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Why We Lost the Second Baltic War
(The Torpedo Lab)
Nikita Dezhev (Greg S)
Two years ago, in introductory chemistry, we were asked to create small torpedoes (pipettes) which would be powered by baking soda and vinegar reactions, and fired along a long trough of water. During the lab, which covered several classes, we kept a notebook of the project, to be typed up and handed in at the end.
For whatever reason, I decided to create a random fictional background for the project. Here it is. -------
It is with a heavy heart that I pen this record of the Baltic War. I feel it is a necessary burden; future generations must be warned of the perils of inaccurate panning, especially when warring with so capable a foe as the Kriegsmarine.
It is common knowledge that, following the success of operation Sealion and the fall of Britain during the Second World War, German expansionism halted. Feeling that even German might was not enough to deal with the United States across the ocean or the Soviet Union to the West, Germans instead looked inwards, cementing their hold on occupied Europe. It is less common knowledge that, throughout the 1940’s, Soviet and Nazi forces clashed in the Scandinavian nations; both nations kept this well guarded secret and hostilities never reached a high point. Both nations’ population believed their governments to be fighting rebellious Swedes or Fins. By 1949, Nazi troops had been forced to withdraw from Sweden entirely, and by 1951 Sweden was officially incorporated into the Soviet Union, along with Finland. But then, someone got cocky.
In 1956, an operation code-named Marlin was developed among the upper echelons of the Soviet Union’s military. It called for a sudden, maritime invasion of Germany. Oh! What hubris.
I myself was the head of the research division of the submarine core of our great nation’s navy. In 1957, I was ordered to begin development of a massive submarine fleet, all under the stiffest of secrecy. This was quite an exercise, as German intelligence has improved vastly over the last 20 years and they no longer had a reputation for being the last to know what happens in their own country. Quite the reverse, in fact.
It is possible to build a submarine using material that is untracked, so the amounts of metal, fuel, and labor being absorbed by my project were able to pass unnoticed. Less easy to disguise was the construction of the torpedoes used to arm our fleet.
As you no doubt know, modern torpedoes are powered by the expulsion of air, propelled through the composition of kerosene or other fuels. That was not a problem. The problem was oxygen. In order to run properly, a torpedo requires a quantity of oxygen, far more then is found in normal air. Optimal operation is obtained only when the reaction takes place in the presence of pure oxygen. And unfortuanly, our noble nation lack the ability to mass-produce pure oxygen. We have always imported it from America, or the Japanese Empire. But, alas, this would not do, as we would have needed to increase importation by 300% to produce enough torpedoes, and this would undoubtedly have been noticed by the Nazis. An alternative was needed.
Our solution, the cause of our eventual downfall, and the reason I’m sitting here in this cell writing this, was one that seemed very inventive at the time. We would mix sodium bicarbonate with acetic acid, more commonly known as baking soda and vinegar (but where would we be if we called thing by names that were actually understandable!), to cause a reaction that releases carbon dioxide. And this would be the fuel that drove our torpedoes.
If this idea seems mad to you, imagine what it sounded like to Admiral Luzhkov, my immediate superior. To help bring him around, I buried him in scientific gobbledygook, hoping to intimidate him into caving (I believe that over half of our so-called “scientific terminology” was invented for this purpose.) What it boiled down to was this:
When acetic acid is mixed with sodium bicarbonate it yields sodium acetate and a carbonic acid. The later rapidly decomposes into water and carbon dioxide.
To the technically inclined, this is the reaction, CH3COOH + NaHCO3 ---> CH3COONa + H2CO3 H2CO3 ---> H2O + C20Because a gas normally occupies a much larger volume then a liquid or a gas of the same molarity, it attempts to expand with vigor. And if this expansion can be directed, you have a method of propulsion.
I won the Admiral around, eventually, and immediately began fulfilling my small part of Operation Marlin.
The following are excerpts from out of lab journals from August 20th, 1957 to April 18th, 1958.
[I'll skip a bit here, as its all just chem stuff, badly written and fairly uninteresting. Its mostly concerned with finding the correct proportions to use. ]
March 16h (Day 8) Testing is complete! Our submarines, using acetic acid power torpedoes, successfully sunk derelict ships used for testing in the Baltic ocean yesterday*! It looks like we have a successful operation. Soviet factories will go into rapid production of torpedoes tomorrow, producing enough of these beauties to arm the fleet in only two weeks. And it will all be done in total secrecy! Oh, what a wondrous country is this. Surely no other nation on Earth could match this feat!
*We achieved a distance of 1.7 meters. Before this, we never really passed .5 meters.
April 2nd (Day 9)
Operation Marlin is a go! Unfortunately, I have fallen ill this last week, and so have not been able to continue work. But my assistants should be more then capable of dealing with anything that might come up.
Soviet submarines, armed with our torpedoes, will sink the entirely unprepared Kriegsmarine ships in their harbors. This will be followed by the invasion of Germany a week later by troops from across the Baltic Sea in Sweden. Germany should fall in a matter of weeks.
April 7th (Day 9)
Oh woe is me.
I don’t fully understand what happen at the Battle of Kiel Harbor. Or submarine approach the ships undetected, and prepared to attack. Something evidently went wrong with the launching mechanisms. I don’t know what it was and never will but, whatever it was, the ships survived and were warned. We lost those subs in the retreat across the Baltic during the furious counter attack.
Now, any sensible commander would have called of the invasion immediately, but General Kamachev is not known for his sense. He insisted on continuing the invasion, and so condemned several thousands to their graves at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
Three days ago two un-uniformed police officers arrived at my door and arrested me for “crimes against the Soviet Union.” I know full well that any defense is futile, and I’ll be lucky to escape with life sentencing to the slate mines.