Naval shipyards in Menghe
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Menghe has emerged as one of Septentrion's leading shipbuilders, both in the commercial sector and in the military sector. In order to support the Menghean Navy's growth from a second-rate green-water navy to a leading blue-water navy, the Menghean Ministry of National Defense has made major investments in expandins shipyard capacity, and in improving the technological quality of individual warships.
History
The Kimhae Naval Yard in Donggyŏng is Menghe's oldest continuously running military shipyard. Located along the Kimhae Sea coast to the northwest of the new capital city, it was formally established in 1875 by the State of Sinyi, to build modern steam-powered warships based on Western technology. Over the decades that followed it grew into Menghe's largest military yard, the first with slips large enough to support the construction of dreadnought battleships. During the leeadup to the Pan-Septentrion War, the Kimhae Naval Yard built half of Menghe's battleships and aircraft carriers, and a number of its cruisers and destroyers. Following Menghe's surrender in 1945, the Allied Occupation Authority used the drydocks at the Kimhae Naval Yard to dismantle many of Menghe's surviving warships, and subsequently the Kimhae Yard was used for the construction of civilian vessels. After Communist forces captured the city in June of 1962, the yard was quickly pressed back into military service to repair vessels damaged in the Kimhae Mutiny, and in the years that followed it once again emerged as Menghe's highest-capacity shipyard.
Today, the Kimhae Naval Yard remains the largest military shipbuilding facility in Menghe. It is the only shipyard in the country with the necessary facilities to build, repair, and refuel nuclear-powered aircaft carriers of the Sibiwŏl Hyŏgmyŏng class, and it also handles the construction of half of Menghe's nuclear submarine fleet.
The Gyŏngsan Naval Yard was founded in 1909 to supplement the Kimhae Naval Yard in the construction of large warships. It occupies the north half of Songsu island at the east side of Gyŏngsan's large, natural deepwater harbor, offering good protection against foul weather and foreign attacks. Its island location, though close enough to the mainland to be accessible by bridge, also isolated it from the public view. Along with the Kimhae Naval Yard, it was historically the only other shipyard in Menghe capable of building and reconstructing battleships and full-size aircraft carriers.
Today, the entire 36-square-kilometer island is a secure Navy facility, off-limits to unauthorized personnel and accessible by two 300-meter bridges guarded by checkpoints. The shipyard is located on the island's north side, and the west side contains warship docks, warehouses, fuel storage tanks, command facilities, and a small military airfield. The southeast part of the island is mountainous and unoccupied, apart from watch towers on top and submarine pens excavated into the side. The island contains its own rail yard and train link to the mainland, built in the 1920s to facilitate the movement of supplies to the shipyard and naval base.
Today, the Gyŏngsan Songsu-do Naval Yard has two on-shore slipways capable of building frigate- or destroyer-sized vessels. Both slipways are located under rail-mobile environmental shelters to protect them from rain and spy satellites, and have large gantry cranes capable of moving prefabricated ship sections into position. A single floating drydock transfers completed hulls from the slipways to the sea, and multiple nearby docks support the subsequent fitting-out process. Submarines are built in fully enclosed warehouses, which may be sufficient to support simultaneous work on as many as four submarine hulls.
A shipyard for destroyers and light vessels was established at Chanam in 1932, but disbanded after the Pan-Septentrion War. The current yard sits at a different site, and was built in the 1970s to support ship construction at a safer distance from both Dayashina and Altagracia.