area51novel #389 - The submarine started out as a big black fish, so there's nothing wrong with taking bigg
#389 - The submarine started out as a big black fish, so there's nothing wrong with taking bigg
With the Blackfish's power system settled, the next step was to choose a prototype for the Blackfish itself.
Now that he had the help of the Main World, no sane person would start from scratch.
The other technical aspects of the submarine had already been assigned for further refinement. Dalian had a dedicated team working towards this goal, and they had already designed a scaled-down version of the first-generation prototype for testing. Although they encountered many difficulties along the way, these challenges were not as significant as those related to the power system.
Ren Zhong searched the Main World and compared the data and characteristics of the first-generation nuclear submarines from various major countries.
Ultimately, he chose the prototype for the first nuclear submarine of the Eastern Continent in the Bright Sword world: the Skate-class attack submarine developed by the Rogue Eagle in the Main World, which was their true first-generation attack nuclear submarine!
Nautilus nuclear submarine
Although the "Nautilus" nuclear submarine had a larger displacement and looked more formidable,
in this timeline, the larger the submarine hull, the more difficult it was to manufacture. During the prototype submarine testing process, the Dalian team found it challenging even with a size less than half of the actual submarine.
The Nautilus had a length of 97.5 meters, a width of 8.4 meters, a draft of 6.7 meters, a surface displacement of 3,700 tons, and a submerged displacement of 4,040 tons.
In the modern Main World, this size was not considered large, but in the 1950s, it seemed oversized, and the overall hull streamline was not smooth enough. It had a strong experimental nature. The reason for making it so large was due to considerations and trade-offs regarding the volume of the power plant and other factors.
In the Main World timeline, the Rogue Eagle only built one for research and then stopped. They achieved mass production with the Skate-class attack submarine, which was modified from the Skipjack-class.
Skate-class attack nuclear submarine
The Skate-class attack nuclear submarine was an optimized modification of the Skipjack-class conventional submarine.
The main dimensions of the Skipjack-class conventional submarine were 81.99 meters × 8.23 meters × 5.18 meters, with a surface displacement of 1,800 tons and a submerged displacement of 2,400 tons. Compared to the Nautilus, the overall size was significantly reduced.
However, there were still some problems with mass-producing this prototype with nuclear power. The hull design for the conventional submarine did not initially consider matching it with a nuclear power plant. The size and location requirements of a nuclear power plant and a conventional power plant were different, so it was necessary to solve the problem of coordinating the reactor and the hull.
According to the original Rogue Eagle version, their engineers had to make a slight enlargement in the final design. The final dimensions of the Skate-class attack nuclear submarine were 81.7 meters × 7.9 meters × 6.1 meters, increasing the height to accommodate the reactor. After this revision, the surface displacement of the Skate-class attack nuclear submarine was 2,552 tons, and the submerged displacement was 2,851 tons.
Although the new submarine was much smaller than the Nautilus, its combat performance was quite satisfactory to the Rogue Eagle Navy.
Ren Zhong was also very satisfied after the comparison. At least after choosing this hull shape, the OK-150 reactor could be installed with a slight modification and reduction in some components, and the driving power would be sufficient. The Skate-class attack nuclear submarine was powered by two steam turbines with a total power of only 7,000 horsepower, while the OK-150 had a full power of 20,000 horsepower!
In this way, this new submarine would have more abundant driving power, which could further increase its maximum speed. The current speed of the Skate-class attack nuclear submarine was 18 knots on the surface and 20 knots underwater. If the new nuclear power plant was replaced, this speed could be greatly increased, by more than 15%.
In terms of attack capability, the Skate-class attack nuclear submarine was equipped with 8 torpedo tubes, giving it a strong one-time strike capability. The bow had 6 533mm torpedo tubes, and the stern had 2 480mm torpedo tubes that could launch MK57 short torpedoes. With 12 spare torpedoes in the bow compartment and 2 in the stern compartment, each submarine could carry 22 torpedoes.
Its one-shot strike force was six large torpedoes, and it could hit and run. Its speed was so fast that only destroyers could catch up, and the anti-submarine capabilities of the destroyers in the Bright Sword world were limited to depth charges and lacked new methods.
Ren Zhong continued to follow the path of the Rogue Eagle.
The reason for not choosing the second-generation Sturgeon-class attack nuclear submarine was that it was the world's first nuclear submarine to use a teardrop-shaped hull. The combination of nuclear power and a teardrop-shaped hull greatly increased the submarine's speed, but also significantly increased the manufacturing difficulty of the hull!
According to the current technology, the Dalian shipyard did not have the ability to process this type of hull. For submarine production, the design and manufacture of this hull was the most demanding aspect. In addition, there was the internal layout. Fortunately, with Ren Zhong's imports, there were solutions to these problems.
It wasn't that it couldn't be overcome completely, but Ren Zhong was focusing on speed. This nuclear submarine had to be launched and sailing within two years to become a new deterrent weapon!
With the current shipbuilding capacity, as long as the technology was fully understood, it could be produced in batches of four, following a rhythm of producing one generation, testing and researching one generation, and theoretically researching one generation.
Producing four ships a year, with a five-year cycle of upgrades, before the technology for large surface ships was fully understood, he would build fifty or sixty attack nuclear submarines in the 1950s and 1960s to ensure that there were always twenty or more lurking in the ocean like assassins. Any major country would have a headache seeing this scale!
In comparison, the performance indicators of the German U-boats were too weak. Their short range and the need to surface to recharge were their most fatal weaknesses. The U-boats had a surface cruising range of only 3,000-6,000 nautical miles at economic cruising speed, and only a few hundred nautical miles underwater (PS: Different models have large differences, but it does not affect the success of wolf pack tactics. Some small German U-boats had only a few dozen nautical miles of underwater range, but it did not delay their brilliant achievements. For example, the famous sea ghost U-46, which belonged to the German VIIB type, had a surface displacement of 735 tons, an underwater displacement of 857 tons, a surface speed of 17.2 knots, and an underwater speed of 8 knots; endurance of 6500 nautical miles/12 knots on the surface and 90 nautical miles/4 knots underwater, and a safe diving depth of 150 meters. In 1940 alone, it destroyed 7 Allied transport ships and 1 John Bull auxiliary cruiser of 20,277 tons, the Carinthia! The cost-effectiveness of combat was amazing.)
. . .
To see results in two years, Ren Zhong still took the relatively simple Skate-class attack nuclear submarine as the first-generation prototype to practice with.
The Rogue Eagle was probably working hard on the first Nautilus. According to the historical timeline of the Main World, the Nautilus was started on June 14, 1952, at General Dynamics Electric Boat, launched on January 21, 1954, and commissioned on September 30, 1954. The speed was amazing. Of course, since it was a demonstration, some places were a bit rough, which was normal.
Therefore, it was not mass-produced based on this Nautilus, making the Nautilus a veritable research ship.
Now that Ren Zhong was standing on the shoulders of giants, he had relatively rich structural diagrams and various performance parameters for both the Skate-class attack nuclear submarine and the Sturgeon-class attack nuclear submarine, including the materials for the core components.
In comparison, Ren Zhong's surrounding conditions were much better than those of the Rogue Eagle's Nautilus.
First, his reactor had stronger power and higher performance indicators.
Second, in terms of materials, the most core hull material, steel, the Rogue Eagle had not yet figured out HY-80 ultra-high-strength steel, but Ren Zhong, with imports from the Main World, had successively obtained HY-80, HY-100, and HY-130 ultra-high-strength steel, and they had been widely used in ships. The yield strengths of HY-80, HY-100, and HY-130 special steels were 550MPa, Pa, and Pa, respectively.
This data meant the maximum depth the submarine could dive to. According to the yield strength of HY-80 special steel, the limit diving depth could be as high as 530 meters (Rogue Eagle Los Angeles-class attack nuclear submarine).
Theoretically, if the hull used HY-80 high-strength special steel, the maximum diving depth could reach 610 meters.
However, under this extreme condition, the danger to the submarine would increase by orders of magnitude, so the design diving depth for submarines using HY-80 special steel was generally around 400 meters, leaving a certain safety margin.
The Rogue Eagle's first-generation Sturgeon-class attack nuclear submarine using HY-80 steel had a maximum diving depth of only 200 meters due to the hull shape and manufacturing process. This was a great waste of HY-80's performance. After all, the Rogue Eagle had no stones to touch in front, and they were groping forward bit by bit.
Ren Zhong could feel his way forward, using the development of the entire main world as stepping stones, so naturally, he wouldn't make such mistakes. Therefore, the diving depth of the first generation of Great Blackfish was directly set at 400 meters. Due to immature processing technology, the pressure hull of the first generation of Great Blackfish mostly used HY-80 special steel, with HY-100 special steel only used in some key parts. HY-130 special steel was too difficult to process, and they couldn't handle such large objects like submarine hulls yet. Currently, it was only used on some special components of surface ships.
However, even so, according to Ren Zhong's estimation, the first generation of Great Blackfish would be an invincible existence!
First of all, relying on the powerful output of OK-150 to achieve great power and speed, with sufficient power, it could completely challenge the title of the submarine with the highest underwater speed. He wasn't sure if it could reach 30 knots, but 28 knots was almost certainly not a problem.
Secondly, its diving depth was already invincible. Current submarines generally operate at a diving depth of around 200 meters, while the first generation of Blackfish could make opponents unable to find its shadow.
Of course, besides the nuclear reactor, the current first generation of Great Blackfish also had another major problem.
533mm heavy torpedoes!
This thing was not simple.
Even in the main world, Dongda developed domestically-produced heavy torpedoes based on the Big Bear's 53-51 torpedoes. However, it was not until the early 1970s that the Yu-1 torpedo was basically finalized, entered mass production, and equipped various submarine units. This shows that its technical content was extraordinary, far exceeding ten years of effort!
But even with such a long time for research and implementation, the Yu-1 torpedo could not meet the operational needs of the submarine units, whether in terms of design level or other indicators. After all, this belonged to the Big Bear's products from the 1950s. Speed, homing ability, and many other aspects were unsatisfactory. It could only be said that it solved the problem of having something.
Ren Zhong didn't even look at such a weak product.
What he was eyeing was the Rogue Eagle's MK-48, a perennial evergreen in the Rogue Eagle's torpedo series, which directly continued to iterate and develop into the new century. Its power was so great that one shot could destroy a 3,000-ton destroyer, and the explosive power could directly cut a destroyer's hull in half! Creating waves of hundreds of meters.
With this power, even aircraft carriers of tens of thousands of tons or hundreds of thousands of tons could not withstand a few shots!
Australian test of MK-48 attacking destroyer target ship ("Torrens" destroyer)
The MK-48 torpedo is one of the torpedo series developed by Rogue Eagle, with a caliber of 533mm. The early version weighed approximately 1600 kg, and adopted wire-guided + active/passive combined guidance, with a range of approximately 8000 meters; all torpedoes in this series are equipped on Rogue Eagle's attack and strategic nuclear submarines, and their purpose is anti-submarine and anti-ship. After updating and iterating to the modern main version, the current MK-48 MOD 5 torpedo is 5.85 meters long, 533 mm in diameter, 1582 kg in weight, has a speed of 55 knots, a range of 46,000 meters, and a maximum diving depth of 1200 meters.
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In 1962, Rogue Eagle invested a huge sum of 6.7 billion US dollars (of which 1.7 billion US dollars was used for the construction of torpedo test ranges to support it) to start bidding for the development of the Mk-48 torpedo, which was successfully developed in 1971, and officially mass-produced and put into service in 1972 to replace the original MK-37 and MK-14 torpedoes in service. After more than 40 years of development, the torpedo has formed 9 models including Mk-48-0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ADCAP, 6, and 7.
Therefore, such a heavy torpedo that has experienced the test of time and actual combat is Ren Zhong's favorite!
Although the thing was good, the technology was not simple. Otherwise, Dongda would not have spent decades chasing and overcoming it.
After all, now, purely from the perspective of torpedo power, there are very many technical routes. Thermal torpedoes use different principles of engines such as open-cycle, semi-open-cycle, or closed-cycle engines, which essentially convert chemical energy into mechanical energy through combustion.
From the perspective of energy conservation, torpedoes cannot obtain oxygen from the surroundings when moving underwater, so they must carry their own oxidizers and reducing agents, just like rockets carrying oxidizers when flying in space. The advancement of torpedo thermal engines mainly depends on the energy density of the propellant.
Early thermal engines used alcohol, kerosene + compressed air fuel, with very low energy density and a specific energy of only 0.197 Wh/kg. Later, propellants developed rapidly, from kerosene + oxygen, kerosene + hydrogen peroxide, kerosene + nitric acid, to the widely used Otto II and its combined fuels, the specific energy has reached 470 Wh/kg, which is more than 2300 times higher than the initial value.
In this regard, Ren Zhong certainly would not start with the early weak fuels and propellants, but would start with Otto fuel. This thing was relatively common, and Ren Zhong spent hundreds of thousands to buy a detailed formula and a complete set of production processes.
Otto II was more difficult. Now, the general formula can be obtained publicly. The so-called Otto fuel II is mainly a mixture of propylene glycol dinitrate (76%), o-nitrodiphenylamine (0.5%), and dibutyl succinate (23.5%), but this is only a principled overview. To truly prepare it into a qualified propellant, it still needs to invest money in research.
The use is not necessarily good. From the overview description of advanced torpedoes in the main world, the method of adding hydroxylammonium perchlorate is usually used to form high-energy binary fuel. However, the problem that arises is that the heat generated by combustion is too high, and the material of the combustion chamber cannot absorb it due to overheating. These application problems have led to high-performance torpedoes still being a secret of a few advanced countries in the world.
Ren Zhong used the guise of developing underwater high-performance submersible fuel research and invested several million in a chemist at the Oriental Gambling City University to set up a project for research. At the same time, he also connected several domestic chemists to jointly research together.
This professor is called Alvar Vieira, a genuine Portuguese national, but he has permanent residence in the Gambling City. With his identity, there is obviously no problem in searching for information and buying some raw materials and instruments in the Western world. The key is that Ren Zhong also promised to support his rental costs for using the laboratory in Portugal.
In this way, Ren Zhong felt that he could combine Eastern and Western resources, wisdom, and experience to develop the second-generation key fuel preparation method as soon as possible. After all, this time Ren Zhong borrowed Zhao Lidong's Hong Kong Island company, which could withstand the test and had no contact with the official side.
Propellant is one link, navigation, engine, hull manufacturing, and warhead, each is a major subject.
Thermal torpedo engines have many paths in terms of large technical routes, such as piston, turbine, gas turbine, rocket engine, etc. Of course, they will not all be tried now. In this regard, Ren Zhong felt his way forward, using the MK-48 as a stepping stone.
To work to death on the piston engine technical route, of course, the piston engine is not simple. Under this classification, it must continue to be divided into small branches such as reciprocating, cam, rotary swashplate/wobble plate, etc.
The current main Mk48 Mod 5 heavy torpedo in the Rogue Eagle main world uses a semi-closed cycle wobble plate piston engine to achieve a maximum speed of 55 knots and a maximum range of 46 kilometers.
The thermal engine systems of torpedoes during World War II were basically composed of a separate combustion chamber and a reciprocating piston device. Fuel and oxidizer are ignited and burned in the combustion chamber, and after the seawater used for mixing and cooling, a mixed high-temperature gas drives the piston to do work.
In the main world, we obtained a MK46 torpedo dud that was caught by a fishing team on October 9, 1978. After arduous efforts, we finally successfully developed our Yu-7 in 1994, 16 years after obtaining the sample, achieving the mainstream level of MK46 torpedo's cruising speed of 40 knots and sprinting speed of 45 knots.
Prior to this, the maximum speed of our in-service "Yu-3" torpedo was only 35 knots, while the underwater speed of the Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine that Rogue Eagle put into service in 1976 reached 32 knots. In other words, after seeing the submarine, launching a torpedo could not keep up with the rhythm of others!
The first-generation torpedo that Ren Zhong is going to research, of course, it is difficult to reach the level of the Mk48 Mod 5 heavy torpedo in terms of indicators, but after improving the propellant, it is still very promising to reach the level of the MK46.
A sprinting speed of 45 knots is basically enough for current submarines that are generally still at 20 knots and surface ships with speeds below 35 knots.
Torpedo Generation 1 performance indicators 40/45 knots, range 10 kilometers; Torpedo Generation 2 performance indicators speed 45/50 knots, range 25 kilometers; Torpedo Generation 3 performance indicators 55 knots, range 40 kilometers! According to one generation every 5 years, it will take about 15 years to reach the level of Rogue Eagle in the early 2000s, which can completely maintain the suppression of opponents.
After getting these submarine's hard conditions, Ren Zhong will then get the submarine's crucial avionics system, knowing that this is the other half of the submarine's combat power.
Submarines must be able to hide, run fast, and attack strongly, these are all necessary. In addition, there is also the need to see accurately and coordinate strongly, these are the soft power of submarines! Otherwise, the submarine hiding under the sea is blind, unable to see the enemy, and does not know the situation of teammates.
However, this thing is even more troublesome.
The information that can be obtained is more fragmented, others.