Rebuild the Navy
It took just over two months for Germany to reorganize its entire army, which once again made the world realize the rigor and efficiency of the Germans.
Fast forward to early June 1925, when the Henschel aircraft company delivered good news to Lyon, they had made significant progress in the HE-37 aircraft secretly experimented with in the Soviet Union, reaching an unprecedented speed of 312 km/h.
Lyon was pleasantly surprised when he received the news, the HE37 aircraft was supposed to be secretly developed in 1928, a full 3 years earlier! You know, the British Bulldog fighter in service in 1929 only had a maximum level flight speed of 287km/h.
However, Leon quickly calmed down, he understood that even with such fast aircraft, Germany could not be equipped, because the Portsmouth Peace Treaty still did not allow Germany to form an air force, so Leon only sent a congratulatory message to the Henschel company, encouraging them to continue to develop better aircraft, instead of purchasing HE37.
At the end of June, the ship design team also received good news that all the ships needed by the Navy had been designed and accepted by Lyon.
Leon immediately set off and took Raeder straight to the office of the ship design team in Kiel.
Arriving in Kiel, Leon and Raeder couldn't wait to look through the general information of the warship, Leon looked at the aircraft carrier he had high hopes for, and Raeder looked at his favorite battleship.
First of all, the aircraft carrier, its standard displacement is 23,000 tons, and the full load displacement is 30,000 tons, which is closer to the previous German Count Zeppelin aircraft carrier.
In terms of power, although it uses two of the latest generation steam turbines newly developed by Germany, the output power is only 65,000 horsepower, so the maximum speed of this aircraft carrier when fully loaded is only 28 knots, but for the current aircraft, the speed of 28 knots is very enough.
The shipborne weapons design team originally planned to equip it with 16 150mm naval guns, 12 105mm high-level dual-purpose guns, 22 37mm anti-aircraft guns and 28 20mm anti-aircraft guns, so that the aircraft carrier would have powerful sea firepower and be able to single out a 10,000-ton heavy cruiser. However, when Leon learned the news, he immediately vetoed the plan.
Perhaps this weapons program seems reasonable to this group of people who have not really seen the future mode of naval warfare, and the aircraft carrier can not only fly aircraft, but also directly participate in artillery battles, isn't it the best of both worlds? However, Leon, as a later man, understood that aircraft carriers rarely had the opportunity to face the opposite battleship in a face-to-face artillery battle. The aircraft carriers sunk in later generations were basically blown up and sunk by the opposite plane, or sunk by submarine sneak attacks, and the very few sunk by naval artillery were basically beaten to the point that they could not run away from losing their combat effectiveness.
Therefore, as an aircraft carrier, it is better to install large-caliber naval guns than to install more anti-aircraft guns to increase their chances of survival.
The design team listened to Lyon's suggestion and changed the 150mm naval gun to an anti-aircraft gun, and at the suggestion of Lyon, the poorly performing 105mm caliber anti-aircraft gun and 37mm anti-aircraft gun were changed to a completely new 128mm anti-aircraft gun and a 40mm anti-aircraft gun, and the new 128mm and 40mm anti-aircraft guns will be designed by Krupp and Rheinmetall at the same time, and finally the order will be received for the best performance. So the armament of this ship will be a combination of 14 128mm twin high-level dual-purpose guns + 22 twin 40mm anti-aircraft guns + 28 quadruple 20mm anti-aircraft guns.
Not only on ships, but in the future army anti-aircraft artillery units will also abandon 105mm anti-aircraft guns in favor of new anti-aircraft guns.
In terms of armor, the deck armor of the aircraft carrier is 25mm thick, and the left main armor belt is 180mm thick, which is used to balance the weight imbalance caused by the island on the right.
In terms of the most important carrier-based aircraft, it plans to equip 20 fighters, 20 dive bombers and 15 torpedo attack aircraft in the future, of course, the specific number depends on how big the aircraft will be.
Once this aircraft carrier is built, it will become the most powerful aircraft carrier in the world, not one of them! Lyon was very happy with this.
Let's talk about Raeder's dream battleship.
THE NEWLY DESIGNED BATTLESHIP USES FOUR TWIN 380mm/L55 GUNS, WITH A RANGE OF 22KM AND AN ARMOR-PIERCING SHELL WEIGHING 880KG. Since the barrel is 55 times the caliber, and the gun was designed to have a strong charge, the initial velocity of the armor-piercing shell reached a terrifying 870m / s, which is a typical high-speed heavy shell. In summary, its main gun is enough for it to penetrate the main armor of all battleships today and even in the next 10 years at 28,000 meters. The only disadvantage of this gun is that due to the strong charge, the barrel life is very short, the life of the medicine chamber is only 120 rounds, and the life of the body barrel is only 250 rounds.
In terms of armor, due to Lyon's proposals, it did not adopt the concept of comprehensive protection + dome armor, which was consistent in Germany, but adopted the scheme of key protection + inverted main installation.
Its main armor was 380 mm thick and tilted inward up to 20 °, which was enough to withstand armor-piercing shells from British 406mm naval guns at 17,000 meters. The horizontal armor is only 120mm, but it is relatively strong now.
In terms of power, he is equipped with 2 steam turbines like the aircraft carrier, but because of its excessive weight, his speed is only 24 knots, which is lower than the 28 knots of the aircraft carrier.
True, he has a large displacement, with a standard displacement of 38,000 tons, which is a lot more than the 35,560 tons stipulated in the contract. However, the design team did not intend to follow the treaty in the single tonnage from the beginning, and then only needed a small false report,lol.
Raeder looked trembling and extremely excited, and as commander-in-chief of the Navy, he understood what this battleship would represent once launched, it would become one of the most powerful battleships in the world. However, he did not know that Britain, the United States and Japan were building battleships of 406mm caliber. However, even against the 406mm "Big Seven", this battleship will not fall behind in single-handedness.
In general, Lyon and Raeder were satisfied with the design, which was approved after it was submitted to Congress.
The battleships were named Admiral Scheer class battleships to commemorate the death of Admiral Scheer during Operation Rainbow. Construction of the lead ship, Admiral Scheer, began immediately at the Königsberg shipyard.
The second ship was named Friedrich Ebert by Lyon in honor of President Albert's great contribution to the German economy (despite Albert's former sworn enemy), and construction began at the Falken shipyard in Hamburg.
The aircraft carrier was named Count Zeppelin by Lyon and construction began at the Deutsche Shipyard.
The designed light cruiser was designated the Königsberg class and construction began at the Königsberg shipyard like Admiral Scheer. The heavy cruisers were named Admiral Hipper and were built by the Deutsche Shipyard. The destroyer was not named meaningfully, so it was directly named Z class, which was the responsibility of some small shipyards. The submarine was named UIA class and was taken care of by the Germanian shipyard, a famous German submarine factory.