From to 1935 2020

For industrial countries, the cost of producing a large spring that can bounce an object weighing 0.6 kilograms 250 meters away will not exceed three dollars or even only two dollars at most.But for the Republic of China, which was still in the era of an agricultural country, it was a high-tech that was more difficult than making a mortar.

At the beginning of January, the spring production workshop located in a factory in Kharkov, Ukraine, the Soviet Union received an order from Moscow to start producing a certain type of spring.This spring has a ready-made production line, but the demand is not large. This time, Comrade Stalin personally instructed the request.

During the cleaning period, no one dared to slack off. In just three days, [-] of the [-] temporary additional industrial spring orders were completed, and they were packed into boxes at the first time.

With two thousand springs, two GAZ cars can carry them all away.When transported by train, even one train car is not enough to fill, and the remaining space is stuffed with supporting parts produced by other factories, and finally more than a dozen boxes of screws and nuts, wire cutters, pliers, screwdrivers and other hardware After the tool spare parts are installed, all the space can be considered to be fully utilized.

Then this carriage, followed by other carriages filled with Mosin Nagant rifles, traveled east along the Siberian Railway,

During the period, the carriages containing munitions were unloaded and replaced with new goods when they stopped on the way.However, the spring-loaded carriage did not change, and continued eastward all the way, and finally entered the Japanese-occupied Northeast after changing the wheels at the Manzhouli Station on the Sino-Soviet border.

In the meantime, someone opened the door of the carriage, boarded the carriage, and pried open several of the boxes for routine customs inspection.

Japanese inspector (holding the spring): "What is this spring for?"

Escorted Soviet: "For shock absorption, probably used to make sofas and spring beds."

"What about the other things?"

"Small hardware parts for machines."

The inspector picked up a spring nearly half a meter long, looked at it, and then looked at the spare parts beside it. Although he was puzzled, he couldn't hook it up with the contraband. After collecting the re-export fee, he waved his hand , let go.

After changing to another locomotive in China, the spring-loaded carriage continued on the Northeast Railway, passed through Shanhaiguan, and entered Peiping, where he changed the locomotive again and continued to move forward, and finally stopped at the destination , is Xi'an.

The boxes were unloaded at Xi'an Railway Station, and the materials in the entire compartment were finally loaded onto two four-wheel-drive Dodge trucks and drove out of the station. He was accompanied by fourteen other trucks, three of which were in the rear. On the carriage, it is loaded with 0.8 mm thick, 65 cm long, and 24 cm wide thin steel plates - these steel plates are imported from Japan.

The convoy of sixteen trucks turned into seventeen after leaving Xi'an City—the extra one was filled with escorting Northeast Army guards. The trucks walked for nine hours on the road in Tongchuan and Qian The Red Army who came to receive the goods handed over, changed the guards and drivers, continued to move forward, and arrived at his final destination: Yan'an the next day.

In Yan'an, the convoys were dispersed, and according to the different materials carried by the vehicles, they were driven to different departments and units for reception.

The steel plates were sent to the hardware factory in Yan'an.

The thin steel plate that was unloaded first was quickly sent to the factory building that had been waiting for him for a long time, and he was sent to a special compression molding machine. When pressed by a special compression molding column, the thin steel plate instantly became a deformed Become a seamed steel pipe.After being removed from the mold machine, workers wearing gloves on one side performed a simple deburring treatment on it, and then sent it to the assembly workshop next door as a finished part.

Spring, slender launch rod core, simple launch trigger, clips, his other "brothers" have been waiting there for a long time, after a series of assembly and adjustments, this piece was dubbed "large slingshot" by Soviet testers Large toys were assembled.

The one holding the final product was first a "Soviet expert" with a big nose. He shook his head and said in Russian to another foreigner in a Red Army uniform next to him:

"This retro toy reminds me of the grenadier era 200 years ago! He is too bulky, [-] kilograms! Counting the ammunition, it takes at least two infantry establishments. And his function can be achieved with grenades. Instead, our Soviet Red Army will never be equipped with such a waste of one, but actually two infantry-made weapons."

"Comrade Andrei, what is suitable for the Soviet Union may not be suitable for China. This is a lesson I have learned in the past year, and what China needs most is people."

Although the person who answered was speaking Russian, he had an obvious German accent—he was originally German, but now he had a Chinese name, Li De.Compared with the Soviets, Li De spent a year in command in the Soviet area, but he still made some progress, knowing that the Red Army could not afford too advanced weapons.

And the man he called Andre was the first batch of technical experts sent by the Soviet Union to China by plane last week.In the days to come, such experts will enter Yan'an through different channels.

He took the "slingshot" from his Russian counterpart and looked at the table next to him. There was a row of strangely shaped projectile warheads on it, including: wine bottles, cement projectile warheads, cast iron grenade warheads, hand grenades made in the border area, and Bamboo tube warhead.The most exaggerated is a ceramic grenade head, and its surface is wrapped with anti-shatter buffer ropes.

The pottery grenade was not an invention of Huang Ke alone.In the history of World War II, when the Soviet Union and Japan faced the crisis of defeat, they all made ceramic hand grenades.The former was produced in small quantities, and the few samples that survived became treasures in later generations.The Japanese also used extensively in the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Battle of Okinawa.

"The biggest advantage of this thing is that it can shoot anything, and it doesn't consume propellant!"

While talking, Li De struggled to load the "slingshot". Besides him, other people at the test site also loaded several newly made "slingshots".

"This thing reminds me of an ancient crossbow!"

It was Boss Zhu who spoke, and everyone, including him, had a very laborious loading process.

Marshal Liu spoke to the Soviet adviser in Russian.

"It looks like we're going to add specialized grenadier units."

These warheads are exploded in a very primitive way: a fuse is ignited before firing.

The Russian muttered: "It's so primitive, can't it use impact fuze?"

Bo Gu, who was in charge of the translation, said: "The production cost is too high."

Test firing began.Wine bottles, cement warheads, cast iron grenade warheads, hand grenades, and finally, in the eyes of Russian military advisers, the most exaggerated "bamboo tube" and "ceramic" warheads were "bombed" out one after another.

The closest wine bottle and bamboo tube flew about 160 meters away, and the rest were all between 200 and 300 meters away.

Throughout Yan'an, almost all high-level leaders observed the test firing process of this weapon on the spot.

The test firing was very successful, and the high-ranking Red Army officers who watched on the spot applauded one after another, and everyone was extremely satisfied with it.

"Jane is the perfect guerrilla harassment weapon."

"He can send a grenade as far as a mortar!"

"The perfect mid-range support weapon!"

"You can add a special grenadier platoon unit to the company."

Huang Ke copied some of the British launching products, and handed over two copies of the design drawings to the Soviet Union. One was a 0.6 kg launch equivalent version that reduced the weight and difficulty of loading, and the complete set of equipment weighed 11 kg.The other can fire a 1 kg warhead, which requires a larger diameter spring and a stronger "loading" force.

After the Soviet Union got the drawings, they easily found suitable springs to make samples, and the final product weighed 15 kilograms.Afterwards, according to Huang Ke's request, they also sent [-] finished springs to China, and the small hardware factory here in Yan'an also easily manufactured the finished products.

Compared with the 0.6 kg version, which can be "loaded" easily while standing, Lin Husan had to lie on the ground and use pedals and hands to pull it with waist strength, just like the British soldiers in history, when Lin Husan manipulated the latter to load it. With the power of "ten bulls and ten tigers", it is still not enough.In the end, another person was added to help, and the two worked together to barely complete the loading.

After the test results, the 1 kg version has a maximum range of about 240 meters.It’s just that the reloading speed of the latter is really annoying. It can barely reload one round per minute. Lin Husan’s evaluation afterwards: In actual combat, it can basically be regarded as one round per two minutes.Because it was too difficult to load, Andre finally ended up adding a winch pulley loading device similar to that used for crossbow bolts to the 1 kg version, which solved this problem just now.

"It is simply the revival of the medieval ballista!" (Soviet spit afterwards)

Afterwards, Chairman Li Runshi sent a telegram to Stalin asking for more springs and spare parts. ——The main reason why there is no finished product is that the sea off Vladivostok is now frozen, and the sea transportation between China and the Soviet Union is temporarily suspended. We can only transport springs and other parts that cannot be produced directly by rail. The remaining bases are processed and manufactured by themselves.

In the next half month, the small hardware processing factory in Yan'an worked continuously in three shifts. After half a month, a total of 0.6 finished products were manufactured. Inside the Red Army, the ones that fired 1 kg warheads were called "small cannons and crossbows." ", [-] kg is called "cannon crossbow".

Note: This thing is actually very different from the British PIAT. The British PIAT actually has a gunpowder launch tube. The function of the spring is to absorb the recoil. This one is a crossbow ejection launcher with a spring as a pure power source.The difference between the two is that the British weapon can aim and shoot horizontally, while Huang Ke's can only be purely projectile and can hardly be fired horizontally.He's just a big slingshot.

-------------------- Chapter 125 "Obsolete" report of the old Soviet comrades ------------------ --

"Another spring, eight thousand? Why are there so many?"

"Not many, at least forty pieces are needed to make a sofa! One hundred pieces are always needed for a bed, and eight thousand pieces are only enough to make eighty beds."

"..."

"Can you pass the level?"

"Go over!"

The materials for the remaining Huang's slingshots requested by the Red Army were received seven days after the telegram was sent—by then they had been stored in warehouses in Manzhouli.The [-] pieces that were transported in the previous trial were just to test the attitude of the Japanese side towards this thing.Seeing that everything went well, after receiving the telegram from here, the Manzhouli side shipped the goods as soon as possible.

In fact, the Japanese customs inspectors already suspected that these springs might be used in the spring return mechanism made by the artillery. However, during this period, the Japanese side secretly supported and even encouraged the abnormal Kaishen forces in the Soviet Union’s arms aid to China. manner.Of course they hoped that the civil war in China would be as fierce as possible, and that Chang Kaishen's "Republic of China orthodoxy" would be weakened as much as possible. In this matter, they did not deliberately block it but let it go with a blind eye.

Among the materials delivered this round, besides the springs, there were also some wooden boxes secretly entrained with [-] Mosin Nagant barrels and mortar sighting devices.

After the battle in the last two months at the end of last year, the Red Army counted the seized rifles, and unexpectedly discovered a large number of Mosin Nagant rifles. Before the Anti-Japanese War, the Northwest Region was also a big user of Mosin Nagant. Before and after the Northern Expedition, it received a large number of Soviet aid.After the Northern Expedition, many Mosin Nagants still flowed from the Mongolian region to the northwest through various channels.

Feng Yuxiang's Great Northwest Army disintegrated with the defeat in the Central Plains War. The remnants were scattered, and a large number of firearms were lost. Many of them also fell into the hands of Sun Dianying, the Northwest Sanma and "Guanzhong Swordsman".After the Red Army swept across the Northwest, they conducted a large-scale inventory of the seized weapons afterwards, and reported that more than [-] Mosin Nagants had been seized.Most of these firearms are in poor condition due to long-term use, improper maintenance, and the rifling of many barrels has almost been worn out. Shipped as counted.

The Japanese side did not check the "transport materials" shipped from Manzhouli to Beiping at all. This batch of key materials such as gun barrels and springs for repairs were easily transported to Yan'an at the end of January, and then the Red Army was at full speed. , Crazy production of "large and small crossbows".

Andrei, a military expert from the Soviet Union, couldn't stand the primitive method of igniting the fuze for the explosive warheads fired by the Red Army during this period. He personally went to the field to improve it.

When improving, he picked up the design drawing left by Huang Ke (the original version of the British), and found that the original design was well done: there was a striking pin on the firing spring, which hit the bottom of the ammunition when firing, ignited, shot out, and then delayed. When the fuze works, it detonates.

Andre expressed his puzzlement: "Isn't this design great, why did you cancel it?"

"We are currently unable to produce this kind of impact-delayed detonation fuze. The lack of firing pin is also to simplify the process..."

"I see! I thought we Russians were rough enough..."

Hearing this answer, Andre covered his face, took a breath, and said:

"However, this primitive method must be improved! Send a report to Moscow, and ask Comrade Stalin to send another batch of delayed impact fuzes—forget it, let's figure out a way to solve this problem first, and this should not be difficult to solve. Ignition and detonation are too primitive, and there will be big problems in rainy and snowy weather!"

That Comrade Andre is an old man in his 50s, who also participated in the October Revolution—but his status is not good, he came from the White Army, and was implicated during the Great Purge.In fact, the people Stalin sent over this time basically had all kinds of political problems.

In Chairman Li's telegram to Stalin, he asked for such "experts" who had "some political problems, but not too serious".The content of the telegram was drafted by Wu Hao, and the statement was nice: Let these comrades undergo another proletarian revolutionary transformation.

Stalin thought it made sense and agreed.

Comrade Andrei was sent to China under such circumstances. If he was still in the Soviet Union at this time, he might be imprisoned or even sent to the Gulag to grow potatoes.

Andre picked up the manufacturing manual of the impact delay fuze that Huang Ke sent not long ago, and after looking at it for a while, he was surprised again:

"Actually, you all know how to make it..."

"We have been working hard to test, but because of technical problems, the success rate of impacting and igniting the fuze is very low."

Andre suddenly understood why he was sent to China because he was "outdated".

Andrei was a military engineer in the old tsarist era. Neither his political ideas nor his knowledge could keep up with the young people who came later.Before being sent to China, he was actually living on his laurels in the factory, and then came the great purge... In the eyes of Comrade Stalin, he "refuses to keep up with the times" ) Poaching the corners of socialism "lazy" is intolerable!

Chairman Li Yunshi made it very clear in his report to Stalin’s dignitaries: What is needed is not someone who knows the latest knowledge, but a technician who has experienced the most difficult years of the October Revolutionary War, knows how to make arms with local methods, and is good at "outdated old technology" .This kind of old man is not capable enough to deal with the ever-changing new technology, but in the relatively backward China, they will be at ease.

"What China needs are Soviet experts who are good at outdated technology!"

At a glance, Stalin agreed that this was the attitude of the Bolsheviks who "don't aim too high," and who were truly down-to-earth. He personally ordered to find such talents from within the Soviet Union to go to China.The first batch of technicians sent to China were all "earth experts" who knew how to use "earth methods" to make munitions, how to build earth blast furnaces, and how to refine oil.In terms of age, they are basically old guys. Their technical knowledge is not the best in the Soviet Union, but it is definitely "outdated", because "outdated" is only suitable for China in this period.

Andre was sent to Yan'an, and his main task was to instruct the Red Army in the manufacture of explosives, detonators and shells.After he figured out the situation of the Red Army, he quickly settled down and worked with relevant people in the Red Army to study how to improve the success rate of ignition of the earth-made impact fuze.

In his later report sent back to the Soviet Union, he described it like this:

"The situation of military production in China reminds me of the hardest days after the October Revolution. At that time, due to the sabotage of enemy agents, our military production also encountered many difficulties, and we had to take various measures in the future. It seems to be a backward but helpless way to solve the problem.”

"They can't produce their own explosives, they can only infiltrate sawdust, %&*%%% (garbled characters) and other materials with nitroammonium fertilizer, and use the most primitive means to process them into primitive explosives. This method was used in the October Revolution. It was used in difficult times. And the process of making their own detonators also reminds me of the old days."

"In China, the production of chemical explosives is almost blank. By the time I came, all he could really produce was granular gunpowder. Fortunately, the best news I heard was that they were planning to build The gunpowder factory has issued an order for related equipment two months ago, and it will arrive in about March. This set of equipment can produce sulfuric acid and nitric acid. According to the personnel of the Red Army, after the factory is built, it is expected to produce 2 tons of sulfuric acid, 1 ton of nitric acid, hundreds of kilograms of smokeless gunpowder..."

The gunpowder factory mentioned in Andre's report is actually a factory prepared by the Red Army to imitate the scale of Yan Xishan Taiyuan Gunpowder Factory.In fact, the original plan for the military construction of the Red Army, in many places, directly copied Yan Laoxi's set, and then modified it.Andre met many technicians and workers in Yan'an, all of whom were secretly hired from Taiyuan by the Red Army through underground organizations during this period.The planned gunpowder factory, even the technological process and equipment purchase order, were all copied from Yan Laoxi.

Military Production Assistance Technician Makarov reports:

"I've been to a factory that makes mortars. The steel pipes used by Chinese comrades to produce mortars are ordinary steel pipes aided by the Soviet Union, not real carbon steel. This method is very easy to blow up the chamber. The solution for Chinese comrades is to use larger Saw off a section of the steel pipe to make a flange-type gun hoop to cover the outer ring, this clever and rough solution, we also did it 20 years ago..."

"The military production equipment here in Yan'an is a contradiction between the advanced and the backward. Compared with their poor mortar production technology, most of the machine tools, lathes, milling machines and other mechanical processing equipment here, although the number is not large, However, it is unexpectedly very advanced. A large number of equipment are new products produced just last year. They are basically German and American products, and their quality is not inferior to similar products in the Soviet Union. My evaluation of the equipment here is: just add A piece or two of specialized equipment, and they could even go straight to the Mosin Nagant."

"Here we have begun to try to manufacture submachine guns in small batches. This is a brand new style. The gun was designed by the Red Army itself. However, due to the lack of special equipment, the production efficiency is not high, and some key parts, such as return springs, need to be imported. .In addition, another limiting factor affecting the production of firearms in the factory is the problem that the raw material special steel cannot be produced by itself."

(At the end of the report, a list of relevant materials ordered from the Soviet Union, as well as the design drawing of the gun is attached. In fact, the gun is the design sketch of the M18 submachine gun that Huang Ke got from the Internet, named "Blizzard" The submachine gun has a slightly modified caliber so that it can fire 18mm bullets instead of 45mm Luger pistol bullets. In addition, the magazine interface is common to the domestic mainstream MP[-] submachine guns, and the two sides can interchange magazines. The reason why MP[-] is not directly produced , but the production parts of the latter are more complicated. In addition, the M[-] submachine gun needs to be produced in large quantities and quickly, so it can directly use stamping technology. The Red Army does not have the equipment for this at present, but there is a way to solve it in the future. At present, it is only a small amount of trial production. for testing.)

"During the conversation, I learned that there is a very powerful technician in China. His name is Hu (Huang Ke's pseudonym) expert, and all these equipments are provided by him. I saw this mysterious "Comrade Hu" leave Yan'an The few machined products left before are extremely finely crafted, and they are indeed quite excellent works of art... I heard that this expert Hu is also the designer of the "Ballista" and "Blizzard" submachine guns …”

(What this Soviet expert did not know was that half of the equipment in the machinery workshop he visited was moved by Huang Ke from Nanchang. Those were all high-end goods imported last year for assembling aircraft. The rest of the equipment was It is also the equipment he ordered from the United States and Germany for real money, so it is naturally the most advanced good thing.)

"In terms of bullets, they still rely entirely on reloading bullets and cannot produce them themselves. They have special bullet reloading equipment, and one can only reload one bullet at a time. The efficiency is not high, but fortunately, the quantity is huge. I first arrived At the time of Yan’an, there were only more than 50 units of this equipment, but at the time of writing this report, [-] brand new equipment have been received, and more similar equipment will be shipped in the future.”

"Grenades are currently the only weapons that China can produce in large quantities and are completely self-made. But the biggest problem currently facing is the supply of self-produced explosives. The grenades filled with the TNT or gun cotton we shipped, although the shell technology is rough, But after the explosion, the number of killing fragments is close to that of our products, and it is regarded as a qualified product. However, the problem of self-produced explosives has always been the biggest headache for Chinese comrades. Comrade Andrei has reported related problems. Another product that can barely be called a qualified product It is a grenade filled with ammonia, which is much less powerful than TNT, and the latter also needs to be obtained through imports."

"As for the grenade filled with old-fashioned granular gunpowder, the explosive power is very bad. Even if we try to improve it and increase the pre-fragmentation groove on the shell, but in the test, the number of fragments rarely exceeds ten pieces. According to Chinese comrades , This is the weapon that embodies their true "self-reliance" level in a long-term war after foreign aid is cut off. It is hard for me to imagine how they have persisted in the past few years until now."

"Another weapon I don't know how to evaluate is related to the "slingshot". This is also a product developed by the designer of the Blizzard submachine gun that I have never met, "Comrade Hu". He made it himself I have test-fired and inspected the parts of his Blizzard submachine gun. Both the design concept and the manual processing technology are extremely exquisite. However, another bullet he designed for the "slingshot" is extremely rough. Like the military production situation here, it is a contradiction between "advanced and backward"."

"The shell of the grenade made of cement and straw rope is filled with iron sand soaked in feces and dried, and an explosive cartridge made of bundle-like gunpowder mixed with a small amount of gunwool is inserted. The explosion delay of one bomb is about ten seconds. Fireworks called "wiping guns" (also known as match guns) by the locals are used to detonate the detonators and are ejected with a slingshot...According to Chinese comrades, this weapon actually fires ten rounds in actual combat It is difficult to kill an enemy directly, but the real power lies in the wound infection caused by the wound... They call this kind of shell "golden feces bomb". I have been to test firing The scene after the explosion was really smelly."