I want to be emperor

Chapter 1129 The Airplane Era

Although the fifty Black Swallow training aircraft purchased by the Army Air Force of the Da Chu Empire were not the first aircraft purchased by the military, they were the first standard aircraft purchased and equipped for use on a large scale.

Prior to this, the Army Air Force had intermittently purchased a total of dozens of aircraft, but they were mainly used for testing, exploring the tactical applications of the aircraft and training pilots. Therefore, the models were very complex. Basically, various types of aircraft were developed by the four major aircraft manufacturers. They all have airplanes, even airplanes developed by American Aircraft Company...

Of course, due to patent issues, the military has no way to directly purchase aircraft from American Aircraft Company, not even through leasing. Therefore, the military sends personnel directly to the American Aircraft Company flight test site to conduct test flights, etc. Training in name.

In order to avoid patent issues, maintain normal research and development, and ensure the military's interest in its own aircraft, American Flight Company is also willing to allow military personnel to use these aircraft for free in the name of testing.

Through direct procurement and test flight models, the Army Air Force actually already has dozens of aircraft... But the models of these aircraft are still too complicated, and the most common aircraft of the same model is no more than ten.

This situation also played a certain role in the early exploration process, but now the military has accumulated certain experience in the early exploration of aircraft operations. Now it is ready to train pilots on a large scale and form a fleet that can officially be used for combat missions. .

But it is also troublesome to train pilots, at least to use various previous aircraft... You must know that contemporary aircraft are still relatively primitive, let alone the various messy early aircraft purchased before. The stability of the aircraft, The controls are not very good, and it is not easy for pilots to learn to fly.

There have been many air accidents before, resulting in the death of many pilots, and this was under the premise of parachutes.

Parachutes are not a new thing. When the Chu Empire used hot air balloons on a large scale, parachutes began to be used in order to ensure the safety of personnel launching missions.

When the combat altitude is higher, and in some cases airships that can even reach an altitude of several thousand meters enter military service, and are also used in some civilian applications, parachutes have also been greatly developed as the only survival tool for air personnel.

This is actually the situation in many provinces directly under the jurisdiction of the Chu Empire... their own industrial strength is not very good, and they basically serve as suppliers of various raw materials and consumer markets.

After the aircraft came out, the actual performance of the parachutes used by the Chu Army Air Force was not bad, and it was basically not much different from the parachutes used in later World War I.

Contemporary Fuso is still just a province that sells industrial raw materials... There is nothing we can do about it. The conditions in Fuso are not good, and it is still very difficult to develop industry.

Later, the principle of treating all directly-governed territories equally was implemented, and the restrictions were relaxed and the scope of protection was expanded to all directly-governed territories... So many overseas directly-governed territories have tea plantations and mulberry plantations, but most of the overseas directly-governed territories are still small To make matters worse, only Fuso Province has really developed a silk industry.

The most important thing is that this is the largest and densest consumer market in the entire empire...not only a consumer market for industrial consumer goods, but also the largest consumer market for industrial equipment.

Today, the annual output value of Fuso raw silk has even surpassed that of Zhejiang or Jiangnan... becoming the province with the largest raw silk industry output value in the Chu Empire.

The government even funded research and cultivation of fine mulberry trees and silkworm seeds, and encouraged raw silk companies to improve their production techniques.

Also protected are the tea and porcelain industries.

No way, industry is all about cluster effect, and some domestic industrial centers have already formed large-scale and complete industrial types, such as the Pan-Jiangnan region... here you can easily purchase almost all industrial equipment. , and at the same time, it also attracts a large number of technical talents and ordinary workers across the country.

At the beginning, the scope of protection of these three major protection bills was even smaller, limited to the traditional Chinese mainland... At that time, even directly administered overseas territories such as Nanyang and America could not engage in these industries.

After all, this thing actually has no technical content, it is just a design problem and a material problem... For example, the silk used in the material may be troublesome and expensive for other countries.

In the past ten years or so, after the Fuso Kingdom was completely destroyed and turned into Fuso Province, the Chu people also planted mulberry trees on a large scale in the Fuso Islands area for the production of silk.

But for the Chu Empire, silk was abundant...the army's medium and large-caliber artillery had long used silk as a wrapping material for propellants.

In fact, even though the raw silk in Fuso ranks first in the empire, almost all of the raw silk they produce is sold to various silk spinning manufacturers in economically developed provinces such as Jiangnan and Zhejiang for deep processing into various products. A variety of silk products are sold to the market.

It is worth mentioning that so far, due to the unique and even damned 'Silk Protection Law', mulberry trees can still be planted to develop the silk industry only in directly-governed territories. In addition to directly-governed territories, even administrative territories are not allowed to plant mulberry trees. Develop the raw silk industry...

Today, the silk-related industries in Fuso Province have made great breakthroughs. The mulberry trees are better, the silkworm seeds are better, and even the raw silk production technology is better... This has also led to the silk industry in Fuso Province having achieved relatively great results. success.

The Great Chu Empire had long wanted to protect the advantages of local specialty industries... to be precise, it was to protect the interests of tens of millions of silkworm farmers, tea farmers, and porcelain factory workers, plus a large number of tea merchants, silk manufacturers, and porcelain manufacturers. Thanks to the promotion, these three such fucked-up protection industries have emerged.

However, it is not bad to be a sustainable supplier of industrial raw materials. Anyway, the current population of Fuso Province is not large, only a few million people. Although the total economic volume is not large, the per capita GDP is not low. of.

Of course... This is actually because Jiangnan and Zhejiang are the most economically developed coastal provinces in East Asia. People have a lot of ways to make money, and there is no need to bother with traditional agriculture... Of course, this does not mean that they give up. the silk industry.

To invest here, you only need to bring your check to build a factory, and on the right are your various suppliers, and on the left are your various customers...

The main reason is that the local climate and environment are relatively good, which is more suitable for planting mulberry trees and raising silkworms. The most important thing is that the local Fuso Provincial Government has little use for various resources due to the backwardness of the local economy, and there is not much land for agricultural production. In order to develop the local area Economically, the local government has chosen to develop the silk industry and has given huge support policies to silk-related industries.

This is not about saving trouble, but about greatly reducing costs!

Industry has a focusing effect, which is why the development speed of major industrial centers in the Chu Empire has remained very high in the past ten years... because of capital and talent, there is still a steady influx of talent into these places.

The population of Songjiang City has reached tens of millions...and the central area of ​​Songjiang City has also expanded from a few dozen square kilometers in the early years to more than a thousand square kilometers.

And this is just the central city in a narrow sense. In fact, Songjiang City also has a lot of so-called suburban towns attached to it. These suburban towns are actually satellite cities one after another, with a population of tens of thousands or even more than 100,000.

These satellite towns are spread throughout Songjiang Prefecture and are connected through urban railways... Because the central city is too crowded, and the residences in the city are generally multi-story apartments. Except for a few high-end apartments, other ordinary apartments are actually average. At the same time, the urban air The environment is not good.

Therefore, a considerable number of middle- and high-income people actually live in various sanitary towns in the suburbs and commute to and from work in towns and central cities via urban railways every day.

In contemporary times, some middle- and high-income married men often live in suburban communities far away from the central city in order to provide a better living environment for their families. This distance is often several kilometers or even ten or twenty kilometers away, but in these places you can Living in townhouses or small detached houses is often accompanied by private primary schools with good teaching quality, daily shopping malls and medical facilities.

It's just that his family's life is better, but he has to work hard...

In the morning, take the commuting public carriage in the community that goes between the community and the train station, and transfer to the urban train at the train station.

After a train journey of about twenty to thirty minutes, or even an hour, you arrive at a train station in the central city, and then transfer to trams, buses, stagecoaches, taxis, taxis, etc. that are specially connected to the train station. public transportation to work.

Finally arrived at the company for work.

Of course, there are also some people who, in order to avoid the hassle of daily commuting, often live in small rented apartments during the working day and go home on their days off.

Of course, there are also some people whose homes are not far from their workplaces who choose to take public transportation or drive their own cars or horse-drawn carriages directly to their workplaces.

However, despite the fact that many people need to spend two or three hours on the road every day... Even so, it is based on the extremely developed urban railway network in Songjiang Prefecture.

The urban railway network in Songjiang Prefecture is very developed. This railway network consists of a subway network and a ground railway network. In suburbs and urban areas where land prices are not too high, in order to save costs, ground railways plus viaducts are used. , subways will only be built in poor places like Linjiang Road in central urban areas with dense buildings and expensive land.

Together, they form a railway network that covers almost every town in Songjiang Prefecture... This is much larger than the so-called subway network in later generations, because the subway in the urban planning sense of later generations is only within the urban area, but the urban railway network of Songjiang Prefecture , it connects all places in the entire central city, and also connects many surrounding satellite towns...

At the same time, most of the more than 2,000 kilometers of urban railway network in Songjiang Prefecture are actually ground railways. The subway part is actually very small, with less than 10% being temporarily avoided.

There is not much money available to build railways on the ground, especially since most of them were actually built as soon as the surrounding areas were developed. At that time, these places were still rural suburbs...Although some places were built later, the land was acquired The cost is relatively high, but Songjiang Prefecture is not short of money. More importantly, the cost of land acquisition in these places is still very low compared to the cost of building railways.

As for building the subway, all fools know that it is very expensive... Building the subway is very expensive these days. Even if a tunnel boring machine has been invented and used, which is probably a tunnel excavation equipment similar to the shield machine that people in later generations will talk about, the cost of excavation is still very high.

Therefore, unless subways are built in extremely special places, don't expect to build subways in other places... Songjiang Prefecture in the Dachu Empire started building so-called subways a long time ago, but not many have been built until now.

The huge urban railway network is also an indispensable means of transportation that supports the huge industrial operations in Songjiang City and the lives of tens of millions of people. In an era without high-rise residential areas, if you want to accommodate tens of millions of people in an urban area, the urban area is so huge. As the urban area becomes larger, it becomes more troublesome for people to travel, so urban railways are needed. A relatively unique way of public transportation.

And this is the strong strength of core industrial cities... which is even more unmatched by backward directly-governed provinces like Fusang Province.

But even so, the life of Chu people in Fusang Province is not bad. After all, there are not many people, and the per capita output value is large enough.

Even though the silk industry is nothing among the many industries in the Chu Empire, it can still bring a good life to the Chu people in Fuso Province.

Fuso's raw silk, plus the raw silk production in Zhejiang, Jiangnan, Liaodong and other provinces, the silk production in the Chu Empire alone in East Asia is a very huge number.

Most of them were used to meet the high-end textile consumption needs of the Chu people, and a few were exported to overseas vassal countries and became luxury accessories sought after by the powerful and wealthy businessmen in the vassal countries.

As for the amount of silk used by the military...it's not worth mentioning.

Therefore, making parachutes from seemingly expensive silk is a bit difficult for other countries, but it is not worth mentioning for the Chu Empire. The annual amount of silk required for parachutes is not even a fraction of the amount of silk stockings.

Therefore, pilots in the Army Air Force will carry a parachute bag every time they take off to fly, so that they can parachute and escape early in the event of a plane crash.

But even so, many Army Air Force flight tests in less than a year still resulted in the death of many pilots, which shows how dangerous contemporary aviation is...

Of course, the more important reason is that the technology of various early experimental aircraft was immature... being able to fly does not mean that it is safe to fly.

This is why the Army Air Force quickly placed an order for fifty aircraft after seeing the Black Yan trainer aircraft... This kind of aircraft flies smoothly, is easier to drive, and is safer to fly.

This is extremely important for the contemporary aviation industry... If the aircraft are not safe enough, there is no point in building a large-scale aircraft fleet.

After Tangshan Aircraft Company received the order, it quickly began to organize the production and delivery of the Black Yan trainer aircraft.

Although contemporary aircraft are expensive, the main technical difficulty in producing them lies in the aeroengine...and the aircraft company is not responsible for this part. They don't even need to carry out detailed designs. They only need to come up with specific technologies. requirements, and then the core technical team of Tangshan Machinery Company, that is, the engine R&D team will conduct research and development.

Then it is delivered to the subordinate Tianjin Engine Factory for production.

As for many other parts, they are actually produced by other professional parts factories in the group. If the group cannot produce them, it will find other manufacturers for outsourcing.

Tangshan Aircraft Company... To be precise, it is actually a company that designs and assembles aircraft. They themselves are not responsible for the production of high-tech parts.

Therefore their factory is also an assembly factory.

After the engines and other parts arrived one after another, Tangshan Aircraft Company quickly carried out assembly and production. Soon the first mass-produced Black Yan training aircraft was produced, and then a large number of intensive tests were conducted.

Then there was the second one, then the third one...

And began formal delivery of this aircraft to the Army Air Force.

After the Army Air Force accepted the Black Yan trainer aircraft, it immediately organized its most skilled pilots to learn to fly under the leadership of the instructor pilots from Tangshan Aircraft Company, and then gradually began to fly alone, and then served as instructors to teach others. pilot.

During this process, the flight stability, easy controllability and other characteristics of the Black Yan trainer aircraft were once again amplified, making it safer and faster to train pilots.

When the Army accepted the use of Black Yan training aircraft and began to train pilots on a large scale, the Navy also heard the news, and then it also found Tangshan Aircraft Company for inspection. After the inspection, it directly placed an order for Black Yan training aircraft.

In the Chu Empire, the users of aircraft were not only the army, but also the navy, the Guards, and even the armed tax police and coast guard.

This is still talking about the traditional five major military services... In addition, aircraft also have certain needs for patrol agencies, agricultural agencies, etc. For example, agricultural agencies are used to patrol mountains and forests, count cultivated land area, and patrol agencies are used to patrol remote areas, monitor borders, etc.

Because there are still many official users of the aircraft, they all faced the same problems as the Army Air Force. The early aircraft were too junk, unsafe to fly, and it was difficult to train pilots.

Now that they have the Black Yan training aircraft, they have instantly seen the hope of training a large number of pilots and forming a formal fleet.

They even directly used other models of the Black Yan trainer aircraft as reconnaissance and inspection aircraft... You must know that the Black Yan trainer aircraft was not designed as a trainer aircraft from the beginning. It was designed as a reconnaissance aircraft from the beginning. .

So from the beginning, this aircraft was a single-engine, two-seat aircraft, unlike some other aircraft that were single-engine, single-seat aircraft.

Therefore, the Heiyan aircraft can be used as a training aircraft, and it can also be used as a reconnaissance aircraft, and its advantages can be even more utilized when used as a reconnaissance aircraft.

Therefore, all major users are very interested in the Black Swallow series of aircraft, and they have placed orders one after another. In a short time, all parties have placed orders for training aircraft, reconnaissance aircraft, and patrol aircraft, totaling 200 orders. There are so many racks.

While this news made everyone at Tangshan Aircraft Company very happy, it also put great pressure on the other four aircraft companies...

You must know that in a short period of time, whether it is the military or administrative agencies, their demand for aircraft is limited. In the early stage, the combined orders from major military and administrative agency users were estimated to be only one or two thousand aircraft.

Now, the market share of two hundred aircraft has been snatched away by Tangshan Aircraft Company... And the aircraft that the four of them are developing have still not received the approval of users.

It would be a lie to say there is no pressure, but there is nothing we can do if there is pressure. We can only immerse ourselves in each other and continue to accelerate research and development.

In the research and development process of the four major aircraft companies, Songjiang Aircraft Company, a subsidiary of Songhe Automobile Company, has a relatively special research and development path. They have seen the fierce competition between single-engine aircraft and twin-engine aircraft.

Especially after the success of the Black Yan series of single-engine aircraft, and the twin-engine long-range aircraft of Liaodong Aircraft Company, a subsidiary of Liaodong Automobile Company, which also received praise from the military after its first flight, it felt tremendous pressure.

So they simply chose a direction that other aircraft companies have not yet vigorously involved: four-engine heavy-duty aircraft.

They are preparing to build a super-large aircraft with a maximum take-off weight of more than five tons, or even six or seven tons, with four engines.

They have conducted preliminary research and development in this field before, and the technical difficulty is actually no greater than that of single-engine and twin-engine aircraft...

Anyway, the biggest technical difficulties are in the engine field. As for the airframe design and production difficulty... To be honest, it is just that. It is not even as difficult as the airframe design of other Heiyan trainer aircraft.

If you look at it purely from a technical perspective, currently in the aviation industry of the Dachu Empire, the Black Swallow series aircraft are the most technically difficult, both in terms of engine and body design.

In the engine field... Tangshan Automobile Company's gasoline engine field is inherently the most technologically advanced, and the same is true for aero engines, so they can use lighter and smaller aero engines to provide greater power.

In terms of airframes, they also have relatively strong technical capabilities, and with good luck, they have figured out an airframe like the Heiyan aircraft with very good flight stability.

As for other spare parts... it is not a reflection of their own abilities, but they are rich and are willing to purchase the best spare parts, install them and sell them at a high price... At the same time, users also recognize their high prices and are willing to be taken advantage of.

As for several other aircraft companies, their engines are somewhat inferior, and their luck in airframe design is not good for the time being. I have tried all kinds of messy airframe designs, but I haven't found one that can surpass the Heiyan trainer aircraft in terms of flight stability... You said it's faster, more fuel-efficient, and has a longer range? , now users don’t care about these at all... They only care about being able to fly up to the sky safely and fly down safely... As for speed and range, these things are the added value after ensuring flight safety... Good performance is best, but worse performance is actually OK. improvise.

After all, it is still in the early stages of the development of the aviation industry, and flight safety is the most important. Other issues must be discussed after flight safety is resolved.

Therefore, the other four aircraft companies can only watch helplessly as Tangshan Aircraft Company kills everyone and continues to receive a large number of orders after the order of 200 aircraft... It is estimated that it will not be long before they are rushing to order 400 or 500 aircraft. .

After the advent of the aircraft age, Tangshan Aircraft Company took the first bite of the fattest meat with its Black Swallow series aircraft!

But this is just the beginning. The other four aircraft companies did not sit still and wait for death. Instead, they are all working hard. Liaodong Aircraft Company's Liao-4 twin-engine long-range reconnaissance aircraft, Songhe Aircraft Company's four-engine heavy-duty aircraft Aircraft projects also have great competitive potential.