New Ming Empire mixed in America

In addition to equipping the National Defense Forces soldiers with new weapons, Li Mingqi also asked people to recruit a large number of workers in the port area.

The purpose of this recruitment is to recycle the barbed wire that besieged downtown San Francisco last time and reuse it to build defense lines at various intersections.

Now the National Defense Forces have begun to shrink their defense lines in an all-round way and will only deploy defenses in places where the people of the empire live.

And began to expel all white people near San Francisco to prevent them from providing intelligence or support to those Union volunteers.

Large quantities of building materials were used in the construction of bunkers, and the construction of new forts began in the Port of San Francisco.

Liu Erhe took the Jin Yiwei to protect Li Mingqi and came to the newly acquired shipyard.

Workers here have already built a wall and put up barbed wire.

Because the Xinming Empire’s Royal Academy had moved here not long ago.

There are only a few people left in Yingtianfu who are responsible for stamping bullet casings to supply Foxconn to produce bullets.

Various machines and equipment have been reinstalled, and Zhang Yu and others continue to study the unfinished Xinming Empire version of RPG.

Unlike mortars and rifles, the technical difficulty of RPG is not something they can overcome in a short time.

But they also gave Li Mingqi a surprise, which was a buoy mine.

This kind of mine that can float under the water using buoys is not the trigger type of later generations.

Strictly speaking, it should be regarded as a type of anchor mine. As long as a ship passes by, the bottom of the ship will be caught by the dense hooks on the buoy, thereby pulling the mine to move.

There is an anchor connected to the fire tube hanging below the mine. When the pontoon is taken away by the ship, the mine will separate from the heavy anchor due to inertia and be brought to the bottom of the ship to explode. (Figure)

Seeing Zhang Yu eloquently introducing this very primitive mine, Li Mingqi also had a smile on his face.

Now those Alliance volunteers are fighting against the New Ming Empire, relying on merchant ships to transport supplies to them through the San Francisco Bay.

As long as there is a naval blockade, the volunteers running from California to San Francisco will lose their supplies.

In the future, when there are no white people living near San Francisco, it will be very difficult for them to obtain supplies.

Unless supplies are obtained from San Jose, which is 65 kilometers away, there is no road for them to travel in future generations (pictured).

And Li Mingqi was not prepared to continue to let San Jose secretly mess with him, so mines became a necessity.

As long as enough ships are bombed and sunk, no merchant ships will dare to help those volunteers.

"Is there any difficulty in mass production?"

Li Mingqi knocked on the large ball with a diameter of half a meter. He originally thought that the shell of this kind of mine would be very thick, but he didn't expect to hear from the sound that it was made of thin iron sheets.

"There are no problems in production, but mine laying is a bit troublesome. Someone needs to dive into the water to adjust the connection between the mine and the anchor..."

Zhang Yu's face turned a little red, because this kind of mine was based on the structure of the mine in the "Encyclopedia of Weapons" that Li Mingqi gave him.

However, due to insufficient quality, only a crude toy-like sample was produced.

"Diving is not a problem. I'm just worried about the danger. What if the mine is carried away by the current and explodes?"

Li Mingqi was still a little worried. Every citizen of the empire was precious, and he did not want to put divers in danger because of the instability of mines.

"There will be no danger, because the location where the anchor is connected to the mine is difficult to separate by water flow alone, and the fire tube is a separate line extending from the anchor, so it is very safe." (pictured)

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After Zhang Yu's explanation, Li Mingqi finally made up his mind to use this kind of mine.

Although this idea of ​​using hooks to hang on the bottom of the ship is a bit unreliable, with the advantage of numbers, there will always be one that will surprise the ship that encounters it.

Seeing the confusion on Li Mingqi's face, Zhang Yu quickly made up for it:

"Now we are intensifying our research on trigger-type mines, and we should have results in a while."

"It's just that the manpower is really insufficient now. I want to select some available people from the newly naturalized people. I don't know, long live the Lord..."

Speaking of this, Zhang Yu paused deliberately to see if Li Mingqi had any other arrangements for the newly joined Chinese.

Li Mingqi patted his head and said, "I almost forgot about them. I will have someone compile statistics on their occupations tomorrow. I will give you a report then. Just pick whatever you can use."

Li Mingqi really almost forgot to count the occupations of those people. During this period, he didn't pay much attention to them because of the war.

After leaving Zhang Yu's place, Li Mingqi went to see the progress of refitting the ironclad ship at the shipyard.

The ironclad ships of this era were steam merchant ships covered with an iron shell, and the bottom and interior of the ship were still made of wood (as shown in the picture).

Because Li Mingqi was present in the work of refitting the ironclad, there was no shortage of all kinds of materials, and the progress was pretty good.

However, the progress of improving marine steam engines is really slow, not only because the engineers who were "invited" are slacking off, but also because Li Mingqi cannot produce ready-made products.

Song He trained the navy in Yingtian Mansion, but the progress could not satisfy Li Mingqi.

Swimming alone takes a lot of time to train, not to mention that many people suffer from seasickness.

In the final analysis, it is because there are not enough immigrants. If there are enough people in the empire, talented people can be selected, but there are not many people now, so we can only force them.

It seems that we still need to continue to work hard!

Since the National Defense Forces once again shrunk their lines, it has become very difficult for the Alliance volunteers to conduct a sneak attack.

And because Li Mingqi ordered the expulsion of the aboriginal people near San Francisco, the difficulty for them to obtain information has greatly increased.

But they didn't do nothing. During this period, they ambushed Davis's "Ming Xiejun" several times, causing more than twenty "Ming Xiejun" casualties.

But the casualties of the "Ming Xie Army" will not appear in front of Li Mingqi unless all the "Ming Xie Army" are dead.

On this day, Davis came to the city hall and asked to see Li Mingqi, pleading:

"Director Li, I hope you can equip the Ming Xie Army with some better weapons. Now my soldiers really have nothing to do with those mountain rats!"

Li Mingqi thought for a while and finally agreed to his request and said:

"I can give you some breech-loading guns, but I don't want someone to use these guns against us one day, you know what I mean?"

Of course, Li Mingqi would not give Davis the standard rifle. At most, he would give him some modified Enfield rifles.

After hearing this, Davis nodded immediately to express his understanding.

Although some of the "Ming Xie Army" he took under his command were former soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment.

But most of them are poor workers who have been recruited on the spot, and there is no guarantee that there will not be some bastards among these people.

A few days ago, it was reported that the Ming Xie Army was involved in reselling weapons.

Some bastards resold the rifles they had robbed (crossed out)... from the aborigines' homes to a businessman.

In the end, it was found out that the guy actually colluded with the volunteers, and he was severely scolded by Li Mingqi for causing this.

After Davis left, Li Mingqi summoned Cui Jianguo and asked him to mobilize the "Heavenly Whites" in the "Ming Xie Army" and ask them to pay more attention to whether anyone was colluding with the volunteers.

The last gun reselling incident was reported by the "Tian Guo Bai", so Li Mingqi paid attention to the informants Cui Jianguo had inadvertently developed.