industrial lord

Chapter 521 New Equipment on Wheels

In recent years, the vehicle industry in the Principality of Wessen has developed rapidly under Frederick's high attention. There are now several automobile factories. The emerging factories are focusing on a certain field, which has brought great pressure to Benz's automobile factory.

At present, Benz's automobile factory is still the one with the strongest technical strength, so the headquarters gave them the order for military vehicles, but made it clear that starting next year, it will adopt the form of open bidding to purchase vehicles.

In the early days of the Wesson Army, the practice of moving double-penetrating rifles onto horse-drawn carriages was adopted. Now that we have cars, this tradition has naturally continued.

It’s just that the roads of that era were too bad, and it was easy to get stuck in the mud during the rainy season. Only after a sufficient four-wheel drive system was developed were military vehicles officially put on the agenda.

Previously, because Eugene accidentally raised the price of lace cloth and increased the principality's income, the high command gave his division three more artillery companies.

But Eugene turned away the three guns and got something better.

According to the current organization of the Wesson Army, Eugene's division is the 3rd Division. In addition to the division headquarters, there are three main regiments, the 31st, 32nd, and 33rd, as well as the division's guard battalion, artillery battalion, engineering battalion, transport regiment, and a logistics battalion composed of medical soldiers and cooks, with a total of more than people.

On the fourth day after the powered delta wing was towed away, Eugene summoned the commanders and chiefs of staff of the three main regiments to the division training ground for an on-site meeting.

The army is not out of touch with society. All the orderlies behind the leaders hold a thermos cup for their leaders. The words engraved on the cup either read their meritorious service or the first battle they had participated in. Only Eugene's was ranked first in the military academy.

Most of the chief of staff, regiment commanders and battalion commanders in the division were former Black Forest mercenaries. They had fought with Frederick throughout the entire game and had experience and military achievements. It was not easy for Eugene to subdue them.

Eugene's approach is very simple, just to let everyone know that they just need to follow him and have meat to eat.

So he recently retreated three artillery companies, then offended the brother troops by snatching equipment, and today is the time to divide the meat.

The open space on the training ground was filled with various vehicles, and engineers from the Springfield Armory explained the performance of these vehicles to Eugene and others.

Due to technical reasons, all vehicles use the same chassis, but the freight model is elongated. Theoretically, a new car can be assembled by removing a good part from each vehicle, which is a bit like a lucky coincidence.

The standard model of this vehicle is 4 meters long, 1.8 meters wide, and 1.88 meters high including the roof. It has a newly developed 50-horsepower implosion engine, front and rear leaf spring non-independent suspension, a load capacity of 800 kg, a chassis height of 30 cm, and tires that are much larger and wider than those of ordinary vehicles.

The freight model has a longer body and a load capacity of 1.5 tons. It can accommodate two rows of seats in the carriage, enough to fit a class of 12 people and a lot of supplies.

I don't really care about comfort, it's good enough to have a car to ride in.

The bodies of these cars are made of thin steel plates with reinforcing ribs, and their appearance resembles a wooden box without a lid, so they are called box cars.

The Springfield Arsenal installed a number of weapons using box cars as platforms, mainly the Big Pea I twin-mounted 15mm caliber heavy pea gun, which used jet tanks originally used for mortars and could fire bullets at enemies one kilometer away at a rate of 500×2 rounds per minute.

Traditional magazines could not provide enough firepower at high rates of fire, so belts were introduced.

The ammunition belt of this machine gun is made of canvas, with an elastic, unclosed metal buckle nailed at a certain interval, and the bullet is fixed in the buckle.

When shooting, the jet tank drives the lever to push the bulge on the other side of the canvas strap to feed the bullet during the backward process. When the jet tank is reset, the bullet is pushed from the buckle into the barrel and then fired.

Some people wanted to use this method of ammunition supply on howitzers, but it was later suppressed by Frederick and the logistics department because they didn't have that much money.

The caliber of the Cherry II grenade launcher used by the Wesson Army soldiers has been reduced from 50mm to 30mm, the grenade charge has been changed from granular black powder to angina medicine, and the fuse has abandoned the more expensive magic fuse and used the relatively cheaper passivated fulminate of mercury impact fuse, so the power has not decreased but increased, the cost has been reduced, and the reliability, range and ammunition capacity have also been improved. This kind of Cherry cannon is naturally installed on the car, because the car can be used to pull ammunition, all use 30 rounds of large drums, and the firepower sustainability has been greatly improved.

Now mortars cannot be loaded onto vehicles, so artillerymen can only take the mortars and ammunition on the vehicle and get off at the destination to shoot.

The same is true for rockets, where personnel, launchers, and ammunition are loaded onto freight-type box trucks and must be removed when needed.

The standard box truck is equipped with a small rocket and rocket nest, with only 8 rockets, which are used to deal with fixed targets.

In addition, there are auxiliary vehicles such as patrol cars equipped with searchlights, communication vehicles equipped with communicators, and cooking vehicles.

During the free tour, Eugene was a little dazed. What he had seen and heard in the Wesson Army in the past few years made him feel as if he was in a different world.

War is no longer a face-to-face fight, but begins with a barrage of fire from hundreds or even thousands of meters away. The influence of individual bravery gradually weakens, and it is more about overall collaboration.

After the tour, everyone held a meeting in the carriage of a troop carrier.

Eugene said to William, the commander of the 31st Regiment, "William, I have got all the equipment I promised you. Now it's up to you."

William, who had the same name as the previous king of the Confederation of the Rhine, once commanded a company of double-pea-gun chariots. He had his own views on the future combat mode and believed that future armies would fight on wheels.

But he had a low position in the army and was not taken seriously. Few people were willing to listen to his voice, so Eugene looked for him to help him realize his dream.

William had come to see the equipment yesterday and was excited.

He stood up and replied: "I will definitely live up to your expectations!"

Eugene said to him: "This incident is not my credit. I made too much trouble in the headquarters. Someone from above passed the note left by the principal to the headquarters, and the headquarters agreed to allocate all the equipment to us."

"Now that we have the equipment and your regiment is organized according to your requirements, it's up to you to see how it performs next year."

William immediately stated: "I will definitely not let down the principal and teachers!"

Eugene had previously discussed his ideas on building the army with the commander of the 32nd Regiment, Erwin, and the commander of the 33rd Regiment, Walter. The two also expected that the biggest piece of meat would be eaten by William, and now they were waiting for their share.

Eugene said to Irwin and Walter, "We still have a batch of freight box trucks. The car factory will be able to provide us with many cars next year. I think these cars should be used together."

Alvin and Walter immediately became serious. If there were enough cars, they would definitely not emphasize centralized use. If each group had a share, they would not emphasize it so much either. It seems like they have to rob them.

Eugene winked at the division chief of staff Erich, who said, "Today we will start the military skills assessment for the 32nd and 33rd Regiments. The official order was issued half an hour ago. You can go directly to the training grounds and don't need to go back to the regiment."

The 3rd Division is stationed in the south of the Principality of Wessen, and further south is the Principality of Bavaria. The Wessen Army’s large-scale comprehensive training ground is in the state of Putz in the east, more than kilometers away.

It is not an easy task for all members of a regiment to maneuver 200 kilometers, especially when the regiment commander is detained and cannot return to command, and the entire task depends on the remaining officers. This can test the regiment commander's usual work performance.

(End of this chapter)