The Daheng Empire Navy has stopped its battlecruiser construction plan. In fact, it cannot be said that it has been completely stopped.
In a sense, the fast battleships currently promoted by the Daheng Empire Navy are the successors, or half of the successors, of the battlecruisers.
The fast battleships of the Daheng Empire Navy combine the firepower and protection of traditional battleships with the speed of battlecruisers, and they still attach great importance to the speed of battleships.
And this also has a premise, that is, in the current era of long-distance battles, the protection concepts of new warships in almost all countries have shifted to focused protection.
In this way, more tonnage can be freed up for firepower and speed.
Coupled with the continuous advancement of power system technology, fast battleships were born.
The Daheng-class battleships of the Daheng Empire and the Arya-class battleships of the Kruls are both typical examples of this.
b To a certain extent, the Daheng Empire directly replaced battlecruisers with fast battleships.
Instead of replacing it with a larger and more powerful heavy cruiser.
At the same time, although the Daheng Empire has reduced its order for Jingzhou-class battleships, it has also proposed a follow-up model of this class of ships, which is more powerful and is expected to be equipped with twelve 400 mm and 50 times caliber naval guns to protect against its own bombardment.
At the same time, it also requires a super battleship that can reach a speed of more than 26 knots.
If such a battleship were built, its standard displacement alone would be estimated to be over 60,000 tons.
In addition, the Daheng Empire Navy also has a research and development plan for a 450mm naval gun, but this kind of naval gun is technically very difficult, and the Daheng Empire has not yet accumulated enough technology in this area.
The prediction of domestic scientific research institutions is that even if it is barely built now, even if it is more powerful than a 400mm fifty times naval gun, it will not be ridiculously powerful. At the same time, the life of the barrel will be very poor.
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Another very important reason is that such a naval gun is too heavy, and is expected to be more than 30% heavier than a 400 mm fifty times caliber naval gun.
This means that the tonnage of the battleship will be very large. Even if it is only equipped with nine artillery, the standard displacement is estimated to be more than 60,000 tons, and the cost will be very high.
The combination of various factors means that the Daheng Empire Navy has no plans to equip this level of naval guns for the time being, but it is also continuing to develop them. Once the research and development is successful and if necessary, it can be directly equipped on new warships.
The plans for fast battleships and super battleships are being steadily advanced by the Daheng Empire Navy.
But relatively speaking, Daheng Empire Emperor Lin Ziran is more concerned about the development of aircraft carriers, well, to be precise, the development of carrier-based aircraft.
The combat effectiveness of an aircraft carrier comes directly from carrier-based aircraft, and it itself does not have much combat capability. The Fairy-class aircraft carrier only has a few 120mm naval guns for self-defense firepower.
Simply talking about aircraft carriers, the Daheng Empire’s aircraft carriers are pretty good. There are eight Fairy-class aircraft carriers in total, with a standard displacement of 18,000 tons and a speed of 30 knots. Moreover, they are actually not expensive. That’s why only eight were built.
This is purely because the Daheng Empire Navy has started construction of a newer aircraft carrier.
The new generation of Goddess-class aircraft carriers, considering that the future carrier-based opportunities will be greater and heavier, in order to ensure the number of carrier-based aircraft, the standard displacement has been further enlarged to 23,000 tons, and in order to take off heavier bombers, the speed has been further increased to
Thirty-two knots to allow the fighter planes to obtain a higher deck wind for takeoff.
Therefore, the development on the aircraft carrier was very smooth, and Lin Ziran did not need to worry too much. Only the development of carrier-based aircraft concerned Lin Ziran.
Today's technology is still relatively limited. Even after so many years of war stimulation, there has been a big explosion in all aspects of technology, and aircraft technology has been greatly improved. But we want to come up with a model that meets the needs of the Navy's carrier-based aircraft force.
, it is still very difficult for carrier-based aircraft to break through the strict air defense firepower of contemporary fleets.
Against high-speed maneuvering warships, high-altitude horizontal bombing is basically useless. Torpedo attack aircraft are a great threat, but they are slow and maneuverable. They cannot break through the fleet's air defense net by themselves.
For this reason, Lin Ziran proposed that the Navy's carrier-based aircraft force needs a carrier-based aircraft that can penetrate the enemy's anti-aircraft fire network and accurately drop bombs on the enemy's head.
Previously, the Army Air Force already had a small number of elite pilots. When flying fighter jets, they would dive directly from high altitudes and then strafe the ground, or drop small bombs.
b In response to this phenomenon, Lin Ziran promptly proposed the development of a specialized dive bomber to obtain precision bombing capabilities.
Dive bombers are not so easy to handle, because the aircraft these days are still wood-skinned aircraft, and the strength of the body is limited. When leveling off after a high-speed dive, the body will bear huge pressure.
Many tests conducted by the Army Air Force ultimately yielded no good results, and even resulted in multiple test bombers disintegrating in the air and pilots losing their lives.
In the end, the Army completely gave up its plan to use traditional wooden bombers for dive bombing, and instead found another way.
What solution?
Naturally, more metal materials are used on the body, especially the frame, to make the body stronger to withstand the huge pressure of high-speed dives, and to withstand the enemy's anti-aircraft fire during dive bombing.
After the specific requirements were distributed to many domestic research institutions, a plan proposed by Jingzhou Aircraft Company quickly attracted the attention of the Army.
Their plan was not to use more steel to strengthen the fuselage like other aircraft companies. Instead, they used a new type of aluminum alloy material as the main material of the fuselage and designed an all-metal monoplane bomber.
This aluminum alloy has the characteristics of high strength and light weight. It has been partially used in the industry before. Even a few test aircraft models have used this material. Some new fighter jets actually also use this aluminum alloy.
But it is only partially used. For all-metal aircraft, it has never been done before.
After Lin Ziran learned about the relevant situation, he directly instructed to increase research and development. Regardless of whether it was easy to use or not, he would first get the prototype out.
As for the lack of aluminum alloy production, wanting to increase production, and insufficient power supply, these are not problems.
Just build a number of aluminum refining factories, and to supply electricity, just build a number of coal power plants.
The Daheng Empire is not short of coal...
With the Daheng Empire's current wartime production and construction capabilities, as long as there is demand, it will take less than a few months to produce a large number of power plants for you.
Soon, Jingzhou Aircraft Company completed the design and produced a prototype for testing.
When Lin Ziran saw that the all-metal monoplane dive bomber prototype took off smoothly, and finally carried a 250 mm bomb for dive bombing, and accurately hit the target, he took the lead in applauding and said to
Congratulations to the R&D team!
No one knows better than him that with the emergence of dive bombers, carrier-based aircraft forces will have the ability to break through and destroy the anti-aircraft firepower of enemy warships!
And when dive bombers and torpedo attack aircraft cooperate with each other, the aircraft carrier will truly have the ability to sink the enemy's high-speed mobile main battleship!