"Focus Interview" Huang Xuhua: "Deep Diving" Thirty Years

It was a heartwarming moment. On November 17, 2017, in the Golden Hall of the Great Hall of the People, General Secretary Xi Jinping took the hand of a gray-haired national moral model and asked him to sit next to him. This is a touching scene when General Secretary Xi Jinping took a group photo with more than 600 representatives participating in the National Spiritual Civilization Construction Commendation Conference. Today, let's meet this old man again. He is known as the "father of China's nuclear submarine" China's first generation of nuclear submarine chief designer Huang Xuhua. Today, 47 years ago, it was he who personally sent China's first nuclear submarine into the water. However, for decades, his name was top secret and unknown to the outside world.

Huang Xuhua is 93 years old this year and has not retired yet. He holds the post of honorary director of the 719th Research Institute of China Shipbuilding heavy Industry, working for half a day every morning. Huang Xuhua, chief designer of China's first generation nuclear submarine and academician of the Chinese Academy of engineering, said: "from 1958 to today, I am the only one who has not left the nuclear submarine work. I am proud of this."

In today's world, nuclear submarines are considered to be one of the strategic nuclear strike forces that a country relies on most. In 1954, the United States successfully built the world's first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, followed by the launch of the Soviet Union's first nuclear submarine in 1957. The emergence of nuclear submarines not only pushes a country's strategic defense to the far sea, but also can launch a nuclear counterattack with its strong mobility and concealment. At that time, there was a saying to describe the endurance of a nuclear submarine: a golf ball-sized uranium block fuel could allow the submarine to sail 60000 nautical miles. If diesel was used as fuel, it would require nearly 100 knots of diesel.

"Once the war comes, how to save ourselves under nuclear attack? The most effective way is to ambush nuclear submarines for a long time. If it carries out nuclear attack on us, then China has the ability to retaliate with nuclear." Huang Xuhua said.

In 1958, China's nuclear submarine project was launched. Huang Xuhua, who graduated from the Shipbuilding Department of Shanghai Jiaotong University and had several years of experience in imitating Soviet-style conventional submarines, was selected to participate in the development of China's nuclear submarines.

The development of nuclear submarines is an extremely challenging major system engineering, which directly involves many fields such as underwater navigation technology, underwater mobile nuclear power technology, missile weapons and equipment. However, at that time, China was poor, without sophisticated equipment and talents, and the biggest difficulty was that no one knew what a nuclear submarine looked like.

Huang Xuhua told reporters: "The technical reference materials about nuclear submarines are blank in our country. Another foreign country has a tight blockade on us, and it is impossible for experts to guide us."

What if there are no conditions? As the person in charge of the overall development, Huang Xuhua proposed that if you want to ride a donkey to find a horse, if there are no conditions, you must create conditions to do it. Huang Xuhua, the first thing they have to do is, like looking for a needle in a haystack, to look for clues from foreign newspapers and periodicals with extremely strict confidentiality control.

Huang Xuhua said: "We ask our comrades, everyone with 'three mirrors' out to look for. The first side with a 'magnifying glance', expand the field of vision to find; the second side 'microscope', make it large; the third side 'mirror of the demon mirror', because the foreign information is true and false, false and true, some are intentional fraud, to use the 'mirror of the demon mirror' to distinguish."

Fortunately, one day, someone brought back two toy models of the US "Washington" nuclear submarine from abroad, and Huang Xuhua was like a treasure. Through dismantling, they were excited to find that the densely packed equipment in the toy was basically the same as the nuclear submarine drawings they had conceived. After careful analysis, they came to a conclusion: "Any cutting-edge technology, including U.S. nuclear submarines, including U.S. missiles, has been developed on the basis of regular. That is to say, we have found a shortcut to conquer cutting-edge technology-to make it on the basis of regular, not to make everything new."

What kind of appearance China's nuclear submarine chooses is the first challenge facing the development team. At that time, the most advanced nuclear submarine in the world was the teardrop type, because the teardrop type had the smallest frictional resistance. When developing nuclear submarines, the United States carefully chose three steps: first, the regular boat type with nuclear power, and then the water drop boat type with regular power. After both steps were successful, the United States combined to develop a water drop nuclear submarine. After a lot of hard tests and rich data, Huang Xuhua decided to take one step at a time and directly aim at the drop-type scheme suitable for underwater high-speed navigation.

A nuclear submarine weighs several thousand tons, with tens of thousands of equipment and pipelines inside, and thousands of core data need to be accurately calculated. However, it is hard for people today to imagine that China's first generation of nuclear submarines used the oldest calculation tool-abacus. In Huang Lao's office, he also kept an old abacus.

Huang Xuhua said that at that time, they were divided into two or three groups to calculate at the same time. If the calculation results were the same, it would prove that there was nothing wrong with everyone. If the wrong result is different, start all over again and stick to the same result for two or three groups.

After 12 years of hard work, it also experienced the twists and turns of the project being dismounted and re-launched. On December 26, 1970, China's first nuclear submarine was launched. Without any foreign aid, it took less than 10 years for the Chinese to develop nuclear submarines that were developed abroad for decades. However, for Huang Xuhua and others, the launching of nuclear submarines is only the first step to success, and a large number of tests will be carried out to verify the reliability of nuclear submarines. Among them, the most risky is the extreme deep diving test, which is the key to the formation of nuclear submarines combat effectiveness.

After a long period of preparation, in April 1988, China's nuclear submarine ushered in the first extreme deep diving test, which will be a life and death test for nuclear submarines and all participants. At the extreme depth, a steel plate the size of a playing card will withstand more than one ton of water pressure. Any weld, any pipeline, or any valve, if it cannot withstand the pressure of the sea, will cause the boat to be destroyed.

Huang Xuhua recalled that there were some activities in the mind of the participants at that time. Some people wrote a suicide note to their families, and more people hummed "Blood-stained Style" in the dormitory, filled with an atmosphere of rustling wind and cold water. In order to cheer up everyone's spirit, Huang Xuhua decided to go in person and complete the experiment with everyone.

Before leaving for the South China Sea for extreme deep diving tests, Huang Xuhua decided to tell his wife about his choice. His wife, who also works in the July 19 Research Institute, said to Huang Xuhua, "you are the chief engineer, you should go down, otherwise you can't be responsible for anything that happens to this team."

After more than 4 hours of thrilling deep diving tests, when the indicator needle of the depth meter pointed to the extreme depth, the nuclear submarine withstood the test, the test was successful, and a new record was born! The officers and soldiers in the submarine were all boiling up. As a result, Huang Xuhua became the first person among the world's chief designers of nuclear submarines to personally participate in the extreme deep diving test.

With the unremitting efforts of Huang Xuhua and others, in September 1988, China's missile nuclear submarine successfully launched submarine-to-surface missiles underwater, marking that China has become the fifth country in the world to truly have the second sea-based nuclear strike and nuclear deterrence strategic force. Huang Xuhua, who is over 60 years old, is very excited. For this moment, he has been incognito for 30 years.

Huang Xuhua said, "At the beginning of our work, our secretary made a request to be anonymous and to be an unsung hero for life. You can't publish your results quickly like other scientists, and the results you have come up with are only recognized by the party and the state, and in society you are incognito and will never be famous."

In the days of incognito for the country, Huang Xuhua needs to bear a lot of unspeakable loneliness and pain. He has not returned to his hometown in Guangdong for more than 30 years. His father and second brother passed away. He could not see him for the last time. All eight brothers and sisters complained about him. Huang Xuhua said: "When my father died, he only knew that his son was in Beijing, only the mailbox number, and nothing else."

It was not until 1987 that a reportage was published in Shanghai Wenhui monthly magazine that Huang Xuhua's mystery of not going home for 30 years was finally revealed. After reading the magazine sent by her son, her mother, who was already in her 90 s, burst into tears and immediately found other children to solemnly explain to everyone that she should understand Huang Xuhua.

With the arrival of the clarification period, Huang Xuhua was finally able to reunite with his family and step by step into the public eye. In 1994, Huang Xuhua was elected academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He has successively won the National Science Conference Award, the National Science and Technology Progress Special Award, the 2013 "Moving China" Top Ten People, and the National Moral Model. In 2016, China's first nuclear submarine was honorably retired after cruising the deep sea for more than 40 years, but its chief designer is still "in service". Now, after getting up in the morning, Huang Lao will play Taijiquan for a while, and then come to the office on time. He said that he would be a good cheerleader for the younger generation of scientific research and design personnel.

Huang Xuhua said, "If the party asks me to shed my blood once, there is no opinion, if the party asks me to shed my blood slowly, drop by drop, until it has flowed, I Huang Xuhua can do it, no doubt. If the organization doesn't call me to retire today, then I 've been working until I can't do it."

For the nuclear submarine, a top-secret project, Huang Xuhua has been incognito for 30 years and has not returned to his hometown for 30 years. Some people ask Huang Lao how to understand that loyalty and filial piety cannot be both. Huang Lao said that loyalty to the country is the greatest filial piety to parents. Faced with the title of "the father of China's nuclear submarines," Huang Lao said that he did not admit it and did not dare to be. He was just a member of the tens of thousands of incognito nuclear submarine engineering development team.

Source: CCTV Network