While Brunhill lamented the new warship at Solomon Base, Admiral Tourville, commander-in-chief of Charlemagne's naval fleet, was also inspecting his ships at La Rochelle. Unlike Brunhill's somewhat relaxed and leisurely state of mind, when the airship carrier on the three-stage flight deck sailed in front of him, Tourville felt not only pride, but also nervous and nervous serpents entangled in the heart of the commander-in-chief of the fleet.

Albion has long been recognized as a naval power, relying on the appearance of artillery battleships, Charlemagne finally has a chance to play with his old rival at sea, and the vast majority of people believe that with the advantage of total industrial volume, if there is no treaty constraints, Charlemagne is likely to finally win this arms race.

However, a high-ranking officer like Tourville knew very well that Charlemagne certainly had an advantage in production capacity, but by seizing the opportunity to seize the overseas colonies, Albion also had his own advantage in terms of resources. Only if necessary, even if one or two detachments are annihilated, or even Brittany, Albiang can still prevent Charlemagne from landing across the sea at the same time, divide troops to blockade Charlemagne at sea, cooperate with diplomatic means to cut off Charlemagne's access to resources, and over time, let the originally equal comprehensive national strength tilt towards Albiang, Charlemagne has no industry but no resources, and finally slowly impoverishes in the blockade strangulation, and finally suffocates - Such a prospect was made clear enough by the events that followed the invasion of Castile by Titans.

On the contrary, the longer the war drags on, the less likely it is to make gains, and the only preferable strategy is to "make peace with one blow" -- to destroy the main core of the Albiang royal navy at the beginning of the war, and force Albion to weigh the cost of the strategic counteroffensive. Accept the fait accompli of peace with Charlemagne and Charlemagne's monopoly of continental hegemony.

The tools used to implement this strategy are large airship carriers.

Charlemagne's airship traces back to its origins and traces the armed airship of Titans. When Titans' converted flying ship laden with Congreve rockets wreaked havoc on the city of Buda, naval engineers were inspired by it and proposed the need to build the navy's own "rocket carriers". Later in practice it was found that the rocket reloads slower than the shell. In order to bring this scheme back to life, the engineers proposed that the dinghy and flying beast should carry rockets and be carried by large motherships. According to their assumptions, this kind of warship should accommodate 60~80 griffons or a similar number of assault boats, which are responsible for long-range reconnaissance missions in peacetime and act as the "eyes of the fleet". During naval battles, the griffons were equipped with Congreve rockets to attack and harass enemy fleets. Fatigues the enemy. If you are lucky, you can also take out a few battleships, weaken the overall strength of the enemy fleet, and create favorable conditions for the decisive battle of the fleet.

This plan was abandoned due to the deterioration of the flight quality of the griffons after carrying rockets and the safety problems when launching the rockets, and in the end, only a small ship with 25 griffons on board was built for demonstration and testing.

By the time the "Naval Armaments Control Agreement" was signed, things had changed, and at that time it was a foregone conclusion to freeze the construction of capital ships, in order to avoid waste. The parties agreed that the unfinished capital ship hull could be converted into auxiliary ships, and the construction of auxiliary ships would not be restricted by the treaty. In the general sense of the word. Auxiliary ships refer to non-combat ships such as training ships, dormitory ships, hospital ships, and supply ships, but Charlemagne seized this loophole and converted two unfinished Normandy-class battleships into empty ship carriers under the vague and ambiguous name of "Sentinel Ship", and then built two Clemenceau-class medium-sized air ship carriers under the name of "fishery administration ships".

This over-fouling practice certainly caused strong displeasure in Albiang. In response, Albion converted the large cruisers "Brave" and "Glorious" into Manticule, and then converted the cruiser "Fury" into a floating boat. Recently, the "Wangjia Ark" protective airship carrier has been launched to strengthen its protection capabilities and high seaworthiness.

Due to the fact that the new thing is still in the research and exploration stage, the engineers of the two countries have adopted some designs of a real nature, and at the same time they have copied and compared the ideas of foreign counterparts, so that the air carriers of both sides are inexplicably similar in some places.

For example, both carriers retain their broadside gun gallery guns, but as aircraft-carrying ships they have the same firepower as a second-class cruiser, and Albiang's Fury has two flight decks. Charlemagne, on the other hand, had a three-level flight deck from the Bean onwards, and Charlemagne installed a steam boiler and linkage paddle mechanism in the Clemenceau class, and Albion immediately contacted the technology supplier to install the same thing on the Ark King......

Such déjà vu abounded, and it was said that after drinking too much in Alfheim, some consortium officials claimed that if the ships were maidens, they would one day meet at sea and could only communicate in their native language, Elvish.

Of course, there is an exaggeration in this statement, but the empty mother of the two great powers is so similar that it is difficult for the average layman to distinguish between them, but their similarity ends there. In addition to the technical details, the top brass of the two navies have completely different ideas about the use of air carriers.

From the beginning to the end, Albion only regarded the air carrier as an auxiliary force in naval warfare, that is, full-time long-range reconnaissance and harassment of the enemy during combat. They never expected this fleet of flat-bottomed boats, built to "stand out" with Charlemagne, to play a decisive role in the battle for sea supremacy. Charlemagne's initial idea was not very different, and it was only for the sake of exploiting loopholes and other signs that he passively built an air carrier -- in this era of fundamentalism when naval officers were all big ships and huge guns, it was not easy to come up with and accept the concept of "all-deck attack", which was regarded as heretic at least and disgraced at worst.

Originally, if this trajectory continued, the future naval battle would definitely be a passionate interpretation of the battle line. However, in the face of the issue of "how to avoid the eyes and ears of the enemy and launch a large-scale attack to destroy the enemy's sea forces," it is obvious that the brigade cannot be expected to go all the way to block the gate and smash open flames. Geographical conditions determined that as soon as Charlemagne's main fleet left the port, Albion would be stimulated, and the entire voyage would be spent under the supervision of the other side, and the concealment and suddenness of the operation were completely impossible. After several studies and discussions, it was decided to adopt a plan of using a small number of warships disguised as exercises for training, going to the assembly area in batches, and then annihilating the warships moored in Sparka Bay in one fell swoop.

It is necessary to achieve the goal of raiding Sparka Bay and crushing the Grand Fleet of the Royal Albion Navy in the shortest possible time. Bulky and sluggish battleships were clearly not the best tool, relying on less conspicuous carriers with long-range strike capabilities. The question is whether the firepower projected by the air carrier can meet the needs of accomplishing the goal? No one can answer this question that has not been encountered, except for high-level magicians, almost none of the battleships have been sunk by the combat power carried by flying beasts, and no one dares to guarantee that those rockets can be as beautiful as the great magicians. Not to mention the deduction according to weapons. Even if the air carrier mobile force is completely destroyed, it can only destroy 40% of the opponent's combat strength at most, which is still quite far from the 80% sunk set by the navy. After some tossing, it seems that the whole raid plan is going to return to the old way of open fire and door-to-door attack.

At this time, the two newly built air carriers were also completed and the 5th Air Force was formed. The commissioned sighting instrument and the bomb modified with artillery shells were also successfully developed, and it has been proved that a skilled bombardier can achieve a bomb drop error of no more than 30 meters at an altitude of 1,000 meters, which is equivalent to ensuring an 80% hit rate. In addition, the improved special attack rocket and the customized shallow water special attack torpedo have been completed. The plan for an air raid that had previously seemed hopeless was now somewhat promising.

But it is not enough to have hope and general intentions, and there is still a lot to be done to put such a plan that is close to gambling into practice. The formulation of the route, the assembly area, the precautions for silent navigation, the order of sorties, the supply on the way, etc...... But in the Charlemagne Navy, where the granite heads are all over the place, the staff officers and captains do not oppose the air raid plan, it is the mother god's eyes, and it is really difficult for them to formulate a detailed battle plan for an unfamiliar and resolutely opposed combat method. Let's be honest, look at the whole world. This kind of scheme can only be done by perverts.

The officers who watched from the sidelines forgot one thing - such a pervert really exists, and it is all around them.

This pervert is the chief staff officer of the royal navy fleet. Colonel Jean Dirk, nicknamed "Fairy Counselor", "Strange Counselor", and "Monster".

If there is still a hint of romance in Tourville's vision, Colonel Dirk is pure pervert. You should know that there may be more overlaps between "romance" and "perversion" than different parts.

Colonel Dirk was born in extreme poverty, and was adopted by his uncle who was an iron striker at an early age, and his personality was withdrawn and introverted, and he was not taken seriously for a long time. Most people think he is an excellent theorist of gunnery. Suitable for the office rather than actual combat, being a logistics director is his limit. This view was not corrected until Dirk met the Bole of Tourville.

Although Dirk is a well-known expert in gunnery, although Dirk's past performance is remarkable, there is no shortage of people who surpass him regardless of his qualifications and appearance. Tourville, on the other hand, chose Dirk alone. This caused a major earthquake within the navy. Tourville then gave Dirk a preliminary plan for a sneak attack on Sparka Bay to make an executable plan. Dirk has lived up to its promise and contributed greatly to the refinement and audit of the program. In particular, it played a considerable role in the use of special attack torpedoes, and according to Dirk's suggestion, both torpedoes and bombs would be used in air raids, because to blow up and sink enemy ships anchored in the harbor, torpedoes with greater destructive power on the underwater part would be more effective than bombs and special attack rockets dropped by griffins. In addition, Dirk supported the plan that all six air carriers should be used for the offensive, and also personally put forward some specific plans to solve the problem of replenishment at sea.

Of course, as Chief Staff Officer, Dirk won't just focus on the plan to sneak up on a corner of Sparka Bay. He devoted considerable energy to the battle plan of the entire fleet, immersed in the review and deduction of those plans. In broad daylight, he shut himself up in his room, lit an oil lamp, smoked a cigarette - the only luxury he had on him - and kept lighting and extinguishing and extinguishing and lighting it, and studying it again and again until late at night. When I woke up in the morning, my clothes were covered in soot and dust. If the orderly doesn't change it for him, he'll keep wearing it like this. There is always a foul smell in the whole room, and in order to dispel the stench, perfume is sprayed. In the end, this "immortal staff officer" got the outline of the "Z plan" for a sneak attack on Sparka Bay, and in order to let the Admiralty understand this plan, the "immortal staff officer" also came back to "go down".

Dirk came to the naval headquarters building in Lüdes with an envelope that was said to be written by Tourville, and made it clear that if he did not agree to "Plan Z", the commander-in-chief of the fleet would be accustomed to black hats, and whoever had the ability to fight Albion would fight them, and Master Ben would not wait.

The Admiralty capitulated to the threat from Tourville, and the entire Navy began to operate at full speed around Plan Z.

In fact, Tourville did not give Dirk that kind of authorization, but Dirk, out of understanding of his superiors' intentions, decided to say such things to threaten the Admiralty on his own, and finally completed the mission. After the incident, quite a number of people in the navy were quite moved by Tourville's unique vision in recognizing and employing people, and they had a little more confidence in the success of the "Plan Z."

What followed was months of high-intensity training, and each training base was mixed with airships and griffons belonging to different air carriers, and the training intensity of ground crews was actually no different from actual combat. In between actual combat exercises, the maintenance personnel will also conduct a comprehensive inspection of the mechanical parts of the assault boats, special attack rockets, and special attack torpedoes, and replace the black and gray camouflage paint for the fuselage. The bases were extremely strict in checking visitors, and only senior generals, pilots, and crew members were allowed to enter and exit freely, and everyone speculated that they were preparing for the regular autumn exercise in the second half of the year.

At this moment, the mobile air carrier unit is about to conduct its last large-scale exercise in the war, and the attack team takes off from the mothership 150 nautical miles away to conduct a simulated attack on the warship group anchored in the harbor. After that, they will go south in batches in the name of "voyage training", ostensibly to the southern colonies for training, but in fact they will meet up with the supply ships that have been waiting for a long time, load up the cold equipment, and then go north according to the Great Circle Navigation Law, avoiding the main route to the Arctic Sea, which is bitterly cold all year round. After completing the assembly, launch a surprise attack on Sparka Bay on the "X day" of the opening day.

It would have been a great battle that would have subverted the common sense of naval warfare, and it would have been a big gamble to decide the fate of both Albion and Charlemagne, and if possible, Tourville would have preferred to resign as commander-in-chief of the fleet and become commander-in-chief of the mobile forces himself, rather than hand over this vital position to the somewhat indecisive Marquis of Fort Reynolds. However, as the price of his previous behavior of "going down to the top", he no longer had the capital to continue to bargain with the Admiralty, and now he could only watch the belongings he had accumulated with great effort sail into the distance, and then stay in the room of the flagship, waiting for the long and short time to pass little by little, entrusting the fate of himself and the motherland to the hands of the mobile force and the mother goddess, until the final result appeared.

Charlemagne, Albion, which side will the gods favor?

With a painful question in his heart, the Admiral saluted the pilots lined up on the deck of the air carrier, and among the young faces flowing in front of him at this moment, how many of them could come back safely, and how many of them would become military gods......?