Thunder Strikes Back

Chapter 94 Design Flaw
"Fire at such a distance? I think he is a little too impatient." Marin said, his mind has been on guessing the opponent's submarine and the type of commander. Now it seems that the opponent's commander is not calm enough. Of course, this kind of The impulsiveness may also be caused by some defects in that submarine, such as a power problem.

"The enemy has already intercepted us?" Sun Xiangdong asked.He knew that 411 must be within the range of heavy torpedoes.

"Probably not, it's just that we hid here, which made their eyes and ears disabled, so they wanted to use the active sonar of this torpedo to enter the trench to search for us and complete the ranging. I think this is his intention to launch only one torpedo."

"What should we do?"

"There is only acceleration for the time being. Let that submarine follow up." Marin could feel the speed of the submarine rising as he spoke. The deputy captain standing aside hurriedly grabbed a pipe on his head to avoid falling .

Submarine No. 411 continuously emits active sonic pulses to update the seabed data, but it is still insufficient. For this large submarine, it is still dangerous to travel at a speed of 70 knots in a trench that is only about 10 meters wide. Trust the helmsman The attention must be highly concentrated, without the slightest deviation.

"Their torpedoes are still approaching, and the active search is still not started."

"Very good, advance 4, and increase the speed to 16 knots." Marin said, he knew that the enemy opened fire early, and it is likely that the Indian captain just guessed from the map that he would hide here, and then relied on the complete Geographical data set the course of the torpedo, and the best thing to do now was to exhaust the wires of this torpedo, so that the enemy submarine could no longer guide its actions. He had already calculated in his head that there should be no problem.Of course, whether it will hit the cliffs on both sides depends on luck.

On the dark bottom of the sea, a huge torpedo chased to the top of the trench, and without hesitation, it dived into the trench. The fire control system of the "Jilower" guided it along the trench according to the available hydrological data.

Colonel Manush waited for the torpedo to descend to a depth of 140 meters and issued a new order.

"Activate torpedo active sonar search. Let me see what they really are."

The black shark torpedo immediately received this command and started an active sonar search.The search information was completely transmitted to the command module of the Arihant through the wire; however, to Manush's disappointment, no target was found within the search range (about 1.5 nautical miles) ahead.This shows that the distance of the Chinese submarine is greater than expected, and it is speeding up to escape. The colonel calculated the length of the wire and found that the chance was not great.He was surprised that the opponent could respond quickly, and did not waste time on issues such as whether to use active sounding, or whether to drill into the geographical shielding area, which shows that he is a very decisive submarine commander.

"I guessed their intentions." The colonel nodded and said.

"What intention?" The officer on the side asked carefully.

"They want to speed up their escape. Of course they have no chance of staying above the trench."

"Yeah, I think they're doing that. Our passive sonar can't help."

"So we have to catch up too."

"But sir, our power part has been overwhelmed." Officer Zhi Geng said.

"It's only twelve festivals now."

"Sir, do you remember the last time she ran 12 knots on the bottom of the sea? In fact, the current speed has exceeded the control redundancy of the power department. I think our potential threat is increasing, from the reactor to the cooling pump. , or secondary circuit pipelines, steam turbines, these systems have never experienced such a long period of high-speed operation.” Manush’s deputy captain reminded bitterly.He knew that the running-in time of the power of this boat was too early, and the design speed was impossible to reach. In fact, in the monitoring of the last year, the Arihant would have another medium failure every 25 hours of sailing, and most of these failures were concentrated. In the rear power compartment.

The colonel knew very well that what the deputy captain said was true. This boat was not suitable for high-speed impact. Even if it reached the highest speed of 15 knots during the test, it only lasted for a short time.Even when it was parked in the port, there had been a level [-] accident in which radiation steam leaked from the circulating cooling pump, but he felt that this opportunity was rare, and he couldn't let the Chinese captain escape just by increasing his speed.

"The engine reports that the gamma rays near the reactor began to exceed the standard. The temperature of the pipeline inside the shielding layer is rising, and it is believed that there is neutron radiation." Without waiting for further instructions from Captain Manush, a frustrated report arrived at the command module first.

"The temperature of the moderator in the primary circuit?"

"The sensor has temporarily failed, sir, and it is being repaired. Now... some data is incomplete. We only know that the pressure on the inner wall of the steam generator has been overloaded." The reactor control room continued to report that this is bad news. A submarine with incomplete technology is now beginning to expose various problems. This is not the last one, and it is unlikely to be the most serious one. However, Manush is now having a hard time choosing. One of his own torpedoes is being chased, so he hastily lowered the submarine's performance. The speed of the ship will only make the length of the wire more stretched. The hunting on the seabed is different from the air battle. The time is not counted in seconds. In fact, the torpedo pursuit is a very long process.

"You guys must hold on, I still need to raise some more control sticks to increase the speed to the maximum."

"Mr. Captain, this will make the reactor more difficult to control. There will be some problems with our plumbing. The crew are afraid..."

"Has neutron radiation been detected outside the shielded area?"

"not yet."

"This is good news. We can rely on the submarines made in India. She has always been reliable." Manush said very against his will.

"but……"

The chief engineer at the other end of the intercom originally wanted to say that no slow neutrons or other rays were detected, and that it was probably just another sensor that had failed, but the impatient colonel had already hung up the intercom.With the accumulation of high-speed sailing time, the hidden dangers hidden in the immature power part of this nuclear submarine are slowly accumulating. understand.

"Colonel, we found her." The torpedo control officer shouted.The Black Shark torpedo has approached to a distance of less than 2 nautical miles from the Chinese submarine. Now the active and passive sonar of the torpedo itself can detect the target ahead through pulse reflection, and the data is transmitted to the command cabin through the wire. This is undoubtedly good news. It gave a boost to Colonel Manush, who was hesitating whether to continue to speed up.

"Their speed?"

"Report, less than 16 knots. Still picking up speed."

"Great, the No. 4 torpedo is ready to launch. Also, tell the engineers that I need [-]% power and continue to increase the speed."

This order has completely exceeded the limit. Since the boat was launched, the reactor has rarely operated at a power of more than 6%. Now it has been overloaded for nearly 8 hours. The core temperature is rising to a dangerous level, and the pressure in each circuit is also accumulating. Design flaws prevent these cooling lines from taking away the accumulated heat in time, and the uranium fuel rods enter a dangerously high temperature state.

Knowing that the Chinese submarine commander is trying to escape with a technological advantage, the captain now needs to bet that if he succeeds, he will become a hero of the navy, as long as the reactor is not damaged in a short time.

In the command cabin of the 411 boat, everyone stared at the trail of the torpedo that followed, and slowly overlapped with the 411 track.The screeching sound of the black shark torpedo crossing the sea is temporarily inaudible to the people in the boat, but the repeated active sonar screams of this torpedo can still penetrate into the thick hull. one's nerves.The cycle of these ping-pong-pong calls is much shorter than before. It can be seen that the torpedo has shifted from searching to tracking. Everyone hopes that the captain Marin can find a way to solve this problem.

"Two rounds of tail gas bombs are ready." Marin ordered slowly.

"Tail gas bombs, two rounds are ready."

"very good."

Marin didn't say much. He was not in a hurry. He knew that the speed of the trailing torpedo was only 35 knots. It would take a long time to catch up with No. 411 at this speed.At present, No. 411 is hiding in the shielded area, and the passive sonar of the Indian submarine is useless. The small sonar of the torpedo has become the only effective sonar they can find No. 411, so they are very careful to control the speed of the torpedo to avoid premature into an undetectable cavitation state.

"The noise of that submarine has increased a lot." Deputy Captain Sun Xiangdong said.Through the towed line array sonar at a relatively shallow depth, No. 411 can monitor the movements of the submarine behind at any time. Now the Indian submarine is not only showing its whereabouts, but also driving a train on the bottom of the sea.

"Obviously, it's not the 'shark' that we're most worried about," said the political commissar.

"Well, if it's just an 'Arithra' type, we can even simply increase the speed to get rid of it." The deputy captain said.

"Do you know how fast India's Annihilator submarines are? Why don't I know?" Marin asked back. He never guessed data randomly, and he hoped that his comrades would not underestimate the enemy.

"Hey, of course I don't know the real data, but judging from the appearance of that boat, it is obvious that it will not exceed 16 knots. Even if it has a 150 megawatt reactor, it will not work."

"Don't jump to conclusions easily. Last year, the naval intelligence department also said that the submarine's reactor was being debugged and could only travel with auxiliary engines, but it is ready for actual combat now." Marin stared at the track of the torpedo, Said on the side.

"Perhaps Naval Intelligence is right," interposed the commissar. "Listen, the noise of the main engine is very abnormal, and it's not a steam turbine. It seems that there is a problem with the operation of the cooling pump. I think they may be in trouble."

Su Changjin's words aroused Marin's interest. He was going to retract the towed sonar because the 500-meter-long sonar seriously hindered further speeding up, but now he thinks he can hold off for a while.He walked to the back of the sonar monitor and took the earphone from the commissar's hand and listened.

"You are right. If I were the Indian captain, I should shut down the reactor immediately to release the steam pressure. Then float to the surface." Marin said, he suddenly came out of the conservative state, forgetting that the enemy torpedo was approaching Forced advantage status.

"Maybe we can change our strategy a little? To cause them a little trouble?" Sun Xiangdong interrupted in time. "Maybe we don't need to launch torpedoes at all to..."

(End of this chapter)