Chapter 784 Nuclear Submarine

Arctic.

A dark giant is speeding in the deep sea.

It is indeed a "big guy". This is the second nuclear-powered submarine that the German Navy has just launched for a trial mission. The length of the ship is 98 meters, the width is 5 meters, and the underwater displacement is as high as 5,000 tons; it is indeed deep enough, its diving depth at this time is 350 meters below the seabed; and the speed reaches 28 knots.

The diving depth is 350 meters, and the maximum depth can reach 400 meters; this depth is unimaginable for submarines in World War II. Although submarines in the Second World War have made great progress compared to those in World War I, due to the limitations of technology at the time, the general combat depth is only 100 to 150 meters, and few dive to 200 meters.

Of course, this 400 meters is not the limit; the Soviet Union in later generations was very obsessed with the diving depth of submarines, because the performance of the surface ships of the Soviet Navy at that time was not as good as that of the US Navy, and it could not directly compete with the US fleet on the sea, so the Soviet Union attached great importance to the development of nuclear submarines. When nuclear submarines are in combat, they mainly need to reduce their noise so that they will not be discovered by the enemy's sonar. The deeper the nuclear submarine dives, the less noise it produces. Therefore, the Soviet Union built a batch of submarines with expensive titanium alloys at that time. The pressure resistance of these submarines is much higher than that of ordinary submarines, so they can dive deeper.

The deepest submarine diving record in the world with written records is created by the Soviet Union's Type 685 attack nuclear submarine. The diving depth of this submarine has reached an astonishing 1,250 meters! Apart from this, no other country's submarines have dived to this depth.

However, it is true that the amazing depth brings better concealment performance, but it also brings many side effects. For example, the cost of construction has soared to the sky. The submarines built by the Soviet Union that can dive to a depth of 600+ are all made of titanium alloys, so there is a saying that they are equal to the weight of gold. So the cost performance is terrible. A submarine that can dive to a depth of 1,000 meters is definitely more expensive than three submarines of the same level that can dive to a depth of 400 meters, but its combat efficiency may not even be as good as that of two submarines that can dive to a depth of 400 meters.

Such a deep depth has already lost its actual combat capability, and it is basically meaningless except that it can be "there". This depth means that the enemy's anti-submarine weapons may fail, and it also means that your offensive weapons will fail - various temperature change layers may even make your observation methods fail together - staying in the deep sea to play the role of a fleet sounds stupid...

When you need to attack the enemy, either the submarine itself will have a large elevation angle in the water, or your torpedo can be fired and then quickly climb at a large angle, but how does the former plan to waste tonnage to design the internal structure of the boat? The latter may be more difficult to achieve than your ultra-deep-diving submarine...

The core of submarine warfare lies in concealment, speed, and acoustic analysis. Relying on diving deeper to achieve this is a very cost-effective means.

In fact, the United States has also gone through this wrong path. When the US Navy developed the Seawolf class, it designed the diving depth of this class of submarines to be 600 meters, intending to increase survivability. But such advanced submarines are naturally not cheap, each costs 3 billion US dollars. The United States has a lot of money, so as long as the performance is good, it will accept it. However, in actual use, it was found that the high-diving wave-class submarines are not very helpful for anti-detection. The detection distance will not increase with the increase of diving depth, and the enemy's anti-submarine weapons can still reach this depth, which seems to be of little use.

Soon the Americans realized that it was meaningless to dwell on the extreme deep diving. Most of the oceans in the world are not deep, and most of the sea areas where submarines operate are not deep seas. Moreover, the deeper the submarine dives, the more expensive the hull materials used by the submarine are. This development is not worth the loss, so the US military has developed some nuclear submarines with very balanced performance.

Until later, the Russian Navy also recognized this view and also reduced the maximum diving depth; the maximum diving depth of the God of the North Wind is 450 meters. It can be said that the submarines of the two countries in later generations tend to fight in shallow waters.

"Report, we have reached the pole!" Hearing the report of the navigator, the captain showed an excited smile on his face. "We will create a miracle and become the first submarine to cross the Arctic!"

According to research, humans have explored the Arctic region more than 2,000 years ago. The earliest record can be traced back to the Greek Bidyas. He bravely sailed to the sea surface of today's Iceland and northern Norway.

In 870 AD, the Scandinavian Ottar sailed east from Cape Norrchen, entered the North Lenz Sea, sailed along the Kola Peninsula, and discovered the White Sea. This is the earliest recorded voyage into the Arctic Ocean.

In 1893, the Norwegian explorer Nansen led an expedition to 86°14′ north latitude, which was the deepest entry into the Arctic region in the 19th century.

On April 6, 1909, Matt Henson and Robert Peary successively landed on the North Pole.

Reaching the pole on the ice is the limit of human challenge, but no one has ever tried to cross the Arctic from the bottom of the sea.

Unlike the Antarctic continent, which is covered by ice and snow, and there is real land under the ice and snow; the Arctic has no land. The Arctic Ocean was originally just an ocean, but was frozen into a huge iceberg with an average thickness of 3 meters (the area of ​​the Arctic glacier is 8 million square kilometers in summer and 11 million square kilometers in winter) by the extreme temperature.

It is basically impossible for ordinary submarines to pass under this 8 million square kilometer iceberg, because conventional submarines need to surface for breathing.

Nuclear submarines do not need to surface for air. The biggest advantage of nuclear power is that it provides almost unlimited endurance. The energy contained in atoms is released through fission. The heat generated is like a boiler, which is used to heat water, turn it into steam, and drive the turbine to do work, so that energy can be output. The reducer can directly drive the propeller at the tail to make the submarine move forward, and it can also drive the generator to power the entire submarine.

In this way, nuclear submarines have almost inexhaustible electricity, and the oxygen needed by the submarine can be decomposed from seawater by ionization decomposition. The gas decomposed from seawater is not only oxygen, but also hydrogen. Therefore, there is a special place on the submarine to store hydrogen. The decomposed hydrogen will be stored here, and the decomposed oxygen will be delivered to various compartments on the submarine through the ventilation system.

As for fresh water, although the submarine is equipped with seawater desalination equipment, the effect is not ideal. The extracted fresh water is mainly used by submarine soldiers for bathing or washing dishes, and drinking fresh water still needs to be brought by themselves.

In this way, the submarine only needs to prepare sufficient food and fresh water when sailing, and air can be prepared to meet the submarine's navigation requirements to the maximum extent. How long it can sail underwater depends entirely on the self-sustaining ability of the submarine's crew.