Munitions Empire

Chapter 663: 622 submarine

From the moment they hit the water, the panicked flight crew were close to tears. Being grasped and hauled onto the world’s only submarine of its kind, they lay sprawled out, gasping on the wet deck.

“Quick! Help me pull him up!” The flight engineer, who had been holding onto the copilot, shouted for assistance to get the unconscious copilot onto the submarine: “He’s injured!”

However, the sailor who had jumped into the sea ignored him and just pushed him towards the submarine. As he pushed, he explained, “He’s already dead!”

The crew hadn’t realized that they had been floating in the sea with a corpse for over an hour, never letting go until they were rescued.

“You all did well.” The submarine’s captain stood atop the command casing, looking down at the men and shouted loudly.

Knowing he had lost a crew member, the pilot sat in silence, soaking wet. Though the seawater wasn’t ice-cold, his mood was far from good.

...

“If you had come just a bit earlier, just a bit… he might not have died.” The bombardier murmured softly, holding onto a sailor who had passed him a cigarette.

“He’s been dead for a while now. We didn’t come here for you guys.” The sailor spread his hands in a helpless gesture, “You should thank your lucky stars. We just happened to be passing by.”

“You didn’t come to rescue us?” The navigator asked in surprise, having thought this unseen ship that emerged from the sea’s depths was there to find them.

“No, we are the engineering technicians testing this ship, along with a few representatives from the Navy… This project is still highly classified, so not many in the Navy are even aware of our existence,” the man with glasses explained.

This warship was not yet commissioned into the Navy and was still in the testing phase. Aside from a few Naval submariners on board for training, only a small portion of the leadership of Tang Country knew of this warship’s existence.

Even now, the warship did not have its own name, and when referred to, it was simply called “that warship.”

“We were just testing some… special feature of this warship.” Due to secrecy, even after everything had been seen by the flight crew, the personnel on the submarine still couldn’t mention sensitive terms like “diving,” “submerging,” or “underwater travel.”

“If we hadn’t seen your orange vests and observed carefully for a while, confirming your identities, we might not have even surfaced,” he said while pointing upwards toward the captain’s position, “You should be grateful to our captain, he’s a good man.”

“Thank you! I am the pilot of Flying Fortress Bomber number 397, here’s my bombardier, flight engineer, navigator… I request that you take the copilot’s body back with us.”

“That’s… difficult…” Hearing the request to bring back a body, the submarine crew looked uneasy: “We have no way to preserve the body.”

It wasn’t out of any superstition that they hesitated, but… they were on a submarine. The ventilation was already poor, and to stack a corpse inside would make the odor… nearly lethal.

“We are Air Force, we don’t have the tradition of a sea burial.” The pilot looked up at the captain above him.

The captain hesitated for a few seconds, then gave the order, “Put it in the empty torpedo tube. Let our people handle it, you guys… forget it, just come inside.”

He had been considering the matter of secrecy, but he thought that leaving the Air Force crew outside was not a solution. Consequently, he had to temporarily abandon the idea of secrecy, prioritizing rescue instead.

Thus, the men were ushered into the submarine’s interior, where they encountered a whole different scene.

There were complicated pipes everywhere, and precision instruments everywhere. Even though they were pilots accustomed to complex instruments, they were still left in awe at this moment.

If it weren’t for labels explaining their purposes beneath the dials, they wouldn’t even comprehend the purpose of the large valves underneath.

Unlike the familiar transport ships, or even warships, the submarine was entirely lit by artificial lights. It was dim and stifling, with cramped quarters and air filled with nauseating odors.

The smells of men’s underwear and socks were mixed with the strange scent of diesel, accompanied by the body odor of seven or eight days without bathing, further compounded by the moldy stench of rotting food…

Do you think that’s all? No, that’s just the beginning. All the aforementioned smells were intensified by tenfold due to the humid air being heated by the working machinery, spreading through every corner of the submarine.

Sometimes, this unique, unbearable atmosphere, stifling with every breath, made them wonder whether the entire submarine would explode like marsh gas, burying everyone at the bottom of the sea.

The initial excitement of entering the submarine dissipated in less than ten minutes. The Flying Fortress’s pilot even started to suspect that this contraption was invented to exile the most heinous criminals.

“Are we still on the surface?” asked the pilot, seeing that the captain had handed over his duties to the executive officer and returned to his cabin, which was scarcely more than a berth. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he had just changed into a damp set of clothes.

“We’re at sea, and we’ve completed the endurance test,” the captain said, sitting next to the pilot, evidently accustomed to the cramped quarters. “We’ll get you back to Dragon Island as soon as possible. Don’t worry, the telegram about you has already been sent; by now, it’s probably reached the official channels.”

He had a decent bedside lamp, the light from which made the area seem a bit more spacious than other places.

In fact, if one were truly familiar with submarines, they could determine the sub’s status based on the lamp alone: under normal circumstances, all lights would be turned off when submerged.

“This thing is really torturous. I thought the working environment in a Flying Fortress Bomber was bad enough, but this is even worse,” the pilot commented on his surroundings.

The submarine’s environment changed gradually with the duration of time at sea. At the beginning of a journey, it was actually alright, but it became increasingly unruly as time went on.

There was no helping it. In the first week, everyone still had various fresh foods, and their clothes were quite clean and starched. Back then, everyone was neatly groomed with shaved faces, looking quite human.

Now inside the submarine, everyone could only casually rinse with seawater, and all the fresh food had been eaten, leaving them with canned food and other sundry items for seven or eight days straight. With their faces covered in stubble and hair disheveled, they looked like psychiatric patients who had just been released.

Actually, this wasn’t even the most extreme condition. If they really entered a combat state, these men might drift at sea for one or two months. By that time, everything they brought with them would be exhausted.

The thick books had been read more than twice, and the playing cards were so worn and torn that one could recognize suits and numbers from the patterns of missing corners.

Everyone would forget what life on land was like, and what kept them going was almost solely the act of killing.

This might be why every German submarine crew member in World War II was so highly decorated: besides sinking enemy warships, they really couldn’t find anything else interesting to do.

Even though the identities of the airmen could be confirmed, access to the submarine’s engine room, the torpedo bay in the front, and even lingering in the command room was not allowed for them.

Even so, the risk of leaking secrets was still tremendous: the interior space of the submarine was so compact that every inch had to be utilized, and secrets could be seen everywhere.

You see, even the toilet on the submarine was high-tech and strictly off-limits for these Air Force airmen.

“Thank you. If it weren’t for you, we might have been soaking in the sea for much longer,” said the pilot, extending his hand.

The captain reached out and shook the pilot’s hand, “No need to be polite, I hope we can fight side by side again in the future.”

In reality, the pilot was being a bit too optimistic. He didn’t know that at that moment, planes were still circling non-stop, looking for his aircraft and had even expanded the search area.

Since the submarine had not been listed with the Navy, the Navy was also unaware that a new type of warship was cruising in the combat zone.

Night fell quickly, and thousands of Shireck Sailors, along with various officers, cooks, and stokers, could only despairingly continue to soak in the water, waiting.

In actuality, the rescue operation had already begun. The Sailfish had pulled up more than 50 Shireck prisoners. However, they still hadn’t found their own downed airmen, and the search and rescue operation had to be hastily concluded before nightfall.

The patrol plane returned to base, discontent, leaving the area, while the search was handed over to a Fengshun-class Destroyer that had arrived later.

The massive searchlights swept back and forth across the sea surface, with plaintive cries rising and falling. As the darkness fully descended, these became increasingly feeble.

The warship’s sharp bow sliced through the sea surface, sometimes even colliding with floating debris as well as corpses and survivors.

But after a busy round of searching, they still couldn’t find the airmen, who might have been in the water for 5 hours.

Then, Xiao Yun, who was in charge of this search and rescue operation, received a telegram from the Navy, saying that 5 airmen had already been found…

And after that, the Shireck prisoners soaking in the water finally received the order to rescue them…

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