Battle of the Third Reich Chapter 205: Japan and submarines

In fact, Japan’s history of contact with submarines is much earlier than people think. On September 16, 1890, the Ottoman wooden frigate, which had just finished its visit to Japan, was going to India. When the typhoon struck, the battleship finally ran aground and sank on the shore of Kii Island. Only 69 of the more than 600 crew members and passengers on board survived, and 587 people drowned or disappeared on the spot. Fast update without ads.

The survivors were rescued by local Japanese people, and immediately boarded a German gunboat that came to the rescue and sent to Kobe Port for treatment. In January of the following year, the then Emperor Meiji himself ordered the dispatch of the cruiser Kazuto to transport the survivors of the shipwreck back to the Ottoman Empire.

Yes, you read that right, but these two are not the second fools of later generations, but the most advanced wooden armored cruiser of the Japanese Navy at that time. The King Kong cruiser uses dual power of sails and steam. It was designed by the famous British ship designer Sir Edward James Reed and built by the Hull Ship Company and the Milford Harbor Shipyard. According to the standards of the British Navy at the time, these two ships could only be regarded as first-class armored frigates, but the Imperial Japanese Navy included these two warships in the sequence of armored cruisers. It is really because Japan was weak at the time. , There are a bunch of old warships picked up from all over the world on hand. The tonnage and firepower of these two are indeed comparable to the old cruisers.

The King Kong armored cruiser is equipped with three Krupp 170mm cannons, six Krupp 150mm cannons, and two 76mm Armstrong gyrojets...cough...cannons . At the same time, it was also equipped with four 37mm and four 25mm single-barrel rapid-fire guns, and even equipped with a 365mm torpedo tube, which was considered a fashionable weapon at the time, to launch British production whiteheads. torpedo.

The two cruisers have large tonnage, good seaworthiness, fierce firepower, and a complete range of weapons, but at this time the age of the two ships has exceeded ten years, so they retreated to the second line and were regarded as naval officers by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Training ship for offshore practice.

On January 2, 1891, the cruiser Kazu embarked on a long journey to the Ottoman Empire with the 69 survivors on board and the 17th ensign candidate of the Japanese Naval Academy. .

It needs to be pointed out that in this group of naval candidates on the ship, there are several future Japanese "military gods", the most famous of which is the "genius staff officer" praised by Togo Heihachiro as "wise and resourceful." "Akiyama is true, but this famous general who is touted by the Japanese navy as a "soldier like a god" is just a 23-year-old rookie.

Don't talk about how many hardships the Japanese experienced on the road, anyway, the two ships successfully reached the Ottoman Empire. While staying in Istanbul Port, the Japanese navy officers and soldiers were surprised to find that two strange ships that they had never seen were docked on the Ottoman Navy Pier. After inquiring about the Turkish sailors, they realized that these were two submarines powered by steam.

Because of the news that the Greek Navy was preparing to purchase submarines, Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, adhering to the concept of "you have and I must have", decided to go to the United Kingdom to buy the "magical weapon" ".

To be honest, the British were a little dumbfounded when they saw the order. The Royal Navy doesn’t have this new toy. It turned out that the Greeks bought it at the time. It was originally a steam submarine designed by the Swedish arms dealer Sosten Nordenfeldt. Now that it is easy to find the source, Nordenfeldt happened to be promoting his improvement in the UK. Based on Nordenfeld’s design drawings, the Barrow Shipyard produced two improved Nordenfeld submarines.

This primitive submarine has a displacement of only 100 tons and a length of 30 meters. It is equipped with a 250-horsepower coal-fired steam engine. The surface speed is six knots, the underwater speed is four knots, and the diving depth reaches four. Nineteen meters. The ship’s weapons are two 365mm torpedo tubes and two 37mm single-tube rapid-fire deck guns.

The Ottoman navy named this type of submarine after the sultan, one was named the number, the other was named the number, this is the father of Hamid Sultan, the thirty-first Ottoman sultan's name.

In fact, this kind of submarine is just a name. It does not solve the submarine's underwater power. When diving, it relies on the air in the compressed air tank to drive the piston of the steam engine. This kind of submarine can only operate underwater. Active for a few minutes, there is no practical use at all, in fact it can only be regarded as a semi-submarine ship. Moreover, the center of gravity of the ship will change after the torpedo is launched, and the ship will become quite unstable, even endangering the safety of navigation. Because the two submarines had only been in service for two years at that time, the Turks were still fresh and interested in this new weapon.

The Japanese first saw the real submarine, and they were attracted by this magical weapon at that time, but the Japanese consumption concept was much more cautious than the Turks, mainly because Japan's national power at the time was relatively poor. At that time, there were still four years before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Japan was tightening its belts to develop the navy, and even a penny could not be broken into two for use. Nothing can compare to the real local tyrants like the Ottoman Empire, who throws tens of thousands of gold into the water, and the sultan will not blink his eyelashes.

Although Japan has passed by with steam submarines, the submarine weapon has left a deep impression on the Japanese Navy. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan ate a big bite of fat on the Manchus, and the Japanese navy began to get rich. So the submarine weapon appeared on the Japanese navy's procurement list for the first time.

It was 1898. On the cruiser USS that visited Philadelphia, a young naval officer, Lieutenant Takachi Sasaki, saw an advertisement published by the Dutch inventor Holland in the newspaper. Philadelphia promoted the submarine he designed, also known as the "Horland type submarine." Sasaki Takachi immediately got in touch with Holland and personally experienced the surface and diving sailing of Holland submarine. Then the lieutenant immediately wrote a report to the Ministry of the Navy, admiring the development prospects of this ship.

Don't look at the rank of this lieutenant, but his family is high enough. Sasaki's family is a Marquis, and Gao Zhi is the eldest son of Sasaki's family.

At that time, Holland offered the Japanese a price of 200,000 U.S. dollars a ship, and the transfer of production technology was considered a conscience price in that year. At that time, the Japanese navy was the generation of Togo and Akiyama in charge, and was still very interested in weapons that could sneak into enemy seaports for sneak attacks, so they began to negotiate procurement matters with Holland. Unfortunately, because the Japanese Navy was undergoing the third phase of expansion, the cost of purchasing the submarine was diverted to the construction costs of other ships, and recalculating the budget was too troublesome. As a result, the transaction was shelved.

I thought that the Japanese Navy would once again pass by the submarine, but after six years, things suddenly turned around. Because in this year, the tragic Russo-Japanese War broke out.

In the Port of Lushun and the offshore battle, Japan lost several ships in a row, and Russia’s Pacific Fleet has begun an expedition. The navy decided to temporarily spend a sum of money to purchase ships from abroad to supplement its strength, so Holland’s submarine It was included in the purchase list.

This time, the Japanese Navy did not hesitate to pay a lot of money. It bought five submarines at a time, which was a full one million US dollars. But no one would have thought that the Russian Navy would lose so fast and so miserably. The Holland style that Japan snapped up. The submarine arrived too late and could not keep up with the actual combat.

However, the Japanese Navy still puts great expectations on this weapon. They organized the five Holland submarines into the first diving team. The Japanese Navy’s diving team was from 1904 to before the outbreak of World War I. The research and training are all around the Holland type submarine.

It was not until the end of World War I~IndoMTL.com~ that Japanese submarines seized a historical opportunity and completed an almost reborn flyby. At that time, Japan was allocated seven German U-boats as trophies, and finally got a glimpse of the true nature of the world's top submarines. No matter the structure, layout, or technology adopted by German submarines, they are far from the Holland style that Japan has.

The Japanese navy opened its eyes on this. It turns out that the world-class submarines are manufactured in this way. It is not necessary to start dismantling research immediately, and imitate the same level of Japanese submarines as soon as possible.

However, the Japanese soon discovered that even with the real thing there, with Japan’s design capabilities and construction technology at the time, it was impossible to imitate a submarine comparable to the performance of Germany. Because Japan lacks not only shipbuilding technology, but also engineers with a clear concept of submarine design.

So the Japanese launched the Jinyuan Warfare, and spent a lot of money to dig from Germany, Dr. Zeher, the design director of the Germania Shipyard. Under the guidance of the German shipbuilding expert, the Japanese Navy began to design in line with the Japanese Navy. Japanese submarine for its own needs. It was from that time that Japanese submarines really began to move towards localization. In the following short period of more than ten years, Japan developed a series of modern submarines with Japanese characteristics. It can be said that the development of modern Japanese submarines is all based on the technology of German submarines in World War I.

The Japanese Navy's Haida series of ocean-going submarines evolved from the design of Dr. Zehir, so this Yi-60 submarine can be regarded as a distant relative of U106 in Japan.

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Today is the background science chapter, and the storyline will continue tomorrow.