Chapter 382: Hunger Action (6)
The so-called empire on which the sun never sets means that its colonies are distributed in twenty-four time zones around the world, and its territory is always under the rays of the sun.
Britain is not the first to receive the title of Empire on which the Sun Never Sets, that is an honor that belongs to Spain. After defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588, Britain replaced Spain as the emerging world hegemon.
By the beginning of the 19th century, during the Victorian era, the British Empire reached its peak. Nearly a quarter of the world's approximately 500 million people, 200 million of them, were subjects of the British Empire, and its territory reached approximately 33.67 million square kilometers. , accounting for a quarter of the world's total land area, from Asia to Africa, from Oceania to the Americas, there are British colonies.
Jevons, a famous British economist in the 19th century, described it this way: "The plains of North America and Russia are our cornfields, Canada and the Baltic coast are our forest areas, Australia is our pastures, Peru is our silver mines, and South Africa is our China and Australia are our gold mines, India and China are our tea plantations, the East Indies are our sugar cane, coffee, and spice plantations, and the southern United States is our cotton plantations. "How glorious and powerful this is. .
The resources of these colonies were all transported to the country by sea transportation lines. It can be said that every sea transportation line was an artery of the British Empire and a lifeline related to the survival of the British Empire. Once these lifelines are cut off, it is not far from death.
"We will never surrender! Britain will never surrender! The Germans are trying to destroy us, Britain, and their conspiracy will never succeed! The ultimate winner is still the British Empire!" Churchill was on the radio station, foaming at the mouth and delivering a morale booster. speech.
Of course, no matter how eloquent he is in front of the radio microphone, the situation he faces still does not make people optimistic. After all, you will become decadent if you hide in a dark underground air-raid shelter every day.
It’s hard to see anyone on the streets of London because the V3 cannon has almost no guarantee of hit rate. Even the Germans don’t know where the shells will land, let alone the British. Maybe a cannonball will fall in front of you while you are walking on the road and blow you up into the sky. Or a cannonball penetrates the roof of your house and lands next to your pillow while you are sleeping.
What morale can there be to talk about under such circumstances?
Fortunately, if the Germans say they will attack London, they will attack London. The surrounding towns will not have any impact. Those with connections are trying to find ways to leave the city and escape to the countryside. Many wealthy people were fleeing north, on their way to Liverpool, where they hoped to get a boat ticket to Canada.
This kind of escape is similar to smuggling, because the British government has expressly prohibited civilians from escaping abroad. However, since only capable people can escape to Liverpool, not many people care about the so-called prohibition.
Just when Churchill was trying to revive the British people, who had already been reduced to despair, somewhere in the North Atlantic.
On the submarine U-100, which is half-snorkeling and half-submersible, with only the bridge exposed on the sea surface, the captain Jogim Schepke is lying on the bridge using a periscope to look at the huge transport formation in the distance, thinking about how to eat it. This behemoth.
Because German submarines were becoming more and more rampant, in order to avoid the attacks of wolves, Britain tried to organize the transport ships returning from Canada into a large fleet, and then escorted it by destroyers, cruisers and even battle cruisers in an attempt to reduce its losses.
The German attacks never stopped, but no matter how powerful the wolf pack was, it was impossible for them to eat so many ships in one go. Although each transport formation suffered heavy losses, there were still more or less ships left to deliver supplies to the British mainland to subsidize their families.
Looking at the transport formation gradually moving away, Qiao Jim turned around and shouted an order into the cabin.
"Torpedo No. 4 launched!"
The first mate inside loudly repeated his order. "Torpedo No. 4 launched!"
At this time, the distance between the submarine and the transport formation was at least 15,000 meters; the range of commonly used German torpedoes during World War II rarely exceeded 10,000 meters.
The reason why Jojim ordered the torpedoes to be fired was because they were equipped with a new type of torpedo.
In order to increase the range and power of a torpedo, it must carry more fuel and explosives, which will inevitably increase the size of the torpedo itself and affect its flexible use. On the contrary, the power of the torpedo cannot be exerted, resulting in putting the cart before the horse.
The best way to increase the sailing distance under the premise of a certain torpedo volume is to use a propeller with stronger power and better efficiency; thus, the "wet thermal power torpedo" came into being.
Since the early 20th century, torpedo experts from many countries have been mobilized to complete research on "wet thermal power torpedoes". However, they soon gave up the development of this "dream" weapon one after another.
The reason is simple - the propulsion principle of the "wet thermal power torpedo" is that the compressed oxygen in the gas tank enters the combustion chamber and is fully mixed with the fuel, so it is also called "oxygen power torpedo". As we all know, oxygen is a very dangerous gas. Combustion caused by pure oxygen in a small space can easily turn into a fatal explosion.
This "hot temper" has become the biggest technical difficulty in developing oxygen torpedoes. Serious explosion accidents have occurred in various countries during the development of oxygen torpedoes, which has made many technicians who pursue the dream of super torpedoes regretful.
Many countries gave up the development of oxygen torpedoes after repeated setbacks, but Japan in the East persisted. However, they also fell into the same dilemma as other countries - they could not find a way to make pure oxygen burn safely inside the torpedo.
But an accident gave the distressed torpedo technicians a glimmer of hope. At the ship review held in Yokohama in 1931, the seaplane carrier "Notoro" had a gasoline depot explosion. When studying related preventive measures, it was found that the use of gasoline anti-knock agent could achieve good results. This made the torpedo design department brighten up. In the previous oxygen torpedo experiment, once more than 25% of oxygen was mixed in the air, it was easy to explode. What would happen if gasoline anti-knock agent was added?
Then they found an interesting phenomenon: if the mixture of oxygen and atomized petroleum was ignited, an explosion would occur; but if pure oxygen was blown in after the petroleum was ignited, it would not explode. This discovery was great news for the research department. As long as this was understood, the remaining problems were no longer difficult.
In the first experiment in early 1932, researchers first input air into the combustion chamber, then sprayed out mist of petroleum and ignited it, and then blew in pure oxygen. Although it caused a violent combustion, it did not induce an explosion. This gave the researchers more confidence.
In the second experiment, they mixed 50% oxygen and 50% air (the ratio of oxygen and nitrogen was 5% and 5% respectively) into a compressed gas with a pressure of 195 kg per square centimeter, input it into the combustion chamber for ignition, and then gradually increased the oxygen purity to achieve pure oxygen combustion. This time, the structural strength of the combustion chamber was also strengthened with the increase in oxygen content, and the volume was also increased. The experiment was unexpectedly smooth, the fuel burned stably, and there was no explosion.
In the following days, although there were some difficulties and setbacks, the technicians still worked hard to improve the technical details, such as the problem of delivering a mixed gas of oxygen and air into the combustion chamber. They added a small starter combustion chamber (about 50 liters) next to the oxygen tank, where oxygen was first mixed with air, and then entered the main combustion chamber and mixed with atomized kerosene for combustion.