The spring breeze is blowing, the grass grows and the warbler flies, the winter moon is gradually gone, and the warmth is melting. The Baltic Sea in the early morning, with a diffuse mist, is like a girl dressed in a light veil, elegant and quiet, beautiful and empty. The blue sea is sparkling, the waves are lightly rolling, and a few gulls and birds are gliding and flying over the sea, crying pleasantly, giving this dream-like beautiful picture a little smart vitality.

A wide, paved asphalt road is built on the sea, with a grey breakwater on one side and lush greenery on the other. At the end of the road, a complex of towering buildings rises from the ground in the hundred-mile field, and in the distance, you can faintly see four huge dry docks built on the shore, surrounded by steel and miscellaneous goods and other things. The factories are scattered, the warehouses are scattered, and there is already a faint bit of the majestic atmosphere of the heavy industry base.

A black car, spitting a faint blue smoke, was slowly moving between the newly built factories. On the front of the car hangs an embroidered gold emblem of the Hohenzollern family, which is scorching and dazzling, showing the world its absolute authority within the Second German Reich. In the double seat at the back of the car, a handsome young man with a long figure sat upright; Facing the rising sun, he is squinting at all the scenes in front of him.

Under the blue sky, in the bright morning light, the production workshops of giant beasts are neatly arranged in one place, wide and horizontal, thunderous and roaring. Cars pass through the open doors, the sound rushes, and all kinds of machine tools and equipment are roaring to work. On the slipway, the figure is longing, and the suspended crane is hanging a huge steel plate slowly moving on the dense steel frame; Occasionally, a bright orange-red light knife can be seen, accompanied by thick black smoke, cutting large plates in the blink of an eye. As the boy rode through the newly built coastal shipyard, he felt a majestic aura churning in his chest, and he couldn't help but want to sing loudly.

Two years ago, Qingying proved the feasibility of Wilhelm's "lead duck" and raised the question of the extreme redundancy of the tonnage of the German Navy's warship design; In return, William agreed not only to his round-the-world voyage, but also to build him a shipbuilding base next to the coastal town of Ninhagen, which is part of Rostock. After two years of construction, the first phase of the project, including four slipways capable of building 3,000-4,000 ton ships and their supporting facilities, has been completed. With a total of more than 1,600 designers, technical workers, and a logistics team, the small shipyard was officially listed and put into operation.

Because William knew that Qingying, a young man, would not be able to manage it at all, he only let Qingying hang the false title of a shipyard owner and become a hands-off shopkeeper, and handed over the usual daily operations to an old man named Bremer to take care of. William's group of tycoons, with a total value of more than 2 billion marks, operates in almost the same way. Qingying is actually quite satisfied with this situation. The original purpose of this shipyard was to engage in some advanced arms of the times, but definitely not to satisfy his own management and management desires. Now I see that the shipyard doesn't have to worry about itself, and someone has made it operate stably, so I am naturally happy; What's more, I will have a large amount of marks coming in every month?

At the end of the 19th century in Europe, shipbuilding was indeed the hottest gold industry. Although the Qing British were still in Berlin when the shipyard was in operation, and there was hardly any advertising work, the huge profits of maritime shipping still prompted the capitalists with the conditions to rush to expand the size of their fleet. Against this backdrop, Qingying, an obscure newly opened shipyard, has also received orders for the construction of a total of 8 merchant ships from 2 shipping companies. Before, Qingying also doubted whether William was afraid that his shipyard would not be able to operate, so he used his privilege to designate the two shipping companies to order merchant ships from his shipyard; But when he visited other shipyards and saw that there was hardly a single slipway idle, he really felt what kind of era he lived in.

The furnace fire roared, the liquid steel poured, and the machine tool was deafening and thundering. Standing at the heart of the furnace of the second industrial revolution, watching the plates being rapidly ground and cut, and planed and milled into precision products in the flying steel chips, Rao is Qingying is accustomed to the modern processing technology of large-scale automatic machine tools in later generations, and still expresses his inner amazement and praise for the superb level displayed by the German industry in this era. Germany's skilled craftsmen and German precision craftsmanship, even after the devastation of the two World Wars, are still unmatched, let alone at the end of the 19th century, when the country was in its prime. With such a powerful and astonishing strength in William's hands, it's no wonder that he is bursting with self-confidence and intends to re-divide the world!

"Your Highness, we're about to arrive."

Just as his thoughts were racing, a man sitting in the passenger seat of the car turned around and said to Qingying. He is burly and dressed in a black power suit, and it is none other than Lorne, the bodyguard who has been staying by Qingying's side all along. Qing Ying nodded slightly when she heard this, and her eyes turned to the area directly ahead: a beige four-story building stood alone in the open space between the slipway and the branch factory, surrounded by green trees, which was very different from the drab and old-fashioned image of the surrounding factories. Looking at the most important design office building in the entire shipyard, Qingying couldn't help but clench her fists, and her handsome face showed a look of expectation.

When laying the foundation, this shipyard was built according to the standard of being able to undertake the construction of 4,000-ton military warships; The main designers and technical workers who have been deployed do not have any qualifications and skills problems. In other words, although there are only 4 slipways at present, its industrial and design base is completely at the level where it can build warships for the military. It coincided with the promulgation and implementation of Tirpitz's naval law two months ago, and Qingying's heart moved, and he started the idea of these four small cruisers in the naval law.

Historically, the "Gazelle" class small cruiser started in Germany in 1898 has a performance that is almost as if it was built in 1888: no matter in terms of firepower, speed or cost, this class has built 10 fourth-class cruisers, and the word "pit daddy" is revealed all over the body. For the sake of the navy's combat power and the huge net profit from the construction of warships, Qingying has no reason to waste this resource in his hands. As soon as Tirpitz's naval law was enacted, he had the shipyard's warship design team begin the design of the corresponding ships. It's February 1897, and it's probably the day the finished product will be produced.

In addition to the mosquito leg meat of the small cruiser, Qingying had a more important purpose on this trip, that is, to see if there was a chance to get a submarine wolf pack belonging to Germany in advance.

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When it comes to submarines, almost everyone is unaware of its power. Because of its high concealment and threat at the same time, it has been an indispensable branch of the navy until the 21st century, when science and technology are changing with each passing day. And during the First World War, it was an excellent opportunity for submarines to show their skills. Because during this time, due to the technical limitations of the times, it was difficult for the warring countries to suppress the underwater threat of the other party.

Since submarines have joined the big family of navies, how to counter submarines has become a major problem faced by the navies of various countries in the world. The means of attacking the submarine are actually very simple, because the hull of the submarine cannot withstand the impact, so it is only necessary to make a special bomb that can explode underwater, and let the shock wave generated by the explosion destroy the pressure-resistant hull of the submarine to achieve the purpose of sinking the submarine. Although the principle of depth charges is simple, detonators, firing pins, springs, and some explosives can be made, and the power of the explosion is enough to produce a devastating threat to the submarine; However, in order for a depth charge to attack a submarine, there must be a prerequisite, that is, the people on the anti-submarine ship must know where the enemy submarine is!

In 1906, the British developed the first sonar machine capable of detecting the location of submarines. It works by listening to the noise made by the rotation of the propeller of an underwater submarine to determine the location of the submarine. However, this ideal anti-submarine effect was obtained only in the pools dug by the British in advance, and as soon as they reached the rough sea, the disadvantages of primitive sonar became apparent. It is impossible to be as calm in the ocean as in a pool, and currents, tides, waves, and schools of fish under the water can produce sounds of one kind or another, which seriously interfere with the normal operation of hydrophones. In addition, due to the limitations of the technical conditions at that time, this instrument originally had various problems; Under the combination of multiple factors, its effect in actual combat is more limited. They either mistook the turbulence in the sea and the noise of the fish for submarines, or they turned a deaf ear to the existence of submarines, or their reported locations were thousands of miles away from their actual location; As soon as the officers and men on the submarine feel the vibration from the explosion of a depth charge in the distance, they only need to stop in place, and the sonar of this passive detection will lose its target, and it will be difficult for the enemy ships on the surface to pose a threat to it.

During the First World War, the lack of power of various countries to kill underwater targets can be shown by a set of data: in the four years of the First World War, German submarines sank more than 5,000 Allied transport ships, with a total tonnage of 13 million tons, almost suffocating the maritime lifeline of the British Empire; It lost less than 180 submarines, and the battle losses between submarines and merchant ships were close to 30 to 1. The real maturity of anti-submarine tactics was not until the end of 1943, when the submarine wolves finally lost their mortal threat to Allied transport fleets with the introduction of escort carriers, anti-submarine patrols, sonar, radar, and radio-directed hunting. And in World War I 30 years ago, none of these conditions existed!

The motor hissed, the breeze blew, and after a while, the convertible car slowly stopped in front of the building. Qingying took a deep breath and strode inside.

Bow and thank the author for the reward of snow drifting, and I will definitely work harder~~~~

It's not easy to ask for some collections, and it's not easy for the author to code words