The first-generation aircraft carrier is a straight straight flight deck, while the second-generation aircraft carrier is mainly marked by a flight deck with an oblique angle.

The warships of the Tang Empire developed and built the first-class and served according to the rules of designing the first-class design, and began to design the next-generation aircraft carrier when building the Tianwang-class aircraft carrier. When the Tianwang-class aircraft carrier was completed and put into service, the second-generation aircraft carrier Doukui-class began to be built.

The Doukui class is not a standard displacement of 30,000 tons, a speed of 33 knots, a deck length of 260 meters, and a carrying 100 aircraft. In fact, the Tang army is also hiding its strength and deliberately weakening the tonnage of aircraft carriers to avoid stimulating the powers of various countries.

The design displacement of the Doukui-class aircraft carrier has actually reached 40,000 tons. The through-type straight deck is 270 meters long, the oblique flight deck is 200 meters long and the draft is 10 meters. The starboard ship is equipped with a trapezoidal octahedral bridge, with 18 floors design, 13 floors on the deck and 5 floors under the deck. The trapezoidal octahedral bridge design has also become one of the signature symbols of various types of aircraft carriers of the Imperial Navy of the Tang Dynasty in the future.

Armor is a highlight of the Doukui-class aircraft carrier. It is built according to the hull of the battleship. Its waterline belt main armor is 300 mm thick and the horizontal deck is 280 mm. It is made of HM1 hot special steel specially developed by Datang Iron and Steel for aircraft carriers. This special steel is forged using a 15,000-ton hydraulic press imported from Germany and is made of deep-sea manganese nodules as alloy raw material. It has many characteristics such as high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, and critical strike resistance. It is also the hard work of the R&D department of Datang Iron and Steel Company after taking the technology-based R&D route to get rid of the loss situation. It completely surpasses the mainstream Krupp military steel in the international market.

Such powerful armor protection is also the main factor that causes the displacement of Doukui-class aircraft carriers to reach 40,000 tons. The total armor weight is as high as 12,000 tons, including several key areas such as the hangar, ammunition depot, and turbine room, and armor protection is also focused on armor protection. Among them, the ammunition depot has reached 450 mm to prevent the ammunition depot from being attacked and causing the aircraft carrier to explode.

Of course, the allocation of 12,000 tons of armor is not just for defense. Since the Doukui-class aircraft carrier is the world's first aircraft carrier with a beveled flight deck, none of the countries had any design experience in this area before. After careful consideration, the warship designers of the Imperial Ship Administration of the Datang Empire believed that such a behemoth was that an aircraft carrier was equivalent to the flight deck area of ​​two aircraft carriers in other countries, and its nautical performance and wave resistance must be handled carefully. Otherwise, once the sea test, there may be a risk of disintegration when the waves hit.

After all, it is the first time, and there is no room for mistakes. After all, the Tang Empire and Japan have become mortal enemies. Both sides are engaged in a large-scale naval arms race. The Tang Navy is currently leading the Japanese Navy for two to three years. If a Doukui-class aircraft carrier makes a major mistake, it will be caught up by the Japanese Navy. It will have a significant impact on the national security of the Tang Empire.

Even after listening to the opinions of the General Administration of Shipbuilding Administration, Zhang Meng expressed his determination to make steady progress and proceed step by step. Anyway, Zhang Meng robbed tens of billions of dollars from Europe, and the shipbuilding funding is sufficient, so it is understandable to spend more money to buy security and accumulate experience in shipbuilding. Therefore, in the issue of excessive armor protection for Doukui-class aircraft carriers, Zhang Meng considered the importance of structural stability and the risk of victory during the future dangerous Pacific War, one inch of armor protection will give him a point of chance of victory. He approved a large number of design plans to increase armor.

According to the designed speed standard of 33 knots, in order to drive this behemoth, the power system uses 8-seater oil-fuel boilers, 4 sets of steam turbine systems, 4 axes and 4 paddles to drive, with an output power of 220,000 horsepower, loading 7,000 tons of high-quality fuel, with a cruising capacity of 8,000 nautical miles at 25 knots and 4,000 nautical miles at 30 knots.

The Doukui-class aircraft carrier with an oblique flight deck can be divided into three parts: takeoff area, standby area and landing area. It can take off and land carrier-based aircraft such as Raptor or Hellfire at the same time, forming a continuous combat circulation system, greatly improving the combat performance of the aircraft carrier and shortening the combat preparation time. This is also one of the leading advantages of the second-generation aircraft carrier over the first-generation aircraft carrier.

In addition, the expansion of the deck area also makes the number of aircraft carriers of Doukui-class aircraft carriers one-third more than that of the Tianwang-class. There are 54 Raptor heavy carrier-based fighters standardly loaded with three squadrons, 54 Hellfire heavy carrier-based bombers of three squadrons, 8 FC-1 torpedo reconnaissance aircraft, and 4 spare hangars.

The catapults are added to three sets, two sets of axial takeoff decks, and one set of oblique decks can provide rapid catapult tasks in emergencies. There are three lifts, one on the front and rear tarmacs of the island, and one on the takeoff area.

The most eye-catching thing is that the Doukui-class aircraft carrier will be equipped with an air defense weapon system similar to the future Russian Kashtan near-defense gun for the first time. The code-named MK1 Vulcan dense array air defense weapon system is a dual-mounted 7-tube 30mm caliber Gatling machine gun with a rotating turret design, with a range of 1500 to 5000 meters, a firing height of 5 to 3500 meters, a firing rate of 3000 rounds per minute, a 1,500 rounds of ammunition, a coiled ammunition chain supply, and an external independent motor drive.

Since there is no fire control computer and photoelectric radar system, the Vulcan dense array cannot automatically lock the target and open fire, so five gunners need to operate manually. However, it is equipped with an advanced Cass photoelectric sight system, which greatly improves the accuracy.

This Vulcan dense array system was a concept proposed by Zhang Meng and handed over to the gun designers of the Ordnance Department to develop. It is still under concentrated testing. It is expected to be completed before the Doukui-class aircraft carrier is launched, which will not affect the time when the new aircraft carrier is equipped with this powerful air defense weapon.

The Doukui-class aircraft carrier is expected to be equipped with a twelve Vulcan dense array system to form a powerful air defense firepower network.

At the same time, other escort warships of the Tang Army aircraft carrier battle group will also be installed in the future to improve the overall air defense capabilities of the aircraft carrier battle group and improve the battlefield survival ability.

The four ships Chiyou, Lizhu, Yinglong and Kuafu, which were announced to be super battleships, were nominally announced to be building battleships, but in fact they were next-class aircraft carriers. The tonnage was much larger than the Doukui-class aircraft carriers, and it was an enlarged version. However, the construction speed deliberately slowed down, and the construction cycle was extended by one to two years, which was staggered with the four Doukui-class aircraft carriers. The main reason was that they lacked the construction experience of the second-generation aircraft carriers. After the completion of the four Doukui-class aircraft carriers, the construction would be completed according to the situation.

However, the eight main large aircraft carriers in the future will need to be equipped with a large number of escort warships to form an aircraft carrier battle group. The Tang Empire's land area is limited, and the large shipyard docks are insufficient. Several shipyard dock facilities built in the Fiji Islands are still being returned and cannot be put into use immediately. Therefore, the Tang Empire has ordered warships from European and American powers.

Previously, Zhang Meng had ordered warships in Britain and France. This time, in order to appease Britain and France, and to ease the United States' concerns about the Tang Empire, Zhang Meng decided to continue to order 12 Linxian-class light cruisers from Britain, 40 Fusion-class destroyers from France, and 20 Gridley-class destroyers from the United States.

The Gridley class is a super destroyer equipped with 16 torpedo tubes. The US military reached a high speed of 40 knots during the trial voyage. Zhang Meng knew that this very successful destroyer had made great contributions in the night battle with the Japanese fleet, so he favored it and was ready to use it for night combat patrols in fleets, ports and naval bases.

The Gridley-class super destroyer has a full load displacement of 2,286 tons, a standard speed of 36.5 knots, and the main gun is 4 single-barrel 5-inch high-level dual-purpose guns (the main guns of a and b have turrets, and the main guns of x and y have no turrets), 4 quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes, 4 1.1-inch anti-aircraft guns, and two anti-submarine deep-water bomb catapults.

The surface ships of the Tang Navy were in full swing, but the development and design of submarines were difficult to produce. The main reason was that the Tang Army's submarines played a limited role in this Pacific Naval Battle. Apart from reconnaissance operations, they did not participate in large-scale fleet operations, nor did they suffer any damage to the war.

In addition, the personal knowledge level of submarine soldiers also limits the improvement of the combat effectiveness of the Tang army's submarines to a certain extent. For this reason, Zhang Meng specially set up a submarine training center at the Longmen Naval Base, and specially hired internationally renowned submarine experts to give lectures to help improve the knowledge level of the Tang army's submarine soldiers.

The submarine submarine's underwater submarine has always been a key bottleneck that plagues the Tang army's submarine fleet to improve its combat effectiveness. Zhang Meng asked the submarine R&D department to design the AIP submarine that does not rely on air propulsion. Obviously, this is a huge and difficult project, which is a very difficult project that is to be used to facilitate growth and cannot be completed at the moment, at least the relevant supporting hardware facilities cannot be achieved.

Because the submarines had no experience in war, the Tang Navy crushed the Japanese Navy with its aircraft carrier battle group, which made the submarine fleet achieve nothing and was despised by various departments of the navy. In the end, the Navy Department only approved the San Francisco Joint Shipyard to build an additional 20 V-4 submarines, and no new submarines started construction.

However, Zhang Meng quickly deployed a hunger battle against Japan. One of the links was to break the war against Japan and destroy Japan's resource supply. At the same time, submarines also needed to go to Japan's coast to lay mines and block Japan's ports and waterways.

Zhang Meng was preparing to fight a big fight with the Japanese devils, and submarines were an important part of it. Therefore, under Zhang Meng's special order, the Navy Department once again customized 40 V-4 submarines, making the total number of Tang army's submarines reach about 120 in the next two or three years.
Chapter completed!