Sa Shijun stayed at the Qinzhou base for a week, and his home in Fuzhou was also moved to Qinzhou with the fleet, and he was given a one-bedroom dormitory building at the naval base. He had no children, only his wife lived alone, and he had been away from home for nearly five years, and the officers and men of the Navy like them did owe much to their families.

Taking advantage of the rare leisure in the past few days, he made a special trip to Qinzhou and Fangcheng to go around. The Navy's Qinzhou Shipyard is indeed developing rapidly, and currently has two 50,000-ton dry docks, three 15,000-ton dry docks and two 10,000-ton docks, and a total of six large warships are currently under construction at the same time.

After several years of rapid development, the domestic industrial capacity is indeed not the same.

However, the supply of high-quality specialty steel in the country is still very tight, and the navy and army are desperately competing for the limited number of high-quality armor materials in the country, and the government is trying to maintain a delicate balance between the army and navy. The supply of materials was still slightly in favor of the army, which, according to the agreement reached between the army and navy, received 60 percent of the high-quality steel, while the navy got a 40 percent share.

There is no way to do this, after all, the army is the main force of the entire war of resistance, and the results achieved are much stronger than those of the navy. It was only because of the recent brilliant achievements of the Navy in the Southeast Asian theater that the War Department was forced to make a slight concession and agree to raise the share of raw materials allocated to the Navy to 40%.

Admiral Chen Shiying's work efficiency was quite fast, and he did not ask Sa Shijun to wait, and a week later, he received an order to report to the Fangchenggang Naval Submarine Base.

At the submarine dock in Fangchenggang, more than a dozen black submarines with streamlined hulls like barracudas are moored, including four newly commissioned submarines with shiny paint.

The Chinese Navy currently has 54 submarines of various types, of which 16 Type 35 submarines were imported from Austria-Hungary after World War I, which have been decommissioned and are currently only used as training boats for submarine schools. There are only 38 submarines that can actually fight, of which 20 are under the command of the Navy's First Fleet, which is based in Bohai Bay, and 18 are under the command of the Second Fleet.

When ordering submarines from Germany and Austria, China also imported technical data from Germany and Austria on the VII.D/40 and SMU40 ocean-going attack submarines, and after comparing their performance, they finally chose to imitate and build the SMU40 ocean-going attack submarine with better performance. With the introduction of advanced standardization, segmentation and assembly line construction technology of submarines, it has gradually improved. The Chinese Navy now has 3 to 4 newly built submarines entering service every month.

Not only the submarine force, with the development of China's shipbuilding industry, the strength of the Chinese Navy's surface ship force is also increasing, and it has now surpassed Italy in terms of light ship construction capacity, including light cruisers, destroyers and frigates, and has basically caught up with the Japanese Navy.

However, so far, the Navy has completed the construction of only two large air defense cruisers with a displacement of 13,600 tons, and more efforts are needed to catch up with Japan in the construction of large ships.

Thanks to the technical support of the two Austrians. The Chinese Navy does not have to worry about design and technical problems in the process of development, but limited by domestic metallurgical technology and metal processing capabilities, China's shipbuilding industry still has a long way to go if it wants to catch up with the level of Germany and Austria in technology.

From the perspective of the pure shipbuilding industry, the technical content is not particularly high, especially in a country like China, which is rich in human resources, and it is not particularly difficult to improve the capacity of the shipbuilding industry. But I want to build a ship with excellent performance. However, it is necessary for the domestic steel, metallurgy, metal processing and other basic industrial sectors to have a considerable level, so the development of the shipbuilding industry can actually best reflect a country's comprehensive industrial capacity and technological level.

For example, China's imitation of the SMU40 ocean-going attack submarine. During its construction, not only did it obtain a full set of Austro-Hungarian design drawings, but the Austro-Hungarian Navy also sent a special team of more than 30 people to guide and help the construction process of Chinese submarines. Even so, because the strength of the pressure-resistant steel produced by China cannot reach the level of Germany and Austria, under the same technical conditions, the maximum depth of Chinese submarines can only reach 150 meters, and it is simply impossible to reach the maximum depth of 220 meters as amazing as that of Germany and Austria.

Equally. The Steyr STEK40 high-horsepower diesel engine manufactured by the same technology and process, the maximum power of the products produced by the newly built Liuzhou Internal Combustion Engine Plant and Wuhan Heavy Industry is only 4800 horsepower, which is 400 horsepower less than the similar products of the Austrians, and the reliability and durability of the diesel engine are also slightly worse.

This is the gap between the technological levels of industry.

Compared with the well-known German submarine forces, the achievements of the Chinese submarine forces are insignificant. So far, Chinese submarines have sunk about 560,000 tons of Japanese merchant ships and about 170,000 tons of other Allied merchant ships. This itself is related to the small number of China's submarine forces, in fact, if you talk about the performance of individual boats, the fledgling Chinese Navy is not worse than its German counterparts, Japan has not established a transport escort system until now, and most of the transport ships are not protected by warships, so the attacks of China's submarine forces will rarely be counterattacked.

So far, China's submarine forces have lost only two submarines, which is already remarkable compared to the results achieved so far.

Boat 1048 is the 16th SMU40 ocean-going attack submarine imitated by the Chinese Navy, which only completed sea tests three days ago and was officially incorporated into the submarine force.

Accompanied by Colonel Song Ziqian, commander of the Second Submarine Force, Sa Shijun arrived at the submarine pier in a military off-road vehicle to prepare to board the boat. The crew of Boat 1048, led by Captain Lin Feng, lined up on the small deck of the submarine to welcome the arrival of a rear admiral.

In Sa's imagination, the crew should have the same shaggy hair and beards as many of the German-Austrian submarine forces he had seen. But the actual situation surprised him: the captain, Major Lin Feng, was only twenty-seven years old, white and clean, and looked a little delicate, and there was not much of the rugged temperament unique to the members of the surface ship unit on his body, and all the crew members were also dressed neatly, and it seemed that they could go directly to the naval club to find girls for a date.

"Report to the chief, all the crew of No. 1048 has been assembled, please review!" Major Lin Feng stood at the mouth of the pontoon bridge connecting the submarine deck and saluted several superiors who had just arrived at the submarine dock, and behind him stood two crew members armed with Type 39 semi-automatic rifles.

"There's no need to review, I'm going to experience life on a submarine, and I'll have to obey your command on the submarine in the future." Sa Shijun said.

Lin Feng was at a loss for a moment, so he had to look at his superior.

"General Sa, naval etiquette is always necessary, go through the motions first!" Colonel Song Ziqian smiled on the side and relieved Lin Feng of the siege and made a gesture of please.

Sa Shijun is also a very famous admiral in China, participated in the Zhenjiang naval battle against Japan, and was seriously wounded, and was praised as a "naval hero" by the domestic press at that time. Subsequently, he commanded the Chinese aircraft carriers to fight with the Axis fleet, especially in the North Atlantic naval battle, and commanded the battered "Guangxi" to return to port with great difficulty, and the deeds were widely reported in Europe. The crew was happy about the arrival of such a famous admiral, but they were also worried that they would be very restrained and had mixed feelings.

After all, most of the commanders of China's submarine forces are young and have little experience, and it is rare to see general-level naval officials in peacetime, let alone get along day and night.

However, Sa Shijun was very easy-going, and he didn't have any captain's shelf, which soon made the atmosphere on the boat harmonious. (To be continued......)