A generation of shipbuilders Zhang Wenzhi

As China's first generation of shipbuilding engineers, Zhang Wenzhi has made outstanding contributions to inland shipping, ship design, and manufacturing and repair work.

Bei dai

The People's River Passenger Liner

On June 26, 1984, China's shipbuilding master Zhang Wen died in Beijing. This year marks the 30th anniversary of his death.

Speaking of Zhang Wenzhi, we have to say that he designed a new generation of Yangtze River ship types, and he also developed Sichuan River ships, especially shallow water rapids ships and hydrofoil ships. Today, at the Jiangnan Shipbuilding Museum, visitors can still see the celebratory scene of the launch of the "People" designed by Zhang Wenzhi in September 1953. The "Popular" is the first large inland river passenger and cargo ship built after the liberation of China, with a displacement of 1540 tons, can carry 968 passengers, and more than 700 tons of cargo - which is second to none among passenger ships at that time.

Heart to submarine manufacturing

Zhang Wenzhi was born in 1906 in Jingxian County, Hebei Province, the son of a famous scholar in the county at that time, who made teaching a profession. In 1918, at the end of World War I, Zhang Wenzhi was admitted to the First Middle School of Cangxian County, Hebei Province. He had heard that German submarines were powerful in naval warfare, and for the first time in his young heart, he planted the dream of building submarines.

In 1923, Zhang Wenzhi was admitted to the Mechanical Department of Tianjin Beiyang University. The commanding attitude of the Anglo-American teachers in the school made him extremely disgusted, and at the same time became the driving force for him to strive for self-improvement. Six years later, Zhang Wenzhi graduated from university and entered the Songpu Machine Factory of Heilongjiang Huhai Railway, where he was in charge of the three workshops of mold, casting and forging.

The dream of a submarine at a young age has never been far away. In the summer of 1935, Zhang Wenzhi was admitted to the third batch of students studying in the United Kingdom by the Sino-British Gengzi Compensation Committee, and only two students were admitted to the Shipbuilding Department that year, in addition to him, the other one was Mr. Yang Renjie. After arriving in England in October, Zhang Wenzhi found that he had already learned many courses in China, and after negotiating with the school, the school agreed to shorten his study time and start research and design work in the next year.

In addition to taking classes on campus, every winter and summer vacation, Zhang Wenzhi would go to the largest shipyard in the northeast of England at that time - Swan hangte Shipyard for internship. This shipyard has a long history, and many old workers also participated in the manufacture of Chinese and Japanese warships during the Sino-Japanese War, and they asked Zhang Wenzhi: "The warships built for you are bigger and more than those built for Japan. ”

This question made Zhang Wenzhi unable to answer, and he had no way to tell the other party how poor and weak his motherland was at that time. In the second year of his study, he made a design of a 2,000-ton sea vessel and wrote a thesis on "Resistance of ships", and then successfully passed the exam to obtain a master's degree.

At that time, there was no submarine manufacturing course in the curriculum, which made Zhang Wenzhi very regretful. He specifically applied to the Gengzi Reparations Committee to go to Germany to study submarine manufacturing, which was finally agreed. In July 1937, Zhang Wenzhi arrived in Germany. Subsequently, he took courses such as submarine design, warship manufacturing, and turbine manufacturing at Danze University of Technology, and the news of Japan's invasion of China shocked him, and at the same time prompted him to step up his pace of studying submarine and warship manufacturing non-stop, hoping to return to China quickly to participate in national defense construction. In April 1938, Zhang Wenzhi completed all the courses and completed the design of a 650-ton submarine in only 9 months.

Devote yourself to the people's livelihood industry

In October 1938, Zhang Wenzhi returned to the mainland via Hong Kong, when the coastal provinces had fallen, and the shipbuilding profession he had worked so hard to learn was useless for a while. In August 1939, he went to Chongqing Democratic Industrial Company to teach at the Northwest Institute of Technology in Chenggu, Shaanxi Province, and at the same time taught at Chongqing Jiaotong University and Tongji University.

At that time, along China's coastal and inland rivers, the ships of the imperialist powers were cruising recklessly, and their sovereignty was lost, let alone the development of their own shipping industry. In 1938, when the Kuomintang government withdrew west to Chongqing, the upper reaches of the Yangtze River became the only important traffic lifeline on the water at that time, and Zhang Wenzhi would choose to devote himself to the Minsheng Industrial Company, largely for this reason, hoping to put what he had learned into practical use. Minsheng Company was founded in 1925 by the national industrialist Lu Zuofu, initially only a 70-ton small steamship, and the route was only between Hechuan and Chongqing on the Jialing River; after ten years of development, by the beginning of the War of Resistance, Minsheng Industrial Company had greatly developed from the number of ships and the length of the route.

At the beginning of Zhang Wenzhi's entry into Minsheng Company, he was only responsible for technical maintenance work, and soon he was promoted to deputy chief engineer because of his outstanding performance and excellent professional ability, and comprehensively presided over ship repair and rectification. He presided over the accounting of the stability of all ships of Minsheng Company, carried out tilt tests, improved ship safety conditions, and drew turbine and mechanical drawings, and designed axle cross joints, sand turners and hydraulic generator speed governors for Minsheng Shipyard's "Shanzi" tugboats. From design, drawing to manufacturing prototypes, he must take care of it and solve the problems that arise in repair and manufacturing at any time. The self-designed solution to the conditions of insufficient machinery and equipment at that time, thus ensuring the needs of military and civilian transportation at that time.

Designer of the first generation of Yangtze River ship types

As the third largest river in the world, the Yangtze River has been known for its prosperity since ancient times, but its modern development is lagging behind, and the gap between water transportation and developed countries is very large. In the early days of national liberation, only some old steam engine ships and large and small landing craft used by the US military in wartime were left in the upper and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which was very unfavorable to the formation of a professional ship team for Yangtze River shipping.

Zhang Wenzhi noticed this problem very early, after a long period of intensive study, from the beginning of 1950 to 1951, he published three times the paper "On the Characteristics of Yangtze River Steamships", discussed in detail the characteristics of the Yangtze River waterway and the characteristics of ships that need to adapt to passenger and cargo transportation, proposed to improve ship maneuverability and rapidity as much as possible, increase the main scale of the ship and the horsepower of the main engine, increase the rudder area, emphasize the problem of changing draft and towing the formation of transportation during dry water levels, so as to improve the performance and efficiency of all aspects.

In 1952, under the auspices of Zhang Wenzhi, China designed a 1200 horsepower single-flow steam engine and a 3000 square foot heating area automatic heating boiler, both installed on the new cargo ship and tugboat built by the Yangtze River Navigation Bureau in 1954. In 1953, he was responsible for the design of the "People" and "Volkswagen" passenger and cargo ships, and then designed the "People's No. 1" 1,000-ton cargo ship and the 2001 and 2002 2,000 horsepower tugboats and various iron barges for the Yangtze River Navigation Bureau. By the end of 1954, the above rounds had been completed, changing the situation that the Yangtze River had dragged 1 ton of cargo with 8 horsepower to 1 ton of cargo for many years.

Zhang Wenzhi suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage at work in 1977, which later led to paralysis of his body. During the seven years he was ill in bed, he was always concerned about the future of the country's economic construction and the development of transportation. Although a generation of shipbuilders has fallen, the precious wealth left to future generations is still shining. Today, the sails of ships traveling from east to west on the Yangtze River may be the best comfort for the deceased.