Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 169 Fish Gun

The reason for this was mainly for the next operation, because during the second operation, it was discovered that the ship had been sunk by underwater bombs.

Some soldiers even jumped into the water, ready to fight Wang Gensheng and his men!
Fortunately, Wang Gensheng and his companions were equipped with hand and foot flippers, so they swam very fast and were not caught.

Therefore, Wang Gensheng naturally had to recall his memories of frogmen and think about how to enhance underwater combat capabilities. After all, firearms are unusable underwater, and with an effective range of only one meter, it's better not to use them at all.

The earliest frogmen were in 1917, when the Italian frogman unit pioneered the sinking of a warship.

They invented a manned torpedo called the "leech." Two frogmen boarded the torpedo and infiltrated the port of Pola, sinking the Austro-Hungarian Empire's 21,000-ton flagship, the battleship "Unitis."

Then during World War II, the Italian frogmen continued their efforts, upgrading the "leech" to the "pig".

In 1940, six frogmen infiltrated the heavily guarded port of Alexandria, Egypt, aboard three "Pig" manned torpedoes. They secured the torpedoes to the hulls of the battleships HMS Courageous and HMS Queen Elizabeth, as well as the tanker Sagouna, inflicting heavy damage on the British Mediterranean Fleet.

The original target of this trip was also an aircraft carrier, but it left port a day early and escaped disaster, while the unfortunate "Saguna" oil tanker took the brunt of the torrent.

The British Navy, not to be outdone, produced a similar product in 1943. British frogman units sank Italy's cruiser "Traiono" in the Mediterranean and severely damaged Germany's battleship "Tirpitz" in the Norwegian fjords.

Then in 1945, the British military used mini-submarines to carry frogmen to install six magnetic mines on the bottom of the Japanese heavy cruiser "Kaohsiung" docked in Singapore, rendering it completely incapable of fighting.

However, the frogmen's glorious achievements did not fade away; on the contrary, they became even more brilliant.

This happened in 1964. Vietnamese frogman troops severely damaged the US Navy escort carrier "Card" in Saigon-Nha Trang harbor, sinking it in the port and shocking the world.

It's important to know that the USS Card was a Bogue-class escort carrier built by the United States during World War II, capable of carrying 28 aircraft.

Of course, where there is a spear, there is a shield. The emergence of frogmen naturally brings with it the emergence of countermeasures, technologies, and protective measures.

Naval ports are key areas of protection. Large warships are large targets, making them quite difficult to protect. While they are relatively easy to protect when sailing, warships are fast, have all their detection equipment running at full capacity, and are easily detected even if frogmen cannot keep up.

Therefore, the real danger lies inside the port, where frogmen are too small to be easily detected.

Historically, 40 percent of naval battle losses occurred in port anchorages, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was a typical example of a failed port defense.

It should be noted that the Japanese also dispatched frogman units at the time, but their achievements were overshadowed by the brilliance of their air force.

Therefore, in order to prevent frogman attacks, modern naval ports have prepared a four-fold defense system, which includes long-range, medium-range, short-range, and self-defense defense.

The first layer is long-range defense, typically ranging from two to five thousand meters. It utilizes anti-submarine systems and air defense radar to detect mini-submarines, surface vessels, and aircraft transporting frogmen in advance, keeping the enemy at bay from a great distance.

The second layer of defense is a medium-range defense of 400 to 2,000 meters, which uses sonar, photoelectric detection equipment and other equipment to detect frogmen using boosters to dive.

It is important to know that in the last few kilometers, frogmen usually use small frogman boosters and other equipment to infiltrate and advance.

The third layer of defense involves close-range attacks within 400 meters, where each ship's own detection system locks onto the target's location and attacks with various anti-frogman weapons.

Finally, there's the fourth stage: the action phase. Once you reach the self-defense level, you're at visual search range, and your own frogmen can begin the search. Of course, things are different on the water. Underwater frogmen won't be using rifles for search; they'll be using underwater rifles, which are specifically designed for close-quarters combat in underwater warfare.

The long, arrow-shaped bullets are highly stable in water and can be fired in single shots or in bursts. They are ready to use immediately upon landing without any modifications, making them very convenient.

In addition, the port has deployed anti-submarine nets and various obstacles to prevent underwater equipment from entering.

Of course, Wang Gensheng also wanted to equip underwater combat teams with some weapons and equipment specifically designed for frogmen, such as cold-weather diving suits and underwater combat rifles.

The reason for equipping wetsuits is that, except in summer, the seawater temperature is only in the teens during winter and spring.

Even in winter, when the temperature is only a few degrees Celsius, such low temperatures will accelerate the rate at which soldiers lose body temperature.

Underwater rifles also ensure that the frogmen have the ability to fight back underwater; they can't exactly engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy underwater!
However, neither of these things is easy to obtain, since the rubber factory is still in Lao Jing's hands!
Moreover, cold-weather diving suits aren't that urgent, since they can be used for the other three seasons, except for winter.

However, the underwater rifle is urgently needed, but it's impossible to have the arsenal design and customize one just for the less than 1,000 required underwater rifles!
Moreover, Wang Gensheng didn't even know the structural principles of underwater rifles!
However, underwater rifles do have alternatives, and those alternatives are arrows.

Contrary to expectations, arrows can actually travel farther underwater, and their lethality is not significantly reduced.

For example, before Wang Gensheng traveled through time, he went to the beach to dive and play with a fish gun. However, it was more like a bow and arrow than a gun, because it shot arrows instead of bullets.

It simply utilizes the elasticity of a rubber band, rather than the elasticity of the bow limbs.

More importantly, the power of the fish gun is truly formidable in its underwater range, with a lethal range exceeding fifty meters. It can easily penetrate a human body at a distance of twenty meters.

This distance is sufficient for underwater combat.

After all, underwater visibility is limited, especially at night.

Even so, it is still much better than ordinary firearms.

Although bows and arrows can be used underwater, the wooden bow will lose its elasticity if it is soaked in water for a short time.

Therefore, Wang Gensheng ultimately decided to use rubber bands to make the fish gun. Although rubber bands were difficult to obtain, they were not impossible to get, since there were quite a few of them in the hospital.

The rubber hose that Wang Gensheng used before was obtained from the hospital.

It's important to know that the tubing used for IV drips in hospitals now is not the plastic tubing that will become more common in the future, but rather rubber tubing.

Yes, this rubber hose is the same kind used to make slingshots.

Such materials naturally benefited Wang Gensheng, because he could use them not only as air hoses for diving but also as materials for spearguns.

(End of this chapter)