Bismarck

"Wait, why would Warspite lose?" Bismarck was the first to ask the question. The existence of Ship Girls should be very advantageous in this situation.

"War-weary isn't really here, he's just a projection. It's not surprising that he lacks ability." Zeppelin's slender fingers slowly slid across the lines of text, looking carefully at the contents.

"That's right." Bismarck sighed, "That's a pity."

Even an experienced opponent like War-weary was unable to turn the tide.

"What a pity." Zeppelin scolded with a smile, "Isn't this great?"

Phew, Bismarck laughed again quickly. Yes, he should be happy.

Although the war situation in the Mediterranean has nothing to do with them now, except Top and Eugen, several people have participated in the deadly battle in the Mediterranean - Persian Cat was almost beaten to death by Warspite and British bombers in the Battle of El Alamein, and the other two were also covered in scars. This is something they will never forget in their lifetime.

When they saw the news, except for Top Eugen who was still a little confused, and Lütjens who always kept his emotions to himself, the rest of the people looked at each other. Their eyes were filled with disbelief and memories of the bloody battles they had fought in the Mediterranean Sea...

They read the battle report carefully, and all the previous scenes came to their mind, even the battle locations could be remembered one by one. Several people exchanged the information and joked about the scene at that time.

As for Prince Eugen, who did not participate, he listened with great interest as if he was listening to a story.

That is truly an unforgettable memory.

But after careful consideration and Lütjens' analysis, this is actually not impossible.

Two months ago, during Operation Support, the Middle East-North Africa war situation regained supply support, even industrial aid was in place, so after Auchinleck, with well-trained troops and sufficient food, re-emerged from the Sinai Peninsula, he easily defeated the North African Italian army led by Prince Umberto II, who was prominent but had limited capabilities, and was stuck again on the edge of the Suez Canal. However, even so, facing the strong defense of Port Said, a key exit point of the Suez Canal surrounded by water and supported by naval guns, no matter who was in Auchinleck's position, I'm afraid they would be a little confused about Port Said, a "nail house".

But given the location of Port Said, if this place was not taken, Auchinleck would never dare to force the crossing of the canal - Umberto II was a mediocre person, but one of Auchinleck's awareness as a top general was that he would never dare to treat any opponent as a fool! Moreover, in order to cope with the counterattack, Hitler, who could wear the same pants as Mussolini at least on the issue of North Africa, dispatched a team of advisors headed by Marshal Küchler to assist in the command after Umberto II lost the Sinai Peninsula.

Even if Umberto II was a fool, Marshal Küchler was not!

If they attacked blindly, the enemy could rely on the canal and the Nile River network to resist step by step, and at the same time transport the two elite Blackshirt Armored Divisions and a Cavalry Division in North Africa, which were fully equipped with German weapons, to Port Said through the seawall road from the hinterland of the Nile Delta to Port Said, which the British could not threaten at all, and then cross the canal under the cover of naval guns to outflank the 100,000 British troops! —— Not to mention that Auchinleck did not dare to take this risk, I am afraid that except for Guderian, Peng Dhuai, Patton, and Zhukov, who had only one word in their heads, no one with a normal nerve would dare to take it!

and……

After the fall of North Africa, because they had completely controlled the sea power in the eastern Mediterranean, they no longer had to worry about being attacked by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. The Italian Royal Navy was now freed from the heavy and dangerous escort mission, saving a large amount of fuel and resources every month to support the main fleet of the navy to blockade Malta. As a result, even the British submarine force, which originally had the support of the Malta base and could threaten the Italian escort team, had to evacuate this fortress that was on the verge of running out of ammunition and food because of the increasingly depleted resource reserves in Malta.

The position of the Malta Fortress, which controls the throat of the Central Mediterranean, is extremely important, and Churchill could not ignore it. In order to make a last-ditch effort in the Mediterranean, the British and American Combined Fleet, which had just returned from the Atlantic after an unsuccessful pursuit of Lütjens, had one aircraft carrier, one light carrier, and four aircraft carriers, regardless of the fatigue of personnel in continuous combat and the performance degradation caused by mechanical wear and tear. With the glory of "repelling" two German main fleets in succession, and 16 high-speed merchant ships, under the command of Lieutenant General Henry Howard, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, they hurriedly filled the hangars of the two aircraft carriers with anti-aircraft fighters, and then set out on the journey to support the last position in the Mediterranean theater.

Their opponents were the main fleet of the Italian Royal Navy, which had the aircraft carrier Aquila, three new battleships, Veneto, Littorio and Roma, and two old battleships, Andrea Doria and Caio Durio. In addition, there was the Italian Royal Air Force, which, after learning from the lessons of many previous combat failures, had begun to try to establish good relations with the Italian Royal Navy and still had a certain strength.

The Malta base has been out of ammunition and food due to the long-term blockade, and is unable to deploy air power that can change the situation. Unfortunately, the current Allied fleet is most lacking in aircraft carriers. What's more, the blockade range of the Italian navy and air force can even reach as far as the Balearic Islands near Spain!

In the face of such a wide range of attacks, the Royal Navy, which was seriously short of air force, was bound to face a tough battle! What was more problematic was that the losses caused by the "Evil Fleet" to the British cruisers and destroyers were too great, and the Atlantic shipping, which had just been delayed for a whole month after the encirclement of the Lütjens fleet, had to be restored - especially when new submarines had begun to appear in Germany, Howard was distressed to find that his fleet, not to mention that most of the carrier-based aircraft in his fleet were fighters that could only defend against air attacks, even the destroyers and cruisers of the escort fleet were not enough.

However, for the sake of the Malta fortress, what other options are there now except to force the issue?

To put it bluntly, this was the last and best effort of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean.

In this situation, the Allies were short of manpower, and the new warships would not be put into service until the end of the year, and the Allies would not be able to reach full scale until the year after. They were also afraid that the fleet would suffer any more losses at this critical juncture. For this reason, they even gave up the glory of the Royal Navy and issued an order to Howard: "If things are impossible, withdraw the main fleet first" - I don't know why, when I read this paragraph in the internal reference materials, Persian Cat always looked at the other side unconsciously, looking at a bunch of electronic tubes and acting silly and cute and refusing to go out...

But after all, it was an internal reference, and its professionalism and seriousness were quite solid, and it was not comparable to the sensational headlines and irresponsible street newspapers. After listing all the ins and outs of these situations one by one in the internal reference, the conclusion was very clear: even though Vice Admiral Howard was not incompetent, and even in his early years he led three cruisers to kill the Count Spee after suffering heavy losses, but the performance of the warships declined due to wear and tear, the air force was unable to cope with the situation, the escort fleet was stretched to its limits, and the enemy had heavy troops ready to fight. Even after the stab in the back of the Mers-el-Kebir Fortress, even the civil airliners of Vichy France blatantly violated the neutral position stipulated by international law and directly used clear code calls to inform the world that the British escort fleet had entered the Mediterranean, which led to the complete exposure of the combat plan. This was almost the last-ditch effort in the Mediterranean battlefield, and the escort operation code-named "Harpoon" ended in complete failure, and it was conceivable...

-

Starting from the Balearic Islands, the convoy was attacked by Italian Air Force bombers, BF-110 heavy fighters and submarines, which directly caused two merchant ships to sink and one to paralyze. The convoy then spent the entire journey in fearful vigilance, as well as hysterical air raid and submarine alarms.

Although the Italian Air Force was not strong, it was able to obtain cover and intelligence reconnaissance from the Aquila aircraft carrier, which was following closely at the periphery at a speed of 30 knots. As for the Harpoon escort fleet, which also had to cover the main fleet and the escort fleet at the same time due to the limited number of aircraft carriers and carrier-based bombers, the tracking of the Aquila caused great trouble to them.

In addition to this, the waters in this area are also prone to torpedoes launched by Italian submarines!

Although the submarine forces of the Italian Royal Navy are not used to wolf pack attacks like their German counterparts, they are good at fighting alone, just like the silent assassins lurking on the seabed. As long as there is even a slight flaw, they may face a round of fatal torpedoes! Even though the Giant light aircraft carrier has taken on all the aviation anti-submarine alert tasks, even so, due to the dilemma of the enemy being in the dark and us being in the light in the anti-submarine warfare, coupled with the psychological pressure of the escort transport ships, various "suspected submarine discovery" alarms are emerging in an endless stream, but piles of depth charges are dropped, but often nothing is blown up, instead, one merchant ship after another, one destroyer after another that is alone in expelling submarines, is sunk, injured, missing, or left behind under the joint attack of the Italian navy and air force...

The number of fleets is decreasing!

The task of reinforcing the Malta Fortress was a heavy military order, and Lieutenant General Howard had no other choice but to urge his subordinates to bite the bullet and continue to move forward.

After suffering from air raids and submarine harassment for a whole day and night, the fleet finally arrived at the narrow and reef-filled Cape Bon waterway outside the Cape of Tunisia, when the real enemy, the flagship of the Italian Royal Navy, arrived!

Right in front of the Royal Navy, the Italian Mafia's big sister battleship Veneto, with her two younger sisters, the battleship Littorio and the newly commissioned battleship Roma, as well as the sisters Akizuki Airi and Marina, whose speed reached 27 knots after modification, and a large number of cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats, suddenly appeared in front of the British fleet, and formed a classic T-shaped formation like a textbook!

Upon seeing this scene, Vice Admiral Howard, who was commanding the main fleet and the escort team to move forward and struggling to change formations, fell silent on the spot...

Although the fleet's vanguard destroyers fought desperately to block the enemy thirty nautical miles away, buying enough time for his fleet to deploy, Howard was able to arrange the six new battleships at hand into a battle line and prepare for battle.

However, compared to the three Veneto-class battleships on the opposite side, which had a speed of up to 307 knots, the four South Dakota-class battleships of the Allied Combined Fleet had a speed of only 870 knots, only 381 mm of sloped armor, and the built-in armor and the rotten internal compartments brought extremely poor damage resistance. In front of the Veneto's mm destroyer guns with an initial velocity of , they were completely pierced and exploded with a single poke!

Although the two King George V-class battleships were not to be outdone in defense, their 356mm main guns, which fired 721kg shells, were basically not enough compared to the terrifying penetration of the Italian Mafia Big Sister-class destroyers on the opposite side, whose armor thickness was not much lower than theirs!

Even though Howard knew that his flagship battleship, the Duke of York, had the fire guidance of "Ms. Bailey, the special gunnery instructor from the headquarters" sent by Marshal Cunningham himself, but... even she, when she admitted that she could not use "guided shells" at the moment, could only shrug her shoulders and shake her head in the face of the powerful attack power of the Italian Fleet League's big sister and the poor defense of her own American battleships, saying that while her destroyers had suffered heavy casualties and had to cover the evacuation of the transport ships, the enemy could get support from a large number of destroyers, cruisers and even torpedo boats.

Even if the battleships were outnumbered by six against five and the other side had two old ships, the enemy had air support and was fighting at home. Even if she guided the artillery fire, the best outcome for her side would probably be a fight to the death.

But... who dares to bear the consequences of destroying this fleet? !

This fleet is the last main fleet of the Allies in the entire Atlantic theater! If it dies here, the German Brest and Kumets still have two Hindenburg-class battleships ready to go at any time!

The British Empire dominated the European continent for 300 years, relying entirely on its control of the seas! But the opposite meaning of this sentence is also easy to understand: once the control of the seas is gone, the British Empire is nothing...

"Forget it, let's retreat... before the Italians catch up..."

After thinking it over, Howard knew with a bitter face that his military career, and even his possible execution as a scapegoat in a military court because of the defeat of the fleet and the surrender of Malta, would end here, along with the Union Jack that would not fly for a few days over the Malta Fortress...

Following Howard's order, the merchant ships of the "Harpoon" escort fleet disbanded on the spot, and then scattered. However, when the main fleet was retreating, something went wrong!

When turning around in the Cape Bonn area, the South Dakota-class battleship USS Alabama was hit on the side of the hull by a heavy cruiser in the chaos. The built-in inclined armor reserve buoyancy was halved and there were no compartments inside the armor. The weakness was exposed by the unintentional collision of a heavy cruiser...

After a half-hour inspection, the captain of the US warship finally made a final salute to the Stars and Stripes, and after confirming that the hull was tilted severely and half of the engine compartment was flooded and could not be repaired, he turned the bow and headed directly to the main fleet of the Italian Royal Navy that had appeared on the horizon. In the last hour before it sank, the battleship, which was accidentally hit by its own cruiser, was hit by heavy artillery from three Veneto-class battleships in turn. It used its only advantage - the powerful 406mm main gun - to desperately damage the battleship Littorio, defending the last dignity of the US battleship...

With the sacrifice of destroyers and the battleship USS Alabama, those precious battleships that "must be kept safe" finally managed to escape from the pursuit of the Italian Royal Navy, which had the advantage of speed and could also get support from the air force and carrier-based aircraft. Due to the lack of destroyer protection, the battleship USS Howe was hit by two torpedoes in front of the Italian submarine and was towed back by the Duke of York on the second half of the journey. The aircraft carrier HMS Indefatigable was bombed by two bombs from Italian bombers and lost its combat effectiveness. It was sent directly to the repair shop when it arrived at Gibraltar. In addition, on the way of retreat, the light aircraft carrier HMS Colossus, which had a speed of only 25 knots, gradually fell behind. In the end, Howard had to reluctantly order the evacuation of personnel, and then opened the sea valve of this aircraft carrier, which was hastily built only a few months ago, and sank itself in the waves of the Mediterranean...

But no matter what, at least Howard has tried his best, and at least those who should be evacuated have been evacuated.

As for how long the Union Jack can continue to fly over the Malta fortress which has run out of ammunition and reinforcements... God knows!

Anyway, Howard, who believed that he would most likely be made a scapegoat, could no longer control it, and did not want to control it anymore...

For the Allies, the Atlantic and Mediterranean in late summer and early autumn of 1942 were a season of ups and downs.

Chapter 406: Transformation !

The news that the Allied fleet was defeated and the Malta fortress surrendered to Italy quickly spread throughout the world.

Moreover, the impact of this battle on the Allied forces can be described as adding insult to injury.

In the Atlantic Ocean now, even if we add the old warships led by the Warspite that have returned from the Indian Ocean and have only received preliminary repairs after the numerous wounds in Operation Support, and will be sent to the shipyard for overhaul, for at least two or three months, the Allies can only have one high-speed ship, the Duke of York, plus three South Dakota-class ships with a speed of only 27 knots, and seven old warships. As for aircraft carriers, don't count on any in the Atlantic Ocean before September - after all, although there are still four aircraft carriers in the Pacific, they can't move at all in front of the powerful Japanese Combined Fleet, and can only defend the Espiritu Santo Islands and the Hawaii-South Pacific route with all their strength. So there is no way to get any reinforcements in the Atlantic Ocean!

No matter how stupid Redl and Kumets were, they knew clearly that their good days in the Atlantic Ocean had arrived...

"Kumetz, the British have no aircraft carriers in the Atlantic now, and the main fleet is also stretched thin... I order you to take Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Scharnhorst and two pocket battleships to cover all the attack ships that can be deployed from the port of Brest... I have already made an agreement with Dönitz, you two must cooperate with each other as much as possible! In the next two months, you can do as much as you can in the Atlantic, and destroy as many ships as you can, do you understand?!"

"Yes! We will fight to the death to serve the empire and live up to the Marshal's cultivation!"

Kumets also smiled confidently - two battleships equipped with powerful 406mm main guns, plus the Scharnhorst with a speed of 32 knots and 6 380 main guns, plus the cooperation of submarines and the harassment of attack ships led by pocket battleships, great military exploits are almost within reach!

Britain and the United States now only have eleven battleships, and each escort team theoretically needs at least three battleships - this means that the opponent's scale will be very bloated, and even these battleships' speed and gunfire range are basically not as good as their own battleships - in fact, based on the requirements of escort, the bloated large fleet can easily have a range of ten nautical miles, let alone three old battleships, even six old battleships are not enough to protect the transport ship! At that time, as long as we learn Lütjens's tactics of dispersed harassment in the support operation, sooner or later we will be able to completely wipe out the exhausted escort team!

Anyway, there are plenty of supply ships disguised as attack ships in the Atlantic Ocean, so Kumets is not afraid of running out of ammunition and fuel!

The colluded admirals and admirals bared their ferocious fangs when they saw the convoys, which had just been open to navigation in the Atlantic for less than a month and were already trembling in fear in front of Dönitz's submarines.

In the Atlantic Ocean, there was a bloody storm in an instant...

And on the distant Pacific battlefield, the situation was equally grim.

Although thanks to the almost fully mechanized American engineering corps, the four aircraft carriers relied on the island airports scattered on the Melanesian island chain to defend against the full-scale attack of the ten aircraft carriers of the Japanese Combined Fleet, but Yamamoto Isoroku and Tojo Hideki reached a tacit consensus in the South Pacific theater - in addition to continuing to confront the US military across Mount Stanley in the north of New Guinea, the rest was to strengthen the construction of island fortifications and the training of reserve pilots. At the same time, according to the information obtained by the German internal reference, Japan and the United States seemed to have been conducting some secret contacts of "conspiracy to stop the war and betray the Axis Agreement with our Greater German Empire"...

While the Pacific battlefield had reached a stalemate, on the other side of the Far East, in order to completely consolidate the occupied areas and strive to make a big profit, Japan stepped up its control and plunder of the occupied areas. In addition, it also carried out "strategies" and induced surrender against the skinhead forces whose power in the southwest and central south had been cut off from the main artery of the Henan-Hunan-Guangxi Railway and whose power was divided into two parts, unable to take care of both ends - we and the United States, which is behind you, Brother Yujie, are both negotiating, so we can actually have a peace talk!

Especially when there is a common enemy, the wild rabbit...

The Baldies seemed to be very interested in this. Although they refused to negotiate openly, according to some unconfirmed news, hundreds of thousands of Baldies' troops had already cooperated with the IJA and began to tacitly carry out the "wild rabbit roundup operation" together.

However, despite this, on the vast North China Plain, the "North China security situation" that the IJA North China Front, which committed murder, arson, and all kinds of evil, was responsible for, had become increasingly "corrupted" under the destruction of the "rabbit nest" that was pervasive and rampant, and there was a trend of further developing towards "unlimited spread of malignant tumor cells"...

(When I saw this paragraph in the German internal report, the Persian cat felt inexplicably happy)

In addition, due to the impact of the Mid-Atlantic Battle two years ago, the second ship of the Yamato-class battleship, the Musashi, and the third ship, the Shinano, were directly converted into aircraft carriers - and the Musashi seemed to have been launched and put into service - and on the slipways of the Japanese mainland, the Taiho, Unryuu, Amagi, Katsuragi, as well as Kasagi, Ikoma, Aso... and other aircraft carriers have also begun to quietly, but little by little, show their grandeur on the slipways...

Although, according to the intelligence obtained by Germany through military diplomatic channels, the Japanese aircraft carrier's design is terrible, and the layout of the internal structure of the hull, which is a cumbersome philosophy, has not been improved at all...

After seeing the introduction of the internal reference, Bismarck and the others would always have a silent question mark popping up in their heads:

It is such a simple thing to weld together horizontal and vertical, standard structural parts and steel plates. Is it necessary to have a lot of "non-standardized" things?

(Just a joke, the Yunlong class, whose combat capability is at best a modified version of the Feilong class, took half as much time to build as the Jiaozi class, which has almost two-thirds more aircraft capacity...)

However, speaking of ship modification...

Bismarck couldn't help but look out the window - it had been agreed before that the transformation of the sisters' bodies was everyone's job. As the "crew member" on duty today, whenever she saw herself and the Grapes sisters neatly lined up on the dock, with two large black holes in front and two in the back on each deck, the Persian cat always felt that her arms were a little weak, and she also felt scared...

According to the battleship's design, the turret ring space is indeed sufficient for modification, but the turret ring, which is the main load-bearing structure, is directly located on the bottom of the ship - the bottom of the ship is located on the two side keels on both sides of the main keel. And if it is at the rear of the hull, it is actually the support structure of her left and right propulsion shafts!

This is the main load-bearing structure, which is determined in advance.

The SKC34/406mm main gun weighs 160 tons, with a muzzle energy of 337.9MJ, and the matching Drh LC34 twin-mounted turret weighs 1475 tons - this is the original turret, and the "forehead" position and the top of the turret are not fully protected. If they were, it would be 1600 tons. In comparison, even the improved SKC34/380mm main gun has a muzzle energy of only 269MJ, and the original weight of the turret is 1080 tons, and it is only 1200 tons after modification.

The muzzle kinetic energy and turret weight have increased by 25%, and the hull structure is not so easy to adjust. Although I am very confident in the basic strength of the hull, I have no idea how to replace it with the 406mm main guns. Given the stress structure of the front and rear gun areas, even if I can "operate" the hull, it seems that it is not so easy to use these eight powerful but heavy main guns...

Bismarck now increasingly felt that Raeder had equipped him with 406mm main guns, not only to strengthen his strength in the face of the Allied forces that "might become powerful in the future", but also to torture him, hoping that he would be retired and demolished earlier due to structural wear and tear after the war...

Well… Although she didn’t really like those sports before she traveled through time, at least she had heard of many celebrities who had to retire in their prime because they overexerted their bodies and suffered bone injuries…

He's only thirty years old, but he's already made himself crippled.

Will my body be like this in the future?

When Bismarck thought of this, he felt inexplicably unhappy - how old was he? According to human age, he was just a little girl, and he was already disabled due to hidden injuries?

But what's the point of thinking about these things now?

Now, the four main turrets of himself and Tizi, along with the mounts, gun mount armor and even the dome armor, have all been stripped off. This also means that his transformation and gun replacement work has now entered the "deep water zone" and it is impossible to turn back.

Besides, the 380 gun is indeed not powerful enough, and the 406 has been looking forward to it for a long time.

The war will only last for a few years, we will talk about the future later.

Seeing that the positions of the four main guns had been dug so deep that the bottom was visible, and that work had already begun on welding reinforcing ribs and even strengthening the bulkheads under the core base structure such as the keel and ribs of the hull, Bismarck felt that it would be good if nothing went wrong.

Although the basic structural strength of her and the Grape can theoretically withstand the weight of changing guns, the seat ring needs to be enlarged, the structural strength to resist recoil needs to be further strengthened, and even the hull needs to be modified to balance the increased weight of the gun compartments at both ends, not to mention the thickened dome armor, underwater armor and even the third internal compartment after the Icelandic naval battle, which all took up a lot of space and weight.

Although the modification plan has already made some arrangements for this: first, the third waterproof bulkhead added during the last modification was thickened and converted into a structural load-bearing wall, and then reinforced ribs and reinforced support structures were used on the bottom of the ship to disperse the gravity and design stress. However, this approach still requires "surgery" on the bottom structure of the ship.

In fact, the structural modification of the corresponding basic ribs actually needs to be connected to the entire length of the bottom of the ship to ensure that the overall strength and stress distribution of the whole ship are not affected. In addition, in order to balance the weight and maintain the speed, the hulls of myself and Tizi must also be modified - in addition to the streamlined modification of the external mine protection "bulges" on both sides of the hull, and the empty warehouse outside the mine protection area is changed into an oil tank to enhance the stability after the battle damage, the bow is also extended by five meters, and a square tail that is more suitable for high-speed sailing is adopted to ensure that the speed will not drop too much after the modification, and at the same time to ensure that the fuel reserves are increased...

Of course, there will still be many problems in doing this...

If this is done, the ammunition depot will be compressed due to the need to add structural walls, and the ammunition depot must be expanded towards the "outside" of the ammunition depot, that is, the bow and stern. Fortunately, in the original design, the main armor of both her and Tizi was included in a layer outside the ammunition depot, so this place does have the potential to be converted into an ammunition depot. Although doing so will indeed come at the cost of some safety risks...

Moreover, this method requires structural reinforcement of the hull. However, although such structural reinforcement is no problem for the two front main guns, there is a big problem with the two rear main guns: because the position of the new turret ring is just above the main shaft, in order to solve this problem, the shaft system must be strengthened and modified! Maybe after entering the dock, the main shaft will have to be removed and the reinforcement structure welded - and even so, it cannot be guaranteed that the weight borne by the bearing structure will be completely dispersed, and the more complicated reinforcement structure processing will not have any impact on the speed of the ship...

In short, this is also a huge and arduous project!

Although she was fully capable of manipulating the materials on her body to reinforce the newly welded structures, it was still very troublesome to do so. Moreover, she did not want to be covered in hidden injuries in the future - even though, as a ship with independent will, she could completely alleviate this problem through "self-regulation" compared to ordinary warships.

"Tsk... I always feel like I've become a middle-aged woman with a yellow face. I must start paying attention to my health..."

Thinking of this, Bismarck always felt inexplicably mad and wanted to throw the newspaper.

Moreover, besides myself, Grape will also be the one to be chopped off this time!

We all get along together, so we won't feel lonely. But when I think of Grape, as a sister, Bismarck always feels worried...

That girl is just a stay-at-home girl, lazy and stupid (cute), and now she is so lazy that she needs Lindeman to spoil her every day - although every time I see her being naughty all day long, she is my sister after all...

"Forget it... I'll take care of her and give her some advice and encouragement when the time comes... Really, she's such a grown-up, but she's still so worrying..."

Thinking about it, as the elder sister, you always feel that whenever you think of Troublemaker Rat’s lazy and naughty behavior, your back teeth start to itch again...

But fortunately, at least Eugen and Zeppelin don't have to be so complicated.

Eugen also needs to be modified this time, but her modification is actually to increase the thickness of armor and dome armor, add a "bulge" and increase the fuel capacity, but at least it does not involve major surgery on the hull foundation. Although the dome armor structure also needs to be dealt with, under the influence of the "will of the warship itself", the workers only need to weld another layer of steel plate on the "floor" of the dome armor, and the actual amount of work is not large.

Moreover, although there is only one large dock in the Kiel Shipyard, Eugen's "size" is a whole circle smaller than hers, so she does not need to enter that large dock for modification - in addition to the large dock, Kiel Port has two medium-sized docks, so Eugen has no pressure to enter the dock for modification.

As for Zeppelin, although she had already modified the angled deck and installed the steam catapult, she only needed to modify the structure of the superstructure. Even the modification of the pipeline reserved for the steam catapult was nothing more than cutting a few compartments and installing relevant armor. She didn't need to go through such a painful "operating table surgery" like herself.

Bismarck silently put down the internal newspaper in his hand, looked in the direction of the Zeppelin aircraft carrier, which had a skeleton already built in the reserved position on the angled deck in the dock and "did not need to be cut", and then looked sourly and silently in the direction of the Holtenau Airport in the north of Kiel across the bay from the shipyard.

There is the current base of the GR-186th Wing.

----

At the same time, at Holtenau Airport, Zeppelin was hosting a welcome ceremony for the new members of the GR-186 Wing.

In the previous brutal air battles, a large number of veterans including Marseille died, and due to the tight situation on the Eastern Front, experienced captains and squadron leaders such as Rudel, Helbig, Ehler, and Weisenberg had to be transferred. The Imperial Marshal hoped to form a new combat unit with their abilities and experience. The current GR-186 wing was in a period of transition and in urgent need of rest and recuperation. Therefore, Goering specially transferred a group of pilots who had just graduated from the fighter school and sent them to Kiel Airport to supplement the troops that had suffered heavy losses.

Fortunately, Goering listened to Zeppelin's advice very early and improved the training of the pilot school. Although the training time of these pilots was shortened, and they might not be as proficient in those complex advanced subjects as the pilots who had received regular training before the war, but in the most critical air combat training, these people had generally been trained at least eight or ten times in the aviation school by those ace pilots who had retired from the front line!