The sky was clear, the sun was shining, the blue sea was glowing with microwaves, and a dozen long white tracks could not be seen at a glance.

Tracing the trail back to its source, I saw a fleet sailing in a northeasterly direction, surrounded by destroyers and submarine hunters, guarding the oil feeders and aircraft carriers in the middle.

The Dongyou 11 tanker is refueling the Lexington, and the two ships are sailing at low speed, one in front of the other.

It was a routine refueling drill at sea, and there was no fuel actually coming out of the pipeline.

The Ming Navy is studying more efficient left-right refueling methods, but it has not yet been promoted, and the traditional front and rear refueling methods are mainly used.

In the middle of the bridge, a major stared at the moving second hand of his pocket watch, and said aloud: "There is a quarter of an hour left in the refueling operation." ”

"Maintain course." The captain of the ship, Colonel Zeming, said calmly.

Looking at the blue and boundless sea, Guan Zeming, who was in a complicated mood, couldn't help but sigh that his luck was really not good.

He once served as a navigator on the Tianshi Youyuan, and then transferred to the Taiwei Youyuan as a co-officer, thinking that he would be able to independently command an aircraft carrier next—most likely a Beiluo Division-class.

However, the second and third ships of the Beiluo Division-class were both sunk in the Battle of Tarawa, and the Taiwei Youyuan was also sunk by a surprise attack at the end of the naval battle, and his change of position was interrupted, and he was transferred to the Hangzhou (Navy) Armament Academy to become a professor.

As a result, two months later, a letter from the Ministry of War dragged him out of his frustration.

Who will command the captured Lexington after it is repaired?

The more suitable candidate is the former captain of the Taiwei Ugaku, who was sunk in the Battle of Tarawa and then became a candidate for the two giant armored aircraft carriers that are about to be completed.

So this burden fell on Guan Zeming - as the first mate of the former Taiwei Youyuan, he was fully qualified for this position.

The Ming Army's Taiweiyuan class is also an aircraft carrier rebuilt on the basis of battle cruisers, and the Lexington class has many similarities with it, such as the slender hull that ensures excellent high-speed performance while also causing a large steering radius and average flexibility.

The Taiweiyuan class has a steering radius of 1550m, while the Lexington class has a whopping 1600m; In comparison, the seriously designed aircraft carrier Yorktown-class is only 1070m.

At the Chuting shipyard in Guangzhou, the Lexington, which had been damaged by torpedoes and aerial bombs, completed the "big move" repair.

In order to repair its unique electric motor engine manufactured by General Electric, Chuting Shipyard had to seek technical support from a thermal power plant, and with great difficulty, it was finally restored to a point where it could continue operations.

After removing the American-made 203mm naval guns, 127mm high-level dual-purpose guns, and 28mm anti-aircraft guns, the shipyard installed more and more complete self-defense weapons for the Lexington.

These anti-aircraft guns consisted of four twin 128mm high-level dual-purpose guns on two broadside platforms, four twin 128mm high-level dual-purpose guns in front and behind the bridge, and 20 twin 38.4mm anti-aircraft guns, eight quadruple 20.8mm anti-aircraft guns, and 14 single-mounted 20.8mm anti-aircraft guns.

Due to the severity of the injury, additional reinforcement treatment was carried out on some ribs and fractures to ensure the strength of the structure during repair.

The addition of armament and structural reinforcement has increased the displacement of the Lexington, and the stability of the repaired motor engine is much less than before.

As a result, the Lexington only ran a speed of 29.6 knots in the sea trial with a full load, and although it was close to 33 knots when it was overloaded, a series of abnormal conditions occurred after more than half an hour and the overload had to be aborted.

Although some people thought that keeping the original ship name was a better way to mock it, the Lexington still changed its name, and the Navy Administration of the Ministry of War gave Tianguan, Yingfu, Xinsu, Jiaosu and other ship names for selection, and finally Zhu Lingjing chose Yingfu.

If you quote the classics, you will find that Yingfu - Mars was not related to auspiciousness in the Qin and Han dynasties, and the retrograde "Yingfu Shouxin" of Mars is an extremely dangerous celestial phenomenon.

The famous Li Chunfeng has "Yingfu is guilty, the battle is invincible, the foreign generals fight to the death, and the master is dead." The heart of the fire offender, the heir of the king of heaven...... The lord changes his government, and the lord goes to his palace".

At this time, at 14:25 on August 24, in the waters west of the Ryukyu Islands, the fleet completed the refueling training at sea, and the Dongyou No. 11 oil supply ship began to recover the oil pipeline.

Suddenly, one of the sailors of the Dongyou 11 felt himself dazzled by the light.

He raised his hand to cover his eyes and turned his head to look over, only to see that there seemed to be a strange thing on the surface of the sea in the distance, that is, it was constantly reflecting the sun.

After a brief moment of surprise, a thought suddenly popped into his mind - his grandmother's, this could not be the periscope of the enemy's submarine, right?!

Recalling the anti-submarine essentials and the knowledge that everyone had to master during the training camp, the current situation is exactly the same as what was said at that time.

"There is a situation!" He immediately shouted loudly.

At this moment, in the bridge of the Yingchao, Guan Zeming was discussing the sea trials and training with the engineer officer and the navigation officer.

"The results of the previous test are so small that there are many problems, and it is easy to have problems if you increase the power output, and the overload should not exceed two quarters of an hour."

"That's too restrictive, even if it's a short-range tactical maneuver, it will take an hour."

"yes, what did the shipyard say? Can you fix it again? Now this speed can't go up or down, chicken ribs. ”

Everyone was very dissatisfied with the speed of the Yingfu, because the maximum speed of 29.6 knots under normal conditions could not follow the rest of the Ming aircraft carriers.

The alarm sounded suddenly, and someone rushed over in three steps and two steps, shouting: "Submarine alarm! ”

Signal lights flashed, the radio band was filled with inquiries, and individual warships had begun to break away from the group to maneuver to evade.

The sound of gunfire also came from afar, it was the anti-aircraft guns of the destroyer Dengfeng that were strafing the sea, splashing in all directions.

A submarine hunter sped up and turned, rushing towards the outer perimeter of the fleet, several depth charges were dropped, and a cry of "bomb dropping this ship" was heard over the radio.

After more than ten seconds, I saw a few white waves burst out of the sea in an instant, first swelling out of the water, and then blooming.

"Boom! Boom! ”

A wave of unsettled waves arose, and several more depth charges were dropped into the sea......

After more than half an hour, a complete set of standard anti-submarine procedures was completed.

The sea is as calm as a mirror, as if nothing had happened, and there are no debris, debris, garbage, or oil trails in sight.

The hydrophones did not detect anything unusual, only the normal noise of the ship's propellers.

A false alarm!

Guan Zeming breathed a sigh of relief and ordered: "Lift your guard, resume practice, and the next one is sortie training." ”

"Order! Lift your guard and continue practicing. ”

But what no one expected was that the next training was unlucky.

At dusk that day, the destroyer Dengfeng sent out a light to report that someone had fallen overboard, including two sailors and a non-commissioned officer.

The fleet then slowed down and separated one destroyer and one submarine hunter to search and rescue, but found nothing.

Such accidents are not uncommon in the navy, and can even be said to be commonplace.

The first lesson of a sailor is to be taught to fear the sea, and the impact of falling from the deck into the sea is enough to hurt people, and it is easy to be swept under the ship even if they are wearing a life jacket, or they can be drowned by the heavy waves that rush in.

The fleet continued to train, and the next project was covert sortie training - the release of the fleet, formation, and air strikes under radio silence.

That night, the meteorological observation station of the 19th Service Detachment of the Navy stationed in Manila of the Ming Navy issued an early warning - it is suspected that there will be large wind and waves in the waters near the Ryukyus, with wind speed of 20m/s and wave height of 6m, and the sea conditions are not good.

Knowing that it was "just" to this level of wind and waves, Guan Zeming was relieved, because this was a very conservative estimate and usually would not be reached, and he was now more worried about whether there would really be enemy submarines in the nearby waters.

The battle for Hawaii lasted for several months, and the US submarine force, which had initially solved the torpedo problem, was quite active and achieved great results, achieving more than 200,000 tons of merchant ships to sink tonnage, not including some sunken warships.

The logistical line of the Ming army was dealt a serious blow, and many officers and men of the navy suffered from submarine stress disorder.

However, in general, the anti-submarine situation is not grim at present, and the arrogant momentum of US submarines has been suppressed, and the large number of destroyers, frigates, and submarine hunters in the Ming Navy has made the happy time of the US submarine force a flash in the pan.

However, in order to ensure that the situation does not reverse again, both ideological and material preparations should be made.

The most commonly used depth charges today are powerful, but they have a low hit rate and low anti-submarine efficiency.

First of all, ships performing anti-submarine missions must sail at low speeds - usually no more than 15 knots, so as not to interfere with sonar and hydrophones with the noise of their own propellers.

The most important thing is that the sinking speed of the depth charge is very slow, only about 2.5m/s, for example, the enemy's submarine is hiding at a depth of 100m, and they have enough time to avoid it after hearing that the depth charge has fallen into the water.

And that's not all, the drawbacks of depth charges don't stop there.

The loud movement of the violent explosion of the deep bomb can significantly interfere with the ship's sonar and hydrophones, and the enemy's submarine can only be detected until the water calms down again.

Zhou Changfeng naturally knew that the famous anti-submarine weapon Hedgehog Bullet was used by the British who attached great importance to anti-submarine in history, but in order to ensure technical superiority, he has not put it into practice until now.

The appearance of the hedgehog bullet launcher looks like a pole after rod, and the image vividly gets the name of the hedgehog.

When attacking, 24 grenades on the launcher will be sprayed out one after another, with a maximum range of about 200m, and the landing point of these 24 grenades is roughly a circle, like a lasso thrown out, trapping the enemy's submarine in it.

These anti-submarine grenades do not use a deep pressure fuse, but instead a collision-triggered fuse, if the grenade does not hit the target during sinking, then it will not explode, and it will not hinder sonar and hydrophones, greatly increasing the anti-submarine efficiency.

As long as it explodes, it means that the hit is achieved, and what is even more interesting is that each anti-submarine grenade has an additional impact fuse, which means that as long as one of the 24 grenades fired in each round explodes, it will cause a chain reaction, causing the grenades next to it to explode one after another.

For enemy submarines, these anti-submarine grenades sink extremely fast - about 7.5 m/s, which is almost three times faster than ordinary depth charges, and there is no reaction time at all.

[Picture]

Weighing the current state of affairs, Zhou believes that the time has come to put this anti-submarine weapon on the agenda.

R&D, testing, trial production, mass production, installation, and training all take time, and it is very appropriate to start construction now.

At present, the Americans are building a large number of Shark-class ocean-going submarines, and it is difficult for these dozens of submarines to play a significant role as they did in history.

After the Imperial Council was over, Zhou Changfeng continued to follow up on the Golden Crow Plan, that is, the Ming Dynasty's nuclear plan.

Zhu Lingjing attaches great importance to this, and she has been paying attention to the progress because of her interest.

The Jacabrina, which was sent to the west coast of Africa, successfully docked at Boma, and the task force successfully went to Hinkolobwe to procure a large amount of "useless scrap ore" at a low price.

The uranium ore produced by Hinkolobwe has an exaggerated content of up to 60 percent, and even the poor-grade uranium ore is about 20 percent.

This is an eye-popping degree, considering that many uranium deposits contain only 0.3 per cent, and the better-grade Eldorado uranium mine in Canada has a content of about 1 per cent, which is nothing compared to the Hinkolobwe uranium mine.

During the four or three years in the original plane, the Americans specially purchased more than 1,000 tons of uranium ore here, which was strictly escorted to New York for storage as an important raw material for the Manhattan Project. After that, they brought in an engineering unit to dig deeper into the Hinklobwe mine.

This time the Americans were not so lucky, and such a "feng shui treasure" was seized by the Ming people with a trick to secretly Chen Cang.

The return journey of the Jecabrina can be said to be thrilling, and it was even mistakenly hit by a submarine of the navy of the royal family of Annam, but fortunately it was not hit, otherwise the water would have washed away the Dragon King Temple.

Excited Zhou Changfeng flew from the capital to the remote northwest, and the destination was an unknown location in the Hexi Corridor.

Because it was too unfamiliar, the plane was lost for a while, preparing to return to Xining and landing, and finally found the right place under radio guidance.

After getting off the plane and leaving the airport, the group went straight to the factory not far away.

Surrounded by barren hills, it looks like a humble settlement, surrounded by a steel fence and topped by electrified barbed wire.

Patrols on sidecar motorbikes were constantly patrolling back and forth, and at the entrance to the camp were watchtowers, horsebacks, sandbag bunkers, and even two Type 32 armored vehicles were parked.

Interestingly, there is a simple wooden torii that serves as a gate, and the plaque on it reads "Red Sand Castle" with three yellow lacquered characters.

This is the core of the Golden Crow Project, where elite talents from Imperial Gezhi University, Suncheon University of Technology, and Shanghai Gezhi University gather.

Zhou Changfeng knew that two reactors had already been built here, and that the graphite reactor under construction here was specifically for plutonium production, compared to the humble reactor he had seen that was only used to verify the chain reaction.

Once completed, a steady stream of Pu-239 will decay and become an essential fertilizer for mushroom cultivation.

Very good fertilizer to make my mushrooms thrive!

The bulldozer roared, the crane lifted the I-beam, and in the distance there were pieces of lead stacked under the makeshift wooden shed......

Looking at the hot scene, Zhou Changfeng was intoxicated for a while, and unconsciously looked stupid.

Shaoqing, with a smile on his face, said leisurely: "Oh, the sun is so good today, the sun is shining." ”

Accompanying him was Zhao Zhansheng, the chief physicist of the project, who looked up at the cloudless blue sky and said inexplicably: "Yes, the sky is high and the clouds are wide in this place west of the river, and the scenery is very good. ”

(End of chapter)