Volume 1: The Empire Awakens Chapter 32: Demonstration of Strength (Part 1)
Three hours before dawn, the seaplane carrying Tan Renhao and other three people landed next to the light cruiser "Bolanghe".
In the moonlight, this 6,000-ton light cruiser looked like a huge whale floating on the sea.
It was not until the seaplane approached that Tan Renhao saw the warship that did not emit any lights. He didn't know how the two pilots saw the warship.
" Renhao, look!"
Tan Renhao was startled and immediately looked in the direction of Hao Dongjue's finger.
There were two huge shadows floating on the sea in the southeast direction. Although they were blurry, it was clear that they were two warships, one large and one small.
"That's the Dongting Lake and the Jiading."
Ji Xiaobin came over. The seaplane he and two other staff officers were riding in landed five minutes in advance. "After we sink these two warships , the Liaoning government will fund the construction of an artificial underwater reef here so that nearby fishermen can fish here."
This was obviously an excuse that the Navy Command had prepared long ago.
The retirement of the battleship "Dongting Lake" and the heavy cruiser "Jiading" must be made public, and it cannot be hidden from anyone.
If these two warships suddenly disappeared, it would arouse the suspicion of enemy spies and would not help maintain confidentiality at all.
Now, it is more convincing to find a reason to build artificial reefs.
"You should go and rest early. Tomorrow we will survey the hydrological conditions and set the attack route."
Ji Xiaobin yawned. "I'll send someone to wake you up at eight o'clock, so don't look at the night view here!"
"Okay, let's go take a break then!"
Tan Renhao immediately accepted the colonel's "suggestion". The several days of sea voyage had prevented him from getting a good rest, and when he was on the plane, Hao Dongjue didn't even give him a chance to close his eyes and take a nap.
The three were assigned to a narrow non-commissioned officer's cabin, which had a total of four bunks, but it was very cramped.
Chang Jianxin quickly calmed down the complaining Hao Dongjue, because this was the collective cabin second only to the officers' cabin on any warship. If he was arranged to the soldier's cabin, Hao Dongjue would definitely not be able to sleep all night. That was truly "cramped". Just as he fell asleep for a while, a soldier on the battleship came over and woke up Tan Renhao and the others.
When the three men arrived at the place where the lifeboat was moored on the rear deck of the battleship, Colonel Ji Xiaobin and his two staff officers helped the sailors on the battleship to put a lifeboat equipped with a propeller on the sea.
"We will go over in the lifeboat."
Ji Xiaobin pointed at the two warships in the distance and said, "We first need to determine the surrounding hydrological conditions and the distribution of the reefs on the seabed, and then design a bombing route today. We must hand it over to the bomber unit as soon as possible so that they can decide the best attack route."
Tan Renhao and the other two immediately came up to help.
As a result, in order to save time, they even had breakfast on the lifeboat.
The two warships were parked on the sea five kilometers away from the "Bolanghe" cruiser.
They were brought here by tugboats, and each battleship was guarded by a squad of Marines who would be evacuated just before the bombing began.
Three Marine divers were responsible for assisting Ji Xiaobin in collecting information on the distribution of underwater reefs.
Tan Renhao was responsible for collecting the hydrological conditions on the sea.
The most important data are water temperature, salinity, transparency of seawater, water flow direction, water flow speed, wind direction, wind speed, etc.
These data may seem a bit redundant to many people, but in order to ensure that the bombing can achieve the best results, it is necessary to try to grasp any hydrological and weather conditions that may interfere with bombs or torpedoes.
They were busy until the evening before returning to the cruiser "Bolanghe".
When they arrived at the officers' mess, most of the officers had already returned to their posts.
After several people ordered a standard officer's meal each, they sat down at two tables in the corner of the restaurant.
“This is a distribution map of the submarine reefs and the water depth nearby.”
Ji Xiaobin must have studied professional drawing. The seabed map with isobaths that he drew temporarily is not much inferior to those professional seabed maps.
"The biggest problem is that the maximum water depth in the waters around here is only about 50 meters, and the shallowest is less than 10 meters. Renhao, what is the shallowest water depth required for the Swordfish torpedo?"
Tan Renhao was stunned for a moment, and immediately put down the data he was collecting, and said, "The minimum operating depth is 30 meters, and it would be best if it could reach 40 meters."
Ji Xiaobin looked at the drawn seabed map for a while.
"If we follow this requirement, then there are only four torpedo release points at most. Even if we use 30 meters as the standard, there are only ten torpedo release points at most. Among them, the release point closest to the target is here."
Tan Renhao immediately took a look at the colonel's underwater map.
"It's two thousand meters away. Isn't that a bit too far?"
Ji Xiaobin shrugged.
"Unless we can get someone to tow the battleship a little further south, this is our only choice."
Both of them fell silent.
Although the range of the Swordfish torpedo reaches 8,000 meters, the pilots of those bombers may not have fully mastered all the techniques of torpedo bombing.
If the torpedo is thrown a little too far, it will definitely affect the result.
Of course, it is impossible to change the location of the battleship, because the sinking location of the battleship has been determined long ago and cannot be easily changed.
"Colonel, there's no need to go through so much trouble."
At this time, Hao Dongjue came over and said, "The standard bombing altitude of the Tangle is 250 meters. If we can reduce this altitude to 150 meters or even 100 meters, then the minimum depth required for the torpedo can be reduced to about 20 meters. In this way, we can choose a closer torpedo entry point."
Ji Xiaobin frowned slightly, then nodded slowly.
"Can those pilots do that?"
Tan Renhao was a little worried.
"It shouldn't be a big problem. They even conducted torpedo dropping training at an altitude of fifty meters before."
Ji Xiaobin took out a cigarette. The officer's cabin was the only public cabin on the cruiser where smoking was allowed.
"If we set the drop height at 100 meters, there won't be much of a problem. Renhao, have you finished the data you're responsible for?"
Tan Renhao gave the sorted data to Colonel Ji Xiaobin, and then started to deal with the plate of food in front of him. After being busy all day, his biggest feeling was "hungry".
