Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

Chapter 218 The Explosion of New Capacity
"Mr. Zhou, your battles have been very effective and have strongly supported the positive development of the Asia-Pacific war. As the chief of staff of the theater, I personally hope that the Eighth Route Army's strength will grow faster and more powerful! It can play a more important role in North China and even in the north. To this end, Mr. Zhou, let's see what we can do to help you.

There is not much we can do in terms of material support. For the huge Eighth Route Army, a few flights of military supplies are just icing on the cake and cannot play a key role. If we can help you improve your strength at this stage in terms of technology, please don't hesitate to help, Mr. Zhou."

General Shi said to Mr. Zhou sincerely.

General Shi was a relatively pure military strategist. After seeing the potential of the Eighth Route Army, he began to really consider this main force in the north to fight against the Japanese invaders.

It is not realistic to provide them with large amounts of material assistance now. Although the Japanese Combined Fleet is now disabled, from Southeast Asia to the coast of Xiaori, the Japanese have the Army Aviation Corps cooperating with the Combined Fleet to escort.

Although the Allied South Seas Task Force has been continuously replenished and strengthened in strength and has always been a thorn in the side of the Japanese in the South Seas, it is still highly risky to transport goods from the South China Sea to the inland via the ocean.

Freight currently still has to be transported by air across the Himalayas via the Indian Ocean, which is a huge hindrance to the supply of materials for the Eighth Route Army, not to mention the need to negotiate with the authorities.

There is no way to adjust the supplies.

So General Shi changed direction. Considering that the production capacity of the border area had grown very rapidly with his help, when the results of this battle were reported, General Shi took the initiative to ask what urgent technical support the border area needed.

"General Shi, thank you for your support and affirmation. We will of course continue to fight against the Japanese and eliminate as many of them as possible in the north. Taking into account our current needs, the troops have a more urgent need for transportation after the large-scale use of artillery. Now we have begun to deploy a large number of mortars at the battalion and company levels. The G506 trucks now produced in the border area are not well adapted to Shanxi and even the northern mountains. We don't have many real roads to drive such large vehicles. If possible, we hope that you can provide a jeep production technology. We will produce a large number of miniaturized mountain off-road jeeps to help the mobility of grassroots troops." The director of the Eighth Office said somewhat overjoyed.

(Classic Willis MA)

"If there are no problems, we hope that the Willys MA can greatly improve the artillery mobility of our grassroots troops in mountain mobile operations, especially increase the carrying capacity of artillery shells and enhance the sustainability of our combat artillery fire.

General Shi, you know that our troops are basically still mainly infantry, and the artillery only has a few light artillery pieces. If possible,

He didn't say this casually. This was at the top of the list of technologies that Ren Zhong proposed to Staff Officer Ye that needed to be acquired.

The Daliwang and Victory I are essentially tractors. Although they are usable, they are still far from being highly maneuverable and flexible cars.

So in terms of automobiles, in addition to trucks, Ren Zhong particularly needs a small off-road vehicle to supplement it. Although the F1 pickup truck is currently under development, this model is not actually Ren Zhong’s ideal battlefield partner.

What really dominates the battlefield are the jeeps with Rogue Eagles running all over the place. Relatively speaking, the mature Willys Jeep is definitely better than the F1 pickup truck that Ren Zhong is currently developing.

Now on the battlefield in North China, no matter in mountainous areas or plains, the road surface is very bad. If we want to enhance the transportation capacity of the Eighth Route Army on mountain roads, the best thing is an all-terrain vehicle. However, it is not easy to develop an all-terrain vehicle now, and we do not have this capability for the time being.

Considering the fact that the border area can already mass-produce the G506 truck, it would definitely be best if we could get a Jeep.

"Mr. Zhou, your idea is very constructive. I will try my best to get it. Speaking of which, our Willys Jeep is indeed very suitable for use in the battlefield of North China."

Since aid resources could not be transported to the North China war zone in large quantities, General Shi felt that providing necessary technical assistance was a better way to enhance the strength of the Eighth Route Army.

You have to know that there are still millions of Japanese troops in North China and Northeast China. If left alone, even if four or five hundred thousand of them moved south, it would be a disaster for the Allied forces.

Although the U.S. Navy and Air Force began to gain the upper hand in the ocean during the bloody battle in the Pacific, the Rogue Eagle's Marines suffered a lot in the fierce fighting on the islands. Every island was made of blood and flesh.

Therefore, if the Eighth Route Army could kill one more Japanese soldier in North China, the rogue eagles in the Pacific might sacrifice one less young man.

Staff Officer Ye passed the news to Ren Zhong, asking him to be prepared to receive the information. This time, General Shi took the initiative to provide technical assistance to the border area. The technology of the Willys Jeep was not too sensitive. Mr. Zhou estimated that there would be no big problem, but it would take some time to transmit the technical process design information across the ocean.

It was a pleasant surprise for Ren Zhong to receive the news.

You should know that this car has a lot of room for future development. If it is iterated and put into civilian use, it will probably be the most popular car on the mainland in the next 30 years.

Before the roads were paved with concrete or asphalt, the traffic capacity of Jeeps would be a necessity for people. The entry of Willys into the mainland would replace the historical status of 212 in advance. You should know that this is a magical car with a life cycle of more than half a century and a cumulative production of more than 120 million! This was an era when cars were not popular at all.

He was waiting happily to receive General Shi's gift package. After Ren Zhong continued to pay attention to the intelligence feedback from all aspects after the war, after only a few days, the news in this regard basically disappeared, as if everything was calm, and the public opinion controlled by the North China Front Army was downplaying its own injuries and covering up the reality of the tragic defeat;

In the rear of Guosu, they were suppressing the Eighth Route Army's new round of victories from becoming a hot topic, lest the Chinese people would be seen as lagging behind by comparison.

It was as if this was just a small battle and the news quickly became a thing of the past. However, this time it was exactly what Ren Zhong wanted and he finally breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that the Japanese would have to fight desperately in the short term.

After Ren Zhong made his judgment, he met with Staff Officer Ye again and formally requested that the construction of the three new bases be accelerated.

The three major bases of the Eighth Route Army were fully mobilized! Almost all the young and middle-aged people in the area were mobilized to start large-scale construction.

The first to be affected are the infrastructure construction of small hydropower, small thermal power, mines and factories.

Almost all of the more than one million young and middle-aged men in the base were mobilized. With the help of thousands of technicians sent from the border areas and hundreds of technicians trained in Yangcun and Heyuan, they adopted the three-shift method created by Li Yunlong without any guidance and carried out construction day and night.

In order to obtain production capacity as quickly as possible, the designs of many infrastructures have been simplified, and the design life span no longer takes into account long-term operation of more than ten years. In Ren Zhong's view, these are temporary transitional facilities that will operate for three to five years, so many design considerations for extending the life span have been simplified and many intermediate links have been eliminated.

In Ren Zhong's opinion, the situation in Shanxi will change drastically in three to five years. Most of the infrastructure in the next few years will be relocated to the city for construction. So when designing, Ren Zhong took out some simple plans from the original construction of Yangcun. After many optimizations, these local measures almost reached the peak state of this simple production model and flourished directly in the mining area.

These earthen blast furnaces, which had long been eliminated in the main world, were built quickly and efficiently in producing crude iron. They could burn coal and make coke at the same time. So they accounted for a large part of the rapidly-started steel production capacity, and were being built one after another in the iron ore plant area.

Ren Zhong needs to use this method to quickly build up new production capacity of more than 3 tons per day and achieve the goal of annual steel production of more than one million tons.

Now the military industry's production capacity is increasing rapidly, creating new production capacity of several thousand tons of crude iron per day, providing abundant raw materials for traditional open-hearth furnace and new electric furnace steelmaking.

The consumption of steel will increase sharply after the advent of tanks. The M3 Stuart tank weighs more than ten tons, and the T-34 tank weighs more than 30 tons. According to Ren Zhong's plan, the tank factory will greatly increase its production capacity. The monthly production capacity of the M3 Stuart will be increased to at least 500 vehicles.

As for T-34 tanks, the number must also be increased to 100.

For the M3 Stuart tank, the future production capacity will be distributed in five major factories in the border areas, Luliang, Wutai, Taihang and Taiyue.

The core equipment is produced in the border areas, but the body and assembly are produced in branch factories. This way, the purpose of production and equipment can be achieved without the effort of transporting them from the border areas to the front line.

The most difficult parts to make in a tank are the communication products and the gun barrel. Even the engine part can spread the technology. For the border area, the production of new gun steel means that the steel plant directly under the Dawn Research Institute has achieved mass production and gun barrel processing. In other words, in the future the border area will mainly produce the communication part and the gun barrel, and then transport them to several other tank factories for assembly.

In this way, the amount of steel consumed by tanks alone is tens of thousands of tons per month;
As for automobiles, although the King of Power and Victory I are not very useful in military use, they will have huge market space in current mountain transportation and future civilian use. Each base must build at least a car factory with a monthly output of thousands of vehicles. Not only these two types of vehicles will be produced, but also the G506 and Willys Jeep will be mass-produced. The total production capacity will exceed 3000 vehicles, which means a consumption of several thousand tons per month.

Coupled with the construction needs of large-scale factories, hydropower, and thermal power, the demand for steel is so high that it would be impossible to sustain it without 100,000 tons per month.

Of course, this is a big plan that affects the entire body. After Ren Zhong draws up the blueprint, the people below will realize it.

The scale of the Cave Academy is now constantly expanding, with one-year and two-year professional technical courses and three-year high-end researcher training courses covering majors from technicians to undergraduates.

Talent is also being exported to factories in large numbers to take up key technical jobs.

With the expansion of factories and the further shortage of technical talents, the Cave Academy began an unprecedented expansion of enrollment. After selecting young people from various bases and sending them to the Cave Academy, it would soon become a huge academy with more than 10,000 people.

Due to its large scale, the Liming Research Institute could no longer accommodate so many people, so these newly recruited people were placed in the branch school built in the capital of the border area. Teachers were sent out by the Cave Academy to teach, and now the highway between the border area and the Liming Research Institute has become a three-lane road, which has achieved a one-hour traffic circle and ensured the integration of the two places.

At the same time, the schools that were opened in Yangcun and Heyuan in the early days are still in operation, but they have been transformed into technical schools. Relying on the integration of work and study in local factories, they provide a steady stream of technical worker training for Taihang and Taiyue factories and even brother bases, and cooperate with the process of industrial expansion. The task is well prepared, so as not to lose sight of the big picture in the new wave of capacity expansion.

Second update, please vote!

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(End of this chapter)