Empire Conquest
Chapter 382 - 378 Visiting

Chapter 382: Chapter 378 Visiting

Bai Zhizhan returned home, yet he didn’t stay overnight. After packing a few sets of clothes, he headed to the airport and took a night flight to Puzhou.

Though the Navy headquarters were in the Imperial Capital, the Navy’s foundation had always been in the south.

Traditionally, the Army was in the north, and the Navy in the south.

Puzhou had always been the main base of the Empire’s Navy and simultaneously the largest shipbuilding base globally with the most comprehensive supporting industries.

By the time he arrived in Puzhou, it was already the next morning.

Bai Zhizhan had long developed the habit of sleeping on planes, no matter whether it was a transport aircraft or even on a violently shaking patrol aircraft, he could still fall asleep peacefully.

Upon arriving in Puzhou, Bai Zhizhan went straight to Zhao Yu’s Ship Design Institute.

After he arrived, he called the shipyard’s manager, Yang Hanlin, and also had the institute’s staff bring Zhao Yu back.

Yang Hanlin arrived quickly.

Bai Zhizhan didn’t delay much and inquired about the situation of the "Imperial Capital" carrier.

It was very bad, it would need at least three months to repair. To ensure the quality of the repairs, it would be best to extend it to four months, otherwise, it would be impossible to guarantee the elimination of all hidden issues.

According to Yang Hanlin’s words, they shouldn’t expect the carrier before the Spring Festival.

The situation of the four fast battleships was equally bleak.

Depending on the extent of the damage, it would take between three to five months to fully repair them.

Due to a lack of docks, the repair work for these four battleships might not be able to start on time.

However, the Empire’s Navy was already coordinating. If it was manageable, they would send them to other shipyards for repair. If not, they’d have to manipulate the repair sequences, such as docking them in turns and possibly conducting minor repairs outside of the dock.

As for the situation of the "Longjiang", Yang Hanlin didn’t say much.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know, but it wasn’t convenient for him to elaborate.

Actually, this was understandable.

Although the shipyard was under the He Family’s control, if forced to choose, they would definitely prefer to keep the carrier instead of letting Bai Zhizhan take it.

By nearly noon, Zhao Yu finally rushed back.

He was not on the factory premises but had gone to an upstream manufacturer producing carrier equipment and had been busy working on a new type of carrier design.

It was not a fleet carrier or a large carrier, but a light carrier.

Actually, this was a decision made out of necessity.

Since there were no long sea routes to protect and islands were deployed along main routes where shore-based air force could cover transport fleets and send patrol aircraft to deal with enemy submarines, the Empire’s Navy had never considered building smaller carriers with lower combat capabilities.

According to Bai Zhizhan, carriers should obviously be as big as possible, why would smaller be better?

However, the situation was now compelling.

The fleet carriers had repeatedly suffered damage, and the construction speed of large carriers couldn’t be accelerated. After the first batch of four were completed, the second batch of eight wouldn’t be delivered until New Calendar 103 at the earliest. As for the third batch, they hadn’t passed approval yet and no one could guarantee that the Empire’s Navy wouldn’t lose any carriers in combat over the next two years. Hence, even when the second batch of large carriers were commissioned, they might still not be sufficient.

Thus, the only solution was to build light carriers.

It would be a newly built, fast light fleet carrier, not the kind of escort aircraft carrier converted from merchant ships like those of the Newland Navy and Bulan Royal Navy.

To save time, Zhao Yu took a shortcut.

He used the hull of a heavy cruiser, removed the superstructure, and main gun magazine, and other redundancies, set up a hangar on top of the hull, then constructed a flight deck out of wooden planks above the hangar, and finally installed a superstructure mainly for arranging the smokestacks on the right side of the flight deck.

Thus, a standard carrier with a displacement of about ten thousand tons was formed.

Of course, if necessary, a catapult could be installed at the front end of the flight deck.

To facilitate construction, the elevators were placed on the sides of the ship, and the hangar had a semi-open structure.

On the exposed armor deck, there was no need to install large-caliber high-altitude guns; a 40 mm high-altitude gun would suffice, but an 80 mm one would be even better.

Crucially, such carriers were especially easy to build and did not require the use of large dockyards.

Any ordinary shipyard could handle the construction!

What Zhao Yu did was take the design plans of the "Wuzhou" class heavy cruiser, modify them, and then liaise with various upstream manufacturers for the relevant equipment.

In his own words, Zhao Yu said that after several days of hard work, there was finally some progress.

The "Wuzhou" class had originally been designed with the potential for conversion in mind—its wartime full-load displacement reached 14,500 tons, yet it could still achieve a maximum speed of 33 knots. Theoretically, without major alterations to the ship’s design and using the original propulsion system, even if the displacement was increased to 17,000 tons, the carrier’s speed would not drop below 30 knots. Since it was a small carrier, a speed of 30 knots was deemed sufficient.

A full load of 17,000 tons was not considered small by any means.

The Saiyi Navy’s "Canglong" and "Feilong" both had a full-load displacement of just over 18,000 tons.

If space was utilized efficiently, storing more than 40 ship-borne aircraft in the hangar and restraining around 20 on the flight deck would definitely be feasible.

The "Canglong" class had sacrificed survivability, allowing it to carry up to 73 ship-borne aircraft!

In reality, 40 to 50 aircraft would be sufficient.

According to Zhao Yu’s estimates, carrying only six squadrons—48 aircraft—not only would maintain a speed of 30 knots but also ensure adequate survivability.

In terms of air combat capabilities, it would be equivalent to 60% of the "Imperial Capital" class.

Indeed, it fell short, but this could entirely be compensated by numbers.

The most crucial aspect was actually the construction speed.

If built strictly to Navy standards, ordinary small shipyards would definitely feel the strain—after all, many small shipyards had never built a battleship, let alone a carrier, and did not understand the naval construction standards, facing significant difficulties in actual practice.

As Zhao Yu put it, even before the last major war erupted, the Empire’s large battleships had all been constructed by the five major shipyards; other shipyards could only take on construction of coastal patrol boats, landing craft, and river gunboats—that is, vessels with displacements of less than a thousand tons.

Not to mention large battleships, even submarines, which required some level of construction technology, were divided among three shipyards.

Implicitly, the Empire’s shipbuilding industry had long been monopolized by a few elites.

However, slightly lowering the standards would eliminate these issues.

This was also a headache for Zhao Yu.

To have small shipyards construct small carriers to stricter-than-commercial ship standards was one thing, but how to convince the Navy?

How could he make the Navy accept carriers built to commercial ship standards?

Two days ago, Zhao Yu submitted a report to the Navy Headquarters, emphasizing that small carriers were an emergency war measure.

Implicitly, these carriers would only be employed during wartime and would be decommissioned once the war concluded.

The current major war, no matter how intense, would only last a few years at most.

With this in mind, even if the quality standards were slightly lower, it wouldn’t be a problem since they would all be retired after the war.

After the war?

With its numerous fleet carriers, the Imperial Navy would undoubtedly dominate globally, naturally sidelining the mass-produced small carriers.

Certainly, this reasoning was very sound.

Regrettably, the Navy Headquarters had yet to respond.

Zhao Yu didn’t articulate the complexity, but Bai Zhizhan could guess it.

Currently, the person in charge of Navy equipment was He Yongxing.

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