Alien Arms Empire.

Chapter 1123 1124 Target Niijima
In fact, the Datang Empire also discovered many problems of its own during this naval operation: Although there was no threat from submarines, and even though the threat from the air was very small, the effect of the Datang Empire's navy on landing support was still not very good.

The carrier-based aircraft of the Tang State Navy are relatively late in supporting land operations, and they are indeed very weak in terms of support.

First of all, the Imperial Navy of the Tang Dynasty did not have a sufficient number of battleships and artillery cruisers. There were relatively few large-caliber naval guns, and the fire support for landing operations was itself weak.

In the entire Datang Empire fleet, there were only 2 battleships and a dozen cruisers, and these battleships could not all be put into the battle to support the landing operations in one go.

Battleships have to act as the meat shields of the aircraft carrier in front of the fleet, so they are often drawn away, so that support landings cannot be done.

The same is true for cruisers: because they are one of the few "heavy warships" of the Tang army, they also have to act with battleships to maintain the size of the fleet.

Therefore, destroyers are the only ones that can really support the landing. Most of the artillery destroyers of the Tang Army have a main gun with a caliber of 127 mm. This caliber is not effective in striking against solid fortifications.

In fact, the two battleships of the Tang Army had only 1900 rounds of ammunition in total, and on average, a main gun had only more than 100 rounds of shells.Sixty salvos were fired in one landing operation, and the shells had bottomed out.

In addition, the lifespan of the main guns of the battleships of the Tang Army is more than 200 rounds. That is to say, after two rounds of ammunition are fired, the two Bismarck-class battleships will return to Hong Kong to replace the main gun barrels, and lose their combat capabilities.

This is the case for battleships, but cruisers are not much better. Although the life of the artillery barrel is longer, cruisers still need to rest and replenish.This is especially true for destroyers: a large number of destroyers that have run out of missiles are forced to return, and the remaining destroyers can only guarantee the safety of the route between South Island and Beiyuan Port.

This is also the reason why almost all of the Tang Empire's fleet returned after capturing the South Island, leaving only some destroyers on standby near the South Island.

Fortunately, the Tang Empire has completely wiped out the mirage fleet. If the other party still has a fleet appearing near the South Island at this time, then the troops of the Tang Empire occupying the South Island will be quite passive.

The aircraft of the entire fleet need repairs, the pilots need to rest, and the aircraft carrier fleet has run out of ammunition and fuel, and has almost lost its combat capability.

The battle fleet also needs to replenish shells, overhaul the life of the barrel, and re-equip: the navy's continuous combat capability is actually not as high as imagined.

The carrier-based aircraft on an aircraft carrier have the same problem: first they have to ensure the safety of their own fleet, and secondly they have to support the attack on the ground.

The normal task priority of aircraft carrier-based aircraft is actually: destroy the enemy fleet > destroy the enemy airport > attack other shore targets.

On the premise of confirming the absolute safety of one's own side, the aircraft carrier can provide air support for the landing, which seriously restricts the speed and quantity of carrier-based aircraft supporting the landing force.

Another problem is that the carrier-based aircraft of the Tang Empire is indeed a bit behind: continuing to use the Stuka dive bomber itself is a compromise, and the current performance of this aircraft can no longer meet operational needs.

In terms of speed, the Stuka is too slow. It is difficult to protect itself under the attack of intensive anti-aircraft firepower or the enemy's advanced fighter jets, and its attack efficiency is too low.

It can only carry a 500kg bomb, while many excellent carrier-based attack aircraft can carry more than 800kg of aerial bombs.

Although the navy-type Stuka can carry torpedoes, the speed of the Stuka is too slow. It is risky to use as a torpedo attack aircraft and is easily interfered by anti-aircraft fire, and the overall performance is not good.

Although Mirage's main fleet was hit by multiple torpedoes dropped by Stukas, pilots generally reported in actual combat that the torpedo attack of this type of aircraft is indeed not as comfortable as dive bombing.

Therefore, in the future naval order of the Tang Empire, the Stuka dive bomber is the first aircraft to be completely eliminated.

The Navy intends to completely replace the Stuka with a jet attack aircraft, and the blueprint given by Tang Mo is the A6 "Intruder" attack aircraft.

The concept of this attack aircraft has completely subverted the attack mode of dive bombers such as the Stuka, and evolved ground support to the era of electronic signals.

It can use early guided bombs to attack the target to improve the accuracy of the attack.Because of the blessing of "missiles", the dangerous option of diving attack was completely abandoned.

But this kind of aircraft really can't dive attack: firstly, it is too big, and secondly, it doesn't even have a cannon.

Therefore, the Intruder attack aircraft is only suitable for high-altitude support. It cannot sweep across the battlefield like the A-10 attack aircraft, and shoot violently at the target.

This makes its ground support less vicious visually, but it does do everything a Stuka can do.

In addition, with its huge fuselage and load capacity, it can use Harpoon anti-ship missiles to attack enemy surface ships, which also allows it to attack enemy fleets without penetrating defenses.

With the blessing of anti-ship missiles, the problem that the intruder attack aircraft cannot carry torpedoes is not so important: the attack distance of torpedoes is too short, and the penetration effect is not as good as that of anti-ship missiles.

In other words, in the future, the Tang State Navy will most likely only be equipped with one type of attack aircraft: the Intruder 6 attack aircraft.As for the A7 Corsair II, which is also very classic, equipped with a large-caliber cannon, and more like an attack aircraft, it may not appear again.

In the future, the missions of the Tang Empire Navy's carrier-based aircraft to attack the ground and attack the sea will all be handed over to "guided bombs" and "missiles".

The kind of ground support in which a plane roars and dives down is destined to withdraw from the stage of history.The tragic and heroic dive bombing will inevitably start from the navy and go to a stranger.

The only question is actually when the Intruder 6 attack aircraft can enter service: In order to meet the needs of the latest carrier-based aircraft, the Navy has actually started building the latest steam catapult aircraft carrier.

The new aircraft carrier uses a brand new angled deck, four steam catapults, which can take off and land heavy carrier aircraft including the F-14 Tomcat!It has four lifts hanging outside the deck. This design ensures the strength of the deck and also increases the scheduling efficiency!
It is the famous Kitty Hawk-class conventionally powered aircraft carrier.It can persist at sea for 45 days relying on its own reserves, which is already quite good.In addition, it can soar to a speed of nearly 60 kilometers per hour, which relies on a super-powerful 28-horsepower power system and nearly 8000 tons of fuel!

This aircraft carrier has a flight deck more than 320 meters long and a flight deck width of more than 76 meters!The full load displacement of the entire battleship exceeds 8 tons!More than 80 aircraft can be loaded!Although Tang Mo can't equip it with Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missiles and Phalanx, it is still the most powerful warship in the world!

Almost 5500 people will serve on this battleship. The entire aircraft carrier has more than 2000 cabins. It is a city floating on the sea!If you serve in the bow, you may not even know a comrade who served in the stern after you retire!

Although this aircraft carrier looks quite modern, God knows that it was actually built in the late 50s and entered service in 1961.

If the navy-type F4 Phantom and A6 Intruder start to serve on the new Nanshan-class (Kitty Hawk-class) aircraft carrier, then the world's navies will probably be out of gear and become the existence of two eras.

On the one hand, there are the jet planes of the Tang Empire plus modern aircraft carriers, and on the other hand, there are a lot of "Xianghe, Ruihe" or "Lexington, Enterprise" from the World War II era.

That picture is really quite interesting: I don’t know how frustrated the aircraft carrier fleets of the world with a combat radius of less than 700 kilometers will be in front of the Datang Empire’s naval fleet with a combat radius of more than 300 kilometers.

Regarding the tragic loss of more than 2000 marines and more than 1000 air force paratroopers, after returning to Beiyuan Port, Bernard formally submitted a review to the General Staff.

Frankly, Bernard can't be blamed entirely for this.After all, this is him, or the first time in the world that someone commanded an aircraft carrier fleet to conduct an amphibious landing operation, and it was a remote landing operation, so some problems are inevitable.

We must know that the battlefield environment at that time was quite complicated: there were attacks from enemy shore-based aircraft, and there were also threats from the enemy naval fleet. Bernard had to ensure the absolute safety of his own fleet. This was what he had to do.

Because of the existence of his fleet, the landing can continue. If his fleet fails miserably, then the landing operation will also fail completely.

Therefore, the General Staff only accepted Bernard's review, and did not initiate an investigation into Bernard's commander's decision-making.

In addition to summarizing the various problems in this landing operation, the Navy is also actively preparing for the next landing operation!It is impossible for them to wait for Mirage to repair all the positions and make all preparations before acting.

This time the naval landing operation will be completed alone, and the airborne combat is all about a surprise victory. It is indeed too risky to rush into the airborne combat under the circumstances that Mirage has already taken precautions.

The Navy decided to take the new island while consuming the life of the battleship's main guns, and let the battleship return to Long Island to replace the new gun barrel.

At the same time, a large number of orc soldiers were sent to the new island to prepare for the attack on the main island.Now that it has been decided to leave the island to the orcs, it is logical for the orcs to fight for their "homeland", isn't it?

After more than two months of "truce", the Tang Empire's navy began to mobilize again.This time, their target is Niijima!
(End of this chapter)