Chapter 22: The Newborn Sea Wolf

In 1892, the British Armstrong Company snapped up the Laiyuan ironclad cruiser that was originally ordered by the Qing Dynasty in Britain but the payment was delayed, and renamed it the Yoshino.

The Yoshino-class is an excellent work designed by Sir Watts, a famous British shipbuilding expert, and its early ships of the same kind were Argentina in South America, and intelligence and other countries rushed to purchase them. The ship has a displacement of 4100 tons and is armed with several 6-inch rapid-fire guns. 12 high-pressure boilers and two four-stroke steam engines allowed it to reach an incredible speed of up to 23 knots. The construction cost of this ship was about 2.73 million yuan, or 300,000 pounds, and 1.9 million taels of silver.

"So, the battleship I bought has already set sail from Plymouth..."

In the 17th dock area of the Sizhejiang Avalanche Shipyard, Chen Zeyu listened to the report of Li Xiao, the director of the Intelligence Bureau, and walked towards the fully enclosed dock in front of him with Liang Jinrong, the deputy chief engineer of the shipyard.

"It's true! Armstrong's shipyards, including the Yoshino, completed all the ships they had ordered ahead of schedule. ”

Li Xiao, whose name is Hongfu, is a native of Tong'an, Fujian.

His family was originally an overseas Chinese in the British Malayan island, and was recommended by a friend to study in the UK in his early years, and obtained a degree in engineering. After 1880, he served as a British colonial politician in Singapore. My uncle met him on a business trip in his early years, and later the two had a long talk and cherished each other. He himself felt that he should serve the fate of the nation, so he resigned from the British colonial authorities the next day and came to Sizhejiang.

"It's just a few months in advance, something that's planned." Chen Zeyu turned his head to look at the north playfully, "Don't worry, it won't affect us..."

In the shipyard, you can see many young students who have just been recruited from Sizhejiang Technical College and joined the Avalanche Group just after graduation.

Looking at these energetic young people, Chen Zeyu has no doubt that after a period of apprenticeship engineer career, they will eventually become the mainstay of Huameng's future shipbuilding career.

The No. 17 dock area is a very special existence in the avalanche shipyard in Sizhejiang, a fully enclosed dock, and all the shipwrights work under the multi-angle ever-bright electric lights inside the dock. As for the reason, it will be revealed today.

Long before Chen Zeyu set up the design and development department of the shipyard, he directly appointed Wu Zhongxian, Liang Jinrong, Wei Han and others as the first batch of shipbuilding designers in this research department.

As Wu Zhongxian, Liang Jinrong, who was the first to get close to him, and Chen Zeyu, who studied in Boston at the beginning, can be said to know the professional ability of the two well. So, when Wu Zhongxian was the president and chief designer of the shipyard and responsible for coordinating the shipyard design and shipbuilding progress of each dock, what was Liang Jinrong, the great designer who was also entrusted with important tasks, doing?

The answer is precisely the submarine!

Westerners have been researching this underwater combat weapon for a long time, but due to the limitations of their own technical conditions and capital investment, they have never been able to turn submarines into actual combat. It was not until the end of the 19th century that a Frenchman piloted a homemade steam submarine and sank a surface ship in the form of a fish in a test, that countries began to invest money and technology to speed up the development of submarines.

As Chen Zeyu, who came from modern times and once served in a submarine unit of the Republic, he deeply understands the combat power of these underwater wolf packs. In the 21st century, while all countries are building aircraft carriers to reflect their national strength and military presence, the naval weapons that really serve as a deterrent are strategic nuclear submarines from beginning to end!

For a long time, although he didn't care about it on the surface, Chen Zeyu knew in his heart that he was actually very afraid of the massive warships of the British Empire sailing in the entire Pacific Ocean.

Although Zhejiang has a certain technological leadership in some fields, objective facts are objective facts, and Britain was an out-and-out empire until the end of World War I from the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The total tonnage of its navy is equivalent to the tonnage of all ships in service in the navies of other countries combined, and this is no joke. It can be said that Chen Zeyu has always been able to despise the Qing Dynasty, Russia, France and the Ben, but the British navy has always been a mountain that has been pressing on his heart from beginning to end.

It was not until now, that the submarine under construction in the Avalanche shipyard was about to be launched into service, and Chen Zeyu was slightly relieved. According to his idea, the Huameng Navy, which took the lead in possessing submarines, at least had the confidence to confront the British Navy in a certain area.

Compared with the increasingly large body and amazing armament of ironclad battleships, limited by their body size and combat methods, the cost of submarines at this time can be described as cheap and scary.

Compared to the high cost of millions of pounds on battleships today, how much money does it cost to build a submarine? If one has limited combat power, I will build five, ten, twenty, fifty, and one hundred. Chen Zeyu's shipyard once carefully calculated the cost, and one British Navy's "Sovereign-class" battleship was enough for its shipyard to build 15 to 20 submarines (early models).

With sufficient numbers and reasonable tactics, the combat power of submarines will be able to reach the extreme.

In this era, no one knows better than Chen Zeyu the terrifying extent of the wolf pack tactics of the German submarine navy during World War II. It was a combat method that was enough to cut off all the sea supply channels of the Empire alone, and if it weren't for the intervention of the Americans, maybe the history at that time would not have been the one that Chen Zeyu was familiar with later.

With such a big benefit, it is natural to do it!

What made Chen Zeyu anxious was that although he directly provided the submarine design drawings, the A-1 submarine design institute in charge of Liang Jinrong was not short of funds and raw materials. But after all, they are engaged in the development of an era-spanning underwater combat ship, and they should never underestimate the difficulties of the pioneers.

Perhaps Chen Zeyu's starting point was too high, and several test boats launched in the early days had accidents or even sank one after another.

Over the past three years, under Chen Zeyu's painstaking "guidance," the institute has summed up and tested hundreds of new materials and tens of thousands of tests, and finally stumbled to develop this type of combat submarine in front of it.

The jet-black metal hull still exudes the unique smell of freshly launched engine oil, and the body of the submarine dozens of meters long stays quietly in the floating dock that has just begun to fill the water, but it looks more and more murderous.

The finalized Sui-I submarine has a floating displacement of 740 tons, and a total submersible displacement of 960 tons, and its main combat area is offshore and cross-regional underwater defense operations.

The design and research institute of the submarine hull took into account the needs of the navy for offshore operations, and after seeking Chen Zeyu's consent, it was not designed as a drop-shaped hull of later generations, but a sharp shape similar to that of ordinary surface ships.

There is no such thing as the best weapon, only the most suitable one.

In this regard, although Chen Zeyu used to be a submarine sailor, he is not prepared to interfere with the opinions of experts.

In Chen Zeyu's eyes, this Sui-I-class submarine, which can only be called a submersible warship, is equipped with a 75mm deck gun, and two 325mm torpedo tubes are arranged at the bow of the submarine, and the whole ship can carry eight torpedoes (including ten in the launch module).

In addition, the Sui-I class submarine is also equipped with a retractable snorkel (the first snorkel appeared on German submarines during World War II), the maximum depth of the submarine is 45 meters, the fastest speed on the surface is 16 knots, the fastest underwater speed is 12 knots, the maximum range is 1700 nautical miles, and it is equipped with 30 crew members. The submarine has a self-sustaining power of 60 hours at sea and 7 hours of self-sustaining power in the underwater state.

For the power part of the submarine, the three-expansion steam engine that the research institute has just started to launch. After Chen Zeyu found out, he immediately and decisively intervened. Chen Zeyu knew that the French had made this mistake in history, and submarines powered by steam engines would consume a lot of air in the hull in a short period of time. In addition to this, the huge steam boiler will also release a large amount of high-calorie steam in the closed submarine, and the combat environment in the boat can be imagined. These experiences are all paved with the blood of the French, and Chen Zeyu will naturally not ignore this negative teaching material.

The air inside a submarine is a life-saving thing underwater.

Even Sui-I-class submarines equipped with snorkels have limited instantaneous air flow through their snorkels. When the air consumed per unit time of the power system in the submarine is greater than this limited inflow of air from the external snorkel, the officers and men of the various cabins in the submarine will soon fall into suffocation one after another.

Chen Zeyu didn't want to waste the lives of his own test personnel on the road of research that had already been experienced, so he ignored the doubts of all the engineers in the institute and directly clarified the direction of the power development of later submarines, diesel-electric power submarines.

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