books44 Chapter 924 A Life Hanging by a Thread? Even a dog wouldn't believe it!
Chapter 924 A Life Hanging by a Thread? Even a dog wouldn't believe it!
Inside the shipyard at the Daryan base, a bustling scene of activity unfolded.
Now that everyone has decided to "release the tiger back to the mountain," the restoration of the "Zhaochao" has become the top priority.
In the words of the simpleton, it's about making the whole show of it, so that the head of the family can happily sail back in the submarine.
Therefore, the most important thing is to repair the huge dent and tear on its hull that was formed in the collision.
In the dock, workers were busy working on the hull of the "Hayashio". Sparks flew and the sound of hammering filled the air. However, progress was not going smoothly.
Several experienced workers were looking at a piece of domestically made special steel plate that they were about to replace.
"That's weird!" an experienced craftsman said, pointing to a huge dent in the hull of the boat.
After such a collision, it should have shattered into eight pieces by now! But look at the breach, it's mainly torn open and caved in, but there aren't any large chunks breaking apart! The steel is incredibly resilient!
"Nonsense! Do you need to tell me?"
Another welder irritably ripped off his welding goggles and slammed them onto the deck: "What kind of weird steel are these Japanese devils using to weld these iron lumps? I've been welding ships for thirty years and I've never seen anything this difficult to work with! As soon as the welding rod goes in, either it doesn't grip the edge or the weld cracks in the middle! It's like welding an iron lump onto tofu; it just won't melt together!"
"Hey, didn't Engineer Peng come over earlier and say he wanted to use a high current, a fast-moving gun, for a head-on collision? Why didn't you change it?"
"What's the use! I've tried junction 422, I've tried junction 507, I've adjusted the current from 90 amps to 150 amps, I've gone back and forth eight times!"
"The T188s sent from the Tianjin factory are okay, but they're not enough. There are only five in total..."
"Old Wang! How about we try 180A again! It's supposed to be high current, right? Let's go for the highest current, I don't believe we can't handle it!"
"Okay, try again!"
Old Wang, the welding master who had smashed his welding goggles, picked up his welding torch again, cursing and preparing to grit his teeth and go back to work.
Jiang Xia emerged from the breach, wearing oil-stained work clothes and holding calipers. As he watched the master welder start the welding machine, even his tuft of hair seemed to stand up alertly.
"No! Stop!"
Jiang Xia strode to the welding point, squatted down, and carefully inspected the still-warm weld.
"Master Wang, this welding method won't work! The preheating temperature is insufficient, and the interpass temperature isn't controlled properly! Moreover, the material of our welding rods is incompatible with the hull steel, which will cause severe stress concentration. Let alone the pressure of the deep sea, it would be difficult to even tow it back to international waters!"
"besides……"
Master Wang, already irritable from the frustrating work, slammed his welding torch on the ground, ripped off his welding goggles, and yelled angrily at Jiang Xia, who had just suggested "preheating and temperature control, and using multi-pass slow welding":
"Jiang, you make it sound so easy! The steel for this little boat hull is really tricky! First, Engineer Peng said we needed high current and single-pass fast welding to prevent overheating! Now you're saying we need preheating, temperature control, and multiple slow welding passes!"
"One Bodhisattva in front, one decree; one monk behind, one sutra! How are we supposed to get this job done? Why don't you go and fight Engineer Peng? Whoever wins, we'll listen to him!"
Who do you listen to?
Of course I'll listen to Lao Tzu!
Jiangxia, who has been working non-stop, is now getting a bit irritable.
The main reason was that, in order to repair this submarine, which he thought was pretty good, the kid used his precious points to exchange for data on the Hayashio-class submarine from the system's shop.
I was so angry I almost laughed when I saw it: this seemingly advanced submarine is actually a "Frankenstein's monster"!
The sonar used is the outdated AN/BQR-2 passive sonar from Bald Eagle, whose detection accuracy is already a generation behind. The power system uses a combination of a diesel engine manufactured by Hansmiao and an electric motor from Bald Eagle's General Electric.
The items themselves are all good, but the way they're matched and integrated is absolutely terrible.
Despite his dizziness, the clueless kid ran a simulation using the system. The underwater noise of this crappy submarine was only slightly better than our 6603; at best, one was like a detonating thunderbolt underwater, the other like a detonating firecracker…
It's just the pot calling the kettle black.
The hull structure did copy some of the streamlined design concepts of the Hanseatic XXI submarine, but due to the limitations of Japan's welding and steel technology at the time, the pressure hull strength and diving depth were only 150 meters.
Bah! How dare you even leave the house if you can't even dive 300 meters? Why didn't your bald eagle daddy teach you the "skipjack tuna" diving technique that allows you to dive over 300 meters?
It seems I'm still not favored!
What really troubled the young man was the marine steel that had infuriated the veteran craftsmen.
At first, the kid thought they were using some kind of advanced technology, but then...
What kind of cutting-edge technology is this?!
They used DS series high-strength low-alloy steel!
This type of steel was developed by Japan in the later stages of the war to cope with resource shortages and ensure structural strength.
This type of steel contains a high proportion of alloying elements such as copper and chromium, giving it superior pressure resistance and corrosion resistance at the same thickness.
However, these same alloying elements, while contributing to the steel's success, also have their downside: they significantly increase the carbon equivalent of the steel. Excessive carbon equivalent leads to increased hardening and embrittlement of the heat-affected zone during welding.
In layman's terms, conventional arc welding can easily cause steel to be "quenched" near the weld, forming a hard and brittle martensitic structure. This not only results in poor weld bonding strength but also creates a fatal hidden danger of stress corrosion cracking.
In layman's terms, the heat-affected zone is extremely prone to hardening and embrittlement during welding, and it can crack if you're not careful.
The reason Jiang Xia was so sensitive to the character of this DS steel set, even with an indescribable contempt, was because he knew about the scandal that was related to it and shocked the world.
These guys keep chanting about "craftsmanship" and "dedicating their lives to it," but behind the scenes they're turning this inherently unstable steel into "data magic"!
Do people still remember the Kobe Steel scandal decades later?
That wasn't a momentary oversight or a few products failing to meet standards. It was a systematic and organized data falsification that lasted for decades, starting in the 1970s and 80s!
From the most common steel to special aluminum and copper materials used in automobiles, aviation, and even defense, Kobe Steel has long and extensively forged quality certificates, marking products that do not meet customer-specified strength standards as "qualified" for shipment.
This is not the mistake of a single worker, but a collective fraud that the entire management team condoned or even drove in order to maintain their myth of manufacturing and corporate profits!
Their shamelessness lies in the fact that they are not incapable of producing qualified products, but rather they deliberately chose to counterfeit in order to save costs and increase efficiency, and completely shifted the risks to their customers, disregarding the lives of countless people who depend on the safety of their materials!
Even more ironically, when the scandal was exposed, the executives who usually talked about the spirit of craftsmanship lined up to bow and apologize, which was a farcical scene of bowing to the spirit of craftsmanship!
They bowed so formally, yet not a single person resigned to take responsibility! Is this the sense of responsibility they boast about?
This deeply ingrained "counterfeiting gene" seems to have already begun to emerge in earlier times, in materials like DS steel that "meet the specifications" while disregarding actual process compatibility and long-term safety!
Looking at the ship in front of him now, Jiang Xia felt only irony.
It turns out that Kobe Steel's tradition of falsification was already foreshadowed at this time.
Using seemingly advanced but actually potentially dangerous materials, how did they create these seemingly impressive but ultimately ineffective weapons?
No wonder their equipment kept having all sorts of inexplicable quality accidents in later generations, Jiang Xia thought to himself. From cracked tank armor to leaking welds on warships, the root cause was probably right here!
Thinking about this, Jiang Xia looked at the pile of Frankenstein's monsters in front of him and suddenly felt bored.
Anyone would be furious to exchange their precious points for such a fake high-tech gift pack.
but……
You can't take it out on your own family when an outsider makes a mistake, can you? Just think of it as a fisherman baiting the spot...
Jiang Xia tapped the cold steel shell lightly with his fingers, producing a dull sound.
After calming down, he looked up and flashed eight teeth at the fuming Master Wang:
"It's not weird, it's just that the material is special. This DS steel has a high carbon equivalent. If you use ordinary welding rods and such a large current, the heat input is too high, and the area around the weld cools too quickly, resulting in a hardened structure."
If we continue welding, it will either crack or break brittlely; if we dive deeper at sea, the pressure will cause it to disintegrate.
"In that case, it will be unable to fulfill its special mission!"
Special mission?
Oh! According to our tradition, the last one to pilot the submarine should be one of our family's soldiers.
That's definitely not something we can fool!
The masters all considered this point and straightened their attitudes, waiting for this clueless kid in front of them to come up with a solution.
"Hey! Which kid is spouting nonsense here, saying that my methods, Old Peng's, are no good?"