Unbelievably, Chrome doesn't offer that option. There is an
extension - called, perhaps unsurprisingly, "Blank New Tab Page"
that gives it to you (though it actually loads a blank page rather
than no page, so it [a] appears in the history [b] takes a short
but non-zero time).

Can you not create your own local blank page and tell Chrome to make it
your home page?

Hi,

Yes you can.

I used an empty folder at the root of my HD as the default page.
Example, "C:\BLANK". This solved that problem.

John