On September 16, 1890, the Ottoman wooden frigate Elturul, which had just finished its visit to Japan and was about to go to India, was unfortunately hit by a typhoon, and the battleship finally ran aground and sank off the coast of Kii, with only 69 of the more than 600 crew and passengers on board surviving, and the remaining 587 people drowned or disappeared on the spot.

The survivors were rescued by the local Japanese people, and they were immediately sent to the port of Kobe on a German gunboat [Wolff], which arrived to rescue them. In January of the following year, Emperor Meiji personally ordered the dispatch of the cruisers "Kongo" and "Hiei" to transport the shipwrecked survivors back to the Ottoman Empire.

Yes, you read that right, but these two are not the second fools of later generations, but the most advanced wooden armored cruisers of the Japanese Navy at that time. The King Kong type cruiser was powered by sails and steam and was designed by the famous British naval designer Edward Edward. James. Designed by Sir Leeder himself, it was built by Hull Shipping and Milford Harbour Shipyard. If by the standards of the British Navy at that time, these two ships could only be regarded as first-class armored frigates, but the Imperial Japanese Navy classified these two warships into the sequence of armored cruisers, because Japan was small and weak, and had a bunch of old warships picked up from all over the world, and the tonnage and firepower of these two were indeed comparable to the old cruisers.

The Kongo-type armored cruiser was equipped with three Krupp 170-mm cannons, six Krupp 150-mm cannons, and two 76-mm Armstrong whirlpool guns. Ahem.. Cannon. It was also armed with four 37mm and four 25mm single-barreled rapid-fire guns, and even a 365mm torpedo tube, which was fashionable at the time, to fire British-made bald torpedoes.

These two cruisers had large tonnage, good seaworthiness, fierce firepower, and a complete range of weapons, but at this time the age of the two ships was more than ten years, so they were relegated to the second line and were regarded by the Imperial Japanese Navy as training ships for naval cadets and trainees.

On January 2, 1891, the cruisers "Kongo" and "Hiei" embarked on a long journey to the Ottoman Empire with 69 survivors of the "Erturul" and the 17th second lieutenant candidates of the Japanese Naval Academy.

It should be pointed out that among the group of naval alternate officers on the ship, there are several future Japanese "military gods", the most famous of which is the "genius staff officer" Akiyama Shinyuki, who was praised by Heihachiro Togo as "resourceful", but this famous general who was touted by the Japanese Navy as "using soldiers like a god" was only a 23-year-old rookie.

Leaving aside the hardships and dangers that the Japanese experienced on the way, the two ships reached the Ottoman Empire without any problems. While stopping at the port of Istanbul, the Japanese naval officers and sailors were surprised to find two strange ships docked on the Ottoman naval pier that they had never seen before. After asking the Turkish sailors, they learned that they were actually two steam-powered submarines.

Because I heard the news that the Greek Navy was ready to buy submarines, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul, who adhered to the concept of "you have it, I must have it". Hamid II decided to go to England to buy submarines, a "magic weapon".

To be honest, the British were also a little dumbfounded when they saw the order, and the Royal Navy did not have this new toy itself. As a result, it turned out that the Greeks had purchased it at that time, and it turned out to be the Swedish arms dealer Southten. Nordenfeldt's design of steam submarines, since it is easy to find the source, Nordenfeldt happened to be in England to promote his improved submarine design, so Barrow Shipyard built two Nordenfeldt improved steam submarines according to Nordenfeld's design drawings.

This primitive submarine had a displacement of only 100 tons, a length of 30 meters, a 250-horsepower coal-fired steam engine installed, a surface speed of six knots, an underwater speed of four knots, and a diving depth of 49 meters. The ship's armament was two 365-mm torpedo tubes, as well as two 37-mm single-barreled rapid-fire deck guns.

The Ottoman Navy named the submarine after the Sultan, and one was named Abdul. Hamid], the other was named Abdul. Mejid], which was the name of the father of the Hamid Sultan, the thirty-first Ottoman Sultan.

In fact, this kind of submarine is only a false name, it does not solve the underwater power of the submarine, it relies on the air in the compressed air tank to push the piston of the steam engine to run when diving, this kind of submarine can only move underwater for a few minutes at most, there is no actual combat use at all, in fact, it can only be regarded as a semi-submersible ship. Moreover, after the torpedo is fired, the center of gravity of the ship will change, and the ship will become quite unstable, even endangering the safety of navigation. Because at that time the two submarines had only been in service for two years, and the Turks were still fresh, and their interest in this new type of weapon was undiminished.

The Japanese saw the submarine for the first time, and were attracted by this magical weapon, but the Japanese consumption concept was much more cautious than the Turks, mainly because Japan's national strength was relatively poor at that time, and there were still four years before the First Sino-Japanese War. Where can it compare to the real tyrant of the Ottoman Empire, who throws tens of thousands of gold pounds into the water, and the Sultan will not blink his eyelashes.

Although Japan rubbed shoulders with steam submarines, the submarine weapon has already made a deep impression on the Japanese Navy. After the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan gnawed a lot of fat on the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the Japanese Navy began to become rich, so the submarine weapon appeared on the Japanese Navy's procurement list for the first time.

It was 1898, on the cruiser "Kasaki" on a visit to Philadelphia, USA, a young naval officer, Lieutenant Takachi Sasaki, saw an advertisement in the newspaper by the Dutch inventor Holland, who was in Philadelphia to sell the submarine he designed, that is, the famous "Holland-type submarine". Sasaki Takachi immediately got in touch with Holland and experienced the surface and diving navigation of the Holland submarine, and the lieutenant immediately wrote a report to the Ministry of the Navy, in which he praised the prospects for the development of this type of ship.

Don't look at the lieutenant's military rank is not high, but the family is high enough, the Sasaki family is a marquis, and Gao Zhi is the eldest son of the Marquis Sasaki's family.

At that time, Holland offered the Japanese $200,000 a ship, plus the transfer of production technology, which was considered a conscience price in that year. At that time, the Japanese navy was the generation of Togo and Akiyama, and they were still very interested in this weapon that could sneak into the enemy's harbor and attack, so they began to negotiate procurement with Horan. Unfortunately, because the Japanese Navy was in the middle of the third phase of expansion at the time, the cost of purchasing submarines was diverted to the construction costs of other ships, and it was too cumbersome to recalculate the budget, so the deal was put on hold.

I thought that the Japanese Navy would once again pass by the submarine, but after six years, things suddenly took a turn for the better. Because in this year, the tragic Russo-Japanese War broke out.

In the Port Arthur and Offshore Battles, Japan lost several ships in a row, and the Russian Pacific Fleet had already begun an expedition, and the navy decided to temporarily come up with a sum of money to buy ships from abroad to supplement its strength, so Horan's submarines were included in the purchase list.

This time, the Japanese Navy did not hesitate to pay a lot of money, and purchased five submarines at one time, which was worth one million US dollars, but no one would have thought that the Russian Navy would lose so quickly and so badly, and the Holland-type submarines that Japan snapped up arrived too late and failed to catch up with the actual battle.

However, the Japanese Navy still had great expectations for this weapon, and they organized the five Holland submarines into the first diving team, and all the research and training of the Japanese Navy's diving team from 1904 to the outbreak of World War I revolved around the Holland-type submarines.

It was only after the end of the First World War that Japanese submarines seized a historic opportunity to complete what can almost be described as a reborn flight. At that time, Japan was given seven German U-boats as trophies, and finally got a glimpse of the world's first-class submarines. The German submarines, in terms of structure, layout, and technology, were far from being comparable to those Holland types that Japan had.

The Japanese Navy opened its eyes to the fact that the world's first-class submarines were built in this way, so it would not immediately begin dismantling and researching and copying Japanese submarines of the same level as soon as possible.

However, the Japanese soon discovered that even if there were real objects there, with Japan's design capabilities and construction technology at the time, it was impossible to imitate a submarine that could compare with the performance of the Germans. This is because what Japan lacks is not only shipbuilding technology, but also engineers who have a clear concept of submarine design.

So the Japanese activated the Golden Yuan Tactics, and spent a lot of money to recruit Dr. Zecher, the design director of the Germania shipyard, from Germany, and under the guidance of the German shipbuilding expert, the Japanese Navy began to design Japanese submarines that met the needs of the Japanese Navy itself. It was only then that Japan's submarines really began to move towards localization, and in the following short period of more than a decade, Japan developed a series of modern submarines with Japanese characteristics. It can be said that the development of modern submarines in Japan was all based on the technology of German submarines in World War I.

The Japanese Navy's Haida series of ocean-going submarines evolved from Dr. Zecher's design, so this I-60 submarine can be regarded as a distant relative of the U106.

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Today is the background science chapter, and the storyline will continue tomorrow.