The Fleet 1934 exercise was divided into two phases, the first stage of the separate assessment of each ship, the actual combat efficiency of the participating ships by means of live firing, and then the second and most important stage of the exercise -- the fleet confrontation exercise.

The numbers obtained in the first stage will be directly substituted into the second stage, that is, in the first stage, the actual use effect (hit rate) of various guns, torpedoes and other weapons of each ship will become an important basis for the second stage of the exercise.

"You have heard it clearly to Lao Tzu, you must be accurate! It's about the victory or defeat that follows, as well as the future of naval aviation! Sukhoi roared at his pilot.

In fact, if it weren't for Li Xiaofeng's stern prohibition on him taking to the skies to participate in the exercise, the commander-in-chief of the Blue Army Fleet would have directly left the fleet and drilled into the cockpit to head towards his favorite blue sky and white clouds. In a sense, Sukhoi was more like a flying wing commander than a fleet commander-in-chief.

Ten minutes later, fighter jets and torpedo planes took off from the decks of the Leningrad and Moskva and flew quickly towards the sea area of the shooting range. Looking at the batches of fighters taking off, Sukhoi didn't mention how lost he was, how he wished he was in the cockpit of the aircraft and not in the combat intelligence room of the aircraft carrier.

"Nikolai. Comrade Gerasimovich called, he asked to lead the participating ships out of formation, please approve it. ”

Sukhoi waved his hand impatiently and said, "Accurate! ”

The herald saluted, smiled, and left quickly, knowing very well that his boss was in tune with the Nikolai. Comrade Gerasimovich did not deal with it. The young Nikolai. Gerasimovich was a traditional naval faction, more familiar with big ships and big guns, and less familiar with aircraft carriers and aviation. When developing a specific operational plan for the exercises. The two sides quarreled. In the end, Sukhoi had to come up with the shelf of the commander-in-chief of the Blues to settle the argument. But it is clear that Nikolai. Comrade Gerasimovich was not convinced by this. He strongly disapproved of the status of his battlecruiser formations as aircraft carrier bodyguards and supporting actors.

Kuznetsov, of course, did not want to play a supporting role, as an officer who received traditional Russian naval education and was gradually promoted from surface ships, he believed more in the role of artillery and torpedoes, of course, at the same time he also believed that in the future sea-based aviation will play an important role, but this important role is not the protagonist, but as the eyes of the surface ship formation and the surprise soldier who disrupts the enemy's formation.

And now, the sea-based aviation, which should be a surprise soldier and a supporting actor in Kuznetsov's eyes, has taken the place of the protagonist without authorization. Do you think he can be happy? And what was even more unhappy was that under the orders of the higher-ups, he, the newly promoted rear admiral and the commander of the battle cruiser detachment of the Baltic Fleet, could only let the mustache do whatever he wanted.

Standing on the bridge of the Red Ukraine (Hindenburg), Kuznetsov looked at the formation behind him, very melancholy, his fleet included the four fastest battle cruisers and four light cruisers in the Baltic Fleet, such a formation was supposed to fight the "Red Army" with artillery at sea, but now, he has become a poor nanny. This makes Kuznetsov a little bit of a pearl in secret.

Kuznetsov's fleet was indeed quite strong, consisting of four battle cruisers: the Red Ukraine, the Red Samara (Moltke), the Red Belarus (Setritz) and the Red Caucasus (Dwringer).

Of course, everyone knows that these four battle cruisers are all German. After a series of modifications in the twenties and thirties, the speed of these four battle cruisers generally exceeded 30 knots. It was also generally replaced with a B12 305 mm main gun, and its combat effectiveness was not the same as before.

In the Baltic Fleet, these four fastest battle cruisers generally served as the leading reconnaissance mission, and their main mission was to destroy the heavy cruisers and light cruisers of the imperialist countries that had gone out to reconnoitre, so as to lay a good foundation for the decisive battle of the fleet in the future.

Speaking of which, we have to mention the capital ships of the Red Navy for the decisive battle of the fleet, as far as the Baltic Fleet is concerned, the main force of the decisive battle is six German-made battleships, namely the October Revolution (Bavaria), the Paris Commune (Baden), the Red Lithuania (King), the Comintern (Elector), the Red Estonia (Governor), and the Red Latvia (Crown Prince Wilhelm).

These six battleships also completed a series of modifications in the twenties and thirties, such as the October Revolution and the Paris Commune, which dismantled the old coal-fired boilers and steam turbines and replaced them with new oil-fired boilers and new steam turbines with gear transmission, and their speed jumped from about 21 knots to about 27 knots.

In fact, according to Li Xiaofeng's requirements, after the two ships were renovated, they should reach a speed of 28 knots, but it is a pity that Russia's industrial capacity is really not ideal, and overweight constantly appears in the process of transformation, and in the end, the speed of the guide is not up to standard. Of course, a speed of 27 knots is actually not bad.

As for the four Kings, the rebuild was more complete than in Bavaria, with the turret in the middle of the hull removed, the entire engine room completely renovated, and the boilers and geared steam turbines replaced with guò, which still reached a speed of 28 knots despite the overweight of the construction.

The only regret is that the turret renovation project of these four battleships has not yet begun, and according to Li Xiaofeng's request, after participating in the fleet's 1934 exercise, these four battleships will have to change their turrets and guns one after another. Judging by the current situation, the combat effectiveness of these four battleships is discounted. However, even if the combat effectiveness of the four King-class ships is reduced, the comprehensive strength is still much stronger than the Kuznetsov battle patrol formation based on the four battle cruisers.

However, for Kuznetsov, who is determined to do a big job, although the number of capital ships of the "enemy" is more and the quality is higher, he is not without the strength of a war, after all, there are two aircraft carriers in his formation, if these two aircraft carriers can play a good role before the decisive battle begins, and can disrupt the enemy's position with aviation, then he has a chance.

But now, this opportunity was lost because of the interference of his superiors, and his battle patrols and light cruisers were firmly tied by the aircraft carrier, and he could only do some work to catch flies. Do you say that Kuznetsov can not be angry?

Of course. Angry is angry. Kuznetsov, on the other hand, is not the kind of person who deliberately swaggers because he is angry, and his temper is that the more unfavorable the situation and the more interference from his superiors, the more he has to prove himself. So he didn't have any intention of releasing water and messing around, but kept cheering the sailors and motivating them to achieve good results.

As mentioned earlier, the first stage of the exercise is a live-fire assessment, and the results of the assessment will be carried over to the second stage. In short, the higher the hit rate at this stage, the more advantageous it will be in the next stage of confrontation exercises.

Why? The reason is very simple, confrontation exercises must no longer be fired with live ammunition. Otherwise, wouldn't that be fratricidal, no one would be brain-dead enough to organize such a drill. Therefore, the confrontation exercise in the latter stage is more of a test of the formation command ability, that is to say, the two fleets in the confrontation are more likely to seize positions and then launch a simulated attack, and the result of the attack is determined by the "hit rate" of the previous live firing.

So what about the Red Navy's live-fire table? To put it mildly, it is not ideal, and to put it mildly, it is miserable. In the live-fire test that day, the average hit rate of battleships and battlecruisers at distances of 15 to 20 kilometers was less than 5 percent, and the accuracy of cruisers at distances of less than 15 kilometers was less than 6 percent.

Some comrades may say that this is not bad, because the hit rate of both sides in the Battle of Jutland was only around 3 percent, and it is not bad to be able to achieve a hit rate of 5 or 6 percent. Is that so? Definitely not. Because Jutland was a real combat hit, and the Red Navy was just an exercise.

In the thirties. In the exercises of the world's major naval powers, the level of Britain, the United States and France is about 7 to 9 percent, while the Japanese have a hit rate of nearly 15 percent. The level of the Red Navy is really at the bottom!

Moreover, judging from the actual combat later, generally speaking, the participating countries did not play to the level of training. It is conceivable that in actual combat, the Red Navy may have a hit rate of at most 2%, and to tell the truth, in the case that the equipment is not as good as the opponent, the hit rate is still like this, and it will really be beaten!

So why is the Red Navy's table so bad? In the words of the then Chief of Naval Operations Ornov: "...... Throughout the 20s, there were very few opportunities for the Navy to go to sea for training, especially for live-fire training, and it was naturally difficult to continue the training work under the circumstances of tight military spending and great difficulty in maintaining equipment......

This is the big truth, the army is a gold-swallowing beast, and the navy is the king of the gold-swallowing beasts. In the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union once gifted Indonesia a huge fleet, making the latter the second most powerful maritime power in Asia, and what happened to this fleet? With the interruption of Soviet aid, all of them became scrap metal.

From this, it is not cheap to build ships, but it is even more difficult to raise a fleet and constantly replenish fresh blood!

And the Red Navy was hungry for a time, so naturally there was no maintenance and training, that is, in the thirties, the economic situation improved, and the normal maintenance and training of the troops could be carried out, which achieved a hit rate of close to 5 percent, and if you let the Red Navy be tested in the twenties, I am afraid that it will not even be 2 percent, and even the ships will have to take risks when they leave the port!

In fact, when I saw this report card, neither Li Xiaofeng, nor Stalin, nor Tukhachevsky had any intention of blaming the Red Navy, because the previous exercises conducted by the Air Force and the Army also reflected the same situation, and only the Army was in a slightly better situation.

"In the next few years, we have to pay attention to training!" Tukhachevsky summed it up with this sentence.

According to the arrangement of the director's department, this is a naval fleet confrontation exercise, which mainly examines the commander's formation command ability, and also indirectly examines new weapons and new tactics.

At the beginning of the second phase of the exercises, Stalin was full of confidence, in his opinion, the Red Army formation, with its six battleships and four light cruisers, could completely beat the four battle cruisers and four light cruisers of the Blue Army, and as for the aircraft carriers, such flat-topped ships were never in the corner of the eyes of steel.

In the eyes of steel, aircraft carriers are unarmed tin cans, which will be torn to shreds under the bombardment of large ships and huge guns. So he proudly declared: "There is no doubt that the red side will win in the end!" ”

At that time, there was absolutely the mainstream who agreed with Stalin's conclusion, no one thought that four battle cruisers could defeat six serious battleships, and even at the beginning of the exercises, Stalin and the traditionalists of the Navy were already discussing the topic of what kind of battleships the Soviet Union would need in the future.

In the midst of a vigorous discussion among this gang. It seems that the Soviet battleships comparable to the Big Seven of the Treaty should be started as soon as possible. The standard displacement should not be less than thirty-five thousand tons. It is best to have more than 9 406mm cannons. Even those radicals believed that the next class of battleships of the Red Navy should not be bound by the treaty at all, and that the displacement should be about fifty thousand tons, preferably with heavy guns of the 18-inch (457 mm) class.

Li Xiaofeng looked at these old antiques coldly, and didn't say anything, and there was no need to say anything, because he didn't believe that the result of the exercise would be what those mainstream old antiques expected, judging from the current director's setting. Red has no advantage at all.

Why? Because the RED side's air power is not as strong as it seems, in fact, the RED side can obtain land-based air support is quite limited, and it can even be said that it cannot do anything other than aerial reconnaissance. Why is this so?

The reason is very simple, because in the Red Army, whether it is land-based naval aviation or the Red Air Force, there are only a few types of aircraft that can be used at present, the Yi-5, Yi-15 and Yi-16 fighters, the attack aircraft is the Lenin II on the verge of retirement that Li Xiaofeng has tinkered with, and the bombers are TB-1 and TB-3. Among them, the fighters naturally did not talk about any sea attack, and the Lenin II was old and unusable, as for the horizontal bombers such as the TB-1 and TB-3. That really has no problem with the warships at sea.

That is, in the current sequence of ground-based aviation of the Red Army. There is no aircraft capable of effectively attacking the sea, so what is there to fear about such an enemy?

On the contrary, although Sukhoi's sea-based aviation is rotten, there are still T2B carrier-based torpedo planes that imitate the American Wright. Even if T2B flies slowly, it still has attack power, doesn't it? If Sukhoi is smart enough, he should take advantage of this, even if he plays with a kite stream, he can take out his opponents.

So how is Sukhoi going to meet the enemy? It should be said that he is even bolder than Li Xiaofeng imagined. In the second hour of the exercise, the Red fleet was attacked at the Kronstadt naval base while it was lighting a fire to burn its boilers! Sukhoi released all the torpedo planes and fighters in one go, and took the red side by surprise with a wave of attitude!

Most of the fighters, attack planes and bombers at the red airfield were ruthlessly "destroyed", and a large number of pilots lost their "lives" while waiting, and most of the air power of the red side was wiped out before the war began.

Of course, the naval losses of Kronstadt were even worse than the loss of aircraft, six battleships were directly sunk "two", and light cruisers and destroyers also suffered "losses" of different paths.

And what price did Sukhoi pay for this? At no cost, except for a fighter and torpedo plane that crash-landed due to mechanical failure, he won a big victory!

"It's cheating! It's a shameful sneak attack! This result is completely innumerable! ”

The commander of the Baltic Fleet, Waikman, was a little angry, the exercise had just begun, and his fleet was crippled, how could this be done? He strongly protested the result, arguing that Sukhoi had violated the rules.

So did Sukhoi break the rules? Not entirely a violation, because the goods took a small advantage, and according to the previous exercise plan, the exercises officially began after the Blue side left Kronstadt and "disappeared" into the Baltic Sea. According to the requirements of the director's department, after his fleet is ready, he should send a telegram to the director's department to confirm that he can start fighting.

At that time, both the director and the mainstream of the Red Navy believed that Sukhoi's fleet should be as far away as possible from the narrow Gulf of Finland and hide far away in the sea before announcing the start of the exercise.

However, it was a good thing, and it was less than three hours before leaving Kronstadt, so he announced the start of the exercise with a roar, and at the same time as the telegram was sent to the director's department, his fighters and torpedo planes were already making a full-deck sortie, which means that Waikman had just received a notice from the director's department and was still lighting a fire on the ship, when the attack came. It's a bit unfair to look at it that way.

However, Li Xiaofeng did not see it that way, and he bluntly criticized: "The enemy will not wait for us to be ready to attack, and the despicable imperialist bandits will use a single means to achieve their evil ends." And as the commander of the Baltic Fleet, your vigilance is really speechless, is this how you came to defend our great motherland? ”

Wekman was a little speechless, and even Stalin on Weikman's side could not help him speak, and if he accused Sukhoi of being too mean, wouldn't he be justifying the evil imperialism that imperialism was not so evil?

But it was impossible to get Stalin to give up completely, and he asked bluntly: "Then the exercises are over?" ”

It is definitely impossible to end up like this, spending so much money and energy, and announcing the end of the war five hours after the start of the war, there is no way to explain it!

Li Xiaofeng said: "Naturally, it can't end like this, I think it can be declared that the blue side has won the first round of the confrontation, let the exercise continue as originally planned, and after a two-hour delay, let the red side fleet attack with all its strength!" ”

"Why the two-hour delay?" Stalin was somewhat dissatisfied.

Li Xiaofeng shrugged his shoulders and said: "It's okay if you don't delay, then let the warship that was sunk by the red side in the first round withdraw from the exercise......"

Naturally, Stalin couldn't accept it like this, gritted his teeth, and replied: "If you delay, you will delay, and next time the blue side will not want to cheat and play tricks!" (To be continued......)

PS: Bow and thank you for the sweet potatoes in the melon field, the spike potatoes and Comrade Juventus!