The high cost makes full-time flagships useless, at least reducing their importance.

Although during this period, the Imperial Navy repeatedly adjusted the performance and technical indicators of the flagship to control construction costs by reducing requirements, compared with other major warships during the war, the urgency of full-time flagships is indeed much worse, and is not a weapon to determine the outcome.

In Liu Changxun's words, the officers and soldiers of the Fleet Command usually live in luxury and should work harder in battle.

It was not until the second year of the war that the Imperial Navy determined the main performance indicators of the flagship.

There is only one key thing to say.

On the premise of ensuring a high speed, the command capability should be enhanced as much as possible, and other combat capabilities can be reduced or abolished for this purpose.

The first thing that was abolished was the combat capability that combat ships must have, that is, the main military equipment.

Although dozens of small-caliber anti-aircraft guns were added after completion, no equipment was considered during design and construction.

According to the design idea, it is at most equipped with a few heavy machine guns.

Because there are dozens of imperial guards responsible for maintaining order and are following the fleet, the flagship does not need weapons to deal with small ships.

Secondly, it is the survivability including armor protection.

No matter when it is, the flagship will definitely be in the fleet, or to be precise, behind the combat ships, so there is almost no possibility of participating in the battle.

Then, there is no need for armor protection.

It is acceptable to reduce the survivability after being hit.

To this end, the designer made an article on the hull structure.

Because of the success of the "Imperial Capital" class fleet aircraft carrier, the hull structure of the small sub-cabin was proven to be effective, almost all the large warships built during the war adopted the hull structure of the small sub-cabin to enhance their survivability after being hit.

One disadvantage of the small sub-cabin structure is that the structure is heavy and the construction is more complex.

In order to control construction costs and to reduce construction difficulty, the flagship did not adopt a small sub-cabin structure.

Of course, this has to do with the basic design of the flagship.

In order to save time and reduce costs, the flagship uses the hull of the "Wuzhou" class heavy cruiser.

Simply put, it is to make changes to the "Wuzhou"-class hull.

The "Wuzhou" class is a standard treaty heavy cruiser, without a small sub-column structure.

In fact, choosing the "Wuzhou" class hull is not only to reduce costs, but also related to the tactical requirements of the flagship.

In order to install various large electronic equipment, especially large and bulky long-wave radio stations, and to arrange the communication center and the control center as much as possible to improve the efficiency of command, the number of large cabins must be increased, so the small sub-cabin structure cannot be adopted.

In short, because the small sub-cabin structure at the level of warships is not adopted, the flagship has almost no ability to resist strikes and is prone to sink after being injured.

Tactically, this is not a bad thing.

Flagships are the brain of the fleet, and there must be many secrets on it that make the enemy salivate, such as communication codebooks. If even the flagship is hit in a naval battle, then the fleet commander will definitely hope that the flagship can sink quickly instead of falling into the hands of the enemy.

If you want to say, this is also the worst survivable warship built by the Imperial Navy during the war.

Strictly speaking, flagships are not warships, but more like auxiliary ships similar to civilian ships.

However, after sacrificing combat power, protection and survivability, the flagship gains huge internal space and amazing self-sustaining ability.

Although the tonnage is 50% higher than that of the "Wuzhou" class and the "Wuzhou" class power system is still used, after using a spherical bow with drag reduction effect and redesigning the underwater part of the hull, the speed during overpressure of the boiler still reaches 30 knots.

This speed is enough to keep up with the special mixed fleet.

The key is that in the standard displacement of nearly 20,000 tons, the main guns and ammunition on heavy cruisers account for more than 30%.

It is precisely this way. With more than 600 officers and soldiers, as well as hundreds of various radio stations, and only hundreds of communication antennas, the flagship's self-sustaining power reaches 120 days, its maximum range of over 20,000 nautical miles, and its range of 7,500 nautical miles is available for full-speed navigation.

In addition, the flagship can also play a guest role in supply ships, providing supplies to other ships during combat operations.

In battle, providing food, fresh water and other supplies to other warships is also one of the main tasks of the flagship.

The reason is: the flagship has the largest freezer in the entire fleet, which can freeze 500 tons of food, which is enough to make a fleet full of half a year.

Because the "Wuzhou"-class power system is extremely reliable and maintainable, the flagship design and deployment cycle reaches half a year.

Of course, it will definitely be more than half a year in actual combat.

If you want to say, the greatest value of a flagship is communication and command capabilities.

Just a long-wave radio station, there are twelve series!

The key is that the flagship is equipped with enough telecommunications officers to be able to repair the radio station during the voyage, and even modify the radio station.

The easiest way is to change the signal characteristics of the radio station by changing the antenna and transmitter.

As for the spare parts required for maintenance, there are many that can be installed in the flagship warehouse.

In fact, in actual combat, flagships often act as electronic repair ships, that is, arrange electronic officers to go to other warships to repair damaged electronic equipment.

In addition to long-wave radio stations, there are hundreds of various communication equipment such as voice radio stations and short-wave radio stations on the flagship.

In addition, radio monitoring equipment was added after delivery to the Navy.

In other words, the flagship also has the ability to perform radio reconnaissance missions, and can help the fleet monitor nearby radio activities when following the fleet.

This is a very amazing ability.

Although there are generally radio monitoring stations on main ships such as aircraft carriers and battleships, as well as on large warships such as cruisers, they are not very large due to space limitations, and in order to avoid interference from the ship's electronic equipment, their use is strictly restricted.

Obviously, these problems do not exist on flagships.

This is also the main reason why Bai Zhizhan brought the Qinling Sea.

The previous fleet decisive battles have proved that radio reconnaissance is an effective means to discover the enemy and can be regarded as a new way of confrontation.

Being able to discover the enemy through electronic reconnaissance means first can often take the initiative and win the final victory.

Obviously, this is also the ability that other current warships lack.

If there is a warship in the fleet with strong radio reconnaissance capabilities, then the victory will definitely be greater in the fleet's decisive battle.

Of course, this is not the whole reason.

Bai Zhizhan brought the Qinling ship and asked his sister ship Kunlun to go to the 22nd special mixed fleet, which has a lot to do with the combat plan.

The key to this battle is to deceive, and to achieve a surprise attack through deception, minimizing the difficulty of the initial combat.

The purpose of bringing the flagship was to deceive the Newland Navy, or to use the means of winning the crowd, so that the Newland Navy firmly believed that the target of the Imperial Navy's attack was Wei Island.

Bai Zhizhan felt that it was unnecessary.
Chapter completed!