A Man of Science and Engineering in Troubled Times Wandering in the Late Qing Dynasty

Chapter 79 Made in Hanyang?
After the banquet, Yuan Shikai invited everyone to the meeting hall of the barracks.

The Beiyang Army is so rich, the barracks are naturally not just a few marching tents, and the decoration is quite in place.Moreover, Yuan Shikai likes to learn from the West, and even the design style is modeled after Germany.

Yuan Shikai said to Li Yu: "Mr. Xiao, I will trouble you to help out in the camp in the near future."

Li Yu was not surprised to learn that he was going to stay in the Beiyang military camp for the time being, and their discussions had already been heard at the banquet.But just the thought of facing a bunch of top soldiers feels a bit of a headache.

“I will do my best to help if I can.”

Yuan Shikai chuckled: "You don't have to do your best. If you do your best, my soldiers won't be able to learn it. They can learn basic theoretical knowledge, and I feel satisfied if they can understand operating procedures and field manuals." .”

"President Feng!" Yuan Shikai called Feng Guozhang over, "You are in charge of the coaching office, and you tell someone to take good care of Mr. Li."

Feng Guozhang gave a military salute to Yuan Shikai, "Yes, Commander."

Then he said to Li Yu: "We don't need so much profound knowledge in the army, Mr. Li can just use a little or two of his skills."

Li Yu replied, "Then do your best."

If you are talking about physics, mathematics, or engineering, you really only need a little effort.

"Sir, please follow me."

Feng Guozhang took Li Yu out of the barracks and walked to the school.

Li Yu sized him up a bit. Feng Guozhang was Feng Gong's great-grandfather. Looking closely, he looked alike, let alone.

Today, the Beiyang Standing Army has established many schools, including Armed Forces School, Normal School, Staff School, Surveying and Mapping School, Military Medical School, Horse Medical School, Military Officer School, Gendarmerie School, and Beiyang Army Crash School, etc.

Feng Guozhang brought Li Yu to the Beiyang Army Crash School mentioned at the end. This school will be moved to Baoding in the future, which is the famous Baoding Army Officer Academy.

The Baoding Army Military Academy later graduated many national army leaders such as Lao Jiang, Bai Chongxi, Fu Zuoyi and so on.

But to mention the origin of Baoding Military Academy, it is the Beiyang Army Crash School established by Yuan Shikai in the Beiyang Standing Army.

Feng Guozhang was the first supervisor of the Beiyang Rapid Academy, and many military officers who graduated here later became Feng Guozhang's disciples.He can be the leader of the immediate warlords, which has a lot to do with it.

And four years later, the supervisor of the school will become Duan Qirui of the Anhui Department.

Unexpectedly, the struggle between Zhi and Anhui was foreshadowed at this time.

The school is located in a camp, and the houses are not small.

Feng Guozhang took Li Yu around and stopped under the eaves of a house. "The school is a bit shabby. It can't be compared with the schools in the capital, and it can't be compared with the Western ones. There are no decent conditions. I can only wrong the husband here. stay overnight."

Li Yu didn't care: "It's better to have something than nothing."

Feng Guozhang couldn't stay here all the time. He was the head of the coaching office of the three major institutions under the Beiyang Standing Army, but he also served as the supervisor of the school.

So Feng Guozhang called Li Chun, "Li Titiao, you are helping Mr. Hao in the school."

"Order."

Feng Guozhang's coaching office has an academic affairs department and a school soldier department, and the promotion of the academic affairs department is Li Chun.

In short, Li Yu feels that the generals of the direct faction are the ones he meets the most today.

Li Chun sat under Li Yu at the banquet, and also helped Cao Kun pour Zhang Xun a drink. Li Yu was impressed.

Li Chun later became the governor of the Yangtze River, known as the "King of Jiangsu".

But I don’t know if it was influenced by Feng Guozhang, who also loves education. Later, he built three primary schools in Tianjin under the name of his character "Xiushan"; he also donated 50 silver dollars to Nankai University and built a "Xiushan" Hall".

Now Li Chun is in charge of some specific affairs of the school. If Feng Guozhang is the principal, Li Chun is the assistant to the principal.

Li Chun took Li Yu into his office, "Sir, please sit down! It's so rare that a university student who understands science comes to us. It's really not easy! In the past, everyone thought that the soldiers were gangsters, and they didn't treat us like that." The big bosses of culture, after all, say that it is reasonable for a scholar to meet a soldier."

Li Yu laughed and said, "The general is humorous."

It is true that scholars did not want to be soldiers back then.Originally, there were not many people who could read, and those who could read were unwilling to serve in the army. The cultural quality of the troops can be imagined.

Li Chun chuckled: "Actually, we also know it. Now we can't understand even if we don't have any culture. Mr. Feng and Mr. Duan are both people who have stayed abroad. In fact, we can also see that only educated people can If you go up, you can only be cannon fodder if you are uneducated."

"Yes."

Li Yu found out that Li Chun, the governor of the Yangtze River, did understand something.It is a troubled time now, and the risk of being a soldier is very high. If you want to save your life, it is the safest way to climb to the top as much as possible, at least it is much better than being a soldier.

"How many students are there in the academy of the Beiyang Army?" Li Yu asked again.

Li Chun said: "If you count the short-term training schools managed by the general office, there are almost a thousand people."

The General Staff School, the Surveying and Mapping School, and the Armed Forces School are all short-term training courses, and Duan Qirui, the general office of the General Staff Department, concurrently serves as the general office of the three schools.This short training course also trained many well-known figures, such as Chen Tiaoyuan, Wu Xintian, Yang Wenkai, Shi Jingyun, etc., all of whom were later generals.

Look, Duan Qirui and Feng Guozhang have been confronting each other all the time.

Li Yu nodded, "If these people can be cultivated into the backbone, and then distributed to the new troops organized and trained in various places, the efficiency can be maximized. It is indeed a good way."

Yuan Shikai really wanted to do this, and it would be of great benefit both in public and private: in public, he could quickly train a group of officers and the chief instructors or supervisors of the army primary schools opened in various places, which could improve the overall military strength; in private, he could Let yourself better control the national military power.

To be able to see so far and take care of his own interests at the same time, Yuan Shikai played a big game of chess.

Li Yu sat on a chair, and there were several rifles of different models on the table in front of him.

Li Chun noticed Li Yu's gaze, and said: "Some soldiers down there felt that the guns were not easy to use, so they handed them over to the military preparation department. The military preparation department thought it was the soldiers messing around, so they started arguing. I happened to see it yesterday, so I took it come and see."

Li Yu didn't know much about the military, but he had studied mechanical design after all. There were many military fans among his classmates, and one roommate even took a postgraduate entrance examination for a major called weapon system and application engineering.

Under his influence, Li Yu understood a little bit, and the weapons at the beginning of the twentieth century were not very advanced, and the principles were not complicated.

Just like the rifle in front of you, even those who have watched the Anti-Japanese War drama can find that there is a problem with it: the action of this gun is actually a straight-pull type.

No matter which anti-Japanese war drama you have watched (except for divine dramas, because you haven’t watched them, you’re not sure if the setting is strict or not, and you don’t know whether you used hair gel in the previous wars), anyway, you will see that the soldiers in it use After a round of bullets is fired, the rifles are rotated and then pulled to change the bullets. The action is very short and the efficiency of changing the bullets is very high.

But the bolt of the rifle in front of me is actually on the buttocks. Pulling the bolt is straight forward and straight back, that is, the straight-pull bolt.

Straight-pull bolts are laborious to pull and have a long stroke, resulting in slow rates of fire and are prone to failure.

Li Yu asked casually, "Is this the rifle that is equipped in the military now?"

Li Chun nodded: "Yes, these guns were bought from Austria by the Marshal through the German instructor Hannagen seven years ago. They are easy to use, but they are even easier to use."

"I heard at the banquet that Beiyang is going to buy a batch of rifles from the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau. I don't know what model it is?" Li Yu continued to ask.

Li Chun was a little surprised: "Unexpectedly, Mr. is also interested in weapons?"

Li Yu said, "Since I've come to the military camp, I'm naturally a little curious."

"Well, it's not something that can't be kept secret," Li Chun said, "Jiangnan Machinery Bureau has probably produced a lot. I heard that it is a blueprint brought from the Hanyang Arsenal. It is a new model, and its performance is said to be close to that of the Germans. Mauser rifle."

Li Yu's mind flashed: "Hanyang Arsenal?"

Well, isn't this the famous Hanyang made!

Hanyang was born in the late Qing Dynasty, but it has been used throughout the entire period of the Anti-Japanese War, even in the Korean battlefield. It has witnessed almost half a century of war history, and it can be regarded as an outstanding meritorious service.

But to say that the performance can catch up with the Mauser rifle is blowing up.

In fact, the reason why Hanyang made it was that the Germans deceived the Qing Dynasty, because the Qing Dynasty was almost obsessed with the German Mauser brand.

Hanyang-made is a copy of a rifle called the 1888-style committee, the name is not as famous as Hanyang-made, and it is by no means the German army's standard rifle-the Mauser rifle that has been used in the European battlefield for decades.

However, the German businessmen figured out the superstition of the word "Mauser" by the high-ranking officials of the Qing Dynasty, and falsely claimed that it was a Mauser rifle, after all, they also used Mauser bullets.Anyway, with the word "Mauser", Da Qing thought it was a Mauser rifle.

The Great Halal was fooled, and as a baby, he bought back design materials and production machinery.

Worshiping foreigners kills people!

It's a pity that this phenomenon will not stop after 100 years.

However, Li Yu was not prepared to intervene in these major military and political affairs. On the one hand, he did not have this ability, and on the other hand, it did not mean that Hanyang Zaozhi really failed.

He remembered what Mingyue said about the reforms of Wang Anshi and Zhang Juzheng back then:

Wang Anshi failed because he thought he was smart; Zhang Juzheng succeeded because he thought he was stupid.

In this world, everything that exists must have its rationality, otherwise it would never be born.But Wang Anshi didn't quite understand this truth. He hated the old system and the big group of idlers in the Northern Song Dynasty.But what he doesn't know is that the old system may be stubborn or unreasonable, but it is also the crystallization of the great wisdom of countless predecessors.The people who formulate and implement the system are unparalleled smart people, much smarter than all those who think they are smart, rigid or cumbersome, but effective.

That's why Wang Anshi was ambitious, and he was very happy with the young crop method, and it was in full swing, but it couldn't be used in the end, so it was useless.

In fact, it is also a truth to apply it to weapons and firearms in the late Qing Dynasty.

Zhang Zhidong, Yuan Shikai, and Duan Qirui are all good people, they are not stupid, and they must have discovered later that they got the wrong blueprint.

But the key is that it can be used, and if you spend a lot of energy to buy it again, Qing Dynasty doesn't have this ability at all and doesn't have much time to waste.

The Mauser rifle is definitely more advanced, just like Wang Anshi's reform is definitely more advanced, but the key is to adapt to the times.

——What is not necessarily right must be right, and sometimes what is wrong is also right.

No matter in the late Qing Dynasty or until the Anti-Japanese War period, what China needs most is not top-notch weapons, but enough weapons that can be used.

After all, the national army's equipment in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War was actually passable, but it soon lost all its capital in Songhu and Taiyuan.After that, the poor equipment of the national army was really appalling.

Otherwise, traitor Wang would not have uttered the notorious phrase "Resistance means only sacrifice."

There is a big gap between China and Japan in terms of equipment, but to be honest, there is not as big a difference in army weapons as in the navy and air force.

As we all know, Japan spends most of its military expenditure on the navy, and the Japanese navy can even fight the Battle of Midway with the US Navy in the Pacific Ocean, a super naval battle between aircraft carriers and aircraft carriers.

Japan's navy was definitely among the top three in the world at the time, at least two generations ahead of Germany.

However, Japan's army was indeed at least a generation behind Germany.

The German Army fought a mechanized blitzkrieg of heavy armored groups. Take the tank king of land warfare. German tanks were very strong throughout World War II.

But Japan, Bean Chariot!

Germany's opponent, the Soviet Union's T34 tank, weighed more than 30 tons, while Xiaodou only weighed 2.4 tons!
Not even that much heavier than a 21st century Jeep SUV!

In the eyes of the tanks of Su De, Britain and the United States, the Bean Chariot is simply a joke.

Although Xiaodou is also very vigorous on the Chinese battlefield, after all, there is no fighting.But its defense ability is not strong, and it is much easier to deal with than the real king of land warfare such as Leopard tank and T34.

You can imagine what it would be like for a jeep to turn into a tank on the battlefield, how many steel plates are there for such a weight.

With such a light weight, it's like... Forget it, let's make up for it by ourselves.

In addition, you may not believe it when you say it, but one of the core tactics of the Japanese army has always been bayonet fighting.There are a lot of explanations about "white soldiers and pigs rushing" in the Japanese army's combat regulations and tactical examples.

"Pig rush" is to ignore the opponent's number and charge like a wild boar.

"Pig" is definitely a commendatory word in Japan.At first, Li Yu was very curious about why Xiaoritian Kingdom respected "pigs" so much. Later, he realized that people treat wild boars just like China treats tigers. They are the most ferocious beasts they can see in the country...

Anyway, wild boars, oh no, the tactics of the Japanese army shocked us a lot back then, and the bayonet fight was really fierce.

Therefore, whether it is the late Qing Dynasty or later, advanced weapons are not important. If Hanyang can manufacture a large number of equipment and manufacture them in large quantities, then it will be happy to laugh.

After all, in the Franco-Prussian War, the Chassebol rifle used by France was obviously better than the German Dreiser rifle, but France still lost.

Well, after talking for a long time, I'm really not insulting the law...

If Li Yu wanted to, he could help produce and improve the rifle, at least he could still reach the design level of the Mauser rifle.

After all, his undergraduate degree in mechanical design is not weak, and his drawing ability is even more outstanding. He passed the course of descriptive geometry with a perfect score. Looking at the current Qing Dynasty, there should be few people who are better than his design and drawing ability.

However, it is limited to simple bolt-action single-shot rifles. If it is a light machine gun or even a heavy machine gun, or even various guns, he has to learn it specially.

But he doesn't want to do it either, because it doesn't make much sense: design capability is design capability, and production capability is production capability.

Again, what is lacking is not good weapons, but strong logistics production.

(End of this chapter)