RPAGF Chapter 878 People have come to the house!
Chapter 878 People have come to the house!
Meanwhile, inside the 418 boat, which was also entangled with it, the atmosphere was equally heavy, yet it exuded a different kind of resilience.
Apart from the personnel who were carrying out the "capture" mission on the opposite submarine, all the young sailors on board 418 have been ordered to evacuate to the relatively safe deck.
At this moment, in the dimly lit cabin, which was riddled with water seepage and barely held together by temporary support pillars, only the deputy captain Zhou Jianjun, the bosun, and a few veterans with bright red badges on their chests remained.
"Tsk, what are you saying? At least he left with a whole corpse." Elder Li, the communications elder, took the cracked electron tube handed to him by Zhou Jianjun and carefully put it back into the wooden box.
"We can't let it be ruined. When we get back, I'll find some skilled craftsmen to see if they can fix it!"
"Repair? Isn't this thing supposed to be vacuum-sealed? How can it be repaired when it's cracked like this?" Zhou Jianjun wiped the sweat and oil from his forehead and asked skeptically.
"Yeah, I went with my boss to make a gift last time. There's a factory in Guangzhou that can even cut the armor of a Blackbird. This little thing should be fine, right..."
"Oh... that model airplane from last time! I was wondering why you made a model airplane instead of a ship model. Hey, did you go to see this person?"
Deputy Captain Zhou gestured with his fingers above his head.
To his surprise, Old Li looked at him warily and asked, "How did you know?"
"Why so nervous...we're old acquaintances!" Deputy Captain Zhou puffed out his chest and quickly added in his mind:
Uh... he's familiar with his elders, you could say he's quite close!
"Oh... no wonder you said those young guys could operate the new submarine. What, do you have any specific information?" Old Li had once accompanied a naval bigwig to visit Jiangxia, and hearing what Old Zhou said, he suddenly understood.
Zhou Jianjun is no longer interested in Xixi. Lying may feel good for a moment, but it will lead to the whole family's downfall...
Thankfully, the rescue arrived. The boatswain waded through ankle-deep water, pointed towards the third cabin with his finger wrapped in cotton gauze, and said in a hoarse voice, "Old Zhou, we're almost out of our 'three planks and one felt' resources! We've used the last board to plug the leak, the old felt pads are almost gone, and we're running out of hemp and wooden wedges. The main crack in the third cabin is temporarily under control, but the base of the support column is slipping. I'm afraid... it won't hold for much longer!"
The term "three boards and one felt" may be unfamiliar to some, but it is the "homemade leak-stopping method" that submariners relied on for survival in the 1960s – "three boards, one felt and one hemp".
Don't mistake these three boards for the concept in stocks; simply put, they are a general term for large, medium, and small wooden sealing boards.
Back then, there were no fancy things like "fast-curing epoxy" or "quick-setting bags," but our predecessors were so clever: wooden plugging boards were used to cover the area of the rupture, and old felt nailed to the back formed a seal under water pressure.
Oil-soaked hemp fibers and corks are used to fill small cracks, and they expand and lock automatically when they come into contact with water; wooden wedges are embedded like nails into the edges of irregular breaks.
Without modern polymer materials, they relied entirely on these primitive yet reliable materials, along with the courage and experience of the officers and soldiers, to fight for their lives against the sea.
Everyone rushed to the third cabin. Zhou Jianjun squatted down, pressed his fingers firmly against the hemp fibers and wooden wedges at the edge of the crack, which were already white from being soaked in water but were still firmly stuck there, and sighed:
"What else can we do? This is all the equipment we have! If it leaks again, we'll use manpower to hold it up! Two people a day, in shifts, use your bodies and the remaining canvas to hold the leak down, every minute we can hold it up is a minute more!"
"Old Zhou! The lads on deck report that clouds are gathering, and a heavy rainstorm might be coming..."
Damn it! When it rains, it pours!
Zhou Jianjun straightened up, looked towards the communications compartment, and said with a last glimmer of hope, "Old Li! Is there really no way to get the radio working? Even just a whisper would be helpful! Just being able to contact home would be enough!"
"Yes!" Old Li answered readily.
"Then hurry up and go!" Zhou Jianjun's eyes lit up.
"Alright!" Old Li bent down and pulled a spare wooden oar from the pile of junk. While paddling vigorously, he estimated, "With my strength, I can probably row for four or five hours. If I'm lucky, I might run into a fishing boat that's out fishing at night..."
"...Your optimism is really misplaced!" Zhou Jianjun was so angry that he almost fainted.
A sense of helplessness, mingled with the salty smell of seawater, permeated the air among the several wounded veterans. One of them, looking at the groaning hull, muttered under his breath, "Sigh, if this really sinks... what will become of us?"
"Aren't we damaging valuable national assets?"
"Hey Hey……"
Just then, Zhou Jianjun suddenly chuckled, which seemed particularly abrupt in the oppressive environment.
He pointed to the ceiling and then to the porthole.
Over there was the Japanese submarine that was locked in a fierce struggle with them.
"Sinking? What's there to be afraid of!" A sly smile appeared on his face. "Didn't you see Old Zhao leading people to 'smoke out the rats'? Once they've smoked all the rats out of that iron turtle shell over there, that ready-made 'new home' of over 800 tons will be ours, right?"
He glanced around at his dumbfounded old buddies, his tone slightly relaxed: "How about that? This trick of mine is called 'Operation Switch Sides'! If our old buddy really can't hold on and falls apart, we'll all move to that new one! Anyway, it can't be moved now, so it'll be a perfect high-class lifeboat for us!"
"This doesn't sound very reliable!" the boatswain muttered, looking at his old, battered boat.
"Do you have any other better ideas?" Zhou Jianjun glared at him.
"without……"
Silence is a long oar, and Elder Li, the communications elder, rows and rows with his old oar...
"Swoosh—Bang!"
A young sailor almost tumbled down the suspension ladder of the command tower, nearly plunging headfirst into the floodwaters.
"Lieutenant... Lieutenant Commander! We heard you! We heard you!"
All eyes in the cabin instantly focused on him.
"What did you hear? Speak slowly!" Zhou Jianjun's heart jumped.
The sailor swallowed hard, pointed to the ceiling, and practically roared:
"The sound of propellers! What a loud noise! It's from the sky! It's our plane! It must be!"
The veterans, who had been sitting or leaning back, conserving their energy, were suddenly sprang up like springs, rushing towards the gangway leading to the upper deck! They didn't care about the varying depths of the floodwaters or the dangerous tilting of the boat; at that moment, they had only one thought—to see it with their own eyes!
Zhou Jianjun was caught off guard by the sudden burst of energy and stumbled, cursing, "What's the rush!" But he quickly followed after him.
On the deck, some clever fellow had already lit a small but unusually bright fire in a relatively safe area using oil-soaked cotton yarn, rags, and sawdust. The orange-red flames leaped stubbornly in the darkening sky and sea breeze!
Almost at the same time,
Phew—pop!
A red signal flare, trailing a dazzling contrail, screamed as it pierced the twilight sky, exploding beneath the low-hanging clouds into a brilliant and hopeful burst of light, illuminating the surrounding sea and the faces of those looking up in a crimson glow!
"It's our Be-6!" The sharp-eyed lookout pointed at the gradually clearing silhouette on the distant horizon and roared with all his might.
On the deck, all the sailors who could stand were either veterans who had just climbed up and were panting, or young men who had been on guard duty there all along.
They all spontaneously straightened their chests and waved their arms, hats, and even torn-off clothes vigorously in the direction the plane was coming from!
"Hahaha! I knew it, I knew it!"
"Damn it! Finally... finally my family has arrived!"