Chapter Seventeen: Airplanes and Tanks

  The Qing court had issued an edict of abdication, but the situation across the country was still chaotic. Amidst this chaos, history had already undergone a tremendous change.

  One of the changes was that Chiang Kai-shek, under Chen Qimei's orders, launched an assassination attempt on the leader of the Guangfu Assembly, Tao Chengzhang, but Jiang Yow came out to obstruct it and ruined the assassination.

  Saving Tao Chengzhang doesn't mean anything else, it's just that I don't want to see a revolutionary like Tao Chengzhang being killed by opportunists like Chen Qimei.

  Cheng Zhang had a strong sense of justice and was determined to overthrow the Qing dynasty. He twice attempted to assassinate Empress Dowager Cixi in Beijing but failed, then traveled alone to Japan to study military tactics. The following year, he returned home and actively participated in revolutionary activities, traveling extensively throughout Zhejiang, Fujian, and Anhui provinces to connect with fellow revolutionaries. He often wore a rope around his waist, wore straw sandals on his feet, and walked over 110 miles a day without complaint. Although Hangzhou was just a river away from his hometown, he refused to return home, saying "Fortunately, my elderly father is still healthy, and our family's finances are stable. If I were to return to my hometown, I fear being tied down by personal relationships and unable to continue my work for the country! How can I prioritize family ties when I have dedicated myself to the nation?"

  For such a true revolutionary hero, Jiang Yu has always admired from the bottom of his heart.

  After all, he himself is also a speculator. Although his goal is very brilliant, the means are not as fearless as Tao Chengzhang's struggle.

  But politics is like this, so-called justice and evil, means can't explain the problem, only results can explain the problem, making a nation move towards revival is bright, making a nation retreat is evil.

  Jiang Yu admired Tao Chengzhang very much, so he asked Wang Chenhai to send someone to secretly protect Tao Chengzhang. As a result, Jiang Guangtou was caught off guard and then disappeared.

  The history of the future will never again see the waves of Chiang's light.

  Of course, Jiang Yu's move wasn't purely out of admiration for Tao Chengzhang, but also to prevent Sun Dagang and his gang from extending their influence into Zhejiang.

  As long as Tao Chengzhang is still alive, Guangfu will have a united bond.

  Because the revival of the Guangfu Society was built on Táo Chéngzhāng's tireless efforts, traveling hundreds of miles a day, once Táo Chéngzhāng died, the Guangfu Society would lose this bond and collapse with a loud crash.

  As long as Guangfu does not collapse, Zhejiang will not fall into Sun's control.

  Jiang Yu does not think that guy is a historical great man, Sun Dapao is completely the culprit of the civil war in China, of course, there are also Japan and the Soviet Union behind him.

  Japan supports Sun Dazhang in launching a civil war and does not want to see a unified China.

  The Soviet Union supported Sun Yat-sen because the Beiyang government went to recover lost territories, so the Soviet Union sold fishing resources to Japan and got 3,000 yuan in exchange, which was given to Sun Yat-sen.

  Sun Dapao relied on these 30 million taels of silver to launch a Northern Expedition, but as a result, the land that the Beiyang government had recovered from Russia was lost again.

  Jiang Yu wants a stable China that can develop. Therefore, he is extremely disgusted with troublemakers like Sun Big Cannon who are supported by the Japanese Black Dragon Society.

  Of course, at present, Western countries do not believe in Sun's boasting, and the Japanese are relatively stingy, it is impossible to take out too much money to support Sun to engage in civil war.

  So for the time being, Sun Dapao's threat is not that great, and the Soviet Union, which has the determination to throw out 30 million taels at once, hasn't even shown up with a single hair, so Jiang Yu has ample time to clean them up.

  The Revival Army is attacking and occupying cities in Shandong and Henan fronts, while Jiang Yu is busy with his feet off the ground in the rear.

  Because Jiang Yu had all the ordinary soldiers of the Revival Army tied to the same war chariot, and there was an instructor team responsible for ideological indoctrination, Jiang Yu did not need to go to the front line at all, nor did he need to suspect the lower-ranking military officers, because even if they wanted to rebel, they could not command the troops.

  Jiang Yu has a lot of things to do in the rear, first is the construction of the legal system. Simply copying the British system won't work, China has its own national conditions, but at its core it still follows the traditional Chinese system of reason and law, which is also known as the common law system of Britain.

  Furthermore, Jiang Yu needs to improve educational materials. Vernacular reform is still necessary, although vernacular Chinese may not have the depth of semi-vernacular Chinese which has developed since the Ming dynasty, it can make education more accessible and widespread.

  The construction of the educational system must also be more clear-cut, and it is completely useless to simply copy the educational systems of later generations.

  The purpose of education is nothing more than for society to move towards stability and cultivate a batch of top-notch national elites.

  It has to be admitted that it is impossible for everyone in this society to become an elite, and those elite classes cannot possibly have all-around talents either.

  For ordinary citizens who cannot become elites, the most important thing is to teach them moral principles and cultivate their moral character and behavioral habits. For those who can become elite talents, they should receive targeted training, and it's not possible to train everyone as a versatile talent, otherwise, it will only cultivate a group of mediocre people.

  Chiang Yu added many targeted things to the education system and reduced many unnecessary things.

  To cultivate students' hands-on ability, Jiang Yu let students often visit factories and work, so many half-work and half-study students appeared.

  To cultivate students' moral qualities, Jiang Yu not only allows teachers to give lectures in class but also requires each school to organize students to participate in a public welfare activity every week. At the same time, schools should provide comprehensive guidance and management of students' words and deeds.

  In terms of cultivating living habits, it is managed according to semi-militarized management system, and some schools are even fully militarized.

  In general, students' extracurricular activities take up one-third of their study time. Each school has classes in the morning and extracurricular activities in the afternoon, with evening classes at night.

  For students, although they have to attend evening classes, spending half of the daytime outside the classroom will make them feel happy and won't make them feel like they're in prison.

  Apart from law and education, industry is the most important thing.

  Jiang Yu attaches great importance to the development of industrial technology. Since his return to China 10 years ago, he has established more than a hundred experimental groups in just two years.

  The annual expenditure on experiments exceeds tens of millions of yuan and continues to grow.

  Modern warfare is all about big factories, large armies and large laboratories. For Jiangsu Province, building a large army is not a big problem, the only problems are the big factories and large laboratories.

  Large factories and large laboratories are what China lacks, so Jiangyu urgently needs to build them up.

  Especially with only two years left before World War I, Jiang Yu demanded that the internal combustion engine experimental group come up with a reliable engine as soon as possible.

  After two years of in-depth research, combined with the solid foundation laid in Germany for three years, and Jiang Yu's correct research approach and methods, a 680-horsepower gasoline engine was finally manufactured at the end of 1911 by the Huadong Internal Combustion Engine Factory, which was not very heavy. A few days later, an 883-horsepower diesel engine was also developed.

  The technical breakthrough of the East China Internal Combustion Engine Factory enabled Jiangyu to obtain a reliable internal combustion engine, while at the same stage, the largest horsepower internal combustion engine in the West was less than 100 horsepower.

  Reliable internal combustion engines can provide a basis for the manufacture of tanks and aircraft.

  Not long after, the East China Aircraft Manufacturing Factory successfully developed a 'wooden composite structure fuselage', whose technology first used concrete to make a mold, then alternately placed spruce wood thin slices coated with dry glue, and covered with the mold cover. At this time, compressed air was again filled into the rubber bladder in the middle, and after the dry glue solidified, a wooden structure was formed. The two wooden structures on both sides were combined to form a wooden composite structure fuselage.

  The wooden composite structure body makes the aircraft, although slightly lighter than wood, not much lighter. However, it is much lighter than aircraft made of steel and other materials, and its strength is more reliable than wood.

  At the same time, the East China Aircraft Manufacturing Factory also achieved success in the research of aluminum aircraft, and the aluminum material proved to be an excellent aviation material.

  After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, Jiang Jieshi ordered a special warfare unit to infiltrate Beijing and abduct aircraft designer Li Baokun.

  Li Baojun was a relatively outstanding aircraft designer in modern China, and even predicted the jet plane. With the support of the Qing government, he carried out aircraft manufacturing.

  However, Li Baojun later contracted malignant dysentery and died young, similar to the famous modern aviation pioneer Feng Ru.

  As for aircraft design, Jiang Yu is not necessarily inseparable from Li Baojun. Since 2007, when he arrived in Germany, he has been cultivating aircraft design talent.

  One more talent is always better than one less.

  Jiang Yu not only had people kidnap Li Baojun, but also had people kidnap Feng Ru in Guangzhou, and even found Fokker in Germany who had not yet made a name for himself.

  Fokker was the first designer to synchronize machine guns with propellers, and in World War I he designed and manufactured Fokker fighter planes for Germany, shooting down many British and French aircraft. At that time, Westerners called the Fokker fighter plane a "Fokker disaster".

  Huadong Aircraft Manufacturing Factory has a large number of self-cultivated talents, although not as many as other countries have gathered in terms of aircraft design talent. The scale of its design team far surpasses that of various countries, and Jiang Yu also downloaded a lot of aircraft design knowledge from the Internet through cheating means.

  These are all very advanced knowledge, and achieving any breakthrough in them will improve aircraft performance.

  With the breakthroughs in internal combustion engine technology and airframe technology, Jiang Yu proposed that a dive bomber with a payload of 500 kg and a range of over 300 km was needed.

  At the same time, a tactical bomber with a range of 200 kilometers and a payload of 1,000 kilograms is also needed. A medium-range bomber with a range of 500 kilometers that can carry 500 kilograms of bombs is also required. A reconnaissance aircraft with a range of 500 kilometers

  In January 1912, the East China Aircraft Factory produced hundreds of aircraft design drawings. Currently, the aircraft designers at the East China Aircraft Factory have a vast space for design.

  Monoplane, biplane, single-engine, twin-engine, even quadruple-engine.

  The East China Aircraft Manufacturing Factory selected thirty relatively reliable drawings from among them and began manufacturing prototype aircraft based on the drawings.

  In the design of tanks, the first tank was soon designed. The word "tank" comes from the English word for water tank, but since the tank was already China's first manufactured one, it wasn't called a tank, but rather a war vehicle.

  The first tank was born in early February 1912, using the tractor chassis of a tractor factory, with a total weight of 12 tons, equipped with two heavy machine guns and one 56mm tank gun.

  This is a rather bizarre tank, although this is from the perspective of a traverser, as this tank has no turret, but the front plate of the hull has an angled slope, making it easy for shells to hit the frontal armor and slide off, which is a very advanced design.

  In terms of armor, it reached 30mm, with a maximum speed of 20km/h, crossing trenches of 1.5m and overcoming obstacles of 0.5m in height, with a maximum range of 120km.

  Judging from this data alone, its performance is far superior to that of early tanks.

  Mainly because of the breakthrough of internal combustion engine, and this tank uses not a gasoline engine, but a diesel engine with rough working method and higher efficiency. The disadvantage is that it makes more noise and emits black smoke.

  However, such a tank still did not satisfy Jiang Yu, although it was immediately put into production by the factory, but no order was given to build a production assembly line. The production speed was not slow either, as the tractor chassis already had a considerable production capacity, with nearly 1,000 tractors produced every month.

  Therefore, if necessary, it can produce 1,000 of these tanks within a month at any time.

  This tank was named 'Ripper 1 Type Tank' by Jiang Yu, meaning trench warfare ripper. The temporary production quantity of Jiang Yu is two hundred vehicles, and a tank regiment was immediately formed.

  ————

  It's pouring outside!

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