basis than to study it from scratch

The space freed up after the removal of seaplanes and catapults was replaced by 6 anti-submarine deep bomb launchers to ensure that the Zhiyuan-class heavy cruisers would fight alone (China has no overseas bases, and once the heavy cruisers enter the open ocean, destroyers whose endurance cannot keep up are a burden. There is also anti-submarine capability sufficient for self-protection (the sonar is housed in the bulbous bow structure of the bow, which is also a big advantage, not only is it more effective). And the speed does not decrease but increases. ）。 Two of them are 12-tube rocket depth bomb launchers, which are used to attack submarines at a distance, and four are ordinary anti-submarine depth bomb launchers, which are used to attack enemy submarines approaching their own ships. Although these depth charges may detonate after being attacked by the enemy, because of the use of sound proximity fuses, the anti-submarine efficiency of depth charges has been greatly improved, and the charge has been greatly reduced, generally only twenty or thirty kilograms (anyway, there was no such big thing as nuclear submarines during World War II, with the help of proximity fuses. The lethality is enough. ), even if it is detonated by an enemy attack. Nor was it powerful enough to blow through the reinforced horizontal decks of the Zhiyuan-class heavy cruisers, and the threat was far less than that of seaplanes, catapults, and their powder magazines

The torpedo tubes have long been removed, and the weight of the six anti-submarine deep-bomb launchers is also smaller than that of the three seaplanes and their related facilities; in addition, some unnecessary loads inside the warships have been cleaned up one after another, and the dead weight of the two heavy cruisers has been reduced, and the endurance of the two heavy cruisers has also been improved

After more than half a year of maintenance and modification, the overall performance of the Zhiyuan has been greatly improved. Together with its sister ship Jingyuan, which was also refitted, it became the top heavy cruiser on the Shijie at that time. It is worth mentioning that although the main guns of the two warships were successively reduced to the 203L52 naval guns that could be produced completely independently at that time in the border area, they were better than before in terms of rate of fire, accuracy and barrel life (the maximum firing range was 40 kilometers, the rate of fire was 10 rounds per minute, and the barrel life had also reached more than 1000 rounds). The performance parameters of the final completed Zhiyuan-class heavy cruiser are as follows:

Displacement: 11,742/16,580 tons

Main size: 201.5 m (overall length) / 18.5 m (width) / 6.38 m (draft)

Power: 4 ship-based steam turbines. 8 ship-based heavy oil boilers, 152,000 horsepower

Speed: 36 knots

Endurance: 12,000 nautical miles / 16 knots

Protection: broadside 105 mm, deck 80 mm, main turret (frontal 80 mm. 30 mm for the rest of the part. ), conning tower 120 mm

Artillery: 4 twin 203 mm L52 guns, 4 twin 127 anti-aircraft guns, 8 twin 88 anti-aircraft guns, 12 twin 37 anti-aircraft guns, 12 latest 7-barreled 25 Phalanx close defense systems.

Anti-submarine: 2 12-tube rocket deep bomb launchers, 4 traditional anti-submarine deep bomb launchers.

Establishment: 900 people

It is worth mentioning that according to Hu Weidong's original idea, the main combat mode of the Zhiyuan-class heavy cruiser is to pursue the enemy ship and counterattack when escaping, so as long as the defense of the bow and stern is strong enough, the armor on the side is not of much significance, even if it is not completely removed, it should be greatly reduced to reduce the weight of the warship, but this modification has greatly affected the stability of the warship

Later, under the persuasion of German experts, Hu Weidong had to accept the new scheme of only 40 thinner broadside armor, but because of this, the Zhiyuan-class heavy cruisers became more flexible in their combat methods. The armor thickness of the main turret and deck was only increased to 80 mm for the same reason (the turret Hu Weidong originally wanted to change to a triple installation, but firstly, there was no jishu at that time, and secondly, he was also worried that it would affect the stability of the warship, so he still used the original double-mounted main turret. But even so, the defense capability of the warship has also made a qualitative leap compared with the previous one, especially the strengthened horizontal armor allows it to completely resist the bombing of any kind of dive bomber on the current Shijie, as for the horizontal bomber and torpedo bomber, first pass the Zhiyuan class with a total of as many as 132 anti-aircraft guns, and there is a super strong anti-aircraft fire network composed of artillery sight radar, gyroscope sight and proximity fuse

Among them, the performance of the 127 anti-aircraft gun and the 88 anti-aircraft gun surpassed any kind of anti-aircraft gun of the same caliber during World War II, the maximum firing height of the former reached 15,000 meters, the latter also had 12,000 meters, and the rate of fire was even more amazing, the former was 4 seconds 1 round, the latter reached a terrible rate of fire of 2 seconds 1 round, and because the transistor eliminated the original electronic tube used in the radio proximity fuze, the volume of the fuse was greatly reduced, so the charge of the anti-aircraft shell naturally increased correspondingly, and the power was further increased.

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