readx; With the successive commissioning of the Tianshan and Tsingshan-class aircraft carriers, it marks that the Chinese Navy has officially become an ocean-going navy with large aircraft carriers as the core. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

If the Chinese Navy still attached equal importance to aircraft carriers and battleships before, then in 1937, the development of the Chinese Navy has been fully shifted to aircraft carriers, and in the eighth and ninth phases of the naval development plan, there is not a single battleship, and even the three Fuxi-class large cruisers in the eighth phase of the plan and the three large cruisers planned in the ninth phase of the plan are also designed and built as aircraft carrier formation escort ships.

Even a large-scale modification of four old battleships was not intended to increase the battlegun combat capabilities of these old battleships, but to increase their speed, in the hope that these old battleships would be able to provide escort for aircraft carrier formations.

In any case, the Chinese Navy in the late thirties basically abandoned the strategic concept of decisive battleship battles and turned to the strategy of decisive battles with aircraft carriers in an all-round way.

At the same time as the Tianshan was put into service, the second ship of the Qingshan, Tianzhushan, also entered active service, and the follow-up ship of the Tianshan, that is, the second ship of the Tianshan class, Wudangshan, has also entered the final stage of training and sea trials, with the experience of the Tianshan in the front, so that the design and construction of the Wudangshan were carried out relatively smoothly, so that although the Wudangshan started nearly a year late, the construction progress was much faster than that of the Tianshan, plus the outbreak of the world war in 1939 and 1940. In order to bring more warships into service in a short period of time, the Chinese Navy accelerated the construction progress, which enabled the Wudangshan, which was originally scheduled to be commissioned in the first half of 1941, to be commissioned in December 1940.

Due to the outbreak of the world war and China's own domestic inflation, the cost of these warships far exceeded the original plan, and the shipbuilding budget formulated in previous years was simply not enough. This is not to say that the cost of the warships themselves has increased, but that the inflation has been very high, and this inflation was even more serious in March 1940 when the Chinese Ministry of Finance decided to issue another 5 billion Chinese dollars guaranteed by state bonds.

In 1940, the Chinese dollar was actually far lower than the Chinese yuan in 1938 in terms of purchasing power, and this was not a difference of a few percentage points, but a multiplication. In fact, in the past two years, the currencies of various countries have been depreciating on a large scale, the yuan, the dollar, the German mark are basically the same, the most illustrative of the currency depreciation is the price of arms, in 1938 the United States booked an Essex-class aircraft carrier cost less than 40 million US dollars, but in 1940, the cost soared directly to more than 70 million, there is of course the additional cost caused by rush and new technology, but more importantly, it is caused by the depreciation of the dollar.

In fact, the depreciation of the currencies of various countries began on a large scale in the early thirties after the countries abandoned the gold standard one after another, and the previous years were fine, but as soon as the war broke out, the countries began to issue a large amount of additional currencies in order to raise military expenses, but the means were through the issuance of government bonds or the direct issuance of additional currencies by the central bank, which caused the rapid depreciation of the currencies of various countries. Behind this devaluation is the fact that the political axes of various countries have begun to directly use private wealth to raise war expenses.

In the so-called concept of total warfare, the issuance of additional currency to loot private wealth for use in warfare is an important part of non-production.

Generally speaking, it can be considered that the political axe directly printed a large number of pieces of paper and then purchased various resources and materials from the people, and the credit of this kind of paper is not guaranteed by gold and any physical goods, but the political axe credit is guaranteed, and it is good that the war is won, and if the war fails, then the economic order of a country is basically finished.

Chen Jingyun stayed at the Wusong Naval Base in Shanghai for several days, and in addition to attending the commissioning ceremonies of the Tianshan and Wudangshan at the beginning, he also held an incendiary speech in Shanghai's Municipal Square, which was mainly aimed at ordinary people. After this speech, Chen Jingyun went to sea again to conduct a large-scale review of the navy.

The naval forces participating in the review were mainly the First Fleet, including two converted battleships, two large cruisers, and several aircraft carriers mainly the newly commissioned Tianshan. That is the Zi'an-class destroyer, the Zi'an destroyer is the product of the eighth phase of the Navy's development plan, the initial design goal is to be a mass-produced general-purpose destroyer, and later it is to strengthen the anti-aircraft fire as the main destroyer of the aircraft carrier formation. The first ship was launched in 1937, and starting with the 16th ship, the Zi'an class has undergone large-scale design details adjustments and large-scale improvements to further improve anti-aircraft firepower and anti-submarine capabilities.

In the later models of the Zi'an-class destroyers, the standard displacement was 2,700 tons, and the four twin-mounted four-inch high-level dual-purpose guns were adopted in fully automatic mode, and the caliber of the main guns was also detached from the five-inch naval guns used on a large scale in the small warships of the Chinese Navy, and the four-inch high-level dual-purpose guns were used for the first time.

The reason for this is mainly affected by the rate of fire, the weight of the shells in the five-inch naval guns of the Chinese Navy is relatively large, and it adopts a semi-active firing mode, the shooting process requires manpower to carry the shells, but the rate of fire is required to be very high, and the physique of the Chinese is smaller than that of whites and blacks, so the handling of five-inch shells is more difficult, this situation actually existed for a long time, but in the First World War and the twenties and even thirties, the Chinese Navy focused on firepower, At that time, it was eager to equip destroyers with six-inch naval guns, and the rate of fire of five-inch naval guns in the early days was relatively limited, and manpower transportation could barely be done.

However, at that time, the rate of fire was generally low, but in the Second Sino-Japanese War, there were cases where the crew members of the destroyer died of exhaustion due to carrying five-inch shells for a long time. It was in the late thirties that the navy's requirements for the rate of fire of medium-caliber naval guns were greatly increased, and technological progress also allowed the increase in the rate of fire to be realized, but the rapid fire increased the physical requirements for the members of the artillery crew, and due to technical limitations, the Chinese Navy is currently unable to implement the full automatic shooting of five-inch naval guns, even if it is barely realized, it will lead to a significant increase in cost, which is unacceptable for a general-purpose destroyer that is expected to be built in large quantities. In this case, the Navy has to re-examine the issue of the caliber of the main guns on the universal destroyer.

At the same time, China has made a technological breakthrough in the full active shooting of four-inch naval guns, which can effectively greatly increase the rate of fire of four-inch naval guns, and it is not difficult to understand that the Chinese Navy uses four-inch naval guns as the caliber of general-purpose destroyers.

The firepower density of eight four-inch fully active-firing high-level dual-purpose guns is far greater than that of six five-inch and semi-active firing naval guns, and the firepower density is particularly important for a small warship, especially a general-purpose destroyer that focuses on air defense.

At the same time, the Zi'an-class destroyers also have a lot of 40 mm and 20 mm anti-aircraft guns, as a destroyer as a destroyer has a lot of torpedo launchers and anti-submarine weapons.

Equipped with so many weapons in such a small tonnage, it is natural to need to sacrifice in other aspects, such as the speed is not too fast, only thirty-four knots, and this is very slow for a destroyer, you must know that in the other destroyers designed by China in the thirties, they are basically more than thirty-five knots, or even thirty-seven or thirty-eight knots.

The reason why the navy has reduced the speed demand for Zi'an-class destroyers is mainly because the naval strategy has changed, and the design of this Zi'an-class is intended to be used to escort aircraft carriers, and the main work is actually air defense and anti-submarine, and there is not much requirement for lightning strikes, so there is no urgent need for high speed.

This is not only reflected in the Zi'an-class destroyers, but also in the eighth and ninth phases of the plan for other auxiliary ships, the speed is not too high, basically to be able to keep up with the speed of the aircraft carrier, basically between 32 and 34 knots. But then again, in addition to the fact that the aircraft carrier formation does not have much demand for high speed, the main thing is the cost, in a warship, especially in a small warship, the most important cost is the cost of the power system, and each increase in the speed of a section represents a large amount of cost, and the cost is extremely strict for the need for large-scale mass production of warships.

Of course, not all warships are designed in accordance with the requirements of aircraft carrier formations, in actual war, the full range of aircraft carrier formation operations is actually a decisive battle of the fleet, and in peacetime there will be many small formations in the vast sea area of the battle, after all, no matter how many aircraft carriers China has now, there are only 12 of them, even if those aircraft carriers of the ninth phase have been put into service one after another, it is impossible to disperse and deploy to every sea area, so in the actual war, the operations on the secondary front are also very frequent. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, in fact, the Chinese Navy directly engaged in only one large-scale decisive battle, and the rest of the time it was basically a small exchange of fire between cruisers and destroyers.

In order to meet the operational needs of the secondary front, the Chinese Navy has another destroyer and light cruiser with high speed and powerful lightning strike capabilities, sacrificing anti-aircraft firepower, paying attention to lightning strikes and speed, and even the cost is higher than that of the auxiliary ships of the air defense type, but the number of ship-building plans in this part is not too much, and they are basically attached according to the scale of the lightning strike fleet.

The plans of the eighth and ninth phases are mainly based on improving and expanding the aircraft carrier formation, and the rest is only a few minor things.

Chen Jingyun did not stay in Shanghai for long after inspecting the First Fleet, and then returned to Nanjing, and as soon as he returned to Nanjing, Wu Shizhong of the Air Force found Chen Jingyun and asked for money in the first sentence.