Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

Arctic.

A big, dark ship sailed rapidly in the deep sea.

It is indeed the "big guy". This is the second nuclear-powered submarine that the German Navy has just launched on a trial mission. The ship is 98 meters long, 5 meters wide, and has an underwater displacement of up to 5,000 tons. It is indeed deep enough. Its submersible depth at this time is 350 meters under the sea; and its speed has reached 28 knots.

The diving depth is 350 meters, and the ultimate depth can reach 400 meters; this depth is unimaginable for World War II submarines. Although submarines in the World War II era had made great progress compared to World War I, due to technical limitations at the time, the general combat depth was only 100 to 150 meters, and few dived 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 surface ships of the Soviet Navy at that time was not as good as that of the US military, and they could not directly compete with the US fleet on the sea, so the Soviet Union was very Pay attention to the development of nuclear submarines. When nuclear submarines are in combat, they mainly need to reduce their own noise so that they will not be detected by enemy sonar. The deeper a nuclear submarine dives, the smaller the noise it generates. Therefore, at that time, the Soviet Union A number of submarines were built using expensive titanium alloys. These submarines have much higher pressure resistance than ordinary submarines, so they can dive deeper.

Currently, the world's deepest recorded submarine dive record was created by the Soviet Union's Type 685 nuclear attack submarine. This submarine dived to an astonishing depth of 1,250 meters! 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 skyrocketed. The submarines built by the Soviet Union that can dive to a depth of 600+ are all made of titanium alloy, so there is a saying that they are equal to gold. So the price/performance ratio is terrible. The cost of a submarine that can dive to a depth of 1,000 meters is definitely much more expensive than three submarines of the same level that can dive to a depth of 400 meters, but its combat efficiency may not be comparable to two submarines that can dive to a depth of 400 meters.

It has lost its actual combat capability at such a deep depth, and is basically meaningless except that it can be "there". This depth means that enemy anti-submarine weapons may fail, but it also means that your offensive weapons may fail - various temperature change layers and other things may even cause your observation methods to fail at the same time - staying in the deep sea and pretending to be a fleet sounds very difficult. stay……

When you need to attack the enemy, you must either have the submarine itself at a large elevation angle in the water, or your torpedo can be launched and climb quickly at a large angle. But in the former case, how do you plan to waste tonnage in designing the internal structure of the boat? The latter may be more difficult to achieve than your super-deep 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 method.

In fact, the United States has also gone through this wrong path. When the U.S. Navy developed the Seawolf class, it designed the submarine's diving depth to 600 meters in order to increase its survivability. But such an advanced submarine is naturally not cheap, costing US$3 billion each. There is a lot of money in the United States, and as long as the performance is good, I accept it. However, in actual use, it has been found that the wave level with high diving depth does not help much in counter-detection. The detection distance will not increase due to the improvement of the diving depth ability, and enemy anti-submarine weapons can also reach this depth, but it does not seem to be very effective.

Americans soon realized that there was no point in focusing on extreme 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 shell materials used by the submarine are. This kind of development is not worth the gain, so the US military develops Developed some nuclear submarines with very balanced performance.

It was not until later that the Russian Navy recognized this view and also lowered the maximum diving depth; the maximum diving depth of the Borei God was 450 meters. It can be said that the submarines of both countries in later generations tended to operate in shallow waters.

"Report, we have reached the top!" Upon hearing the pilot's report, the captain's face showed an excited smile. "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 records date back to the Greek Pytheas. He bravely sailed to the waters of what is now Iceland and northern Norway.

In 870 AD, the Scandinavian Otar traveled east from Cape Nolchen, entered the North Lundz Sea, sailed along the Kola Peninsula, and discovered the White Sea. This was the earliest recorded voyage into the Arctic Ocean.

In 1893, 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 stepped onto the North Pole.

Reaching the extreme point 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 a continent covered by ice and snow, there is real land under the ice and snow; the Arctic has no land. The Arctic Ocean was originally just an ocean and was frozen into a huge piece by extreme temperatures (the Arctic glacier area in summer is 800 million square kilometers (11 million square kilometers in winter), with an average thickness of 3 meters.

It is basically impossible for ordinary submarines to pass under this iceberg with an area of ​​​​8 million square kilometers, because conventional submarines need to surface to breathe.

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, used to heat water, turn it into steam, and drive the steam turbine to do work. , energy can be output. It can directly drive the propeller at the tail through the reducer to move the submarine forward, and it can also drive the generator to provide power to the entire submarine.

In this way, nuclear submarines have almost inexhaustible power, and the oxygen needed by the submarine can be decomposed from seawater using the ionization decomposition method. The gases released by seawater decomposition are not only oxygen, but also hydrogen. Therefore, there is also a special place for storing hydrogen on the submarine. The decomposed hydrogen will be stored here, and the decomposed oxygen will be sent to various cabins 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 submariners for bathing or washing dishes. Drinking fresh water still needs to be brought with you.

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