Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1648 Ships
In Foshan Town, a large military depot can be set up as a distribution center for materials.He pondered, taking advantage of its geographical advantages, not only can purchase military supplies on a large scale: rice, miscellaneous grains, livestock, fruits, cloth...and can distribute the supplies conveniently.

His brain turned quickly, some of the purchased materials could be directly processed in Foshan, and the other part could be transported to Hong Kong for processing.The purchased rice was purchased and pounded into brown rice for storage in the grain and fodder factory of the military depot. It was then pounded into polished rice and distributed before being supplied to the troops.According to the nutrition theory put forward by Chen Sigen, Fu Bojun no longer eats brown rice.The reason is that brown rice takes more time to cook, wasting fuel, and brown rice is difficult to digest and requires more chewing to fully absorb.It is obviously impossible to have too long to cook and eat on the battlefield.

In addition to food, vegetables can also be purchased and processed locally in Foshan, and processed into dried vegetables and pickles to supply troops—if the transportation time does not exceed 72 hours, fresh vegetables can be directly transported to the frontline troops.

As for meat, poultry eggs and even candy, Hong Huangnan has the idea of ​​using local raw materials to manufacture them.Especially meat, with the fast and convenient water supply system, you don't even need to think about pickled food.He can give full play to his expertise in food and make some dishes with a long shelf life for the soldiers on the front line.

After drawing the schematic diagram, Hong Huangnan returned to the desk.Wugeng chicken has begun to exude an attractive aroma.He took a sip of the tea brought by his secretary, and opened the folder he had just delivered, which contained line drawings of several types of inland waterway ships newly designed and built by the shipbuilding industry of the Senate for the Guangdong Raiders.

Guangdong itself does not lack inland river vessels. Just on the river from Guangzhou to the Pearl River Estuary, there are at least three to four thousand inland river and river-sea mixed vessels moored all year round.Except for small boats such as fishing boats and flower boats, most of them can be used to load goods and people.Although the cargo capacity is not large, the draft of the ship is shallow enough, which can basically meet the needs of sailing on the main and tributaries of the Dongjiang, Xijiang and Beijiang.There are also a lot of local coastal merchant ships, and the direct expropriation fee is not much.

But Hong Huangnan was not very satisfied with these ships: not to mention that they were all sailing ships, and the cargo holds were not suitable for the various standard packing boxes widely used by the joint logistics department.Although a large number of these ships need to be used for transportation for the time being, it is still necessary to establish a backbone transportation fleet of its own.

In Hong Huangnan's consideration, these specialized ships should not only be motorized, but also have a certain degree of protection.Especially to defend against arson attacks on the river bank.This is a lesson learned: in the Battle of the Pearl River Estuary, the Marine Corps used a variety of captured wooden ships extensively, and the losses of ships in the battle were mainly caused by the enemy's arson weapons, so these ships were not considered to use sails.

He initially focused on existing naval vessels, especially motor three-engine boats.These small boats have a shallow draft and are equipped with small steam engines, making them ideal shallow water vessels.In addition, the 621 paddle wheel tugboat is also a very suitable inland waterway vessel.The intelligence personnel reported that the Type 621 ship could sail to Wuzhou without any difficulty, and could even sail upstream to Nanning.

Using the 621 tugboat to tow the barge can transport a large amount of materials and personnel.Hong Huangnan's "water supply column" is roughly based on this.But that's not enough.

For the main waterway of Sanjiang, the "supply column" of the 621 round can be unimpeded, but when it reaches some parts of the upper reaches and many tributaries, the 621 round is too big.Therefore, a "small steamer" with a shallower draft is also needed to perform transportation and towing work.These small steamers were still active on many rivers in China until the 80s.

In addition to transport ships, in order to protect the safety of shipping and eliminate water bandits; in combat to provide fire support for landing troops and deter coastal villages, small inland gunboats must also be equipped.

When these requirements are mixed together, it becomes a topic for the veterans of the shipyard. Given Shi Jiantao's initiative to ask for a job, he will be responsible for the project. As for the designer, Zhong Ziheng, the only chief designer of the "Central Ship Design Institute", is naturally in charge. .

After the coordination of the Military Affairs Bureau and the Planning Institute, the design of the ship was carried out in Lingao, and the construction of the whole ship was arranged in Hong Kong.Naturally, engines, artillery and the like still have to be shipped from Lingao.

The first page that Hong Huangnan opened was the 621 "inner" type.The so-called "nei" is specially used for navigation in inland rivers.This was done by Zhong Ziheng with a few modifications on the 621 prototype. The main modifications were to install a smaller engine to save the cabin volume, reduce the storage capacity of the coal bunker, and change the paddle wheel to a tail wheel to adapt to the shallower river.

However, 621 itself is designed based on large-depth waterways such as the coastal and Pearl River waterways, and the line shape has not been specially optimized for shallow drafts.Although the draft of the ship has been reduced by refitting smaller engines and other measures, its seaworthy range is already relatively limited.Hong Huangnan looked at the indicator, probably only the Xijiang River is unimpeded, and there is no pressure to run all the way to Wuzhou.

The second line drawing that follows is a river gunboat with an iron frame and a wooden shell.According to the dividing line of 500 tons, its standard displacement of 260 tons can only be regarded as a boat.

This is an inland river gunboat "well-designed" by Zhong Ziheng. The specific blueprint is the river gunboat sailed by the great powers on the Yangtze River in the 20s and 30s.Because of the dual requirements of "riot suppression" and "deterrence", these gunboats are often equipped with larger caliber artillery and a considerable number of light rapid-fire weapons.The speed is faster than wooden boats on the river.Due to the consideration of crossing the Three Gorges into the interior of Sichuan during the dry season, the draft is generally very shallow.

This technical requirement coincides with the general staff's river operations in Guangdong.Therefore, the river gunboat code-named 798 was designed by Zhong Ziheng in accordance with this requirement.The main scale is 54.86 meters long, 8.23 ​​meters wide and 0.79 meters draft.Equipped with two reciprocating 500-horsepower steam engines and two coal-fired boilers.It has a crew of 56 people and can carry a platoon of troops if necessary. The 798 type does not consider the navigating ability at all. It adopts a shallow-draft inland ship line type, and the main line is extremely low.Due to the limited space in the hull, the Type 798 has a common feature of this type of river gunboat: a long and large superstructure.Coupled with the tall double funnels and the huge 130mm front-loading rifled gun profile, the whole ship appears to be top-heavy.

However, thanks to this design, it can pass through most of the waterways and quite a few tributaries of the Three Rivers in the East, West, and North.With its "tall" body and "giant cannon", appearing on any section of the river, it must be extremely deterrent to the surrounding local forces.When necessary, it can also be used to project troops and transport supplies.Although the hull is made of steel and wood, the cabins that are mainly exposed to the waterline are all equipped with hot-rolled thin steel plates as armor. Except for the Hongyi cannon, they are completely immune to most of the firearms of the Ming army at close range.

Hong Huangnan was very satisfied with this river gunboat, but out of experience of the planning institute's stingy character, he was skeptical that the planning institute would finally agree to build a few special-purpose river gunboat Type 798 gunboats.Of course, he personally supports this new type of weapon very much.Compared with the thousand-pound siege guns boasted by many veterans, the river gunboats moored at Baietan are more convincing.

It seems to be in contrast with the river gunboat. Next is a small inland river gunboat that the Planning Institute will obviously like very much. It is based on the 25-ton inland river gunboat that the Japanese army has widely used in China.The seaworthiness of this gunboat is almost unlimited.During the Anti-Japanese War, it can be seen everywhere from the small riversides in the south of the Yangtze River to the rivers in Guangdong.Needless to say on the Yangtze River, the People's Liberation Army also used it to go to sea to support the liberation of offshore islands.The remaining hull has been used as a handyman along the Yangtze River until the 90s.

The problem is that this kind of small boat uses an internal combustion engine, which is relatively weak in terms of high industrial capacity. The design plan is to use a compact 12-horsepower steam engine designed and manufactured based on the American steam engine enthusiast brought by Li Di to enlarge the imitation An 18-horsepower steam engine.Natural speed and endurance are greatly affected.The specifications of the whole ship are 18.1 meters long, 3.5 meters wide, full load displacement of 30 tons, and a naval version of a 70mm trial 32-year-old brigade gun installed-it can be used as an infantry gun with wheels.

"This gunboat is too ugly to look at." Hong Huangnan couldn't help but commented.

Ugliness is ugly, but it is a very useful boat. The "water supply column" does need such a flexible and cheap armed boat escort.

Finally, there is the so-called 1024 small river steamer.Apparently, Designer Zhong didn’t think too much about it, and directly copied the ready-made design materials. In addition to changing the power to an 18-horsepower small steam engine and adding coal bunkers, it was active in China’s inland waterways throughout the 20th century. The "Little Steamer" is no different. The Type 1024 adopts a conventional shallow draft design with a flat bottom and low freeboard. Although it is unattractive in appearance and mediocre in performance, it has strong navigation adaptability.Easy to use and flexible.Hong Huangnan decided to use this kind of ship as a joint logistics mobile transport force.

"That's about it. It's best to build a batch of them." Hong Huangnan circled his name and put the documents back into the document basket.In my mind, I roughly estimated how many ships of various types were needed.

However, he was a little worried, because it was already early autumn, and there were only more than three months before the date of launching the attack. How many of these new-type ships would be put into use by then?He was ignorant of the efficiency of the Hong Kong shipyards and had no progress reports to him.

(End of this chapter)