Great Power Heavy Industries: Emerged from the Sky

When foreign countries asserted that "the Chinese will not be able to build an aircraft carrier in thirty years," a secret research team was already deep in the alley, using abacus and hand-operated computers to start a long march into the deep sea that spanned half a century. In 1956, shipbuilding expert Cheng Changfeng gave up his favorable treatment overseas and returned to China. He was faced with a poor shipbuilding industry. The largest slipway in the country can only build 3,000-ton cargo ships. It relies entirely on imported special steel and precision machine tools rely entirely on manual work. In a simple conference room of the Ministry of Industry, he submitted an aircraft carrier concept document that was criticized as a "dream". Everyone said it was impossible: there was no equipment, no materials, no technology, not even qualified welders. But Cheng Changfeng only said one sentence: "What we don't have now, we can make it with these hands." He invited Chen Xuemei, a materials expert, who made the first batch of special steel in a leaky laboratory using a home-made electric furnace; He hired Zhao Tiezhu, an eighth-level fitter, who scraped and grinded the precision guide rails by hand, with an error of less than a hair; He gathered a group of "idiots": returned scholars who gave up going abroad, and young workers who were self-taught in night school. The research team nestled in a nine-square-meter alley pavilion, using an abacus to calculate fluid data, using a pen to draw thousands of drawings, and using a modified truck engine to simulate ship power. If food stamps are not enough, neighbors chip in; If the equipment is broken, fix it yourself; The drawings were soaked by the rain, so I redrawn them from memory. In the eyes of outsiders, this was a tragic expedition destined to fail. Every flash of welding sparks is the nation's firm step towards the deep sea.