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Volume 1 The Glory of Germany Chapter 132 Timing

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    Chapter 132 Timing

    ¡°Completely opposite to the situation a month ago, almost everyone this time believes that war on the United States should not be declared immediately.

    Wu Tiesheng and other army generals are worried that if war is immediately declared on the United States, resources will definitely be tilted towards the navy, so the army that is fighting hard in Siberia will definitely be affected.  Air Force generals represented by Air Force Commander Marshal Liu Yaguang believe that Japan has not surrendered yet and that after the war with the United States, combat operations against Japan will definitely encounter trouble.  Admirals believed that the Navy was not ready for war with the United States.

    Of course, the key is the latter.

    Although the second batch of three "Qin Shihuang" class aircraft carriers, namely the "Guangwu Emperor", "Wei Wu Emperor" and "Tang Gaozu", have been officially commissioned in early June, they are accompanied by six air defense cruisers, six light cruisers and eight  An anti-submarine destroyer has also been delivered to the Navy before this, but the training work has not yet ended, and the mass production of new carrier-based fighters, dive bombers and torpedo attack aircraft is in progress, and it will not be able to replace the existing carrier-based aircraft until August.  If flight training is taken into account, combat effectiveness will not be achieved until October.

    Prior to this, the Navy still had only three fleet aircraft carriers.

    Obviously, this power is not enough to defeat the US Navy, or even to compete with the US Navy.

    You should know that at the beginning of the year, the size of the U.S. Pacific Fleet was increased to six fleet aircraft carriers, and in May it also acquired two fast battleships.

    Although the U.S. Navy has no actual combat experience and is seriously lacking in air defense warships, the United States is different from Japan in that in addition to having a strong navy, it also has a strong industrial base.  In other words, defeating the United States will definitely not be achieved overnight.

    According to the judgments of Li Xianglong, Lu Zhigang and others, the Chinese Navy will not be able to defeat the US Navy until at least the end of the year.

    It is precisely for this reason that Li Xianglong and others believe that war should not be declared immediately on the United States. The declaration of war should at least be postponed to the end of the year, and preferably to the beginning of 1942.

    The reason is simple. By the beginning of 1942, the warships built after the war began to enter service.

    This includes the Chinese Navy's second-class fleet aircraft carrier, the "Tang Taizong" class.

    As mentioned earlier, the biggest improvement of the "Tang Taizong" class is to make up for the shortcomings of the "Qin Shihuang" class by increasing the displacement.  In addition, the "Tang Taizong" class is also the first aircraft carrier equipped with a catapult in the Chinese Navy, and its aviation combat efficiency is greatly improved compared to the "Qin Shihuang" class.

    During the design stage, Feng Chengqian clearly mentioned that the new aircraft carrier must be equipped with a catapult.

    Although the early carrier-based aircraft did not need a catapult and could take off directly from the deck of the aircraft carrier, as the performance of fighter aircraft improved, the take-off weight became larger and larger, and the load became larger and larger.  Without a catapult, the fighter's take-off weight would be limited.

    When developing a new generation of fighter jets, this problem became extremely prominent.

    If designed in accordance with the performance indicators proposed by the Navy, the new carrier-based aircraft will not be able to glide off from the aircraft carrier at the maximum take-off weight. The load must be reduced or the fuel load must be reduced, which reduces the combat effectiveness of the fighter aircraft.  Only using a catapult can solve this problem.

    Initially, Feng Chengqian hoped to directly develop steam catapults.

    ?Obviously, this is too ambitious.

    With China¡¯s industrial strength, especially its industrial technology, it is unlikely that a steam catapult would be manufactured even if it waited ten years, let alone the 1940s.

    Relatively speaking, hydraulic ejector is more realistic.

    Fortunately, the Second German Empire was also developing hydraulic catapults and gave China considerable help.

    Because of this, the "Tang Taizong" class took the catapult into consideration during the design stage, and thus determined the basic performance indicators of the carrier-based aircraft.

    In addition, Feng Chengqian also had an unrealistic idea, which was to use a beveled deck.

    However, when Feng Chengqian proposed this idea, the basic design of the "Tang Taizong" class had been determined. If the design was changed, the construction work would be delayed.

    The result is that it was not until the third-tier fleet aircraft carriers that angled decks were adopted.

    The "Tang Taizong" class still uses a direct flight deck. Two hydraulic catapults are installed at the front end and are separated from the landing area by a blocking net. Eleven blocking ropes are set up in the landing area. The total length of the flight deck is 240  Seventeen meters, only slightly longer than the "Qin Shihuang" class, while the width has increased to 33 meters, which is a significant improvement.  The biggest benefit of increasing the width of the flight deck is that it increases the area of ??the flight waiting area, allows more fighters to be tied to the flight deck, and improves the operational efficiency of the flight deck.

    ?Of course, as the flight deck is widened, the ship body is also widened, and the hangar area is greatly increased.

    Compared with the "Qin Shihuang" class, the hangar area of ??the "Tang Taizong" class has increased by nearly 40%.  With the same four carrier-based aircraft squadrons, 80% of the fighters can be placed in the hangar, reducing the number of fighters tied to the flight deck.

    ??Obviously, this will be of great help in improving the operational efficiency of the flight deck.

    These are all external changes, but internal changes are more important.

    Affected by the high center of gravity and low reserve buoyancy, when the "Qin Shihuang" class was built, the armored flight deck in the design was replaced by a wooden deck, and the armor thickness of the hangar deck was also reduced by one-third.  Although the "Qin Shihuang" class has not been attacked by dive bombers during the battle, and it is impossible to know whether its horizontal protection is sufficient, it can be seen from the attacks suffered by several Japanese Navy aircraft carriers that horizontal protection is very important.

    It is precisely for this reason that the "Tang Taizong" class attached great importance to horizontal protection when designing it.

    In a sense, the increased displacement of the "Tang Taizong" class is mainly used to strengthen horizontal protection. For example, it uses an armored flight deck with a thickness of 70 mm, and the thickness of the hangar deck armor is also 70 mm.  The total horizontal armor thickness is one hundred and fifty millimeters.  During the construction process, due to the adoption of a more compact power system and a tonnage of about 500 tons, a layer of armor plate with a thickness of 30 mm was also added below the hangar deck to combine the total horizontal armor  The thickness has been increased to 170 mm.

    What is this concept?

    ¡°Most of the fast battleships built before the war had horizontal armor thickness of around 150 mm. Even some fast battleships built during the war had horizontal armor thickness that did not reach 170 mm.  For example, the thickest horizontal armor of the "North Carolina" class battleships built in the United States is only 140 mm, while the "South Dakota" class is 156 mm, and the "Iowa" class is 152 mm.  .

    The 170 mm thick horizontal armor was certainly unique at the time.

    Of course, this is not all of the "Tang Taizong" level.

    During the design stage, the "Tang Taizong" class did not consider other aspects of defense. After all, fleet aircraft carriers mainly operate in sea areas far away from enemy battleships. They will not encounter enemy ships at all, and are even unlikely to encounter enemy small and medium-sized warships. Therefore,  The battleship's protection was of no use at all.

    However, during the construction process, a new threat emerged.

    This is a torpedo.

    Of the six aircraft carriers lost by the Japanese Navy, two were sunk directly by torpedoes, and the other two were sunk by bombs after being damaged by torpedoes.

    Obviously, the threat of torpedoes cannot be underestimated.

    As a result, during the construction process, an anti-torpedo compartment was added to the "Tang Taizong" class, resulting in an increase in displacement of more than 2,000 tons.

    The increase in displacement has reduced the maximum speed of the "Tang Taizong" class from the designed thirty-three knots to 31.5 knots.

    The point is, the loss of speed is well worth it.

    In the subsequent war, four of the six "Tang Taizong" class ships were lost, none of which was directly sunk by torpedoes, and they returned to the military port after being damaged by torpedoes many times.

    It can be said that the "Tang Taizong" class is a fleet aircraft carrier that attaches great importance to protection, or survivability.

    For the Chinese Navy, the "Tang Taizong" class is also a rare fleet aircraft carrier.

    Although the "Tang Taizong" class was not the first to enter service and did not participate in all naval battles during the war, starting from the second half of 1942, the "Tang Taizong" class was the most active and most powerful fleet in the Chinese navy.  Aircraft carriers can be said to be the backbone of the Chinese navy.

    It is no exaggeration to say that the advantages of the "Tang Taizong" class were maintained until 1944, that is, after the "Essex" class aircraft carrier of the U.S. Navy was put into service, and it surpassed the "Tang Taizong" class in some performances.  , becoming the most powerful fleet aircraft carrier at that time.

    Obviously, the Chinese Navy has very high expectations for the "Tang Taizong" class.

    It is precisely for this reason that fleet commanders like Li Xianglong proposed to postpone the declaration of war on the United States as much as possible, preferably until mid-1942.

    The question is, is this possible?

    Since March, with the entry into service of four-engine heavy bombers, strategic bombing against Japan has been fully upgraded.  In addition, the Navy repaired the airport on Iwo Jima, and the Army captured the airport on Kyushu Island. The bombing range expanded to all of Japan, and the key bombing areas were the two urban areas with Osaka and Tokyo as the core.

    Only in April and May, the Chinese Air Force¡¯s bombardmentBombers dispatched nearly 20,000 sorties and dropped nearly 100,000 tons of bombs.

    What¡¯s more, the Air Force began using a more powerful bomb in April, an incendiary bomb developed specifically to target Japanese buildings.

    Japan is an earthquake-prone country, and most of its buildings are low wooden houses.

    Actual combat has proven that when bombing Japanese cities, incendiary bombs are much more destructive than high-explosive bombs.  On May 17 alone, the Chinese Air Force dispatched more than 600 bomber sorties and used more than 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs to create an uninhabited land of nearly 20 square kilometers in downtown Tokyo.

    It is conceivable that Japan is not far away from surrender.

    As long as Japan surrenders, the Sino-US Pacific War will break out, and Japan will not be able to persist until the second half of 1942.

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