Military industrial hegemony

Chapter 526 Surprised Steam Catapult

To be honest, Jiang Chen had never seen such a big boat.Even in his previous life, he had never boarded a warship of such a large tonnage.Coming up this time, he also opened his eyes. Rather than saying that this is a ship or an aircraft carrier, it is better to say that it is a city floating on the sea in the game.Jiang Chen visited many cabins on it, but it was an eye-opener for him.Although the ship was dismantled beyond recognition when it was towed to the country, and even intentionally destroyed, Jiang Chen could still see what it looked like before from the original layout.

Jiang Chen is like this, let alone these experts.Basically as soon as you get on board, you're basically in a state of madness.Everyone wanted to be more than 20 years younger and ran around the whole ship.When some workers or accompanying staff were about to clean up the environment and garbage in the cabin, they were blocked by these old experts one by one.It is forbidden to let them move, talking will affect their investigation and research.A few more careful old experts went there specially to put some garbage and damaged things back to the original place where they were placed for their future research.

Here Jiang Chen is still carefully inspecting some facilities, only to hear someone shouting at Jiang Chen: "Xiao Jiang, Xiao Jiang, come here quickly, we have a big discovery."

"Ah?" Jiang Chen responded, then turned to look, and found that it was Feng Lao who was shouting excitedly at Jiang Chen.

"What's the matter, Mr. Feng?" Jiang Chen walked over quickly and asked.

"What do you think this is?" Feng Lao pointed to a large device and several gas tanks and said excitedly.

Jiang Chen stepped forward and took a closer look. After seeing some specific equipment and English signs, Jiang Chen excitedly said, "This is the catapult on the aircraft carrier!"

"Yes, that's right!" Feng Lao said excitedly: "This is a steam catapult for aircraft carriers. I just saw it. This one is basically complete. We can use it after some repairs."

"Really?" Jiang Chen was also surprised.As a posterity, he knew the meaning and importance of this catapult.Because of this catapult, yes, our country's aircraft carrier was built many years late.It also made us fail to create a catapult in the end, so that our country's first aircraft carrier had to use a skid with relatively small combat effectiveness to take off and launch.Don't think it's just a little bit worse, but it's actually a lot worse.

The steam catapult used by the aircraft carrier came out in August 1950. The prototype was developed by Mitchell, Commander of the Naval Air Force Reserve of the United Kingdom. The old US Navy purchased the patent and developed it to maturity.The C-8 steam catapult currently equipped on the "Nimitz" class aircraft carrier is 13 meters long and can eject two carrier-based aircraft per minute. It is so powerful that it can eject a two-ton car to two kilometers beyond the sea.

Today, only Laomei has fully mastered the steam catapult technology, and even the French "Charles de Gaulle" nuclear-powered aircraft carrier also uses Laomei's steam catapult technology.Due to technical limitations, countries such as Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain cannot develop steam catapults that have passed the technical and technological standards, so they can only use sliding decks on their aircraft carriers (that is, make the end of the deck into a slope Upturned, the carrier-based aircraft rushes out of the deck along the upturned slope after take-off, forming an oblique throwing movement), and its combat efficiency is far inferior to that of steam catapults.Although Laomei is the leader in the field of steam catapults, the inherent shortcomings of steam catapults determine that it will be replaced by newer technologies.

In terms of working principle, the steam catapult uses high-pressure steam to push the piston to drive the slider on the ejection track to eject the carrier-based aircraft connected to it.It is bulky and consumes a lot of steam during work, which results in a serious waste of power, and only about 6% of the steam is utilized.In order to produce and transport steam, the aircraft carrier has to be equipped with seawater desalination plants, large boilers and countless pipelines, which requires a staggering amount of work and maintenance.Its biggest flaw is that it cannot launch drones because the ejection power is too high. Because of the light weight of active drones, they will be torn apart by acceleration during ejection.

But despite so many shortcomings, the steam catapult is still used on the aircraft carrier and is listed as the top secret ejection technology.The combat effectiveness it presents is also unmatched by the current ski-flying take-off method.For example, this steam catapult can take off a large number of aircraft per minute. According to the standards of the United States, they can use the four catapults on the ship to eject an aviation combat squadron within 1 minute in an emergency.This performance is not unmatched by ordinary ski-over aircraft carriers, so there is no advantage in number.

The second plane has a higher take-off weight and can carry more fuel and weapons.The skid takeoff is generally not fully loaded, and the amount of ammunition and fuel cannot be taken into account.Generally, in order to carry sufficient ammunition, the aircraft can only carry a small amount of fuel to take off by skidding.Because there is no refueling plane in the open sea, another fighter plane will be taken off from the aircraft carrier at this time, and the refueling pod will be used to refuel the fighter plane that took off, which greatly limits the combat effectiveness.When all the planes took off and the refueling was completed, the opportunity for combat had long been delayed.The catapult take-off does not require so many restrictions. It can eject a fully loaded aircraft with sufficient ammunition and fuel without additional refueling.In this way, its combat effectiveness is greatly improved.

The third point requires a small take-off space. An aircraft carrier can take off up to four fighters at the same time, and the aircraft will not yaw during take-off.In this way, it is especially valuable on an aircraft carrier where every inch of land is expensive.The area required for the take-off area is small, which means that the entire aircraft carrier deck can carry more fighters, which will greatly increase the attack power of an aircraft carrier formation.The ski-fly take-off requires a lot of take-off space, because the suitability of the aircraft for take-off is not fixed, which may be due to the pilot's error or sudden wind and other reasons, and the aircraft's peace of mind will change, so if the take-off area is too large If it is small, it will be very unsafe.But in this way, the deck space of the entire aircraft carrier will be wasted.

The fourth is also very important, that is, there are many types of aircraft that it can eject.Catapult take-off, he can eject a variety of aircraft types, such as this fixed-wing early warning aircraft, refueling aircraft, warning aircraft, anti-submarine aircraft, transport aircraft and so on.This type of aircraft is relatively large and needs sufficient lift when taking off. This cannot be achieved in the ski-over takeoff, because the ski-over takeoff cannot give him enough speed to provide him with the lift that can lift into the air.The skid-over thief is different, it can make these aircraft get the speed and lift that can take off through rapid acceleration.In this way, its combat effectiveness is further improved.

(End of this chapter)