In a shipyard in the Port of Hamburg, Germany, dozens of the best submarine officers and soldiers stood in four rows with their hands behind their backs, waiting for the military band on the side to play a solemn war song.
In fact, the new submarine is currently parked in a closed submarine dock. The military band and the current crew have not yet seen this new equipment that is said to change the way submarines fight.
"General Dönitz, can this new type of submarine really change the way the submarine force operates in ocean operations as envisioned?"
Accompanied by the sound of military music, Marshal Raeder gently leaned over to Dönitz's ear and asked this question.
Marshal Redl was wearing a black navy officer's dress with double rows of gold buttons and looked in very good spirits.
After all, under his command is a powerful fleet that defeated the world's largest navy. It is not an exaggeration to say that he is the most successful high-level naval commander in Germany since its birth.
Although most of these achievements are not directly related to him, after all, during his tenure as the supreme commander of the navy, the German Navy achieved terrible achievements that frightened the whole world.
He has stood at the pinnacle of the entire Imperial Navy, and the battleship Marshal Raeder named after him can even be said to be the first true battleship since the German Navy was built.
Dönitz nodded. He is a commander who has experienced the entire process of testing a new submarine. He has personally witnessed the entire process of this submarine from birth to development.
Due to key breakthroughs in material technology, this submarine is destined to be the most high-tech representative of this era. It is also destined to be forever engraved in the history of human weapons development because of its terrifying performance.
"The power system is a new and terrifying system that allows the submarine to sail underwater for a long time."
Dönitz tried his best to explain this super weapon of the German Navy to Raeder in a language that was not very confidential: "The birth of this submarine marks the true development and maturity of submarines starting from today. This is the real submarine.
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"Such a huge change? What is a real submarine? Wasn't it a real submarine before?" Raeder became even more confused after he stopped. He looked at Dönitz, waiting for the other party to give him a more understandable explanation.
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Dönitz smiled even brighter. After all, this weapon was enough for him to formulate more terrifying wolf pack tactics and a more desperate strangulation system.
"Marshal, in the past, the weapon we drove could only be said to be a submersible underwater weapon, but now this submarine, to put it simply, is an underwater weapon that can surface."
"Is there any difference?" Redel still didn't understand the difference between the two, but he immediately realized something. Before Dönitz could show off his new toy, he asked: "You mean
…This submarine mainly sails underwater?”
"Yes, Marshal." Dönitz nodded proudly and said proudly.
"This submarine can dive very far away, and for a long, long time. The underwater speed..."
He lowered his voice, put it next to Redel's ear, and whispered a number: "More than 15 knots."
"Hiss!" Redel couldn't help but take a breath of cold air.
The temperature in the Hamburg military port in October was very low, so he inhaled so hard that his lungs were a little irritated and he coughed violently: "Cough! Cough! Cough!"
The performance of the military band never stopped. The submarine commander Prien, who had great luck in the German Navy submarine formation and achieved brilliant results, stood at attention when he suddenly saw Marshal Redl coughing violently not far away. He didn't know
What kind of stimulation did you receive?
"Ahem!" After finishing coughing, Raeder looked at Dönitz, quite frightened by his words.
As a commander who came from the Navy's surface ship force, Redel is very familiar with the fleet's anti-submarine combat rules. Does he know what a speed of 15 knots means for a submarine.
In this era, the sonar installed on almost all surface ships is not accurate and can only roughly detect the location of the submarine, and then use the relatively large explosion radius of the mine to make up for the lack of attack accuracy.
Now that the speed of the submarine has increased by three times, this means that the approximate position of the submarine can no longer be used as a basis for attacks by surface ships - from the moment the depth charge is dropped, the submarine has already left the effective destruction radius of the depth charge.
The bows of World War II submarines were designed in a sharp shape. A large part of the reason was that the submarines needed to sail on the water for more than half of their time, so they were designed into a ship shape to reduce driving resistance as much as possible, thereby improving the seaworthiness of the submarines.
However, this is obviously not designed for long-term underwater travel, and the operating power of the battery underwater is really not flattering. Therefore, the underwater speed of World War II submarines was maintained at about 5 knots in most cases.
On speed.
However, under Reinhardt's prompting, fuel cells, a new trendy gadget, had been secretly and successfully developed as early as the Soviet-German cooperation. After another ten years of technical reserves, this new type of submarine underwater power was finally developed.
The design standards were met a year ago and met Reinhardt's requirements for stable performance of the equipment.
With this new power system, Germany's new submarine can travel quietly underwater for up to two days, and even more than three days if traveling at a quiet cruising speed.
The important thing is that the ventilation snorkel does not even need to be exposed to the water during this period, which makes the submarine a real underwater warship and no longer a warship that can dive.
Since the submarine only needs to float up and charge once, it will stay underwater for about 3 days. For the safety of the submarine, this new submarine will stay underwater most of the time, so the sharp bow
The design style seems outdated.
Therefore, the new submarine adopts a rounded bow design that is more in line with hydrodynamics. With more powerful power, its ultimate underwater speed can even reach 16 knots, which is three times the fastest speed of previous submarines.
Such speed can even enable submarines to have the ability to pursue some merchant ships underwater, and if conditions permit, they can almost track enemy fleets underwater.
In order to increase the speed of the submarine to such a high speed and to reduce the noise produced by irregular parts underwater, this new type of submarine has made many unprecedented changes.
For example, the 88mm cannon on the bow of the boat was cancelled, and the 40mm anti-aircraft gun on the command tower was designed to be more concealed and retractable.
After all this effort, this submarine is enough to be called the quietest submarine at this stage.
The update of the battery has also increased its size, so a larger submarine is necessary.
Because members cannot ventilate above the water in most cases, they also need a larger space to reduce the mental pressure that enclosed spaces bring to submariners.
From another perspective, a larger volume also means that the submarine has the ability to carry more supplies and ammunition. Under this design concept, the new submarine has a displacement of an astonishing 2,350 tons, which is a quite terrifying one.
Underwater monster.
The rounded bow also brings a previously unimaginable benefit to this new submarine, that is, part of the sonar system can be installed at the position with the widest coverage angle of the submarine.
In this way, the submarine can detect the enemy earlier and further underwater, and the last blind spot is only the stern part of the ship.
Benefiting from the increased size, the new submarine has powerful firepower from six torpedo launch bays in the forward bow.
In the more professional torpedo cabin, it is even equipped with a fashionable gadget such as an auxiliary loader. With sufficient ammunition, this new submarine can light up the 18 torpedoes on standby in the torpedo cabin in one go, and
A new salvo strike can be launched in less than 10 minutes.
When Dönitz transferred Prien back to Hamburg, Germany, Prien and his men were somewhat reluctant. But after the military band left the dock and the engineers opened the hidden dock and displayed the new submarine,
Prien and his men were immediately shocked by the super submarine in front of them and were speechless.
After the engineer finished explaining the powerful functions of this new submarine, Prien glanced at General Dönitz standing next to him.
What he saw reflected in the other person's eyes. Their souls were trembling with excitement for the birth of this submarine. The submarine warfare situation for which they had devoted their whole lives was changed at this moment.
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And these people will personally witness this earth-shaking change.
"You are no longer just a battleship killer, you are also the fastest person under water." Dönitz said proudly as he looked at the new submarine.
Different from the Type XXI submarine in another time and space, Germany this time directly evolved the appearance of the bow part of the submarine to be similar to the Chinese Type 033 conventional submarine in the 1960s, instead of adopting the sharp bow design of the Type XXI submarine.
This also makes the latest German submarine data show for the first time the strange phenomenon that the surface speed is not as good as the underwater speed, completely subverting the traditional submarine design concept of "a ship that can dive".
The same improvement has also appeared in the reduction of anti-aircraft guns and other weapons. Now the Allied forces do not have many aircraft in the Atlantic. In order to compromise underwater quietness and speed, this new type of submarine only leaves a very limited 40 mm firing range.
caliber anti-aircraft gun, which is also different from the XXI submarine in another time and space.
Another terrible change is in the sonar system at the bow of the boat, which benefited from Reinhardt's systematic weapons technology reserves ten years ago.
Germany has not made any detours in many aspects of weapon design, and its investment in development and research with manpower and material resources is also moving in the right direction.
Coupled with Germany's consistent leadership in science and technology, it has created a large number of world-leading advanced electronic equipment, radar and sonar being some of them.
Therefore, this new type of submarine with a relatively wide internal space is equipped with more advanced electronic equipment, making it the true ancestor of modern submarines.
The sonar system on the bow of the boat gives it the ability to launch torpedoes directly underwater for direct attack. It has also become the first submarine in the world that can directly launch torpedoes to attack targets without the aid of a periscope for aiming.
In addition, it is equipped with a foldable small radar antenna that can search for enemy ships within a range of 35 kilometers near the sea surface and provide early warning for nearby aircraft within a range of 85 kilometers.
Coupled with this achievement and a maximum diving depth of 200 meters, this submarine has become an underwater killer that is almost impossible to hit with today's technology.
Of course, this is only an integral part of the reorganization plan of the modern German Navy. The future German Navy will use three types of ships as its main force.
One is the anti-submarine and anti-aircraft missile destroyer and cruiser whose main function is escort, the other is the aircraft carrier as the core combat capability, and the last one is the ocean-going submarine.
This development direction, which has long been proven correct, enabled the Germans to jump over the battleship gap that their own development had no time to catch up with, and in one fell swoop pulled the world's navies into the era of air fleets with aircraft carriers as the core.
It also transformed the originally weak German Navy into a first-class navy, defeating the powerful Royal Navy of the British Empire.
Today's naval warfare has long changed beyond recognition. The era of large ships and huge guns has begun to gradually come to an end. The era of air fleets pioneered by emerging naval powers such as Germany, Japan and the United States has quietly led the world.
Of course, those lunatics in the Tokyo base camp who clamor all day long to knock on the door of the West Coast of the United States with battleship main guns cannot be counted among the advancement of the times.
But after all, the scene of using naval guns to penetrate the armor of enemy ships is too charming, so it is understandable that some people hold the idea that naval guns are supreme.
After all, not everyone can be like Reinhardt. Using old war experience and clearly figuring out the development direction of future weapons is the best model that other world powers can choose.
Every powerful country has its own experience summarizing war.
After Germany lost World War I, Germany began to reflect on its own shortcomings. The Treaty of Versailles lagged behind Germany's progress in military industry science and technology, which made the development of Germany's military industry science and technology blind and inexperienced.
This will give Reinhardt the opportunity to intervene and make changes. As for the victorious countries, they put experience first and believe that their direction is more correct.
Only a nation that is constantly innovating and a country that is constantly making progress is worthy of enjoying an eternal foundation and can stand at the top of the world without being dragged down. This truth has been verified by countless once-glorious imperial dynasties for future generations.
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Just as Japanese high-level officials had firmly believed that battleships could defeat aircraft carriers before the Pearl Harbor incident, because it had only been 30 years since they had relied on large ships and cannons, and it was natural to draw on previous experience.
From the perspective of Germany's technological development path, its path is completely opposite to that of Japan. Germany regards technological development as the most important part. Now it has even begun to manufacture equipment based on the automation industry.
In the era before computers, the actual degree of automation of this kind of automated production workshop based on mechanical direction did not reach the efficiency imagined.
However, this can also be said to be a leap forward in industrial development and civilization. It marks that Germany has embarked on a fast track to improve its industrial production capacity. The slight advantage of the United States in this regard is now being overtaken by Germany.
In Reinhardt's view, the most important development was the development of Germany's overall industrial base. This was the improvement of the energy conditions of the Third Reich and the initial success of the integration of industrial production capacity across Europe.
What Reinhard wants is not a short-lived empire. What he wants is a Third Reich that lasts for thousands of generations, an empire that can last until the time before he traveled through time. As long as this is the case, what he has done before will be the same as before.
This war has nothing to do with it, it has to do with a lot of personal preparation to make the difference...
