50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 484 Rice for Warships

RSV Group, a ship design and manufacturing company, has all its shipyards owned by a subsidiary called Rotterdam Dry Dock Company.

As its name suggests, Rotterdam Dockyard is a shipyard located in Rotterdam, and they own several large land-based dry docks.

Amsterdam Navy's Spearfish-class diesel-electric submarines were built at the Rotterdam shipyard.

Amsterdam's submarine manufacturing capabilities are also strange; they can design and manufacture cutting-edge submarines on their own, but their own military's purchasing power is very limited.

As we all know, no matter what you design and manufacture, the more you make, the cheaper it is. But if you design something and only build a few ships, you will definitely lose money.

For example, after RSV completed the design of the Spearfish-class diesel-electric submarine, the Amsterdam Navy only purchased two, and as a result, RSV Group did not even make back its costs.

The RSV Group's insistence on the export order for these two submarines is closely related to their submarine research and development work, which is driven by a disregard for cost.

Running out of money, they can only resort to arms sales and foreign trade. This approach is correct, but they shouldn't have targeted us.

Amsterdam has a small land area, with its widest point from north to south being only about 300 kilometers, and the distance from Amsterdam city to the port of Rotterdam is only about 50 kilometers.

He had been to the Port of Rotterdam once before. A few years ago, he returned from studying in the UK and stopped in The Hague for two days because he needed to transfer trains there.

At that time, a third secretary from the embassy took him on a tour of the Port of Rotterdam.

Rotterdam is the second largest city in the Netherlands, with a total area of ​​218.4 square kilometers and a current population of less than 50.

In terms of both area and population, it is comparable to a small county town in the Central Plains of China.

However, the region is economically very developed, and the Port of Rotterdam became the world's largest port in 1961.

It has 400 sea routes to all parts of the world, and approximately 3.1 ocean-going vessels and 18 to 20 inland waterway vessels call at its ports each year.

The Rotterdam Dry Dock Company is located next to the Port of Rotterdam. They are the largest shipyard in the area, with a history dating back to 1856.

In the 1950s, he also built the cruiser Zeven for the Amsterdam Navy. Ten years ago, the Rotterdam dry dock company merged with several other companies to form the current RSV Group.

Sun Zhiwei hitched a ride in Amsterdam and drove for more than an hour to reach Rotterdam.

Amsterdam, a small country, is located between Germany and the sphere of influence of the Russian bear.

Since World War II, it has been in a relatively safe environment, and since it does not have any military advantages, it has rarely been targeted by the Soviet Union.

Not only is its military power weak, but its two intelligence agencies, the Public Intelligence Directorate AIVD and the Military Intelligence Directorate MIVD, are also quite incompetent.

Compared to the United States, this place is practically undefended for Sun Zhiwei.

According to his estimate, the most powerful military force in Amsterdam is probably the two M Army air bases.

However, Steberg Air Base and Volker Air Base are hundreds of kilometers away from Rotterdam, and Sun Zhiwei will not cause trouble for them this time.

He parked his car near the port and checked into a small hotel using his Hong Kong Island passport. Two days later, he had figured out the locations of all the dry docks and office buildings of the Rotterdam Dry Dock Company.

In their office building, Sun Zhiwei found the safe room where paper design documents for submarines were stored. Inside, he discovered the complete set of design drawings for the Spearfish-class submarine.

These include overall structural diagrams (structural and layout relationships), detailed design drawings (dimensions, structure, and materials of each compartment), system diagrams (layout and connections of avionics, communication, navigation, and other systems), component drawings (detailed design drawings of key components such as torpedo tubes, battery packs, and diesel engines), and final assembly drawings.

All the blueprints for the Sailfish-class ships filled an entire room, with the formulas for hull materials and the design drawings for diesel engines being the most valuable for reference.

The data safe room contains not only blueprints for the Spearfish-class submarine, but also a complete set of design drawings for a new type of submarine—the Walrus-class.

Even the design blueprints for the cruiser Zevin they built back then are included.

This piqued his interest. Our country's warship manufacturing is currently a weakness. The largest ships in the entire navy are still the four second-hand destroyers that were acquired in the 1950s in exchange for 68 tons of gold.

68 tons of gold, at the gold price at the time, was worth $2.3 million, which was about the same price as building a Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier back then.

But at that time we had a sea but no defense, and faced with the Russian bear's exorbitant demands, we had no choice but to accept this astronomical price.

However, after we got the ships, we found that although these four destroyers were only 2451 tons and their overall performance was a generation behind, their firepower was indeed very strong and their speed was extremely fast, reaching 37 knots.

Moreover, the Soviet Union didn't have many ships to sell to us back then, and their navy valued these four destroyers highly, maintaining them very well in daily operations.

Overall, they were quite usable. These four destroyers have now become the four pillars of our navy, and the rise of our modern shipbuilding industry in later generations also began with the study of these four pillars.

Moreover, the 68 tons of gold was just a figure on paper. Back then, we were extremely poor, so where would we get the real gold and silver? In the end, we settled the debt entirely with agricultural products.

In summary, we traded rice and eggs for four old warships, which makes us feel much better.

Later, through studying the Four Great Kings, we began to build our own ships.

Because we only had destroyers as a reference, the only destroyers we could build were destroyers. Later, we built them bigger and bigger, and finally we built the Type 055 destroyer that roams the oceans.

However, in this era, destroyers were only medium-sized ships, and before the technology of vertical launch missile units matured, destroyers could not compare with cruisers.

Was it that we didn't want to build cruisers and battleships back then? No, it was that we couldn't.

We can't buy them even if we want to, and we don't even have any reference points. It's a bit difficult to start researching from scratch with nothing to our knowledge.

He hadn't thought about this issue before, but now that a complete blueprint for a fully developed cruiser was right in front of him, he wasn't going to hold back.

The space was immediately activated, and the blueprints for several rooms disappeared instantly into the Rotterdam Dry Dock Company's database without anyone knowing.

To prevent the theft from turning into a paranormal event, he even brought in dozens of tons of waste paper from a scrap yard in the suburbs to fill the database.

The next morning, Sun Zhiwei got up from the hotel and went to the restaurant on the first floor for breakfast. The largest local newspaper, the *Neuro Rotterdam Business Daily*, had a headline story about this:
A fire broke out last night at the office building of the Rotterdam Dry Dock Company due to aging electrical wiring, and the entire building was destroyed. The exact extent of the damage is still being assessed.

(End of this chapter)