Show the sword, start from the guerrillas

Chapter 468 Chapter 467, Make up for the shortcomings
In June, the Arsenal was still busy, with various products coming off the production line under the busy work of workers. After quality inspection, these products were packed and put into the warehouse, waiting to be distributed to the front-line teams.

Although the arsenal's production capacity has expanded several times, the warehouse here is still the same as when Li Yuexuan first came here, and has not been expanded due to the increase in products.

This is not to say that the warehouse area is large enough to accommodate a lot of products. Rather, the inventory at the arsenal can only store products for about a month at most. Before it is filled, it will be distributed to the front-line troops. It cannot be said that there is zero inventory, but that the production capacity of the arsenal cannot meet the mission requirements of the front-line troops and cannot be stored at all.

How should I put it? The Eighth Route Army now has more than 30 troops. The 129th Division and the 344th Brigade, which are closely following the headquarters, alone have a total of about 15 troops.

Even if the products of the arsenal can arm more than 1000 people in a month, it is still not enough to face such a large and still forming team. Streamlining the military? Yes, there is such a thing, and the main force is reorganized to the local level. This is all true. But the local troops don't need guns? Without weapons, what can we use to fight the devils?
Moreover, the development of the arsenal cannot only look at the current situation, but also consider the problem in the long run! After the Anti-Japanese War, there was the War of Founding the Nation, and a few years later, there was the War of Establishing the Nation, the kind that challenged 17 companies at once!

How can we fight without a strong reserve of weapons and ammunition? At least, when facing the tanks of the Eagle Sauce family, the comrades should have appropriate anti-tank weapons in their hands, right?

What is the good news? The 120mm heavy mortars and 82mm mortars produced by the arsenal will be equipped to the troops on a large scale even after the founding of the country. They can be produced without any worries. As for the small Dinglong grenade launcher, it was necessary to ensure that each squad had one during the founding of the country. Otherwise, how could they fight against the preserved army equipped with American weapons?
What is the bad news? The arsenal's weapons production capacity is OK, but it lacks the ability to produce bullets! This is the key point, and also a shortcoming of the arsenal, which needs to be made up urgently!

There is a limit to the amount of bullets that can be reloaded. After repeated reloading, the shell will eventually become too heavy and must be remelted and remade! The problem is this remelting and remaking! Remelting is fine, but remaking can only produce copper plates, and the rest of the process is hard to say.

Bullets are small things. Although they are small and not difficult to produce, there are not many countries that can produce bullets themselves even after decades! It is not that the technology is not up to the task, but how to choose between mass production and low cost. It costs one dollar to buy a bullet from abroad, but it costs two dollars to produce a bullet at home. How to choose?
Minister Zhang gave an answer to the question of how to choose: "If you want to, then do it. It doesn't matter if it's slow, as long as you can make it! Even if it takes manpower to make a bullet, it is cheaper than the cost of capturing a bullet on the battlefield! Production only takes manpower, while capturing requires desperate efforts!"

"Then I'll try to produce some! For now, the technical problems shouldn't be too big, because when we were making our own shotguns, we already had some shell production technology! In fact, for bullet production, what we lack right now is the shell production! The technology for propellant, primer, percussion cap, and bullet has been solved, the only thing missing is the shell!"

"The disadvantage is that we use copper plates to stamp out the bullet casings ourselves. There are no ready-made machines, so we can only rely on manual labor like reloading bullets. The production efficiency... I really can't say much." Li Yuexuan said.

"As I said, it doesn't matter if it's a little slower, and it doesn't matter if it takes more people. Just get to work!" Minister Zhang gave great support.

"Then, are there enough copper coins? Copper is a scarce resource in our country, and the Zhongtiao Mountain area, which produces a lot of copper, has been occupied by the Japanese. Can we do it?" Li Yuexuan expressed his concerns. "Do you think our comrades on the secret front have been eating for free these years? Do you think the Shanxi merchants are just talking?" Minister Zhang frowned and continued, "Since our sulfa drugs were mass-produced, some of them have communicated with the Shanxi merchants through secret channels. The Shanxi merchants used these life-saving drugs to go to Zhongtiao Mountain and exchange them with the Central Army guarding Zhongtiao Mountain for refined copper and gave it to us, and then..."

"Get it, right? We can now produce at least 1000 tons of brass! Although most of this brass is in northern Shaanxi, it is used as raw material for the bullet production line obtained from the Russians. However, our arsenal still has more than 80 tons in stock! As the factory director, you are only responsible for research and development, and you don't care about anything else!"

"Let me do the math. A bullet weighs more than 21 grams, of which propellant takes up more than 2 grams, and the steel core lead bonding of the bullet takes up... well, a bullet, minus the production cost, will weigh about 15 grams of brass. If we take out 50 tons to produce bullets, how much will that be? More than 300 million rounds? That's not a small amount!" Minister Zhang calculated, looked at Li Yuexuan with satisfaction and said, "If you have the ability, turn all these 80 tons of brass into bullets! Don't talk about other things. As long as you can let our arsenal use the existing tools and equipment to produce 500 rounds of bullets a day, it won't be too much to give you a first-class merit!"

"I really don't care about military merit or anything like that. As long as I can kill more Japanese devils, that's better than anything else!" Li Yuexuan didn't care about military affairs at all. Having a special merit in his name was enough to brag about for the rest of his life.

"Okay, go and do it. We'll assign you three senior fitters. Go to the warehouse to get whatever you need. The factory will support you unconditionally! Well, take some time and don't forget to check out the production of mortars. Let's first secure what we can grasp!" Minister Zhang did not forget to remind Li Yuexuan before he finished.

"I understand, it's okay!" After getting support, Li Yuexuan could do it with confidence.

The processes required for a bullet production line are extremely difficult and complicated, but now what we want is hand-rubbed bullets, so there is no need for so many complicated processes.

First of all, the warhead. The existing manual stamping machine has a mature process, and the thickness of the warhead armor stamping is basically the same, so there is no need to worry about it. As for the production of the steel core, there is no need to worry, because there are suitable molds. Of course, the most important point is that when the steel core and the armor are bonded together with lead, the center of gravity must be in the middle of the warhead to avoid nutation.

What is the concept of nutation? It is difficult to explain it in a few words. When a bullet is spinning, if its center of mass deviates from the axis of rotation, it will generate a force directed outward. This force is divergent. When combined with air resistance, it will cause the rotating bullet to fly everywhere, thus causing trajectory deviation. That's roughly what it means.

(End of this chapter)