"The results of the exercise have come out. Let's talk about your opinion!"

As Vice Chairman of the Military Commission and People's Committee of the National Defense, although Fu Longzhi has been very low-key and even lacks presence in recent years, he will still participate in large-scale exercises like Fleet 1934. And after the painful exercise results came out, only he, who has always adhered to neutrality, is suitable to break the silence.

The result of the exercise left the navy's top leaders shattering their glasses, especially those traditional large ships and giant cannons, almost speechless. Six powerful battleship main guns were sent to the seabed without a shell, and the entire fleet seemed vulnerable in the face of continuous air strikes. If the director's department hadn't simply stopped the exercise, the Red Fleet would have been wiped out, because when the Blue Battlecruisers arrived at the battlefield, the Red Fleet was only three light cruisers and several destroyers were left.

"I think the setting of the director department is quite problematic. The hit rate of the torpedo machine cannot be that high," he said.

Lieutenant General Dushennov, deputy commander of the Baltic Fleet, strongly questioned the result, believing that the entire exercise was ridiculous.

But Alxnis, who was watching the game, blocked Dushennov with only one sentence: "But before, Sukhoi's young man achieved this hit rate in live ammunition shooting, we can only speak based on objective facts."

Dushennov was still dissatisfied: "It's not really an exercise, and this kind of hit rate is impossible in actual combat!"

"This has nothing to do with whether it is actual combat or not," Alxnis is quite safeguarding Sukhoi's interests, because this is actually protecting the interests of the Air Force. "The Red Fleet performed in the exercises in a mess. He also hoped that they could perform at the best level in actual combat? The Red Fleet was fooled by the opponent from beginning to end!"

"That was just an accident!" Dushennov was still dissatisfied. "If it weren't for that cold current, the Blue Party would never have been able to escape!"

Alqueznis still just smiled and said, "Is there no weather influence in actual combat? Can the Red Navy only fight in good weather?"

Dushennov's lips trembled twice, which showed that he was so angry that he was very angry, but who told Alxnis to tell the truth! There were no accidents in the war and no influence of the climate. As he said, if the Red Navy now had a strong combat capability in good weather.

"I asked for another exercise, and I believe the Blue Party will not be so lucky next time..."

Li Xiaofeng couldn't help it anymore. He thought that these stubborn old naval factions would just think that he didn't exist. He thought that with Stalin protecting them, he could be unscrupulous.

"You have tried twice," Li Xiaofeng said coldly, "For the first time you said you were not prepared enough, and said the enemy was too despicable. The second time, you pushed the reasons for the failure to the weather and luck. I have had enough of your attitude of shirking responsibility. I don't think you have realized that the root cause of failure is yourselves. Your conservatism and incompetence can no longer keep up with the situation!"

This is quite heavy, especially Li Xiaofeng said this. During the 1920s and 1930s, during the most difficult times of the Navy, Li Xiaofeng was always running around to attract sponsorship and speaking good things for the Navy. It can be said that the current situation of the entire Red Navy is definitely inseparable from someone's support.

In fact, the Red Navy was also very grateful to Li Xiaofeng, and even wanted to name the Bavarian battleship Red Novgorod. Why Novgorod? Because this is the hometown of a certain immortal in Russia. Obviously, the Red Navy wanted to please a certain immortal in a roundabout way. However, it was flatly rejected by Li Xiaofeng at that time. You must know that even Sverdlovsk and Stalingrad did not take advantage of the naming of the naval battleship. How could he be ahead? Isn’t this political mind? What’s more, Novgorod has a dime with him. After traveling through time, he has never been there. What’s the meaning of a so-called hometown on paper?

Of course, this shows how close a certain immortal was to the Red Navy, and now he almost bluntly denounced the incompetence of the Red Navy. How could the top leaders of the Red Navy not be shocked? They were even a little confused.

However, Li Xiaofeng, regardless of whether the senior executives of the Red Navy were confused or not, he continued to say on his own: "From this exercise, we can see the importance of naval aviation. No matter whether the torpedo aircraft have such a high hit rate in actual combat, we must clearly see that carrier-based aircraft is more flexible in use and have the ability to decide the outcome of the sea!"

Li Xiaofeng deliberately looked around and stared at Dushennov and Stalin and said: "The aircraft is no longer just a reconnaissance force on the battlefield... Whoever can control the sky in the future can win the war!"

Dushennov wanted to refute it, but when he met Li Xiaofeng, he was a little unconfident, and Stalin beside him had no expression, just smoked and didn't even speak to his backer, so Dushennov naturally didn't dare to go up and look for abuse.

So why didn't Stalin speak? Stalin was thinking and speaking in his heart. The result of the exercise was too unexpected. The Red Party was almost wiped out one-sidedly, which was far from the scene he expected. As a smart man, Stalin could see the reason for the Red Party's miserable defeat at a glance. Although there were elements of pride and underestimation of the enemy, weather and luck, the more important thing was the use of aviation weapons.

When the Red Fleet, which had been separated from the fighter cover circle, was exposed to the threat of torpedo aircraft, their counterattack methods were very limited. Apart from calling for land-based aircraft to support it over and over again, they could only perform high-speed and high-angle maneuvers in vain. It is true that the hit rate of the torpedo aircraft cannot be that high, but the exercises also prove that maneuvering alone cannot escape the siege of enemy aircraft.

In other words, Stalin felt that Li Xiaofeng was right, that is, the aircraft can indeed threaten the survival of the main battleship. After being separated from effective air protection, the main battleship appears to be very passive in the face of air strikes. This indirectly shows that only by mastering the sky can one win war.

In other words, Stalin believed that Li Xiaofeng's words made some sense, and as Li Xiaofeng said, the navy's problems were more serious. When facing the threat of enemy aircraft and maneuvering at high speed and high angle, the Red Fleet was in chaos. Wakeman's order could not be implemented at all, and the entire fleet turned into a mess!

What's even more annoying is that two ship collisions occurred during this maneuver. The Communist International and the Paris Commune collided together, causing the latter to have a hole of more than ten meters at the stern. In a panic, the Paris Commune hit the Fierce Destroyer again, almost blew the destroyer open. This fully demonstrates that the Red Navy officers and soldiers have all had considerable problems in the ability of the ship control. This is just an exercise. If it really comes to actual combat, it will probably be even more unbearable when facing the torpedoes and bombs dropped by the enemy planes.

Of course, there is another important reason Stalin did not speak for Dushennov, that is, Li Xiaofeng did not excessively. Someone did not say that the boss of the navy will be aircraft carriers and aviation companies in the future, so that battleships and cruisers will all stand aside. Someone did not say such things. Someone concluded that the aviation team has the ability to decide the outcome in naval battles.

There are many weapons that have the ability to decide the victory of the sea, and aviation is just one of them. In Stalin's view, someone just wants to improve the status of the naval aviation, but did not sentence the death penalty for the ship and the cannon. From this perspective, he should not be too impulsive.

Stalin's silence made Li Xiaofeng feel relieved. He was really worried about Stalin's fierce opposition just now. Then things would be complicated. Fortunately, Steel was a little rational and gave him face, which made what he had to do next much simpler.

"Of course, it is not difficult to see from the exercise that although the sea-based aviation corps has achieved good results, there are many problems. For example, the performance of fighter jets is lagging behind, the types of fighter jets are not complete, and the use of aircraft carriers is also inefficient, and frequent accidents are concerned..."

This is also a big truth. I won’t mention the poor performance of the fighter. Whether it is the I-5k or the T2b, the performance is really not great. Especially the latter, the speed is too slow, the operation is not good, and the combat radius is too short. After completing the attack, the T2b was hit by the red land-based fighter on the way back. Seventy of the eighty torpedo aircraft were judged to be shot down, and the combat loss rate was close to 90%. As for the I-5k performance, it was not good. Facing the new I-15 and I-16, the fight could not be fought or escaped. Let’s put it this way, the young men of Sukhoi were hunted by turkeys.

Not only is the performance of existing fighter jets, but the more serious problem is that the aircraft carrier lacks dive bombers. As Lenin II approaches its scrapping, Sukhoi has almost no dive bombers available. He has been constantly reporting reports to develop new dive bombers for the Navy aviation. However, after these reports are handed over, they are either sank to the sea or are blocked by the top naval executives with limited military spending. This time, with Li Xiaofeng for him, it is impossible for the old naval antiques to block his mouth.

"Carbon-based fighter jets, torpedo aircraft, dive bombers and carrier-based water reconnaissance aircraft must be updated. The existing technical equipment is no longer enough to deal with future naval battles. The Navy should update its aviation equipment in the next five years, the faster the better!"

With Li Xiaofeng's final decision, the update of naval aviation equipment is the general trend, but there is still a lot of controversy on specific details. There is also debate within the Naval Aviation faction on what kind of new fighter aircraft to develop.

Some people think that the existing Yi 15 and Yi 16 have very good performance (in that era, the performance on paper was indeed good), and believe that the fighter jets on the aircraft carrier can use the naval versions of the Yi 15 and Yi 16.

However, Li Xiaofeng doesn't like this approach. Even if this approach can quickly get new fighter jets, it will be more economical, but he just doesn't like it.

Isn't this a disease when equipping two fighter jets on an aircraft carrier? Li Xiaofeng has always been very optimistic about the Air Force's ideas. According to the Air Force's idea, the Yi 15 focuses on hovering fighting and the Yi 16's speed is faster for interception. These two fighters will perfectly cope with any challenges.

But to be honest, it only looks beautiful if you do it like this. What's more, in the early stages of production of the Iran 15 and Iran 16, because the production of the m-25 engine was extremely limited, you could only use the m-22 with a smaller power first, which resulted in a much lower performance degradation, which could not form the so-called cooperative combat advantage at all.

Moreover, the aircraft designed by Polykapov, the designers of I-15 and I-16, are both very good at data digging. Polykapov's prerequisite for lagging behind the world's first-class level in the Soviet aviation industry, and inevitably sacrifices some performance, which is commonly known as the wrong move. For example, I-16. This product was once the fastest-flying fighter in the world at that time. But the price paid for this was that its operability was not ideal. It was easy to enter the spiral when it jumped, and it was often difficult for newcomers to operate I-16.

Not only the I-16, but later designed with Polykapovyi-200 as the foundation are both aircraft with certain performances that are quite ideal (such as speed) but have very poor operating performance.

Anyway, Li Xiaofeng doesn't like the I-16 boarding ship. The carrier-based aircraft originally had high requirements for flight quality and faced extremely high risks when taking off and landing on aircraft carriers. If you get a Polykapov aircraft that is difficult to operate, the picture is so beautiful that it can't be seen.

Li Xiaofeng prefers to redesign a real carrier-based fighter jet instead of picking up the air force's junk, and the air force has no junk to pick up, because the localization of the Iran 15 and Iran 16 engines has not been completely completed, and the production is limited, so it is not the Navy's turn to worry about it.

What Li Xiaofeng wants more is an all-metal monoplane fighter designed based on the French 12ycrs engine. "The maximum flight speed of the new carrier-based fighter must not be less than 450 kilometers per hour, the wings must be foldable, and have good flight quality..."

To be honest, when Li Xiaofeng said his request was that the Navy Aviation faction, including Sukhoi, did not look very good. Because someone's requirements were too high, such as the first maximum speed of 450 kilometers. This was not easy to achieve in 1934, because the maximum speed of the Yi-16-5, which was put into production in 1935, was only 454 kilometers per hour. Moreover, someone's requirements for flight quality, especially the take-off and landing properties of the fighter, further increased the difficulty.

Even Polikapov complained about these requirements, thinking that someone was trying to make things difficult for him, but in the end the old designer took on this challenge. What Li Xiaofeng did not expect was that the final new carrier-based fighter gave him a surprise.

However, this is not mentioned later, because the debate about carrier-based fighter jets was just a topic at that time. New carrier-based aircraft that needed to be designed also include torpedo bombers and dive bombers. There are still many debates on these two aspects, and it also involves departments outside the military, such as the People's Committee on Diplomatic Affairs.

After hearing the news of the tender for new naval torpedoes and dive bombers, Livinov, an acting diplomatic member, gave Lenin advice as soon as possible: "It is possible to purchase torpedoes and dive bombers from the United States. As far as I know, the US government also has needs in this regard!"

Is Livinov telling the truth? Indeed, in June 1934, the US government began to bid for the successor of the T4m torpedo aircraft, and finally selected Douglas' Xtbd-1 to win in 1936. In February of that year, 114 orders were placed, which was the later Savior torpedo aircraft (tbd-1).

Not only torpedo aircraft, the US government also chose Northrop's dive bomber program in November 1934. In 1935, the XBT-1 prototype was delivered to the naval test flight. In September 1936, the BT-1 entered the naval service and then continued to develop into BT-2. After Northrop was merged into Douglas, it was renamed SBD-1, which is what everyone later known as "Fearlessness".

In short, in 1934, the United States and the Soviet Union had the demand for new carrier-based aircraft at the same time. Moreover, as the two countries resumed diplomatic relations and the impact of the economic crisis, it was possible for the two countries to conduct military cooperation. It was even a pleasure for the Red Army military to see it. After all, the United States' aviation technology is more developed, and the backward Soviet Union can completely catch up with the world's advanced level through cooperation.

However, Li Xiaofeng did not like Livinov's suggestions. According to Livinov, it would be better to directly purchase the torpedo aircraft and dive bombers that won the competition from the United States. It could bring the relationship between the two countries closer and solve the navy's demand problem, and the investment was small.

Indeed, the demand for naval carrier-based aircraft is relatively small (the Red Navy has only two aircraft carriers, and the other two are under renovation), and the full amount is only the gap of 400 aircraft. It seems uneconomical to develop four new models for these 400 aircraft to develop four new production lines. Since there are better and more economical options abroad, just buy them directly.

But in Li Xiaofeng's opinion, this problem is very big. The Soviet Union could not have developed carrier-based aircraft forever, and it is impossible to have relied on imports forever to solve the problem? It is always a good thing to accumulate experience early? And it must be seen that not only naval carrier-based aircraft lack new fighter jets, but torpedo aircraft and dive bombers, and land-based naval aviation lack these three aircraft types. After a little calculation, you will know that the gap in aircraft is definitely more than 400. To be honest, it is the same as playing if you want to triple it. Do these thousands of aircraft rely on imports? Are there so much foreign exchange?

Not only is it an economic issue, but Li Xiaofeng actually knows that both TBD-1 and BT-1 have problems. Among them, TBD-1 is too slow, and its crawling ability is even worse, and it seems too stupid. The BT-1 dive bomber has many problems, and its manipulation is outrageous. Even Americans only purchased 54 aircraft and ordered the development of BT-2. Since that is the case, why jump into this pit?

In Li Xiaofeng's view, the Soviet Union was fully capable of developing its own carrier-based aircraft, so there was no need to spend this in vain.

"Comrade Andre, you look at the problem too one-sidedly. This is no longer just a military issue, but an international relations issue..."

Livinov, who looked at Barraba, kept talking and didn't give anyone a chance to interrupt, was very dissatisfied with this diplomat who liked to work in a strong style. He interrupted Livinov's strength without hesitation:

"State relations are not traitorous relations. my country's foreign exchange resources are precious and can only be used in projects that are extremely lacking in self-developed by countries. The naval carrier-based aircraft project can be based in China. This is a military issue that is as simple as possible. Please do not interfere with the correct decisions of the Military Commission!" (To be continued, please search for astronomy, novels are better, updated and faster!

ps: Bow to thank Chuan Liuhuagui, instantly killing Potato, hzwangdd and comrade Juventus!

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Chapter completed!