บท 30: Mother Duck and Super Duck Mother

When the train of time entered 1907, Germany and the United Kingdom were fully engaged in naval arms races, and other powers were not idle. Japan and the United States were also vigorously building naval battleships, and the Russian government was preparing for the turbulent situation in the country. they were very busy with revolutionaries. Although the Russian Revolutionary Uprising in late 1905 was suppressed by the tsarist government due to the disparity in power and the lack of a unified organization among the armed forces, the foundation of the Tsarist Empire has been greatly shaken Too. Lenin fled to East Prussia in early 1906. While reflecting on the reasons for the failure of the revolution, he also regained strength.

Chen Tian began to study the aircraft carrier. In his consciousness, with the aircraft carrier, the battleship would no longer be solved only by the battleship.

But this time was after all in 1907, and everything had to be planned and designed by himself, so he decided to start with a simpler one, which was the seaplane and the seaplane mothership.

Prior to this, Chen tian's aircraft factory had produced a "flying fish" type seaplane. In fact, it was modified on the basis of the "Sky II" type aircraft, and a ship-shaped buoy was added to the position of the aircraft wheel. All the seaplane mother ship needs to do is to hang the aircraft from the mother ship to the water surface, the aircraft takes off and land on the water surface, and then the mother ship hangs the aircraft back from the water to the ship. The design and modification of the seaplane mothership is very simple. As long as a cargo ship or battleship is modified, it can carry 2-10 "flying fish" seaplanes.

However, Chen Tian did not understand anything about the conversion of the ship. He had to go to the Königsberg shipyard to find all the engineers and technicians, including the ship technicians recruited from Norway and Sweden, hoping to find a suitable one from them. Of the project.

"I need an imaginative engineer or technician who has worked in the construction of ordinary freighters and warships!" Chen Tian said to the dozens of people in front of him.

About 10 people raised their hands on the spot to show that they met the requirements. Chen Tian asked the people who raised their hands, "Do you think the plane can take off from the ship?"

They looked at each other and shook their heads. Only two younger people raised their hands.

"The two of you stay! The others can go!" Chen Tian suddenly felt that this was a bit like an interview. He motioned to the two young men who had just raised their hands to sit in front of him. Both of them are blond, one looks typical of the German, the other...

"Solskya!" When Chen Tian looked at the other person's face carefully, he couldn't help but yell out softly. The baby's face looked exactly like Manchester United star Solskjaer. If the baby face can also be inherited, this person must be a ancestor of Solskjaer!

"His Royal Highness, you, you actually know my name?" The man also looked at Chen Tian with a surprised expression.

"Are you... really called Solskjaer?" Chen Tian looked at this baby face with his eyes wide open. Could it be that the face shape could be inherited?

"Yes! My name is St. Solskya! Why?"

"It's nothing, but you look like someone I know. He's also called Solskjaer. He will have a chance to introduce you later, hahaha!" Chen Tian laughed awkwardly, then he looked at another The wondering young man, "Sorry, what's your name?"

"Lehmann, Fabbit Lehman! Berline, marine engineer!" Sure enough, he was German, and his speech was concise and concise, but he had a rare German imagination.

"Okay! You will follow me from today! We will do an epoch-making event!" Chen Tian took their hands excitedly, the ancestor of the star! How about signing a name?

Two months later, Chen Tian's first seaplane carrier was converted. Its predecessor was a freighter with a displacement of 8,000 tons. Chen Tian gave it a very interesting name, "Mama Duck". "Mama Duck" was equipped with a lift and a long boom at the front and rear of the ship, and opened several cargo compartments on the belly of the ship as an aircraft hangar, which can accommodate a total of 8 "flying fish" seaplanes. .

On this day, the Baltic Sea was calm and calm, and Chen Tian, along with Solskjaer and Lehman, boarded the "Mother Duck" for the first test flight with aircraft taking off and landing.

"Okay, let's go down and host!"

"Left, a little further to the left."

Seeing the crew busy lifting the seaplane to the boom, Solskjaer couldn't help but show a happy expression. The boom on the boat was designed and installed by him, "Look! His Royal Highness, the plane will be soon Put it steadily on the water!"

"Um! Not bad! But I want to ask, how long does it take for a plane to be installed from the boom to the water?"

"About 5 minutes!" Solskjaer thought and answered.

"It takes at least half an hour for each of the eight aircraft to be lowered from the two ends to takeoff! How long will it take for that aircraft to retract and start again?"

"Well... it will take 10 minutes to hang up, 5 minutes to refuel and check, and 5 minutes to hang to the surface, it will take a total of 20 minutes!"

"The speed of the seaplane mothership modified by the cargo ship is too slow, but if the battleship is modified, the carrying capacity is too small, and in any case, it needs to be suspended or lifted at a static or very slow speed, and there are high winds and waves. The seaplane could not take off at all!" Lehman interjected suddenly.

"It's a very good talk! Lehman!" Chen Tian stretched out his hand and gestured, "If you take off directly from the deck of the all-in-one deck? The problems are all solved!"

Lehman and Solskjaer did not speak, but looked at a seaplane on the surface of the water, which was gliding a distance on the water and vacated.

"Theoretically feasible!" Lehman suddenly thought of something, "as long as the deck is long enough!"

"Landing? It takes a long distance to land!"

Lehman is a very creative engineer, and Solskjaer is a technician who can turn imagination into reality.

"Landing! Install a hook at the tail of the plane and a few retractable ropes on the deck. Hook the hook with the hook when the plane lands!" Let Lehman and Solskjaer fall into deep thinking.

Three years later, with Chen tian's "pointing" and the joint efforts of Lehman and Solskjaer, a real aircraft carrier-the "Super Duck Mother" with a full-style deck and island bridge Launched, this aircraft carrier has a displacement of 12,000 tons, a maximum speed of 20 knots, and a deck length of 188×28 meters. It can carry 25 "Seagull I" single-engined biplane fighters or 14 "Wild Duck I" double-engined biplane attack aircraft. The birth of "Super Mama Duck" gave this battleship era an unusual atmosphere. Since Chen Tian and his mother ducks were silently constructed and tested in the Baltic Sea, the world knows little about this advanced weapon. In fact, they have fallen behind Chen Tian and the German Navy by a lot...

It was not until December 14, 1910, that American pilot Eugene Erie took the Curtiss biplane to take off from the platform installed on the front of the cruiser "Birmingham". On January 18 of the following year, the platform was installed on the rear of the moored state cruiser "Pennsylvania". The British Navy followed suit closely. On January 1, 1912, Captain Charles Samson followed the example of Eugene Erie from the 305 mm main gun of the battleship "Africa" and the temporary runway erected above the front deck. The British took off for the first time on a warship. In May of the same year, during a naval review in Wemers Bay, he took off from the battleship "Ireland" and then from the battleship "London". At the end of 1912, the Royal Navy carried out the practice of converting light cruisers into seaplane motherships. When the First World War broke out in 1914, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier converted from a coal carrier was nearing completion. It was named "Royal Ark" with a displacement of 7,450 tons and could carry 10 seaplanes.

By the time the war broke out, Chen tian's Baltic Squadron already had 2 medium-sized aircraft carriers, namely the 12,000-ton "Super Duck Mother" and the 15,000-ton "Lisa", and 4 seaplane carriers, 3 of which were later Support was given to the German High Seas Fleet, in addition to 2 light cruisers allocated by the Admiralty, 14 destroyers built by the Königsberg shipyard, 2 destroyers provided by the Admiralty, 24 self-built submarines, and self-built torpedo boats Thirteen, self-built patrol gunboats 35, this fleet has become a decisive military force in the Baltic Sea.