69novels Chapter 281 China's Independently Built U-III Submarine
Chapter 281 China's Independently Built U-III Submarine
"Baka! An ambush! Retreat! Retreat!"
The moment the searchlight came on, Hideo Inoue instinctively slid down the sloping rails, but a 7.92mm steel-core bullet still pierced his right shoulder, tearing off a large chunk of flesh.
Ignoring the excruciating pain, he desperately tried to struggle and jump into the river to escape.
However, a gray-black German Sd.Kfz.222 light wheeled armored vehicle roared and sped towards one end of the dam like a steel monster.
The Horch V8 engine roared in the dead of night, its black exhaust fumes carrying a strong tar smell.
"Squeak—!"
The heavy vehicle came to a precise stop in front of Hideo Inoue, accompanied by a screeching sound of brakes and the scraping of metal.
The muzzle of the 20mm KwK30 autocannon at the front of the vehicle gleamed coldly under the searchlight, locking onto his head.
The heavy rubber wheels of the armored vehicle, covered with anti-slip patterns, cruelly crushed his legs onto the cold steel rails!
"ah--!!"
A mournful howl, like that of a dying wild beast, instantly exploded on the banks of the Mawei River, drowning out the mournful sound of the wind and waves.
Inoue Hideo's leg bones were crushed to pieces by the hard wheels and rail steel, and his muscles and nerves were completely ruptured under the heavy pressure of the heavy armored vehicle. He was pinned to the dam, with only his upper body convulsing wildly in a pool of blood.
The armored vehicle's bulletproof steel door slowly opened.
Chen Zijun, dressed in a crisp German-style major general's uniform with a black military leather overcoat for wind protection and warmth, and shiny riding boots, calmly stepped off the armored vehicle.
He held his ever-present German Browning pistol in his hand, his eyes showing no pity, only chilling indifference and disdain.
Shen Li led dozens of military police armed with MP18 submachine guns and quickly surrounded the area, the muzzles of their guns gleaming coldly in the bright beam of light.
"You're Inoue Hideo?"
Chen Zijun walked up to him, looking down at the special agent chief who was howling on the ground like a dead dog, and sneered:
"I've been drinking tea in the camp for three hours waiting for you, and this is all the stuff you've brought? It's not even enough to use up a whole box of bullets for my guard battalion."
"Chen Zijun...you damned Chinese scum!"
Inoue Hideo gripped the rails tightly with both hands, dark red blood gushing from his mouth, his eyes twisted in extreme hatred and pain:
"Don't be too smug! The Imperial Combined Fleet is already assembling in the East China Sea! You have no navy at all! As soon as the cruisers and battleships of the Great Japanese Empire enter the mouth of the Min River, your Mawei Shipyard and Jiangnan Heavy Industry will be bombarded into a wasteland!"
"No navy?"
Chen Zijun chuckled, slowly squatted down, and patted Inoue Hideo's blood-stained face with the cold muzzle of the gun:
"Old devil, since you value your Imperial Navy's junk so much, then I'll be generous today and open your eyes to something new."
He stood up, turned to Liu Zhenliang, and instructed him:
"Open the gate and let our Japanese guests see our new treasure."
"Yes, young marshal!"
Liu Zhenliang was so excited that his face turned red. He ran all the way to the control room, let out a long sigh of relief, and pulled down the red hydraulic gate switch.
"Rumble rumble rumble—"
The roar of the huge electric motors echoed across the dam in the dead of night, causing the surrounding steel structure to tremble slightly.
Under Hideo Inoue's horrified, desperate, and incredulous gaze, the bulletproof door, weighing hundreds of tons and welded with special armored steel plates, at the deepest part of the Mawei Shipyard, slowly rose, accompanied by the piercing flashing of a red alarm.
Behind the gate, a massive, top-secret shipyard, illuminated by hundreds of high-powered incandescent lights like a brightly lit palace, was fully revealed under the night sky.
On the clear water of the reservoir, eight ships with hulls painted with special gray-black anti-rust paint and streamlined bodies that looked as menacing as underwater giant sharks were quietly floating.
The bridges of these behemoths are painted with striking white numbers: U-01 to U-08.
At the front of their long, graceful bows, four dark torpedo tubes, like open snake mouths, faced the churning river, radiating a chilling aura of death.
"This...this is impossible! This is absolutely impossible!"
Hideo Inoue stared intently at the row of long, ferocious underwater behemoths, his whole body trembling violently, blood even splitting from the corners of his mouth and eyes due to extreme fear.
"This is a Germanic U-boat! This is the pride of the German Navy!"
"Why would the Chinese have such a weapon?! Where did you get the blueprints?! How could you possibly build it in just a few months?!"
This completely exceeds Hideo Inoue's understanding of Chinese industry.
On the second-floor passageway of the top-secret dock at the Mawei Shipyard, several senior German engineers in blue work clothes were standing by the railing.
The leader was Fritz, the chief designer who had been poached by Lily from the Hamburg Vulcan shipyard with a high salary and a special agreement.
Holding a half-empty bottle of Munich dark beer, he gazed at the submarine in the pool and exclaimed in broken Chinese to his Chinese apprentices, "Young men, look at our masterpiece! This is the most perfect steel creation in the world. Your welding skills are already on par with the veteran workers in Hamburg!"
These submarines were entirely welded using the latest chromium-nickel-molybdenum alloy special steel from Ma'anshan.
According to tests conducted by naval engineers in Stuttgart, Germany, these submarines could reach a maximum diving depth of 220 meters, far exceeding the limits of sonar and anti-submarine depth charges on all Japanese destroyers of the same era!
Furthermore, the submarine is equipped with a heavy-duty diesel engine assembled by Jiangnan Heavy Industry, a high-density lead-acid battery from Siemens, and a high-precision optical periscope from Zeiss.
Once these eight submarines silently enter the East China Sea, the poorly defended merchant shipping lanes of the Japanese Empire will be turned into a sea of blood overnight!
Even the Imperial Navy's proud Nagato-class battleships are nothing more than slow-moving steel coffins in the face of these silent underwater assassins!
"If the Germans can make it, so can I."
Chen Zijun stomped on Inoue Hideo's bloodied chest, his eyes flashing with the arrogance and domineering aura of a ruthless overlord:
"Every piece of special steel plate here was forged by hand by the workers of my Ma'anshan Arsenal; every heavy-duty oil engine was meticulously tuned by the technicians of Jiangnan Heavy Industry!"
"Today, these eight deep-sea ghost ships were launched, but they were still missing a suitable ceremony to witness their arrival."
"It seems that the filthy blood of you Japanese spies is perfect for sacrificing to our flag!"
Chen Zijun turned around and coldly gave Shen Li the order:
"Tie all the living ones to scrap metal with iron chains and sink them into the Mawei River. Feed the dead directly to the fish. Don't leave a trace. I want the intelligence agencies in Tianjin and Dalian to think that their people have vanished into thin air."
"Yes! I understand!" Shen Li grinned, revealing a set of cold, white teeth.
"Chen Zijun! You devil! The Great Japanese Empire will not let you get away with this—!"
Amidst Hideo Inoue's mournful and desperate howls, several burly military police officers in black uniforms bound him tightly to an abandoned diesel engine with heavy iron chains and pushed him from the top of the dam into the turbulent waters of the Minjiang River estuary.
"Thump!"
A huge splash of water erupted, accompanied by several murky bubbles, and the arrogant head of the secret service and his ambition were instantly swallowed up by the cold, deep sea, leaving no trace.
At this moment, a sharp alarm sounded in the dock, and the huge water storage valves were fully opened, with the surging river water roaring into the dock under the force of gravity.
"Get in the water!"
Liu Zhenliang stood on the high platform and roared at the top of his lungs.
"Boom boom boom—"
The heavy oil engines of the eight German-made Class VII submarines emitted a deep and imposing roar underwater.
Under Chen Zijun's watchful eye, the eight black deep-sea sharks, following the surging currents of the estuary, glided slowly into the wide and deep waters of the Minjiang River estuary with an elegant yet terrifying posture.
They undulated on the water for a moment, then slowly tilted their bodies amidst the faint white smoke billowing from their exhaust pipes. Those menacing hulls, cast from special steel, vanished silently beneath the dark depths of the sea, completely entering their hunting territory.
China's first domestically produced and built underwater wolf pack was officially formed at this moment.
However, before the cold smile on Chen Zijun's face could fade, a communications soldier, his face ashen, scrambled up the stone steps behind the dam, clutching a red, top-secret telegram paper tightly in his hand, his voice shrill and trembling:
"Young Marshal! Urgent telegram from the Northeast!"
"Half an hour ago, elite troops of the Japanese Kwantung Army brazenly opened fire along the Chinese Eastern Railway, using the pretext of searching for missing soldiers to launch a fierce attack!"
"The main defensive line of the Northeast Army has voluntarily retreated, and three Class A divisions of the Kwantung Army are crossing the Yalu River, ostensibly to protect overseas Chinese, with their vanguard advancing directly towards the three northeastern provinces!"
"The Fengtian warlords haven't sent any telegrams yet, but President Chiang Kai-shek of Nanjing University is still sending telegrams to the whole country, saying that he has applied for the League of Nations to intervene and demand that 'the situation be prevented from escalating and a peaceful resolution be reached'!"
"Currently, the Northeast is in imminent danger!"
Under the night sky, the howling sea breeze seemed to fall into a deathly silence for a moment.
Chen Zijun snatched the telegram, his gaze sweeping over every word. The simmering, suppressed rage in his eyes erupted, transforming into boundless, domineering killing intent.
"President Chang is still counting on those foreign devils from the League of Nations? That's utterly ridiculous!"
"That Xiao Liu is a bastard too. The hatred for his father's murder is irreconcilable, how could he tolerate this?"
With a flick of his wrist, Chen Zijun crushed the telegram into tiny pieces, letting the shreds drift like snowflakes into the cold seawater in the night wind.
He slowly turned around, looking at the dark sky over Mawei Harbor, and spoke slowly and deliberately, each word like a knife:
"Damn it, these little devils finally couldn't hold back and used their knives."
"Shen Li! Notify the First and Second Armies that all leave is cancelled, all army officers return to their camps immediately, and all army soldiers return to their units immediately! Inventory of combat supplies overnight and issue live ammunition!"
"Have He Maofeng's Second Army prepare to march north along the Jinpu Railway overnight! The armored divisions and heavy artillery brigades under the First Army must immediately board trains and be transported to the Heze-Shangqiu line within three days to deploy along the Yellow River!"
"Young Marshal, where shall we fight?" Shen Li's eyes gleamed with fervent fighting spirit.
"To Beiping! To Beiping!"
A cruel, ruthless smile curled at the corner of Chen Zijun's lips as he gazed at the deep northern night sky:
"I risked my life to stand in Beiping and tell the world that this country is not yet lost, and that there are those who will stand against the foreign enemy!"