Battle of the Third Reich

In fact, the history of Japan’s contact with submarines is much earlier than people thought. On September 16, 1890, I just finished my visit to Japan and prepared to go to India to the Ottoman wooden frigate [El Turur] Unfortunately, the typhoon hit the typhoon, and the battleship eventually ran aground and sank on the shore of Kii Island. Only sixty-nine of the more than 600 crew members and passengers on board survived, and the remaining 587 people drowned or disappeared on the spot.

The survivors were rescued by the local Japanese people, and immediately boarded a German gunboat [Wolf] that came to the rescue and sent to Kobe Port for treatment. In January of the following year, the then Emperor Meiji personally ordered the dispatch of cruisers [King Kong] and [Hiro] to transport the shipwrecked survivors back to the Ottoman Empire.

Yes, you are not mistaken, but these two are not the second fool of later generations, but the most advanced wooden armored cruiser of the Japanese Navy at that time. King Kong cruiser adopts dual power of sail and steam. It was designed by the famous British ship designer Sir Edward James Leed. It was built by Hull Shipyard and Milford Harbor Shipyard respectively. If by the British Navy’s standards at that time, these two ships could only be regarded as first-class armored frigates, but the Japanese Imperial Navy classified these two warships into the sequence of armored cruisers. There are a bunch of old warships from all over the world on hand. The tonnage and firepower of these two are indeed comparable to those of old cruisers.

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

These two cruisers have large tonnage, good airworthiness, fierce firepower, and a full range of weapons. However, at this time, the two ships have been more than ten years old, so they retired to the second line and were regarded as naval officers by the Imperial Navy of Japan. Training ship.

On January 2, 1891, the cruisers [King Kong] and [Hiro] carried sixty-nine survivors on the [El Turur] and the 17th ensign candidate of the Japanese Naval Academy, Embarked on a long journey to the Ottoman Empire.

It should be pointed out that there are several future Japanese "military gods" among the group of alternate naval officers on the ship, the most famous of which is the "genius chief of staff" Akiyama who is praised by Higashi Hachiro as "intellectual resources" That's it, but this famous general who is touted by the Japanese Navy as "using troops as gods" is just a twenty-three-year-old rookie.

Not to mention how much hardship the Japanese experienced on the road, anyway, the two ships successfully reached the Ottoman Empire. While staying in Istanbul Port, Japanese naval officers and soldiers were surprised to find that two strange ships they had never seen were docked on the Ottoman Navy Pier. After inquiring the Turkish sailors, they realized that these turned out to be two steam-powered submarines.

Because I heard that the Greek navy is preparing to buy a submarine, Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who upholds the idea of ​​"you have me and I must have it", decided to go to the UK to buy a "magic weapon" such as a submarine.

Honestly, the British were dumbfounded when they saw the order. The Royal Navy did not have this new toy. As a result, it was found that the Greeks bought the steam submarine originally designed by the Swedish arms dealer Southen Nordenfeldt. Since it was easy to find the source, Nordenfeldt was selling his improvements in the United Kingdom. Design of the submarine, the Barrow Shipyard built two Nordenfeldt improved steam submarines according to the design drawings of Nordenfeld.

This original submarine has a displacement of only one hundred tons and a length of 30 meters. It is equipped with a 250-horsepower coal-fired steam engine with a surface speed of six knots and an underwater speed of four knots. The diving depth has reached 49 meters . The boat-mounted weapons are two 365 mm torpedo tubes and two 37 mm single-tube deck rapid-fire guns.

The Ottoman navy named this type of submarine with the name of Sudan, one was named [Abdul Hamid], and the other was named [Abdul Mejid], which was Hami The father of De Sultan, the thirty-first term of the Ottoman Sultan.

In fact, this kind of submarine is just a name. It does not solve the submarine's underwater power. During diving, it relies on the air in the compressed air tank to drive the piston of the steam engine. This submarine can only move for a few minutes under water. Time has no practical use at all, in fact it can only be regarded as a semi-submersible warship. Moreover, the center of gravity of the ship will change after the torpedo is fired, and the ship becomes quite unstable, even jeopardizing 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 their interest in this new type of weapon remained undiminished.

The first time the Japanese saw the real submarine, they were attracted by this magic weapon at that time, but the Japanese consumer philosophy was much more cautious than the Turks. The main reason was that Japan’s national strength was relatively poor at that time. Four years before the Sino-Japanese War, Japan is tightening its belts to develop the navy, and they can’t wait for a penny to break in half. Nowhere can it be compared to the Ottoman Empire, a true local tyrant who sprinkled money casually. Thousands of pounds of gold were thrown into the water, and the Sultan would not blink his eyelashes.

Although Japan passed by the steam submarine, the submarine weapon has left a deep impression on the Japanese navy. When the Sino-Japanese War ended, Japan ate a large mouthful of fat on Manqing, and the Japanese navy began to grow rich, so the submarine weapon appeared on the Japanese navy's purchase list for the first time.

It was in 1998, on the cruiser [Kasa] visited in Philadelphia, the United States, a young naval officer Lieutenant Sasaki Gao Zhi, saw an advertisement published by Holland inventor Holland in the newspaper. Philadelphia promotes the submarine he designed, which is also known as the "Holland type submarine". Sasaki Gaozhi immediately contacted Holland and experienced the surface and diving of the Holland submarine. Then the lieutenant immediately wrote a report to the Navy Province, and highly respected the development prospect of this kind of ship.

Don’t look at the rank of this lieutenant is not high, but the door is high enough, the Sasaki family is the marquis, and Gao Zhi is the eldest son of the Sasaki family.

At that time, Holland offered the Japanese a price of 200,000 US dollars, plus the transfer of production technology, which was also a conscience price in that year. At that time, the Japanese navy was in charge of the generations of Togo and Akiyama. They were still very interested in this kind of weapon that could sneak into the enemy's seaport, so they began to discuss procurement matters with Holland. Unfortunately, because the Japanese Navy was undergoing the third phase of expansion at that time, the cost of submarine purchase was diverted to the construction cost of other ships, and it was too cumbersome to recalculate the budget. As a result, the transaction was put on hold.

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

In the battles of Lushun Port and the open sea, Japan lost several ships in a row, and the Russian Pacific Fleet has begun an expedition. The Navy decided to temporarily pay a sum of money to buy ships from abroad to supplement its strength, so Holland’s submarines were listed. Into the purchase list.

This time the Japanese Navy did not hesitate to pay a large sum of money, and bought five submarines at a time, which was a million dollars, but no one thought that the Russian Navy would lose so fast and so miserably. The Dutch-purchased Holland submarine arrived It was too late to catch up with actual combat.

However, the Japanese Navy still put great expectations on this weapon. They composed five Holland submarines into the first diving team. The diving team of the Japanese Navy from 1904 to the outbreak of World War I, all the research and The training revolved around the Holland submarine.

It wasn't until the end of the First World War that the Japanese submarine seized a historical opportunity to complete a flyby that could almost be called a reborn. At that time, Japan was assigned to seven German U-boats as trophies, and finally got a glimpse of the true content of the world's first-class submarines. The structure, layout and technology of the German submarine are far from the Holland styles owned by Japan.

The Japanese navy opened its eyes to this. The original world-class submarine was manufactured in this way, and it was not immediately dismantled for research, as soon as possible to imitate a Japanese submarine of the same level.

But the Japanese soon discovered that even with the physical objects there, with the Japanese design capabilities and construction technology at that time, it was impossible to imitate a submarine ship comparable to German performance. Because Japan lacks not only shipbuilding technology but also engineers who have a clear concept of submarine design.

So the Japanese started the gold dollar tactics and spent a lot of money digging from Germany. Dr. Zeher, the design director of the German Shipyard, under the guidance of the German shipbuilding expert, the Japanese Navy began to design the Japanese Navy’s own needs. Japanese submarine. It was from then on that Japanese submarines really began to move towards localization. In just over ten years, Japan developed a series of modern submarines with Japanese characteristics. It can be said that the development of modern Japanese submarines was all based on the technical foundation of the German submarines in World War I.

The Japanese Navy’s large series of ocean-going submarines evolved from Dr. Zeher’s design, so this Iraqi submarine 60 can be regarded as a distant relative of the U106.

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