Empire Conquest

Chapter 558 - 554: Power Multiplier

Although he was a Fleet Commander, Bai Zhizhan had always believed that the combat power of the Navy depended not only on the majestic battleships but also on numerous auxiliary ships.

One of the more famous ones was the fleet oiler, which later became the Fast Combat Support Ship.

Among the many auxiliary ships, the role of a self-propelled floating dock absolutely could not be underestimated, even ranking ahead of other engineering vessels.

The reason was quite simple.

A self-propelled floating dock could serve several, or even dozens of battleships, thereby significantly improving the operational availability of the ships.

Floating docks could be used not only to repair damaged battleships but also to provide other services.

For instance, they could perform maintenance on battleships at the front line, especially in areas far from the homeland and severely lacking in supporting facilities in the depths of the ocean.

In a sense, a self-propelled floating dock was a shipyard that could navigate.

Although it could not be used to build battleships, it was absolutely more than adequate for their repair and maintenance.

In actual use, floating docks spent 80% of the time providing routine maintenance for vessels, with fewer opportunities to repair damaged battleships.

However, the issue was that the cost of building self-propelled floating docks was extravagantly high.

Before the outbreak of major wars, self-propelled floating docks were the most expensive specialized engineering vessels, not only in terms of construction cost but also in terms of maintenance and operational costs.

That was precisely why the Imperial Navy had purchased only two.

In peacetime, self-propelled floating docks were primarily used for civilian purposes and had little to do with the Navy, rarely providing services for battleships. Even if a battleship suffered a serious malfunction at sea, such as non-functional power equipment or propulsion systems, the Navy would prefer to send a tugboat or have the ship towed by another vessel because towing the battleship back to a military port for repairs was much cheaper than using a floating dock.

If self-propelled floating docks were constructed in the pre-war manner, their numbers would certainly not be substantial.

Fortunately, the Imperial Navy had found a very clever solution to this problem.

It wasn’t anything special, just the modular construction method.

Briefly, apart from the engineering and power sections which were built separately, the repair sections of the self-propelled floating docks were designed and constructed according to uniform standards, and assembled as needed in practice to serve battleships of different sizes and tonnages.

For instance, serving carriers and battleships required 8 repair sections, supporting a weight of 50,000 tons with a dock length of 300 meters. To service heavy cruisers and other large battleships, only 4 or 6 repair sections would be needed, supporting less than 30,000 tons with a dock length between 180 and 240 meters. Further reduction would involve assembling 2 repair sections, capable of supporting a weight under 10,000 tons and shortening the dock length to 120 meters, sufficient only for destroyers and other small battleships.

The key was that all repair sections adhered to a uniform standard.

Not only were the outer dimensions identical, but the connecting ports also used uniform standards, facilitating arbitrary assembly and combination in practice.

In actual construction, shipyards built the hulls with thin steel plates to save costs and speed up construction, then filled them with cement, and finally, as needed, welded drainage-capable pontoons to the outside of the hulls, thus reducing the construction time of repair sections by two-thirds.

Indeed, it was this construction method that turned the self-propelled floating docks into "common goods."

Otherwise, the Imperial Navy couldn’t have built more than 20 self-propelled floating docks in just over 2 years, making them ubiquitous "self-service" repair stations.

Not to mention others, the "North River" and "Nanjiang" were first repaired in the self-propelled floating docks at Lion Spring City, then returned to the Imperial homeland.

Because the initial repairs were timely, the shipyard repair time for these two Fast Battleships was reduced to 3 months.

If everything went smoothly, they could rejoin the battle sequence by the end of the year and appear alongside the carrier as bodyguards.

However, the value of the self-propelled drydock was primarily reflected in escort operations.

Speaking of which, this was related to the current predicament of the Imperial Navy.

Before the war broke out, because there were few shipping routes that needed protection and no one had thought that they could break through to Boss Bay so smoothly—even no one had considered gaining strategic initiative after the war began. Due to the possibility of being engaged in combat with several heavyweight opponents at the same time, priority had to be given to the construction of carriers, fast battleships, and heavy cruisers as the main battle ships, so the Imperial Navy had always not paid much attention to anti-submarine escorting, although many destroyers had been built, mainly as large oceangoing destroyers accompanying fleet activities.

The anti-submarine destroyers that could truly be used for escort operations were, in fact, few and far between.

Of course, this was not only an issue for the Imperial Navy but for the navies of all nations.

The logic was simple—in the Treaty Era, to ensure the advantage of their main fleets, the navies of various countries did not prioritize the secondary warships used for escort operations.

Furthermore, after the end of the last great war, when construction replaced confrontation, the navies had a hard time.

Like other navies of the Great Powers, the Imperial Navy mothballed a large number of escort destroyers during peacetime, especially those built in the later stages of the last war.

To comply with treaties, some of these were even demilitarized by removing cannons, torpedoes, and other weapons.

Indeed, these old destroyers, generally over 20 years old, were the main escort force at the beginning of the war.

Although relying on these mothballed old warships effectively alleviated the dilemma of insufficient troops in the initial phase of the war, many fundamental issues remained unresolved.

Among these, the most troubling for the navy was the indispensable maintenance.

When they captured Lion Spring City and entered the Fan Flame Ocean, needing to protect the fleets travelling back and forth, the Imperial Navy realized that there was a severe lack of naval bases along the route that could support the escort warships, and the military port in Lion Spring City was simply incapable of servicing all the escort warships.

Having escort warships return to the Imperial homeland every few months was clearly impractical.

Just the round-trip travel would take a lot of time.

Moreover, routine maintenance did not require the facilities of a shipyard or professional technicians—with many tasks, even fleet sailors could manage.

What was needed were some specialized tools not found on the ships.

Moreover, it was necessary to drydock the warships, remove the marine organisms from the hull, and perform nondestructive testing on the shell.

It was in these conditions that the self-propelled drydock served as a floating base.

The Imperial Navy deployed 12, or about 60%, of its self-propelled drydocks to Colombo, specifically to serve the escort warfare.

It was because of these self-propelled drydocks that the escort fleets operating on the North Sunset Ocean could maintain efficiency.

From a contribution standpoint, the value of these 12 self-propelled drydocks was equivalent to 10 escort aircraft carriers and 50 anti-submarine destroyers!

Of course, the freighters that were attacked by submarines and were lucky enough to reach Colombo also received services from these self-propelled drydocks.

To put it bluntly, without the 12 self-propelled drydocks, the North Fan Flame Ocean route might have collapsed under the current investment. To keep the route open and unobstructed, at least double the investment would be needed, which would entail drawing many more warships from the East Ocean.

With insufficient troops, could the Imperial Navy still triumph in the East Ocean?

From this perspective, it is not an exaggeration to commend these auxiliary vessels constructed of concrete.