My Italy

With the end of this secret mobilization meeting against the Ottomans, preparations for war began across Italy.

The Turin Arsenal, located in the east of Turin, was formerly the Arsenal of the Kingdom of Sardinia, founded in 1716 by the government of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Later, after integrating several other weapons manufacturing factories, it became the main weapons supplier to the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

After the unification of Italy, the Turin Arsenal became one of the main arsenals of the Kingdom of Italy, undertaking nearly 30% of the army's weapons manufacturing tasks, and is currently the largest arsenal in Italy.

In the rifle manufacturing workshop of the arsenal, brand-new M88 Carcano rifles are being manufactured by workers themselves.

As the general manager, Carvalho was inspecting the factory.

"The quality of the Army's orders must be guaranteed. Last month, an accident occurred in which a soldier was injured while using a firearm. It was identified as a quality issue with the firearm. You must pay close attention to quality. I will not allow such an accident to happen again."

Facing Carvalho's words, the head of the rifle manufacturing workshop kept nodding. "General manager, please rest assured that we have punished the person responsible for the gun and warned him that if such an accident occurs again, he will go home immediately."

The words of the person in charge of the workshop made him very satisfied.

"Very good. Since I took over, I have been emphasizing quality. Only high-quality quality can make us the first choice of the military. You must know that there are several arsenals behind us, and they are eyeing us. We must not relax in any way."

After talking about quality issues, Carvalho casually asked the secretary behind him. "By the way, what are Mr. Carcano busy with these days?"

As the general manager of the arsenal, Carvalho is very concerned about his factory's chief firearms designer. It’s okay to not care about it. What if this master has a hot head and is poached by other arsenals, and he can’t even find a place to cry?

Facing his leader's inquiry, the secretary said quickly. "Mr. Carcano has recently been analyzing the Beretta Arms Maxim machine gun."

As soon as he heard that the chief gunsmith was not doing his job and began to study machine guns again, Cavallo had the urge to slap his forehead.

"Is it the latest Maxim machine gun?"

"Yes, this is Beretta's latest Maxim machine gun. I heard that with a weight reduction of 2 kilograms, its reliability is 6% higher than the previous model. According to tests, it can shoot 96 times without interruption. Minutes are not stuck.”

As a qualified secretary, it is natural not to answer whatever you ask, but to tell the leader what he wants to know in advance. In this regard, Carvalho's secretary is very qualified.

However, Carvalho did not pay attention to the problem of the secretary's qualifications. Instead, he felt very headache thinking that his opponent also had an excellent firearms designer. Of course, he was more envious.

Unlike rifles, which are mass-produced guns, Beretta's machine guns are all about technical work, and they are a separate business. Why shouldn't he be envious of this?

But there is no point in envying him, unless his chief gunsmith can develop a work that is better than the Maxim machine gun. It is precisely because of this little expectation that he did not neglect Carcano's job. , without too much interference.

While Carvalho was inspecting the arsenal, the office director hurried over. His running posture is a bit weird, like a ball with limbs running, and the sweat stains on his forehead are clearly visible, which is difficult for him to weigh 180 pounds.

Before he even arrived, I heard his breathing sound like an aging blower.

"What's the matter, Roll?"

Carvalho, who couldn't bear it, was considerate of his office director.

"Your Excellency, General Manager, this is a telegram from the military. It has added an order for 65,000 new rifles, and the time requirement is also very urgent."

At this time, Carvalho no longer cared about his office director, and immediately stepped forward to grab the telegram and read it carefully.

This telegram was sent from the War Department, requiring the Turin Arsenal to complete the Army's manufacturing task of 90,000 rifles and 18 million rounds of new 6.5 mm round-head bullets before the end of 1889. It also specifically stated that if the arsenal cannot be completed on time, the Army's weapons manufacturing tasks will be deprioritized in the future.

This sentence was like a hard whip on Carvalho's butt, and he couldn't sit still immediately. He immediately spoke to the secretary behind him. "Immediately summon the directors of each workshop to the conference room for a meeting, as soon as possible."

"I'll do it right away."

The secretary immediately trotted away.

Then Carvalho said to the fat office director. "Immediately prepare a reward system for overtime work in each workshop. We will be very busy next."

Do you feel confused when you see this word? This mere 90,000 rifles and 18 million rounds of rifle bullets will keep the Turin Arsenal busy for more than a year. Isn’t it an exaggeration? This is the largest arsenal in Italy.

Yes, that’s right, it just takes so long.

Although the Turin Arsenal is the largest arsenal in Italy, it only has more than 200 employees, which is twice as few as the well-known Mauser Arsenal.

Moreover, in this era, there was no assembly line operation, which further slowed down the manufacturing speed of rifles. Not to mention that it is more troublesome to make your own bullets. I didn’t expect that later generations would be so advanced. There are many countries that cannot make qualified bullets. (I didn’t mention your third brother, put down the cow dung bomb)

Therefore, this has also led to the slowdown in the production of rifles and bullets. Of course, there is also a more important problem, that is, Italian guns and other weapons are basically only supplied to the domestic army and there is no external market. The consequence of the absence of an external market is that the arsenal cannot get enough orders and can only reduce its size or merge several arsenals to create a large arsenal, while Italy chose the former.

Both have advantages and disadvantages, and currently Italy feels the disadvantage of a small arsenal, that is, the speed of weapons manufacturing cannot be increased.

At this time, some people may ask, why not recruit more workers, purchase more equipment, and expand production capacity?

Let me tell you clearly that this is not possible. The reason is simple. It takes at least a year for a new employee to become a skilled arsenal veteran.

And after the new employee becomes a veteran, the order is completed?

So how should the arsenal support the extra employees and maintain the new equipment? This is the problem. Without a steady stream of orders, no one would dare to expand their factory.

This wave of orders from the Army alone will not allow several major arsenals to think about expanding personnel and equipment.

Of course, we will not pursue the issue of the Italian arsenal. In addition to arsenals, there are also other companies that have also been urged by the military.

As one of the manufacturers of Turin-class battleships, Andoshar Shipyard also received a telegram with the same meaning. But this time the urging telegram came from the Navy.

"The Navy requires us to speed up the outfitting and strive to conduct sea trials as soon as possible."

In the office, the person in charge of the shipyard waved the telegram in his hand and loudly read the requirements from the navy to the warship project supervisor.

"We're already fast enough. If something like this causes quality problems, it's not a joke."

At this point, the project supervisor stepped forward and raised his own questions.

"Then increase working hours, divide workers into two shifts, and let them work from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. This time, the Navy must feel the efforts of our shipyard."

What the person in charge said at the end was very clear, that is, to reduce profits, we must also have a good relationship with the navy.

Of course, it was not just the navy and army that were making preparations in Italy. In the following period, some Ottoman jokes appeared in newspapers from time to time, usually political cartoons and some popular science jokes.

At first, the people simply laughed at this as fun, but after a while, some historical descriptions of the Ottoman battlefields in Italy began to appear, but these were basically descriptions of battles between Venice and the Ottomans.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the guidance of public opinion. If it continues, the Ottomans will be described as more and more hateful, and finally it will successfully arouse the anger of the people.

Of course, now is not the time to stir up public anger, because Italy is still preparing.