First of all, Ye Fei has a good cultural foundation, and he is young and studious, and he is proficient in Japanese (Ye Fei began to learn Japanese after joining the Red Fifteenth Army, and since then, he has not stopped self-study even if he is separated, and now he has a very high level. And has a good water nature, no matter from which point of view, it is very suitable for serving as a commander of the navy; secondly, Ye Fei is Hu Weidong's old subordinate, and he is the commander of the navy, which is conducive to the cooperation and coordination between the army and the navy; As for Ye Fei's half of his Filipino ancestry, if he still mentions it repeatedly after he has been tested for a long time, it is undoubtedly a corrupt idea of origin and unification. Moreover, from another point of view, Ye Fei's identity as a descendant of the Chinese in Southeast Asia is conducive to the Red Party winning the support of overseas Chinese, which cannot be ignored. In addition, what Taizu did not say at this time was that Ye Fei's Filipino blood would also be of great help to the liberation of Southeast Asia in the future

After learning that the Soviet Union refused to help, Hu Weidong was naturally very disappointed, but he also aroused his competitive spirit, and made up his mind to rely on the Chinese's own liliang to keep these warships, or at least some of them. On the one hand, he requested the central authorities to transfer all the North China Air Corps to Shandong and station them in Qingdao, Jinan, and Yantai as soon as possible, as well as several field airfields in the base areas, and on the other hand, he seized the time to try to improve the survivability of warships in the face of air raids, including the protection and anti-aircraft firepower of warships

There is not much time at present, and Qingdao and even China do not have the ability to carry out large-scale modifications of 10,000-ton giant ships. Therefore, Hu Weidong can only skip the problems of armor and hull design. But even if Hu Weidong doesn't know much about the design of warships, he can also see that the six water reconnaissance planes equipped with the two big ships are definitely a huge safety hazard, and he even wanted to remove the seaplanes together with the catapults, but Shen Honglie reminded him that if there is no water reconnaissance aircraft to provide observation data for the naval guns, the long-range heavy guns on the two big ships will not be able to give full play to their power. When naval artillery attacks a target 20 kilometers away, it must be guided by an artillery observer. The shelling on the opposite shore can rely on the marines to go ashore to observe, and in the vast sea, it is all dependent on aircraft, and it is naturally best to have aircraft carriers. When there were no aircraft carriers, they could only rely on the water reconnaissance planes brought by large warships, so although these seaplanes were cumbersome, they really couldn't do without.

The importance attached to radar in the Central Plains border area can be said to be unparalleled in the current shijie. Good results have been achieved so far, but not to the point where optical observation can be dispensed with altogether, so these six seaplanes are still useful. However, as far as the next air defense operations are concerned, these planes are useless for the time being, so Hu Weidong still sent people to put them away first, and without these "dangerous goods", the survivability of the two large ships, especially the heavy cruisers, which are obviously much thinner, will undoubtedly be raised by a higher grade in the face of air raids.

In contrast, Hu Weidong paid more attention to strengthening anti-aircraft firepower, and the rapid concentration of antiaircraft artillery units on land in Qingdao was one thing, and the strengthening of the air defense capability of the warships themselves was another. Among them, Hu Weidong was the first to operate. It was the four triple 25mm anti-aircraft guns on the battleship "Haruna", even if he knew in advance the extremely low evaluation of this anti-aircraft gun in history, Hu Weidong couldn't help but curse after watching the test with his own eyes, the average anti-aircraft efficiency of each gun barrel is less than one-tenth of the self-produced 25mm anti-aircraft guns in the border area (Note 1), such a bad anti-aircraft weapon. It's also a shame that the little devils can use it

The situation of the double-mounted Type 96 25mm anti-aircraft guns was slightly better, but it was not enough to undertake the heavy task of close defense of warships, and in addition, these small-caliber antiaircraft guns were relatively easy to disassemble and assemble, so Hu Weidong did not hesitate to dismantle and install the double-mounted 37mm anti-aircraft guns of the air defense brigade with roughly the same weight and size on the warships, and first replaced the four triple-mounted Type 96 25mm antiaircraft guns, which more than doubled the medium- and close-range anti-aircraft firepower of the "Haruna" battleship. Motivated, Hu Weidong soon dismantled the rest of the 37mm anti-aircraft guns and 25mm anti-aircraft guns of the air defense brigade and mounted them on the battleship "Haruna" and the heavy cruiser "Ligen". He even sent a telegram to urgently summon his apprentice Wu Yunduo and a number of excellent technicians to help, and used the method of combining machinery and manual work to produce a number of 6-barreled 13.2mm anti-aircraft machine guns (Note 2) similar to the "phalanx" of later generations and installed them on the two giant ships. …,

Among them, the anti-aircraft weapons on the battleship were changed to: 4 twin Type 98 120mm anti-aircraft guns, 8 twin Type 98 120mm anti-aircraft guns, 4 twin 37mm anti-aircraft guns, 4 twin 25mm anti-aircraft guns, and 6 6-barreled 13.2mm anti-aircraft machine guns. The anti-aircraft armament on the heavy cruiser was changed to: 4 twin Type 98 120mm anti-aircraft guns, 8 twin Type 98 75mm anti-aircraft guns, 4 twin 37mm anti-aircraft guns, 8 twin 25mm anti-aircraft guns, and 12 6-barreled 13.2mm anti-aircraft machine guns.

After a short period of simple modification, the air defense capability of the two warships, especially the close-range air defense capability, is simply reborn, plus the entire 48 large-caliber anti-aircraft guns on the two warships have increased their hit rate several times after replacing them with new shells equipped with proximity fuses, and there are artillery sighting radars (due to the lack of numbers, the anti-aircraft guns can only be indirectly controlled by the commander, but they are still much stronger than before, which relied on manual aiming. Compared with the air defense capabilities of the fleets of various countries on Shijie today, these two warships are undoubtedly stronger by more than one level, if you say an exaggeration, without considering the interception of aircraft, even if all the warships of the Japanese Combined Fleet are combined, the air defense capabilities of the fleet may not be comparable to these two

Note 1: The actual combat effect of the triple Type 96 25mm anti-aircraft gun is similar to that of the single-mounted Type 96 25mm anti-aircraft gun, and the Type 96 25mm anti-aircraft gun itself is one of the worst small-caliber anti-aircraft guns in history

Note 2: The reason why the Japanese 13.2mm anti-aircraft machine gun with a slower rate of fire is modified is because the rate of fire after being converted into a dense array is too terrifying, and the low-speed propeller aircraft of World War II are somewhat wasteful. In addition, the production of anti-aircraft machine guns is not easy, and it is more economical to make full use of the captured Japanese goods (you are welcome to come to your support, which is my biggest motivation. )