This time, Zhang Meng did not rush to demolish it, but instead filled all the docks of San Francisco United Steel Shipyard with full construction period.

Four large 30,000-ton docks were arranged by Zhang Meng to build large aircraft carriers, while other docks were used to build gunboats and submarines for offshore defense, as well as fleet transport ships, supply ships, oil tankers, tugboats and other auxiliary ships.

The first aircraft carrier of the Tang Empire Navy was designed by Holmesfil, chief ship designer of the San Francisco United Steel Shipyard, and was modified in accordance with the requirements put forward by Zhang Meng.

Since Holmsfell had only designed battleships and had no experience in designing aircraft carriers, in addition to making requests to him, Zhang Meng also spent a lot of money to buy a complete set of design drawings for the US Navy's USS Lexington modified aircraft carrier and the USS Saratoga from the archives custodian of the Newport News Shipyard.

With the design drawings, everything was easy to deal with. Holmesfil combined the drawings to design an aircraft carrier for the Tang Empire Navy, and strengthened the horizontal armor protection and underwater armor protection of the aircraft carrier in accordance with the requirements put forward by Zhang Meng, widened and extended the flight deck of the aircraft carrier to ensure that the heavy bombers can be taken off (landing is not yet possible for the time being), canceled the original Saratoga's sea attack artillery, and all changed to anti-aircraft rapid-fire cannons.

When the final design drawings were completed, Zhang Meng was quite satisfied with the reading.

As the first aircraft carrier of the Tang Empire, four ships were built at the same level, named after the four heavenly kings of ancient Chinese Buddhist mythology, namely the Heavenly King of Chiguo (CV-1), the Heavenly King of Geng (CV-2), the Heavenly King of Guangmu (CV-3) in the West and the Heavenly King of Duowen (CV-4).

The first ship, the aircraft carrier of the Guotianwang, has a standard displacement of 28,560 tons, a full load displacement of 37,746 tons, a flight deck length of 270 meters, a width of 33 meters, and a draft of 7.1 meters. The standard full-purpose flight deck, with the P6E carrier-based aircraft as the target model, can normally carry 130 aircraft and 12 aircraft in spare. It adopts a mature American power system, 16 Wilcox-type special-fired boiler, 4 GE steam turbines, a standard speed of 27.5 knots, a maximum speed of 30 knots, a standard crew member, 2,120 elevators, and 1 set of steam catapults.

The tonnage, size and speed of the other three aircraft carriers are roughly the same as the performance of the Tsingguo Tianwang aircraft carrier.

The reason why the speed of the four king-class aircraft carriers is 3 knots less than that of the US Lexington-class is mainly to enhance the aircraft carrier's defense capabilities, anti-sinking capabilities and air defense capabilities, so a certain speed is sacrificed.

Fortunately, the biggest threat to aircraft carriers in this era - the speed of submarines generally does not exceed 18 knots, so a speed of 27 knots is still more than enough to avoid submarines.

The aircraft carrier's defense capability obtained by sacrificing speed has been greatly improved. The horizontal deck (80+40+20 three-layer Krupp steel armor) can withstand direct attacks of 500 kilograms of aviation bombs without any problem. The waterline has 127 mm main armor, plus a large number of redesigned watertight capsules and watertight doors, and the most advanced sealing technology in the United States, greatly improving the anti-sinking ability of the aircraft carrier. In theory, it can directly withstand the non-lethal attacks of 7 533 mm conventional torpedoes without sinking.

In terms of firepower, the Saratoga's four-seater double-barrel 8-inch/55 guns were cancelled, and it was replaced with four-seater double-barrel 120mm anti-aircraft rapid-fire guns, adding 24 12.7mm parallel anti-aircraft machine guns, which can also shoot torpedo boats at sea.

In addition, the most dangerous hangar of aircraft carriers is a semi-enclosed type. Fighters of conventional ammunition are stored in the enclosed hangar. Bombers carrying high-explosive bombs and torpedoes work in the open hangar. Once attacked, all bombs can be pushed into the sea to prevent explosions in the hangar, which greatly reduces the possibility of aircraft carriers' second explosion.

The problems that Zhang Meng had temporarily thought of required Holmesfeld to improve and design. Many of the problems were not even considered by Holmesfeld, so he had to give Zhang Meng a thumbs up.

After repeated argumentation, Holmesfil finally finalized the aircraft carrier design drawings and handed them over to the shipyard Engineering Department to start construction.

After half a month of preparation, on February 7, 1930, the four large docks of the San Francisco United Steel Shipyard began to lay keels at the same time, and the construction of the four king-class aircraft carriers officially began.

Zhang Meng thought that the price of US steel plummeted at this time, and the large amount of cheap steel reduced the construction cost of the four king-class aircraft carriers by half. After preliminary calculations, the USS Saratoga aircraft carrier built by the US Navy was about US$16 million. This was the price before the outbreak of the economic crisis. During the economic crisis, major shipbuilding materials such as steel plummeted by an average of 60%. Therefore, the cost of each king-class aircraft carrier can be basically controlled within US$10 million.

However, Zhang Meng knew very well that after 1933, the United States would abolish the gold standard and depreciate the US dollar on a large scale to restore price levels. Therefore, in order to control the cost of shipbuilding, Zhang Meng had to complete all the battleship construction work of his aircraft carrier battle group before that time.

Therefore, Zhang Meng asked the shipyard to enter a wartime construction state and start construction in 24-hour shifts. He used the United States' huge industrial manufacturing capabilities and cheap steel and other raw materials to complete four king-class aircraft carriers before the US dollar depreciates, and free up the dock to build as many warships as possible.

Zhang Meng did some calculations and completed the entire shipbuilding plan of the main fleet of the Tang Empire Navy by 33 years, it would cost approximately US$290 million. If it was delayed until 33 years later, when the US dollar depreciated wildly and pushed up prices, an additional fee of up to US$2.1 billion will be added.

Obviously, Zhang Meng calculated the account very clearly.

Therefore, he would rather spend more money to get workers to start work 24 hours a day.

In this way, in addition to giving Zhang Meng a large amount of money, the construction period of the four king-class aircraft carriers was also shortened to 15 months, which is a big hit.

While the construction of the Tianwang-class aircraft carrier was started, Zhang Meng was also considering the indispensable underwater combat force of the Imperial Navy aircraft carrier battle group - the submarine.

For the current Tang Empire, the maritime threat from Japan is huge. In a short period of time, the Tang Empire's navy was unable to compete with the Japanese navy, so it was necessary to build asymmetric combat forces on a large scale.

The so-called asymmetric combat force is to take advantage of the natural advantages of the geographical environment of the Tang Empire to build submarines on a large scale and form submarine wolves in the Pacific Ocean.

Once they get into evil with Japan or even start war, the submarine wolves of the Tang Empire Navy's naval naval fleet will attack from all sides, attacking the Japanese naval fleet and supply, and cutting off Japan's maritime supply line.

Since Japan is also an island country, resources are scarce and all rely on imports. Once the Tang Empire navy adopts the wolf pack attack tactic, just like the German wolf pack besieged the British mainland during World War I, which forced Britain to almost surrender, Japan could not stand such attack tactics.

This is an asymmetric combat method and one of the key tactics of the Tang Empire's navy, which is currently at a disadvantage at sea. Before the aircraft carrier battle group has formed its combat effectiveness, it is best to use wolves tactics to ensure the national defense security of the Tang Empire.

Therefore, in addition to rapidly producing submarines in other docks of San Francisco United Steel Shipyard, Zhang Meng also ordered various types of submarines from other American shipyards.

At this time, the mainstream submarines of the US Navy were V-1 class submarines. They were included in the construction plan of the US Navy during World War I, but due to the complex situation during the war, it was not implemented. After the end of World War I, the US Navy decided to start building V-1 class submarines based on the 1921 annual plan, and built three of them between 1924 and 1925.

The V-1 submarine adopts a half-shell structure, and the main engine power of the boat has been greatly increased to achieve a maximum speed of 21 knots on the water surface. According to the initial vision of the US Navy, it intends to deploy the built V-1 submarine in the Pacific Ocean to engage in separate maritime combat activities.

However, after completion and service, the US Navy discovered that the V-1 submarine was too tilted during surface navigation and often had a bow buried phenomenon, which had a very adverse impact on the surface navigation of this class of submarines. In addition, due to the influence of some factors during the design process, the maximum surface speed of the V-1 submarine did not actually meet the initially envisioned design index of 21 knots.

In 1930, the U.S. Navy renamed the V-1 class submarine as the "Barclaw" class submarine.

At the same time, the V-4 submarine stood out in the submarine design bid. The US Navy has always been very stingy in its investment in submarines, so it tried to order a submarine of this type from the Philadelphia Shipyard.

Zhang Meng was attracted by this new submarine, which just met the combat needs of the future fleet submarine of the Tang Empire Navy, so he immediately placed an order for six V-4 submarines from the Philadelphia Shipyard and purchased the design drawings of the boat. The San Francisco United Steel Shipyard was responsible for building twenty ships, and ten were built by several other American shipyards along the Pacific coast.

The V-4 submarine is a large ocean submarine after the V-1 class submarine. It was built by the US Navy according to the annual plan of 1925 and only built one. During the design of the V-4 submarine, the Philadelphia Shipyard fully absorbed the characteristics of Germany's submarines engaged in maritime combat during World War I and decided that the V-4 submarine would adopt a double-hull structure. Therefore, the reserve buoyancy of the boat was doubled compared with the V-1 class submarine. The main feature of the V-4 submarine is that the boat is equipped with large caliber naval guns, which have strong sea combat performance, and the boat is loaded with a large number of spare torpedoes, and has a large endurance.

Zhang Meng officially took a fancy to the powerful endurance of the V-4 submarine, because its ability to operate from oceans is equivalent to meeting the standards of fleet submarines, and can also fight alone, approaching Japan's local coastal areas to conduct breakthrough combat, which meets the temporary maritime combat standards of the Tang Empire Navy.

These 40 V-4 submarines were combined with 12 Linxian-class light cruisers customized in the UK, 24 Fusion-class destroyers customized in France, and four Tianwang-class aircraft carriers under construction by the San Francisco United Steel Shipyard. Zhang Meng announced the completion of the planning of the aircraft carrier battle group for the Tang Empire in the next two to three years.

However, it is not enough to have an aircraft carrier alone, so Zhang Meng then placed his target on the aircraft carrier-based aircraft.

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Basic data of V-4 submarine (here is the cruiser translated from the external network data, for reference only): Standard displacement (surface/underwater): 2710t/4164 tons, main scale is 116.1 meters × 10.3 meters × 5.0 meters, main engine is 3 MAN type 6-cylinder 4-stroke diesel engines (for surface navigation), 2 RDY type motors (for underwater navigation), dual propulsion shafts. Power (surface/underwater) is 31
Chapter completed!