Since Wang Chenhao arranged for Holland and Lake to enter the Dagu Shipyard.

After specializing in the research and development and manufacturing of submarines, Wang Chenhao began to plan to build a submarine naval base.

As a new naval weapon, submarines are listed by Wang Chenhao as the key development target of national strategic defense. At present, Wang Chenhao's naval power is still weak, and the naval industry has not yet been perfected, so it is unable to compete with the naval forces such as Britain for a considerable period of time.

As a naval weapon that is both economical and affordable, the development of submarines is in line with the current national conditions of China.

Holland and Lake are developing and building new submarines in the closed dock of Dagu Shipyard. Once the newly developed submarines have combat effectiveness, they will be built in batches. Therefore, the construction of the submarine base will be put on the agenda.

Wang Chenhao considered that there were many important coastal ports along the Qing Empire, and the submarine base was difficult to hide. Therefore, Wang Chenhao decided to find a suitable harbor to build a submarine base in the north of the Bohai Sea, which the powerful navies did not pay attention to, as the home port of the future submarines.

Located on the southeast coast of Lianyun Castle, Jinzhou Prefecture, under General Shengjing, there is a small fishing village called Huludao. The entire island goes deep into the sea from northwest to southeast, just like a gourd floating on the sea, hence the name.

In Wang Chenhao's era, Huludao Port was used as a naval base of the North Sea Fleet. It not only berths on various surface ships, but also a submarine base, but also a base for building nuclear submarines and berthing nuclear submarines.

However, the port of Huludao Naval Base was built in 1930, and now it is an unknown small fishing village in front of Wang Chenhao. However, it just meets Wang Chenhao's requirement that he plan to secretly build a submarine base.

Just after the New Year in 1897, Wang Chenhao ordered a group of casting port engineers from the Engineering Department of the Navy General Administration to set off to Huludao to actually survey the terrain and design a plan for Huludao Naval Base...

Blueprint and preparation of relevant port casting equipment and materials. Wang Chenhao asked to start construction of the base in the beginning of spring, so these engineers only have two months of field survey and design time.

Island Port is located on the Huludao Peninsula in the northwest of Liaodong Bay, 90 nautical miles southwest from Qinhuangdao Port and 60 nautical miles east from Yingkou Port. After the engineers conducted field investigations on Huludao, they believed that the port was chunqian and connected to the Beijing-Feng Railway in the north, so they could control North China and become a key pass in Liaodong. They praised Wang Chenhao for his foresight.

After planning... Huludao Port plans to build a breakwater as the boundary, which is divided into two ports inside and outside. The outer port is berthed in warships and supply ships, and the inner port can be berthed in submarines. The port area covers an area of ​​2 square kilometers, with a depth of 7 to meter, with a wide water depth of harbor, which can be sheltered from wind and waves in summer, and a slight icy ice in winter. It is an ideal freezing port in the north second only to Lushun.

The Port Construction Project begins in early April, and construction machinery will be transported from Tianjin in advance via railway and sea routes. Before this, the engineering team will complete the construction of machinery factories, wood factories, small workshops, office buildings, temporary dormitories for workers and staff.

The entire naval base plan... costs US$6.4 million, including the fortress defense fortresses, base shipyards, base military camps, base subway docks, etc. required to build the base. It will take 28 months to complete.

The construction period is so long, mainly because the engineers plan to razed the Linhai Banla Mountain in Huludao to the ground in order to broaden the port's exit width. The mountain is made of hard stones, with a plane tilted eastward, with a highest point of more than 200 feet. On the side of the sea, there are cliffs, and the workers want to level the mountain for time and effort.

After learning about the situation, Wang Chenhao immediately stopped it. At that time, Huludao port was built to facilitate large transport ships with shallow draft and large width to transport goods. It can be said that Huludao Port was built for commercial purposes. But now it is different. Wang Chenhao does not need to build Huludao into a commercial port, but builds a submarine base.

Wang Chenhao knew very well that this Banla Mountain was extremely important for the concealment of the submarine base. If it was razed to the ground as in history, it would make the submarine less hiding place.

Wang Chenhao knew that the natural enemies of future submarines came from air force, and the submarine base would be hidden underground, and digging caves in the mountains along the coast is the mainstream of future submarine bases.

Wang Chenhao did not want to flatten Banla Mountain, but wanted to use the entire Banla Mountain as a fortress for a submarine. So, at Wang Chenhao's request, the engineers changed the design blueprint, retained Banla Mountain, dug caves under the steep cliffs of Banla Mountain, hollowed out Banla Mountain as a secret submarine base, and two exits on one side of the sea lead to the sea bottom, which was extremely hidden. On the side of the port, two tunnels directly connect to the inner port. The submarine mooring terminal is a rectangular pool of 10 meters deep, which can hide twenty submarines.

The submarine base includes two rectangular closed docks with a length of 200 meters, a width of 40 meters and a height of 10 meters. Once Holland and Lake have designed the submarines and successfully passed the sea trial, the two submarine docks will begin to build submarines for the Navy, which can build six nose boats at the same time, or repair six submarines.

The base has a barracks, a granary, 4 oil warehouses, 4 ammunition warehouses, and 4 machinery and equipment warehouses. A branch railway is built on the west side of the base, which controls the Beijing-Feng Railway transportation line. The base supply is usually replenished by sea ships, and when necessary, it can be replenished by land railways.

After re-planning..., workers do not need to venture to climb rocks and flatten the hills, which significantly shortens the construction period and is expected to be completed in 24 months. At the same time, part of the submarine base is hidden in the hollowed-out Half-La Mountain, and part is in the inner port. Even if the enemy discovers the submarine base, they can only see the submarines anchored on the surface of the inner port. For mihuo's enemy's reconnaissance intelligence personnel, it is extremely important to cover the real combat power of the submarine base.

After the design blueprint for Huludao Naval Submarine Base was finally finalized, Wang Chenhao named it Wolf Nest, but on the surface it was also called Huludao Naval Base, which was just an internal name for the submarine base. Afterwards, Wang Chenhao immediately ordered the construction of the port to be built.

At the same time, Wang Chenhao also inspected the Dagu Shipyard. On the surface, he inspected the project of the new dock in the Dagu Shipyard, but in fact he came specifically for the new submarines in the closed submarine dock.

As the important person in charge of the submarine dock, Horan and Lake also worked with them here, and their assistants were assigned to a group of domestic technicians who were helping them.

There are more than 500 people in total.

They came to Tianjin, and at the same time, their entire laboratory and the equipment needed to build submarines were transported by ship. Before 1897, Holland designed and built a total of 8 Holland submarines in the United States, with numbers ranging from Holland 1 to Holland 8. Lake built a total of 3 submarines.

Holland No. 1 was first developed and was launched in 1875.

At that time, the whole world was sensational. However, Holland 1 was very small, with a displacement of only 74 tons underwater, which was smaller than the Jiaolong. The main scale was 16.4

The m main engine is an Otto type 6-cylinder 2-stroke gasoline engine (for surface navigation), 1 motor (for underwater navigation), and a single propulsion shaft: power (surface. underwater) is 50 horsepower.

40 horsepower: speed (surface. Underwater speed 5.5 knots underwater, the endurance is the blade and mile: the military equipment is 1 450mm bow torpedo launcher, and 3 torpedoes are loaded: safe submarine depth 23m: 7 crew members.

Since then, Holland has successively improved its submarines and built seven Holland-type submarines. By the time of the Eighth Search, the submarines had actual combat capabilities, but under the influence of giant ship artilleryism, the whole world was not valued by the US Navy.

If it weren't for Wang Chenhao's appearance, the Holland 9 submarine should have been purchased by the U.S. Navy in 1899 and served in service in April 1900 until it was retired in 1911.

But unfortunately, Holland accepted Wang Chenhao's invitation.

He also came to Tianjin to secretly build a submarine for Wang Chenhao, making the Holland 9 submarine no longer the first submarine of the US Navy, but the first submarine of the Chinese Navy.

Wang Chenhao used the Holland 9 submarine as the first training ship of the Navy submarine force to train the submarine force and provide sufficient submarine combat personnel for subsequent submarine service.

Wang Chenhao, who has a wider understanding of the Holland 9 submarine, almost looked down on him. He proposed a series of improvement plans for the Holland 9 submarine, from the submarine tonnage, speed, firepower,

The structure, operation, submarine time, endurance, safe submarine depth, etc. put forward a lot of requirements. Although Holland made a lot of sense when he heard it, unfortunately due to the constraints of technology and equipment, he could not meet Wang Chenhao's requirements at all.

Holland's submarine technology is actually the most advanced submarine technology in the world. Although the submarine designed by Holland looks rough and simple to Wang Chenhao, Wang Chenhao has to admit that he must accept reality.

Although Holland could not meet all Wang Chenhao's requirements, Holland was also greatly inspired by Wang Chenhao's explanation of some advanced submarine design ideas. Therefore, it improved the submarine with his Holland slogan and launched the Holland No. 10 submarine.

Wang Chenhao looked at the design blueprint of the Holland No. 10 submarine. Although it was still a thousand miles away from his requirements, it has to be said that this submarine has basically met the conditions for submarine combat.

Holland 10 submarine, designed displacement (surface, underwater) main scale

Main Otto 6-cylinder 2-stroke gasoline engine (for surface navigation), 1 motor (for underwater navigation), single propulsion shaft: power (surface. 180 horsepower underwater. 70 horsepower: speed (surface. surplus) section: endurance: 4 hours underwater navigation: 450nm

One bow torpedo launcher, three torpedoes are loaded with three safety submarine depth 46m: number of crew: 1.

The old submarine of Holan is an improved model based on the Holan slogan submarine. Compared with the slogan submarine, the safe submarine's 10 submarine doubled, the size of the command platform has also increased accordingly, and the main engine's power has increased by nearly 3 times. For the first time, the periscope and other equipment were added at the request of Wang Chenhao, thus making this class of submarines have more powerful practical combat capabilities. However, due to the low strength of the superstructure structure of the submarine No. 10 submarine and poor boxing energy during surface navigation, it can only be used as a defensive submarine along the harbor coast.

Despite this, Wang Chenhao was still very happy because his requirements for submarine combat in a short period of time were only limited to the defense of the harbor coastal areas.

So, Wang Chenhao classified the submarine No. 10 as the Xia class, and built old ships of the same class, namely Carp No. 1), Chain Fish No. 2), Grass Carp No. 4), Green Fish No. 5), Pomfret No. 6), Cyclone Fish No.

7), Jesus Fish Number 8-), Ghost Head Fish Number 9-), Yellow Lingyu Number

10).

The construction cost of a single Xia-class submarine is less than 40,000 US dollars, and the construction cycle only takes about three months to complete. According to Wang Chenhao's plan, only one enemy's small ship needs to be sunk during the war.

Even if a warship is profitable, if it can sink a battleship, even if it loses all ten Lou-class submarines, it will be a big profit.

At present, the navies of various countries do not attach importance to the combat effectiveness of submarines, so Wang Chenhao is confident in his future submarine force. Any enemy ship that dares to invade China's maritime border will pay a heavy price.

Holland's No. 10 submarine was recognized by Wang Chenhao, but the submarine of West Méng and Lake was eliminated. This is mainly because Lake does not like to design combat submarines. He pays attention to the submarine's diving depth and diving time in order to explore the underwater world. Lake's submarine does not have attacks, which is the main reason why his submarine was eliminated.

However, this does not mean that Lake's submarine is useless.

Submarines not only use torpedoes as attack weapons, but also had another function in early submarines, which was to arrange mines. Lake's submarine had advantages in diving depth and diving time, so his Lake 3 submarine had a slight improvement and could be used to arrange mines.

In fact, the water content is being sorted out
Chapter completed!