Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

"Do you want to say that these artillery pieces are not designed for the Chinese?" After listening to Liang En complain about Bald Man and Dongsan Province, Joan of Arc asked curiously.

"No, on the contrary, as far as I know, this thing does look like the style of another Chinese warlord." Liang En smiled and shook his head, then replied.

What he is talking about is Yan Laoxi, the warlord of Jin Province. This warlord owns the Jinyang Arsenal, which mainly produces mountain artillery and field artillery, usually with a caliber of 75 mm and a maximum caliber of 150 mm, with about 2,300 guns produced.

It is a pity that the arsenal did not end well. Around 1935 to 1936, Yan Laoxi felt that the war with Japan was inevitable and Jin Province would definitely become a war zone. He believed that the arsenal was too unsafe in Jin Province, so he proposed to move Jinyang The arsenal was handed over to the central government.

However, the payment was not in vain, so Yan Laoxi opened his mouth and asked the central government to subsidize Shanxi Province to spend 80 million yuan. Of course, the central government did not agree, so Yan Laoxi lowered the price all the way to 20 million yuan.

The central government sent people to the factory to investigate, but the people who investigated had all drank foreign ink in foreign countries. They had seen large foreign factories, and they simply looked down upon this, even though it was the largest arsenal in China at the time.

After the investigation, it was unanimously concluded that the factory's technology was backward, its machinery was outdated, and it was of no use value. People don’t want a central building, they want a new central building.

But having said that, it is indeed sighing to abandon China's largest arsenal with an annual output of nearly 200 cannons and nearly 10,000 rifles when a war is imminent.

Yes, the weapon production level of this factory is indeed somewhat questionable. According to the experiments of the rabbits later, the rifling of the firearms produced by this factory is particularly easy to smooth, and the overall quality is as good as the original imported goods.

But under the circumstances at that time, availability was obviously more important than good or bad, especially since this arsenal was also equipped with a new steel plant, whose annual production capacity was equivalent to the total steel plants in the rear during the Anti-Japanese War.

As a result, the arsenal was bombed at the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War and was urgently demolished before Jinyang fell. Some of the machinery, equipment and materials were snatched away, and the rest was used by the enemy.

Yan Laoxi used these equipment and evacuated them to the rear of Western Qin Province to build two small arsenals to manufacture guns and ammunition. However, because the steelmaking equipment could not be transported in a hurry, he also lost the ability to build cannons.

It is worth mentioning that in order to solve the steel problem, Yan Laoxi took advantage of the Japanese invasion of the Central Plains and the national army was routed thousands of miles away. When the central government ordered the demolition of a large section of the railway in Henan, he sent a division to Henan to rob and demolish a part of the railway.

besides. They also pulled back some spare rails and obtained thousands of tons of track steel. This, together with its pre-war accumulation, lasted eight full years of the War of Resistance. But these steel materials can only be used to make mortars at best.

Although Yan Laoxi did not have the ability or even the ideas to end the warlord separatism and unify the country, he also did not have the determination to resist foreign humiliation at all costs when the survival of the nation was at stake. In essence, it was just a separatist force that hooked up with the Japanese invaders and lured the wolves into the house.

But from a purely technical perspective, the series of achievements made by Jinyang Arsenal in the 1930s were indeed an ideal choice for China at that time.

Therefore, Liang En felt that the artillery on these drawings was probably related to him, so he sent scanned versions of these drawings to the Chinese scholars he had known before, hoping to get corresponding clues from them.

What he didn't expect was that he received a call just five or six hours later. The call came from the director of the Weapons and Equipment Exhibition Hall of Jinling University of Science and Technology.

The curator told Liang En that after inspection by himself and several experts, he could confirm that the drawings he provided exactly corresponded to a cultural relic in the collection.

"That's great." After I hung up the phone, Liang En and Jeanne high-fived excitedly, because this meant that after peeling off the cocoons, they were now very close to the truth.

Fifteen minutes later, a series of documents from China were transmitted to Liang En and the others through the network, and through these documents, which did not contain much content, they learned more about this artillery.

The artillery the other party was talking about was a heavy artillery called a Jin-made 150mm howitzer. Previously, China only vaguely knew that this gun was made in the 1930s.

As for the origin of the artillery, it was even vaguer. It was only said that the drawings and some equipment "came from Germany", but Jinyang was declared fall after only having time to build two artillery pieces.

However, according to records, the Jinsui Army successfully transferred the two artillery pieces that had participated in the Jinyang Defense War and kept them in their own hands for the rest of the time.

Until the war to liberate Jinyang in 1949, the two cannons were mounted on the city wall and fired by the Jinsui Army. In the end, one was captured and remains today.

Since all the design and manufacturing information about the gun had been lost in the previous chaos, and only one gun was obtained, the PLA did not use the gun again, but put it in the school as a teaching aid and retains it to this day.

This is also a common practice. After all, an artillery piece like this that has no spare parts, no drawings, can’t find matching artillery shells, and doesn’t even know how to repair it is just adding chaos to the battlefield, and the PLA in 1949 is really useless. Such a cannon is missing.

"In other words, Mr. Frey's father went to China and became the designer of a warlord arsenal in China?" After confirming that the artillery on the drawing really existed, Joan whispered to Liang En Q\u0026A.

"It's very possible, but we'd better see if we can collect more clues if we do a better job." Liang En said seriously.

"Fortunately, we found the whereabouts of those artillery pieces and the scholars there, so I think if everyone exchanges information with each other, the other party should be willing to cooperate with us."

"But before that, I think I need to talk to Mr. Frey. At least in my opinion, as we get more information, he should also be able to find new clues."

For Liang En, since there is a task at hand now, it is also a very reasonable approach to report the progress of the task in a timely manner. At least it is more convenient for the task arranger to grasp the progress of the overall situation.

"Thank you so much, I think my choice should be right." Mr. Frey seemed very happy after receiving Liang En's call, because Liang En found his target in a short time.

"It's nothing. Since I promised this, I will definitely help you." Liang En replied with a smile, "But I also have some things that need your help here. The situation is like this -"

"No problem, I will definitely help you with this favor, or this is what I should do." After chatting about the request, Mr. Frey immediately replied.

"Since there is a high probability that my father went to China, I think it is feasible to find relevant files at this time, so please wait for me for a few days. I think I should be able to find more clues."

The reason why the other party said this is also very simple, because many contents of that era were recorded in secret files. Even though most of these files have been declassified now, it is almost impossible to check all the paper files. .

Therefore, only when the scope is narrowed down to a certain level as is the case now, can everyone find what they are looking for from those decrypted files through manual query.