At a time when the world was hotly discussing the secret war between Chinese and British underwater submarines, two months later, in the Forbidden City, the capital of the Chinese Empire, the Ministry of War had already held a military meeting to investigate the submarine collision accident in the North Sea, and recalled the captain and sailors of the Blackhead Shark submarine.

According to the captain of the Blackhead Shark, the underwater collision was due to the lack of underwater detection equipment. When the Great White Shark-class submarine sails underwater, it is completely black, nothing can be seen, it is all based on the nautical charts prepared in advance, and it is completely unknown what is outside the submarine. The captain said he had once hit a giant octopus in the Atlantic Ocean and was almost preyed upon by the octopus.

This incident has aroused great attention from military personnel of the Ministry of War, who have demanded that the military industry department study equipment that can make submarines not blind underwater and strive to prevent the recurrence of similar accidents.

Since the number of submarines in the Chinese Empire is not large, and it has been taking the high-quality route before, the loss of a Great White Shark-class submarine is a very significant matter for the submarine power of the Chinese Imperial Navy.

Fortunately, the Naval Defense Act of the Chinese Empire in 3980 has been implemented for more than a year, and the first batch of 24 new submarines is in full swing, and the first batch of 12 submarines has been completed and is currently undergoing final sea trials, and then the outfitting can be officially put into service, so this time the sinking of the Blackhead Shark has only brought adverse effects to the Chinese Imperial Navy for one or two months, and the military has not been too responsible, and the military hearings have ended soon.

The subsequent congressional hearings did not make things difficult for the captain and sailors of the Blackhead Shark submarine.

Of course, it's not that the members of Congress are generous and suddenly turn around. These legislators, who are elected by the citizens of the country, are very concerned about any unexpected loss of economic property, especially the large loss of equipment by the military. This time, because the Chinese Empire lodged a solemn protest to the British Empire, deliberately blackmailed the British Empire with the sinking accident of the Blackhead Shark, and obtained an apology and double compensation from the British Empire.

However, when the military sent the final results of the discussion to Emperor Li Weiguo, Li Weiguo suddenly realized a problem.

Submarines are blind under water, and this problem is not unsolvable, it is only necessary to develop sonar detection equipment.

In the past, Li Weiguo took the lead in developing submarine forces and also considered sonar detection equipment, but because the technology in the seventies of the nineteenth century was not enough, it could not meet the development of sonar detection equipment.

But now it is different, after entering the eighties, the Chinese empire led the world in the telecommunications industry, and telephone and radio systems have been successfully developed.

In this way, there are no technical barriers to early sonar systems based on telephone and radio systems, and they can be developed quickly.

So Li Weiguo called the military and relevant experts in the field of telecommunications to study the submarine underwater not blind people.

"The principle of this sonar system is very simple, we say that the eyes of a bat are invisible, but it can fly around obstacles. Why, just because the bat has a set of radar equipment, it can emit electromagnetic waves into the surrounding air, and when the electromagnetic waves hit an obstacle and return to the bat, then the bat knows that there is an obstacle in front of it, and then avoids it. ”

At the meeting, Li Weiguo briefly introduced the principle of the sonar system to everyone, and made another crazy show, which made all the participants admire.

"Your Majesty means that we can emit electromagnetic waves underwater, and use the return time of electromagnetic waves to calculate whether there is an obstacle ahead?" Mewucci, an expert from the Ministry of Telecommunications, asked, offering his own understanding.

"You're right! However, the electromagnetic wave attenuates too quickly underwater, and the detection distance is only a few tens of meters, which has no effect. ”

Li Weiguo nodded, first affirmed Mei Wuqi's understanding, and then added: "The sonar system I am talking about is first of all based on the principle of sound wave transmission. The sound is attenuated underwater and travels a long distance. A shell explodes here, and a sound signal can be detected under the water 20,000 kilometers away. ”

Deppler, an expert in the radio group, suddenly asked: "Your Majesty, our radio is electromagnetic waves, since you deny the use of electromagnetic waves, I don't know what is the purpose of calling our radio group over?" ”

Li Weiguo said with a smile: "The radio has limited underwater transmission capabilities, but if you build a basic sonar array, you have to rely on the cooperation of your radio group." You're going to need to convert the radio base array into a sonar base array. ”

Depler suddenly understood, and a heart was finally let go.

Meucci asked again: "The sonar array is in charge of the radio group, so what is our telecommunications group responsible for?" ”

Li Weiguo then said: "Your telecommunications team is responsible for the most important transducer!" This transducer is the core device of sonar and has two functions. One is the transmitter transducer, as the name suggests, is a device that emits sound waves, similar to the earpiece in the telephone you developed, or the speaker, except that this time it is not in the air, but underwater. The second is to accept the transducer, which is equivalent to the telephone cylinder, or the microphone, which also needs to receive sound underwater, and the higher the sensitivity, the better. ”

"Got it!" Meucci happily agreed, and he felt that there was no problem, just to repurpose the components of the telephone system so that they could be used underwater.

Li Weiguo nodded and said, "According to this idea, let's start developing a sonar system first!" If you have any questions, you can always ask me! ”

Under Li Weiguo's order, the Imperial Academy of Sciences set up a sonar scientific research team and began intense research and experimental work.

The core component of the sonar system is the transducer, but now there is no problem for the Chinese Empire.

With the abundant human, material and financial support of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, the sonar team completed the first sonar system in less than three days, and then found a pool of water and began to experiment.

The tester put on headphones, listened to the echo of the pool, and then calculated the depth of the pool based on the density of the water and the echo time.

The personnel of the sonar group suddenly came to their senses, indicating that their efforts were in the right direction, and the next step was to continuously improve and improve the entire sonar system, and eventually to install it on submarines and warships.

The research on the sonar system is progressing smoothly, and Li Weiguo believes that within a year, the sonar system will be thoroughly perfected and then equipped with the navy. When the time comes, the submarine will have a sonar system, and it will not easily hit the ridge trench or other submarines underwater.

At the same time, Li Weiguo also thought of anti-submarine destroyers, which previously had only depth charges as anti-submarine weapons, and in fact did not have detection capabilities. It often takes a long time to search for enemy submarines on the surface of the sea at the speed of the destroyer, after all, the enemy's submarine can dive for more than several hours, and the anti-submarine destroyer must search for the enemy submarine within a large anti-submarine radius, which is time-consuming and laborious.

Now that there is a sonar system, if you install anti-submarine destroyers, you can easily detect enemy submarines under the surface.

Of course, although there is no problem with the development of sonar systems in this era, the accuracy is not very high, after all, the technology of many electronic components is limited.

However, relatively speaking, the submarines of this era were also very simple. After all, submarines in this era can only dive to a maximum depth of 50 meters, and they can be seen by the naked eye in good weather. The noise of the submarine propeller is also very loud, and people can feel it with their ears when they are underwater within a kilometer.

In this way, even the inaccurate sonar can easily capture the echo of the submarine and the noise of the submarine's huge propellers.

This principle is like two people playing chess, if they are both stinky chess baskets, then both people will think that the other is very powerful.

Therefore, Li Weiguo can imagine that when the submarines of the Chinese Empire have a sonar system, the enemy's submarines will be hunted by their own side underwater. With the sonar system of the anti-submarine destroyer, the enemy's submarine will have no way to escape. All kinds of capital warships have sonar systems, so the enemy's submarines will be discovered before they get close, and the large-caliber main guns will bombard, instantly killing the enemy submarines that come to sneak attack.

Li Weiguo was immediately happy, this is another killer piece of equipment!

Now that the Chinese Empire has a number of killer weapons and equipment, even if Britain, France, the United States, Russia, and Japan are fully united in the future, the Chinese Empire will not be afraid of them, and will definitely beat them all over the ground and beat them out!

Time passed day by day, and the world appeared to be peaceful, but in fact there was a turbulent undercurrent.

The military bloc headed by Britain, the United States, and Japan, on the other, and the German-Austrian military bloc, and the Chinese Empire, never ceased to compete with each other.

Since a few months ago, more than a dozen submarines of the British Navy were secretly killed by the Chinese Imperial submarine Blackhead Shark, which made the British Navy suffer a dumb loss, and now the British Empire has not only not been frightened, but has intensified the submarine secret war.

The British submarines were no longer limited to the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, but quietly entered the Pacific Ocean, and the British still had several strongholds in the Pacific Ocean, that is, New Zealand and the Solomon Islands near Australia, which were still under the colonial rule of the British Empire.

The British Navy built defensive fortifications and naval bases here on a large scale, and a large number of British submarines were deployed here to secretly harass the merchant ships of the Chinese Empire, secretly track the warships of the Chinese Empire, and secretly practice attack methods against the warships of the Chinese Empire.

The British intelligence service kept a close eye on the submarine forces of the Chinese Empire, and whenever the submarines of the Chinese Empire left the port, the British submarines would also leave the port, and the two sides continued to compete under the surface of the sea.

This has almost become a tacit agreement between the Chinese Empire and the British Empire, neither side will hold the other side accountable for attack, no matter whose submarine is sunk, it will be claimed that the submarine sank due to an accident, and if there are surviving sailors, they will also be strictly controlled, and no secrets are allowed.

In general, the submarine forces of the Chinese Empire won more and lost less, and the submarine forces of the British Empire suffered heavy losses.

However, the British Empire still did not intend to back down, and continued to invest more submarines. In fact, this is the British Navy's efforts to strengthen the British submarine combat capability through actual combat, and it is also to analyze the submarine performance and advanced degree of the Chinese Empire, and strive to surpass the submarine force of the Chinese Empire in the future.

At the same time, the British Empire also gathered the submarine forces of the United States and the Japanese Empire, and the submarines of the three countries hunted and killed the Chinese Imperial submarines under the water of the Pacific Ocean.

For a time, the entire Pacific Ocean became a slaughterhouse, and a large number of British, American, and Japanese submarines were sunk, while the submarines of the Chinese Empire were rarely lost.

The world's media quickly noticed that almost every week, submarines from Britain, the United States, and Japan would sink due to accidents, while the Chinese Empire would only have a submarine accident every six months.

Everyone understands that this is the underwater contest between Britain, the United States and Japan and the Chinese Empire!

However, a year later, as the warships of various types of the Imperial Chinese Navy returned to the dock for overhaul, and after the repair was undocked, in just one month, the number of submarines wrecked by Britain, the United States and Japan in the Pacific waters exceeded 100, while the submarines of the Imperial Chinese Navy did not suffer any losses.

The whole world was shocked, the submarines of Britain, the United States and Japan were almost slaughtered by one side!

In just one month, the submarine forces of Britain, the United States and Japan in the Pacific waters were almost completely wiped out!

As a result, the leaders of Britain, the United States and Japan, who learned of this, immediately vomited three liters of blood!

On March 4, 1882, representatives of the military of Britain, the United States and Japan met in Washington, D.C., and in the face of the fact that the incidence of "accidents" during the recent operations of the submarine forces of the three navies was close to 100%, the military of the three countries collectively agreed to suspend all submarines from going to sea to carry out their duties and investigate the cause of the "accident".

This is also a decision made only as a last resort, although people all over the world understand that the submarines of Britain, the United States and Japan lost 100 in a month, and they were obviously tortured and killed by the Imperial Chinese Navy!

However, this is an unspoken rule, and the governments of Britain, the United States, and Japan know that they are suffering, but they cannot say it, and they are also dumb and dumb when they suffer.

In the face of public opinion all over the world, the governments of Britain, the United States, and Japan have no choice but to brazenly say that it was an "accident" caused by the quality of the submarine, and now a case is being opened for investigation to hold the submarine manufacturer responsible.

As a result, the submarine manufacturers of Britain, the United States and Japan were all summoned by the military of the three countries and then imposed huge fines.

The submarine manufacturers of the three countries immediately scolded the military for being shameless and let them carry the black pot, but unfortunately their arms could not twist their thighs, and the people could not fight the officials, so they could only suffer dumb losses.

However, the navies of Britain, the United States, and Japan cannot suffer such a big loss in vain.

The militaries of the three countries decided to cooperate in submarine technology and work together to develop advanced submarines to counter the submarine superiority of the Chinese Empire.

As a result, Britain, the United States, and Japan once again decided to expand the size of their submarines, and a plan for a larger submarine encirclement against the Chinese Empire surfaced. (To be continued.) )