Chapter 26: Rapidly Developing Taiwan
The current Keelung Harbor and Liuweizui are no longer the same as before. The original port has been expanded by half, all of which have been allocated for use by the Taiwan Navy. The newly built port is located on the northwest side of the Keelung Military Port, a brand new civilian wharf. The Keelung Shipyard was also allocated within the scope of the military terminal and became a confidential unit.
Liu Yi immediately returned to the Presidential Palace in Taipei and called Helena, asking her to take Joseph and David together to visit Andrew on the mountain. He himself stayed at the Presidential Palace to listen to Liu Gui's report on the general development of Taiwan over the past year or so when he was not there.
In the more than half a year since Liu Wei left Taiwan to travel around the world, Liu Gui, as the caretaker president, has been doing his job conscientiously and thoroughly implementing the policies set by Liu Wei without any changes.
The industrial base in Tainan's Takao Port is still under construction, with the power plant and supporting facilities already operational. In Taichung, the Taiwan Bank continues to provide small and medium-sized loans to support small and medium-sized enterprises engaged in sugar production and camphor processing to purchase equipment and expand their scale. The cooperative production model has basically spread throughout Taiwan, and although there have been some opposing voices and actions during the years of exploration and development, with the benefits received by the vast majority of middle and lower-level farmers, supporters are becoming more and more numerous, occupying an overwhelming majority, while opponents are becoming fewer and fewer. Those landlords and wealthy individuals who do not occupy too much land also face opposition from the majority and the government's high-pressure measures, and no longer compete with farmers for land, instead investing their funds in more profitable industries and manufacturing sectors.
As the new Taiwanese government gradually improved, various departments cultivated a group of officials at all levels in their daily operations. Some were selected from former Qing dynasty officials who voluntarily stayed in Taiwan and studied, while others were transferred from the new Taiwanese army, supplemented by some European and American talents who volunteered to stay in Taiwan. They basically enabled the entire government to function, operating relatively smoothly. However, where there is sunlight, there must be darkness, which is inevitable. Despite Liu Yue and the Ministry of Internal Affairs using extremely severe measures to try to eradicate corruption within the new government, some people still risked their lives to embezzle funds. This has been unstoppable since ancient times, and Liu Yue was no exception. He could only use various means to minimize the negative impact. From Liu Yue's departure from Taiwan to his return in less than a year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had investigated three cases of abuse of power and corruption, involving mainly mid-to-low-level government officials. Most were former bureaucrats colluding with local landlords and wealthy merchants, who were arrested by the Ministry of Internal Affairs after being discovered, but not yet processed, awaiting Liu Yue's final decision upon his return. After reviewing the case files, Liu Yue did not immediately make a decision but instead planned to listen to opinions from various departments, re-examine whether the case was as investigated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and then take action. Although combating crime and corruption was crucial work, Liu Yue also did not want to create a situation where the Ministry of Internal Affairs dominated everything due to his subjective judgment, which would be detrimental to future development.
Apart from the government and livelihood issues, after three years of construction, the airport has basically been completed. The aircraft laboratory located in several underground sites has also been operating for some time. Following Liu's model airplane, the lab successfully replicated a scaled-up wooden airplane and glided it with a pig on board from high altitude for hundreds of meters before crashing and damaging the plane and injuring the pig. It seems that airplanes are not something that can be easily copied; various components' performance and parameters require extensive testing to determine, which cannot be accomplished in a short period. Liu's guidance was limited to some vague concepts, such as the shape of the wing's cross-section, single-layer wings may not work, try double-layer wings, engines should not be installed at the rear like on boats, but rather at the front, and the layout of the landing gear, etc. The specifics still require researchers to explore slowly on their own.
In addition, the construction of the 10,000-ton large cruiser was not smooth. Due to its large tonnage and complex hull design, the processing and welding of steel plates were slow. The development of large-caliber naval guns was also slow. It is estimated that this cruiser will take another year to be launched. As a result, the construction of destroyers has also been delayed. Currently, there are only 5 destroyers in service in Taiwan, with 2 more under construction. However, Liu does not rush the construction of surface warships, as he believes that even if many ships are built, there will not be enough trained naval personnel to operate them.
The rest is all good news. First, based on the Dongfeng pickup truck, according to Liu's description and several military magazines, two armored vehicles were created by drawing a tiger as a cat. The first type is a small armored reconnaissance vehicle, which looks like a police armored vehicle in movies, with a low body, four thick wheels, and a 12MM machine gun on the roof. This car uses four-wheel drive and a more advanced diesel engine, with the engine and radiator at the rear, highway speed up to 70 km/h, water depth of 1 meter, and climbing height of 40 degrees; armor thickness is 8MM, total weight over 4 tons, crew of 8 people, good off-road performance, on various dirt roads and hills in Taichung, speed can also reach over 35 km/h, and durability is relatively strong, maintenance is simple. The second type of armored vehicle is completely different from the first one. From the appearance, the second type of armored vehicle looks more like a cash transport truck, with the engine at the front and the carriage at the back, which can hold 22 combat personnel, and two 12MM heavy machine guns on top of the carriage. The armor of the whole car is 10MM, which can defend against the medium-to-long-range shooting of Taiwan's 12MM machine gun at that time, but the weight of over 8 tons makes the speed drop to 50 km/h on highways and over 20 km/h off-road.
Liu Chih was quite satisfied with both armored vehicles, although they looked a bit ugly, but still very practical. The first armored vehicle was named "Shan Shu Shi", and the second armored personnel carrier was named "Huan Shi" by Liu Chih, and began mass production, equipping the new Taiwanese army.
Apart from armored vehicles, the institute also developed and produced the first real artillery for the Taiwanese Army, the 75mm field gun. This artillery was converted from naval ship guns, with a caliber of 75MM and a length of 30 times the diameter, using a double-wheel single-leg pattern, weighing less than one ton, which can be easily towed by a truck; in addition, due to the adoption of a full hydraulic recoil system, the shooting accuracy and speed of this artillery were greatly improved, with a range of up to 7,000 meters. Currently, this artillery is mainly manufactured at Keelung's Machinery Factory, and will be produced by Tainan Machinery Factory once the industrial base in Tainan is completed.
In addition to artillery and armored vehicles, the institute also provided the army with a new non-equipment equipment, that is, landmines.
Landmines have been recorded in the Huo Long Jing as early as the Ming dynasty, but it wasn't until the development of high explosives in the 19th century that they truly became a part of infantry warfare.
This time, the Taiwan Institute developed an anti-personnel landmine, which comes in two forms: tread and tripwire. The total weight of this mine is 2 kg, including 0.5 kg of high explosives and 1.5 kg of 300 glass beads.
The main lethal radius of this landmine is 15 meters, but the glass beads can reach a maximum range of 150 meters, mainly for the purpose of injuring rather than killing.
Liu Mou was relatively familiar with this vicious weapon, because in later generations, there were still many places around the world where various landmines were buried. Some of them had been buried decades ago and had not yet been cleared, and they continued to cause injuries and deaths. This cheap little thing was used to its fullest extent in defensive and blocking warfare, with remarkable effects.
Due to Taiwan's current weak army, Liu is not very reassured about land defense. Now that there is this defensive weapon, Liu immediately ordered mass production to guard against the enemy landing in Taiwan, and what would greet them would be a carpet of flying small glass beads.
Although the progress of large cruisers was not satisfactory, other research and development in the navy did not stop. The "Tuna-class" submarine has been updated to the third generation, with a displacement increase of nearly 50%, and both range and speed have improved, becoming a true ocean-going submarine. To distinguish it from the first two generations of "Tuna-class", Liu Ming named the third-generation submarine "Shark-class".
The "Shark-class" ocean-going submarine has a displacement of 1022/1291 tons, a length of 70/62 meters, a width of 6.5/5.4 meters, and a draft depth of 5 meters, with a double-layered pressure hull; it is powered by new diesel engine units and electric motor units, with a maximum surface speed of 18 knots, a range of 11,000 nautical miles, a maximum underwater speed of 22 knots, a range of 700 nautical miles, and a designed diving depth of 150 meters. The weapon system has been modified to include 533mm torpedoes, configured in a forward 4 and aft 2 layout, with 15 rounds of ammunition; the conning tower is equipped with two 19mm dual-purpose machine guns, with 5,000 rounds of ammunition. Other improvements have also been made to the snorkel tube, long-wave radio station, active sonar, and hydrophone.
With this long-range submarine, Taiwan is not only capable of defending its coastal waters but also has a certain capability for medium- and long-distance sneak attacks and interdiction operations.
Apart from the "Shark-class" submarines, the institute also made great progress in the improvement of torpedoes. Not only was the 450MM "Type II" torpedo technology more mature, but it also developed a more powerful "Type III" 533mm heavy-duty torpedo to deal with larger and more solid surface ships.
This 533mm heavyweight torpedo has a warhead of over 190kg, is nearly 8 meters long, and uses an improved thermal power engine to propel it at speeds of up to 36 knots, with a range of 2000 meters. Additionally, the institute also developed a 450mm electrically-powered torpedo, but due to insufficient power from the batteries and electric motor, its speed was only 21 knots, and its range was less than 1000 meters; in order to achieve higher speeds and longer ranges, breakthroughs in electric motor and battery research are still needed.
Apart from the research and development of weapons, the institute has also made significant progress in electronics and sonar. The new generation of electronic tubes has improved the problems of heat generation and instability, thereby greatly extending the startup time of long-wave radio stations and sonar equipment, basically meeting the needs of combat. Moreover, according to Liu's plan, the institute is developing radar equipment. Although the small marine radar on the fishing boat integrates a large number of functions such as sonar, navigation, and mapping into one, and most of them are integrated circuit modules and small antennas, which do not provide much help for simple pirated products. However, in principle, it is still roughly the same, and from a theoretical and research perspective, it has great guidance on the development of a radar suitable for modern use.
Because there were many things on the fishing boat that didn't exist in this era, a special cave dock was designed for the fishing boat at the submarine base a few years ago. The place is heavily guarded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and even researchers from the institute must obtain authorization from Liu or be accompanied by him to enter the dock within a limited time to use the necessary items on the ship for research projects. The current fishing boat can no longer leave the dock, and almost all equipment has been dismantled, including the hull, engine room, radar antenna, and driving console devices, which are now sealed in the dock for research purposes. Although it's just an ordinary ocean squid fishing boat, from steel plates to welding methods, from ship types to cabin divisions, from diesel engines to transmission gearboxes, and from generator sets to wireless equipment, all can be successfully transformed into scientific achievements that surpass this era by one or even many generations.
