On the same day that Ribbentrop Jr. arrived on Georgetown Island to prepare for a possible landing of American GIs there, Major Rudolf von Heinsberg Hersmann was on his way to the port of Brest to report for Rudolph, who had just been offered a promising position as a staff officer of the 2nd Air of the 2nd Fleet of the Combined European Fleet.
Generally speaking, the Navy's fleet staff officers are generally graduates of the Naval Staff College and Naval University, and have considerable experience working in surface fleets and command organs.
However, the aviation staff officer is an exception, because the fleet aviation staff officer must have served as the captain of the carrier-based aviation unit and must be proficient in aviation operations.
And most of such officers are naval aviation officers who have not attended a serious naval academy.
Because German naval aviation has always been regarded as a branch of the air force, pilots and naval aviation officers are mainly trained by the air force.
The advantage of this staffing arrangement was that the Luftwaffe, with its 180,000 front-line pilots, was ready to provide elite pilots for naval aviation.
And after a few months of training at the Naval Aviation School in Port Kiel, 3040 of them will be able to fly carrier-based aircraft on aircraft carriers.
This ensures that the aircraft carriers of the European Community Joint Fleet can get enough and good carrier-based pilots, and they will not be in the dilemma of having aircraft carriers but no pilots, as is the case with Japan.
However, there are pros and cons to everything; when naval aviation and the air force are almost integrated, it is impossible for officers of the navy to be proficient in fleet staff business, and officers with serious naval backgrounds, even if they have participated in flight training organized by the naval aviation school, are far less proficient in aviation warfare than carrier-based aircraft pilots from the air force.
As a result, the Fleet Aviation Staff Officer, who is responsible for communicating between the Navy and the Navy, has become a difficult position to do well.
If this position is held by an officer from the navy, the following carrier-based aircraft pilots will regard him as a layman and are actually a layman, and if he is held by an officer from the air force system, he is not proficient in naval warfare and fleet business.
As a result, there has always been a problem of running-in between the German navy and navy, and when the air force bigwig, Marshal Kesselring, became the commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Front, he adopted a method of making peace with the mud, and the officers from the navy and naval aviation respectively served as the first and second aviation staff officers of the fleet.
Although Hesmann Jr. is young and has not attended the General Staff Academy, the Luftwaffe has not been open for long after all, and the Staff Academy has not been open for a long time, so most of the staff officers of the Air Force and the Navy have not attended the Air Force Staff College, but judging from his resume, he is really the best candidate to serve as a staff officer of the fleet aviation.
Don't look at the young age of Hersman, but he is a veteran of the Navy who has personally experienced the two naval battles of the Hawaiian Islands and the Panama naval battle, and he is still an ace pilot who has won the Blue Max Medal, and he is also the vice president of the official jet flight school, and he has also participated in the officer training class of the naval school in Port Kiel, so he still knows the rules and regulations of the Navy very well.
However, when the well-informed Hesman, who had a diploma from the Navy, Army and Air Force Military Academy, flew to the port of Brest on August 20 on a JU52 transport plane to take up his post, he saw a strange warship in the bay of the port of Brest that he had never seen before.
This is a battleship Judging by the size and caliber of the main guns, it was definitely a battleship Its standard displacement is certainly more than 30000 tons, and the caliber of the main guns is about 380, it seems that it should have been a very powerful battleship.
However, the number of main guns of this battleship was strangely small, with only two twin main gun turrets, one in the bow and one in the stern.
Behind the bow main gun turret was a large, somewhat excessive bridge, as if to make room for the expansion of the bridge, occupying the position that could have been followed by a main gun turret.
As a result, a large ship of more than 30,000 tons has only 4 380 cannons, which is too wasteful of tonnage And this is not the strangest thing, the most incomprehensible thing for little Hersman is that on each side of the large ship is a row of 10 large pipes with one end raised in the direction of the forward bow at an angle of about 45 degrees.
From a distance, it looks a bit like a torpedo tube, but it's certainly not used to launch torpedoes, and the torpedo doesn't need to be tilted upwards, and the torpedo is not rocket artillery.
"Rear Admiral, what kind of ship is this," Hersmann Jr. asked, pointing to the strangely shaped battleship in the sea below, and asked Rear Admiral Hanskalmayer, the chief of staff of the 2nd Fleet, who had flown with him from Berlin.
"This is the missile battleship Gneisenau," said Rear Admiral Mayer, "the flagship of the 201st missile ship group." ” "The missile battleship turned out to be a missile battleship," Hesman Jr. took a breath, he had piloted missiles.
"Those tubes are full of missiles" "That's right, it's all Bleach 2 TV remote control guidance missiles."
Rear Admiral Mayer held out two fingers, "A missile battleship has 20 missile launch tubes, and it is capable of launching 20 Reaper-2 missiles at a time. ” The idea of converting missile battleships was proposed after the "Battle of the Ice Sea" in the North Atlantic in December 1942.
In that battleship fleet showdown, the "Wilhelm II" class missile cruisers played a key role.
Thus, the German Navy fully realized the huge role of remote-controlled missiles in naval warfare.
Moreover, because the battleship Barbarossa was easily sunk by the Soviet-class 406 cannon in that naval battle, the German Navy also realized the fragility of battleships with a standard displacement of around 30,000 tons, such as the "Barbarossa", "Scharnhorst" and "Dunkirk" classes.
As a result, after the "Battle of the Ice Sea", the second ship of the Barbarossa-class, the second ship of the Barbarossa-class, the second ship, the Gneisenau, and the two Dunkirk-class ships began to be overhauled at the same time, and according to the plan, they will be converted into "missile battleships" and "fleet command ships".
According to the German Navy's vision, the four "missile battleships" were to be converted into launch tubes with 20 missile launchers each, which were used to launch remotely controlled missiles of the V series or the Reaper series.
At the same time, they will also serve as the flagship of the task force's battleship group.
In addition, the four "Wilhelm II" class missile cruisers also underwent major changes from 1943.
The turret and the 2 twin 150 turrets were all removed and replaced with 3 triple 203 turrets.
Thus from an "armored ship" to a "heavy cruiser".
At the same time, the eight 533 torpedo tubes and the missile launchers in the ship's amidships were dismantled and replaced with 20 "Reaper" 2 missile launch tubes, which were also equipped with the same anti-ship missile firepower configuration as the "missile battleship."
After the completion of the program of refit of "missile battleship" and "missile heavy cruiser".
The EC Navy will have eight powerful "missile ships" that, if used intensively, can fire 160 25-ton Reaper-2 remote-controlled TV missiles in a salvo.
Theoretically enough to destroy an entire enemy fleet, but only within 30,000 meters of good visibility.
While Germany was striving to build "missile battleships" and "missile heavy cruisers", the T-class missile boat program, which Hersmann had high hopes for at the beginning, failed.
This is due to the fact that the use of jet engines is the Reaper 1 missile, which, like the Reaper 2, is an improvement from the Silver Reaper suicide missile, which cannot be used on ships, and the jet engine is inferior to the rocket engine in terms of thrust and acceleration ability.
The rocket engine of the HWK509 series used in the Reaper-2 missile must use highly corrosive, highly toxic and highly explosive hydrogen peroxide as propellant, so it must use a special preservation container and a method of refueling before launch.
Such a set of equipment is so large that it cannot be installed on a small ship of more than 1,000 tons, which is why the European Community Navy took out eight large ships of 20,000 tons for "missile" modification.
In addition to the major refit of 4 missile battleships and 4 missile cruisers, the German Navy also launched a major overhaul of the Deutschland-class armored ships after 43 years, and 3 chicken-like "Deutschland"-class armored ships were converted into heavy cruisers, and 3 triple 280 turrets were replaced with 3 triple 203 turrets.
At the same time, it was also replaced with a more advanced diesel engine on the dual-action two-stroke diesel engine class, which increased the power to 110,000 horsepower and the maximum speed to 325 knots, but the maximum range was reduced to 6,500 nautical miles and 17 knots, the same as the Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruisers.
As a result of this series of refits, the German Navy had a total of 10 heavy cruisers of three classes in August 1944.
If you add to the 10 heavy cruisers of the French Navy, three of which are of the newly built "Saint-Louis" class, and the Spanish heavy cruiser of the Canarias class, the current combined fleet of the European Community has a total of 21 heavy cruisers.
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Although it is inferior to the United States in terms of numbers, its combat effectiveness is much stronger than that of the Americans' heavy cruisers, and the four "Wilhelm II" class missile cruisers alone have the power to sink several American battleships "Rudolph," said Rear Admiral Mayer, with some anticipation, to Hersmann Jr. as the plane landed at the naval airfield near the port of Brest, "and if we are to form Task Force 20, we will all be on board the Gneisenau."
When the time comes, you will have the opportunity to experience the decisive battle of the battleship formation, which is the real war at sea." t1706231537: