Empire Conquest

Chapter 612 - 608 Unorthodox

Replacing Fast Battleships with Large Cruisers to provide air cover for carriers has the greatest advantage of adding a Main Air Defense Ship without increasing expenditures.

In practice, it had proven that a single Fast Battleship could not provide full defensive air cover for a carrier.

The crux of the issue was that, in the midst of a high-intensity naval and aerial battle, no one could accurately predict the direction of incoming enemy aircraft, which meant that Anti-Air Warships couldn’t always be in the most suitable position.

In several naval battles fought after the Newland Federation entered the war, there were similar occurrences where, at times of enemy aircraft attacks, Anti-Air Warships were not in the best position and thus unable to provide complete cover. Sometimes, they couldn’t even offer any protection to carriers.

That was why the Empire’s Navy included Heavy Cruisers with enhanced anti-aircraft firepower in their carrier battle groups and specially constructed Long-range Cruisers focused on air defense.

In actual combat, while the Fast Battleships remained the pillar, Heavy Cruisers and Long-range Cruisers only filled gaps, undertaking secondary directional air defense roles.

As for the effectiveness, it was just slightly better than none.

Practical experience had already shown that vessels like Heavy Cruisers and Long-range Cruisers were better suited for outer perimeter air defense alert roles.

Because it was truly impossible to figure out the direction of the attacking enemy aircraft, in most cases, the Fast Battleships serving as the air defense backbone rarely had the opportunity to perform.

Of course, this was also related to the increasingly sophisticated attack tactics.

Taking the Empire’s shipborne air force for example, when launching an attack, several ship-borne aircraft would be dispatched to conduct search missions ahead of the formation. During the attack, those aircraft would be responsible for tactical command, their main task being to find gaps in the enemy Fleet’s air defenses.

With effective command, the Attack Aircraft Group could launch attacks from the weakest side of the enemy Fleet’s air defense network.

Since the speed of Battleships could never exceed that of airplanes, it was very hard to keep pace with enemy aircraft during air defense operations.

Clearly, having two Main Air Defense Ships made a difference.

The Empire’s Navy had conducted similar tests, which is, using two Fast Battleships to cover one carrier.

Exercises had shown that under the cover of two Anti-Air Warships, the survival rate of the carrier could be increased by an order of magnitude, and it was much more convenient during coordinated operations.

Unfortunately, such a "luxurious package" was simply unaffordable for the Empire’s Navy.

The cost of Fast Battleships themselves was already higher than fleet carriers, so using two Fast Battleships to cover one carrier was a joke.

Clearly, the Large Cruiser provided the perfect solution to this problem.

Since there were not enough Large Cruisers, the new organizational system still required Fast Battleships as the air defense backbone. Taking over from Heavy Cruisers or Long-range Cruisers, it remained three Anti-Air Warships providing coverage to carriers.

Of course, this arrangement also facilitated the temporary reassignment of Fast Battleships to form Assault Fleets.

When there were enough Large Cruisers, they could take over as the air defense pillar, thus freeing Fast Battleships from the escorting tasks.

However, this still did not solve another problem.

The Fleet composition of the carrier mixed fleet was becoming increasingly bloated, with the number of escort battleships continuously growing, yet the combat power of the carriers themselves had not improved significantly.

From another perspective, this was actually the key reason why the Empire’s Navy insisted on building large carriers.

In a carrier battle group, there were usually three Anti-Air Warships, four General-purpose Battleships, and four Anti-submarine Warships, plus fleet oilers or Fast Combat Support Ships as the situation required, with over ten combat ships and vessels involved, sometimes even reaching fifteen.

So many warships were there to serve just one carrier, or more precisely, a few dozen ship-borne aircraft within the Shipborne Air Force Wing.

Clearly, it was excessively extravagant!

If there weren’t enough ship-borne aircraft, or to put it another way, if their combat power wasn’t strong enough, having so many battleships follow a carrier would be an ineffective use of resources.

Indeed, whenever there was a chance, the Fleet Commander would dispatch escort battleships to carry out other tasks.

Of course, this also meant that the bigger the carrier, the better, because only if the carrier were big enough and hosted enough ship-borne aircraft could it truly demonstrate the value of the escorts.

Regardless, covering a large carrier versus a small one made little tactical difference.

The problem was, carriers couldn’t be enlarged indefinitely.

With the Empire’s current technology, they could at most take the "province"-class as a foundation and further increase the standard displacement of a large carrier to 50,000 tons.

To go bigger would require larger slipways and the use of more advanced construction technology and equipment.

The Imperial Navy indeed had similar plans, but so far, they only existed on design drawings.

More importantly, the trend towards enlarging carriers was largely due to the increasing size of ship-borne aircraft; that is to say, the effects of carrier enlargement were not reflected in the numbers of aircraft. Larger aircraft would take up more space, negating the additional capacity brought about by the enlargement of the carriers.

The contribution of larger ship-borne aircraft to combat capabilities was also offset by the increasingly powerful anti-air firepower.

Fundamentally, it remained essential to improve the efficiency of anti-air defenses.

That is why the Imperial Navy first made bold trials by equipping new high-altitude guns on large cruisers.

To be precise, they made improvements to fire a new type of ammunition.

The caliber hadn’t changed, remaining at 130mm and 80mm, but internal structures had to be adjusted to accommodate the new ammo.

This new type of ammunition was the legendary "Near Bomb".

In reality, it was a shell with a radio proximity fuze.

Putting it another way, this type of shell that could detonate near the target was the culmination of over a decade of work by the Imperial Navy to enhance anti-air combat efficiency.

In Zhao Yu’s words, the value of this new type of shell was absolutely no less than radar.

According to tests conducted by the Imperial Navy, radio proximity fuzes could improve the efficiency of high-altitude guns by an order of magnitude.

If there were any issues, it was that the size of the fuze’s components limited its use to 130mm and 80mm shells.

The influence of large cruisers brought another significant impact that couldn’t be ignored.

It indirectly freed up the fast battleships.

Although the Imperial Navy hadn’t adjusted the composition of the Special Mixed Fleet for the time being, with large cruisers, Fleet Commanders could assign fast battleships to other more important tasks, such as making advances at night, or acting as the main force in situations unsuitable for carrier operations.

Moreover, if there were enough large cruisers, then fast battleships could form the core of a specialized Assault Mixed Fleet.

Practical experience had already proven that in many special scenarios, such assault formations still possessed powerful combat capabilities.

And most importantly, special situations nearly always occur on the battlefield.

Of course, in Zhao Yu’s words, the changes brought about by the large cruisers essentially acknowledged the dominant position of carriers in naval battles.

Large cruisers were the first type of large warship designed entirely around carriers, existing solely to serve carriers.

From the large cruisers onward, future large warships would all be designed with the service of carriers in mind.