afterglow

Chapter 224 [-]-ton Hydraulic Press; Automatic Rifle

September 29, early morning.

This day is the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the traditional lunar calendar, which is the Mid-Autumn Festival. Even in a place like a prison, the indispensable customs are not absent.

"Hey, where are the mooncakes?"

As soon as Zhou Changfeng and Mu Yu entered the cafeteria, they heard someone asking the military police next to them for mooncakes.

The military police sergeant on duty replied with a stern face: "It's still hanging out, and it will be released at night."

"Why bother, it's not the same when you eat it? Hurry up and present it."

"That's right, it's not short of food."

Many people booed, and the scene was a bit chaotic, but it soon became silent amidst the "bang bang" sound of sticks beating on the table.

Yuan Huai, who was informed of this matter, didn't care at first, but suddenly he had a plan.

"Bold! Do you dare to be confident during the festival? Don't they want to eat mooncakes? They withdraw the breakfast of those who took the lead in making a fuss, and give them the mooncakes that were baked last night."

"Order!"

After half an hour.

Dozens of people in the cafeteria had just lined up to get their breakfast, and before they could get their chopsticks back to their seats, several military policemen rushed in from the door.

After muttering for a while, the three people who took the lead in making a fuss before were confiscated in public with their rice bowls and chopsticks.

"What is this for? What do you mean by taking away the rice bowl?"

"Aren't you arguing for mooncakes? This breakfast will be taken away."

Someone strode forward with a bamboo basket, took out a mooncake from it and put it heavily on the table.

When the two collided, there was a crisp sound of "pop".

???

Is there something wrong with this sound?

While everyone present was in a daze, several gendarmes had already distributed two mooncakes to each of the three people, then turned and left.

One of them picked up the mooncake and wanted to eat it, but he froze immediately because the hand felt strange.

He hesitated for a moment, and tried to take a bite, but the hard mooncake remained motionless, as hard as a brick.

Zhou Changfeng, who was very interested, also reached out and took one. He looked around and found that there was nothing to smash, because the tables and chairs were all made of mortise and tenon joints.

After finally finding a small bench with nails and the heads of the nails turned up, he smashed it down hard, and the nails were knocked off, leaving only a mark on the moon cake.

"Iron teeth and copper teeth can't chew mooncakes that haven't returned oil yet." Mu Yu sneered.

"Hahahaha——" everyone present burst into laughter.

Zhou Changfeng sat back in his seat, and Mu Yu next to him stretched out his chopsticks to pick up a piece of salted duck egg, and explained casually: "This kind of Cantonese-style mooncake is very hard after it comes out of the oven, and it usually takes a night or two to wait for it inside." The oil from the stuffing oozes out so that the outer skin will be soft.”

There is no need to hide it, Zhou Changfeng really doesn't know the reason, or it can be said that there are only a few of the gang of elders around who cook by themselves, let alone moon cakes.

A fat man at the next table asked curiously: "Brother Mu, you know all about this? Could it be that you are good at cooking?"

Embarrassed, Mu Yu coughed twice, and said leisurely, "My wife is tough. She smashed her head with a mooncake when she came home from Qinfen Pavilion on the eve of Mid-Autumn Festival last year, and she got four stitches."

hiss……

Everyone bared their teeth in amazement.

"It's what you deserve." Zhou Changfeng scooped up a spoonful of porridge, and said contemptuously, "Since you dare to steal, you must be prepared to be beaten."

Unconvinced, Mu Yu immediately replied: "Brother Zhou, according to your past experience, I am far behind you in terms of romance."

"That was all in the past."

"Oh, brother Zhou, your nature is hard to change, at least I don't believe that you will be as good as a jade in the future!"

"Who taught you to use words like this?" Zhou Changfeng glanced at him, and said indifferently: "If you don't behave properly after marriage, my wife can hang me up and beat me."

"I'll remember it for you. Hey, all of you present will bear witness to what brother Zhou said."

At this time, it happened to be Chen Shi, and the morning news broadcast on the official radio station began.

"...After more than five years old, the first self-made Wanjun heavy equipment was completed and put into production. The large-scale hydraulic press manufactured by Yanjing First Heavy Machinery Group has been completed recently. The trial operation is good, and the pressure can reach [-] tons. Such A military weapon..."

aha?A [-]-ton hydraulic press?

Zhou Changfeng naturally didn't know much about the development history of heavy industry. He thought that this thing should be standard equipment in industrial countries, and he was embarrassed to go out without a dozen at home. He didn't expect it to be the first one produced by Daming itself?
"The first self-produced one? How many are there in the country now?"

"I don't know." Mu Yu also didn't know.

A small middle-aged man obliquely in front probably heard the conversation between the two of them, and replied, "For the time being, there is only one for [-] tons, and there are four for [-] tons and one for [-] tons."

"That's it, I see." Zhou Changfeng nodded, then asked in a low voice, "Who is this person?"

"He, from the Jinzhou Naval Arsenal, embezzled 10,000+ yuan privately. Fortunately, he recovered most of it, so he was only sentenced to five years." Mu Yu replied.

The hydraulic press is one of the core processing tools in heavy industry, and it is in the same category as the hydraulic press.

After metal workpieces undergo high-pressure forging processing, due to plastic deformation and secondary crystallization, the metal structure is more dense, and the mechanical properties will be significantly improved.

The hydraulic press is divided into two types: free forging and die forging:

Simply put, the free-style hydraulic press means that there are no constraints around it, and a piece of red-hot forging is directly placed on it, and then exerted forcefully.It is usually used to forge large-scale high-strength components, such as the crankshaft of a ship's propeller and the barrel of a battleship.

Die forging hydraulic press, as the name suggests, has a mold, put the blank in it, then close the mold, and press the blank into the desired shape after applying pressure.Generally, it is suitable for processing parts with a small weight and a large number of requirements, such as alloy steel plates, aircraft parts, steam turbine parts, etc., because it is impossible to use only a few times for the molds that are finally made.

In history, in order to build the Yamato-class battleship, the Japanese island country not only expanded the length of the dock and berth, but also added a lot of new equipment to the shipbuilding industry-purchased a 15000-ton hydraulic press and three 70-ton open hearth furnaces from Germany to manufacture 460mm naval guns and high-quality armor steel.

The Germans are more vigorous. In order to expand the production of the aviation industry, the demand for aluminum alloy forgings for manufacturing aircraft is very large, so they developed a 7000-ton forging hydraulic press, and then built an unprecedented 30000-ton hydraulic press, and Three 15000-ton die forging hydraulic presses.

In addition, only the United Kingdom built a 12000-ton die forging hydraulic press before the war, and other countries only had at most [-]-ton free-style hydraulic presses.

The Americans, who win by quantity, have released more than 100 medium and small forging hydraulic presses in just a few years, but the largest of them is only 5000 tons.

The small middle-aged man sighed: "It is not easy to build a giant press, and it takes time and effort. If you want to improve the overall industrial strength, you must hurry up and build a few more."

Decades ago in Qiyuan 7893, the first [-]-ton free-style hydraulic press in human history was completed at the Bethlehem Steel Company in the United States.

This kind of pressure machine with huge pressure, stable pressure process and high production efficiency soon replaced the old-fashioned steam hammer and became the key equipment for Western industries to manufacture high-quality large and medium-sized components, and it was also a manifestation of a country's industrial strength.

Today, there are only more than forty large hydraulic presses larger than 5000 tons in the world, and there are only a handful of [-]-ton hydraulic presses.

为了拥有这一能力，大明早在30年前就引入了首座4000吨水压机，之后很快就掌握了4000吨及以下的自由式水压机的自主生产能力。为了满足需求，几家重型机械公司陆续建造了三十余座4000吨、2500吨、1000吨的中、小型水压机和油压机。

The 22-ton hydraulic press was introduced in the 27nd year of Zhichang. The government-run Taipingfu Iron and Steel Works (Ma'anshan) ordered by the Ministry of Industry from the French company Auber-Dewar. It took four years to complete the construction and waited for thousands of miles. It has been [-] years since it was put into production.

Next, Shangshu Jian of the Ministry of Industry proposed self-research and self-manufacturing. After Zhunzao, the Ministry of Industry obtained a huge amount of funds from the Advisory Council through multi-party lobbying, and chose to walk on two legs with deep pockets - ordering another one while developing it.

However, due to its own limited scale and production capacity, the delivery speed of the Czech Skoda company is very slow; in the 32 years of Zhichang, the "[-]-ton" hydraulic press developed by Daming has been tested and put into production, and the Czechs are still worrying about how to Take that big guy down to its parts and ship it to the port for shipment.

But in fact, because the atmosphere of quick success and quick profit was very common at that time, the R&D team eager for limelight and rewards also came under multiple external and internal pressures.

This led to many flaws in the "8000-ton" hydraulic press, the unreasonable design of beams and columns, and the process of applying pressure at full power output was not smooth.In the second test run, the high-pressure valve was damaged, and the high-pressure water was jetted out, resulting in two deaths and seven injuries.Later, people continued to use it after repairing it, but they could only limit it to less than [-] tons.

The emperor was very upset, thinking that this was a serious dereliction of duty, and it was also a disguised deception.

Therefore, the right minister of the Ministry of Industry who was ordered to supervise this matter is still in prison, with two years left in his sentence.

Counting those that have just been put into production in recent days, today, there are three 11000-ton free-type hydraulic presses standing in the north and south of the Yangtze River; the [-]-ton die-forging hydraulic press ordered from Germany's Demag Machinery Company has also been shipped at the Port of Hamburg. .

As an experimental ship integrating many advanced technologies, the battleship Longshuo has already verified whether many technologies are mature and reasonable.

However, there are great differences within the navy as to what level of main guns the new battleships should carry.

One group proposed to directly increase the 448-inch (416㎜), but the opponents believed that this would greatly increase the displacement and increase the cost, which was not cost-effective; the other group believed that the 400-inch ([-]㎜) was enough, full of power, and not too expensive. ; There are also a small number of people who think that the existing [-]-inch ([-]㎜) main gun can be slightly improved, and the performance is not weak. Generally speaking, it is the most cost-effective.

Although the Ming Dynasty Navy is still fighting internally, the industrial department of the Ming Dynasty has already made sufficient preparations and is waiting for the request of the masters of Party A.

Fourteen inches is not the limit, and fifteen-inch (480mm) main guns are theoretically feasible.

That day, afternoon.

This year's Mid-Autumn Festival is full of good things for Zhou Changfeng.

Maybe the people at the bottom don't care about the important weapon of the country, but for the meat-eaters whose self-interest is tied to the country's strength, this is indeed good news worth celebrating.

Also on this day, after nearly ten days of waiting, the Air Force Department finally replied.

With an excited heart and trembling hands, Zhou Changfeng tore open the envelope and took out the letter paper to read ten lines at a glance. The corners of his mouth raised and heaved a sigh of relief.

The general idea of ​​this reply is:
Lieutenant Colonel Zhou Changfeng, your ideas are very forward-looking, and you also have detailed and effective theoretical arguments and practical basis.The light weapons equipped by our paratrooper units today are mainly semi-automatic rifles, submachine guns, and light machine guns.However, semi-automatic rifles are not easy to carry. Only with a submachine gun and a light machine gun, there will be a firepower gap in the middle of a few hundred meters.Intermediate power ammunition and corresponding guns seem to be an effective solution to the current problems. Therefore, the Air Force decided to adopt this proposal after preliminary discussions.

"Brother Zhou, what are you so excited about? Did you agree?" Mu Yu rolled the newspaper into a cylinder, threw it on the bed, and walked over.

"Yes, I thought I'd go to the big bosses of the navy to give it a try." Zhou Changfeng sighed with a relaxed expression, "I didn't expect the Air Force to be very enlightened."

"Paratroopers are so precious, no matter how pedantic and stubborn they are, they have to be weighed carefully. They are not ordinary consumables."

"..."

However, the Air Force is not considered to be painting a big cake, it is obviously well thought out.

They have no intention of modifying the existing production line, and stated that they will issue a request to Daming National Arsenal and Weapons Companies in the form of bidding, which can be accepted by both government-run and private companies. The caliber should preferably be consistent with the current 23%.

After testing and evaluation, the design with the best performance or other sufficient advantages will be adopted.

Because Zhou Changfeng's report not only mentioned semi-automatic rifles that fired intermediate-power ammunition, but also automatic rifles, and the Air Force was very interested in it.

It's not that automatic rifles can't be shot in bursts, bursts of fire at a distance, and continuous fire at a short distance. Well-trained elite soldiers can use them handily, instead of panicking and wasting ammunition.

Ever since, this weapon can replace the position of semi-automatic rifles and submachine guns, and the flexibility of squad tactics will also be greatly improved.

Moreover, the man-hours and cost of automatic rifles are actually similar to those of semi-automatic rifles, and the number of elite paratrooper units does not need too many, so the Air Force considers whether it is possible to equip all personnel with automatic rifles and light machine guns that fire intermediate-power ammunition.

This kind of idea is not advanced, in Zhou Changfeng's view, it is worthy of praise.

His euphoria faded slowly, and remained so until dinnertime.

"Hey? Is there only sweet-scented osmanthus wine tonight?" Zhou Changfeng, who came to the cafeteria, asked in surprise.

"It's good if you have it. If you don't drink it, I will drink it." Mu Yu looked him up and down, "Why are you so happy today? It's not like this if the idea is approved."

"Uh...you are an aviation commander who doesn't understand these things," Zhou Changfeng stared at him for a few seconds and thought for a few seconds, and said metaphorically, "It's like the adoption of a new type of fighter plane with extraordinary performance that you proposed. Are you unhappy? ?”

"Oh, it's just mediocre."

"You boy, are you stubborn?"

"Ahem, dare not dare."

(End of this chapter)