Chapter Seven: Causing Trouble
He Shao-t'ang had finished his supplementary shots and organizational work, but unexpectedly stayed in Lingling for ten days. This made Tan Xiao feel deeply moved: he was happy about He Shao-t'ang's dedication and strong sense of belonging to the 23rd Division, but also felt helpless about the chaos in the National Army's management. A liaison officer from the Military Affairs Department could take a ten-day vacation during a major battle (the Red Army's First Crossing of the Chishui River) just to help an old classmate and take care of personal business! If the enemy were the Japanese...
In these ten days, He Shaotang made a huge contribution to the temporary 23rd Division: in addition to packaging and propaganda work, he even mobilized his connections and invited several engineers from Hengyang Ordnance Factory to inspect the military production situation of the temporary 23rd Division and help standardize it. Moreover, at Tan Xiao's request, he also brought a batch of domestically produced armor-piercing shells and 10mm, 20mm, and 40mm nickel-chromium steel plates that could simulate tank shell experiments. Although this cost Tan Xiao another 30,000 yuan, he felt it was worth it to start anti-tank warfare experiments as soon as possible. As for what happened in the last few hours before He Shaotang left, it was stunning: a Central Army sergeant named Li Taifu suddenly arrived with a truckload of equipment and delivered it to the temporary 23rd Division. The equipment included four Type 20 82mm mortars and twenty Czech-made ZB-26 light machine guns! These were all the types of equipment that Tan Xiao had requested for the temporary 23rd Division, and the handover method was even more incredible: Sergeant Li Taifu handed over a report on the loss of the vehicle and equipment during transportation, which He Shaotang signed, and then left with the vehicle and equipment, taking Tan Xiao's 3,000 yuan red envelope with him! The people present, including Tan Xiao himself, were stunned, including Ji Ping and Liu Taihe.
What's even more shocking is that He Shaotang said there will be several such incidents in the next period of time! Tan Xiao was secretly happy about the curve helping the Red Army to reduce pressure, while on the other hand, he was speechless at He Shaotang's boldness and the corruption within the National Army.
He Shaotang took over the 50,000 yuan special public relations fee from Tan Xiao after a slight decline and bid farewell to the temporarily gathered twenty-three brothers of the Shandong Provincial Public Security Department, and then set off on his journey. At this time, Tan Xiao's father-in-law, Wu Sheng, whispered in Tan Xiao's ear: "We've made a fortune!"
Originally, due to the battles between the Red Army and the National Army on the Guizhou-Yunnan border, some important opium transportation routes were cut off. The Yunnan soil that used to enter Sichuan-Shaanxi now had to take a detour via the Xiang-Gui line! Moreover, the opium produced in the minority areas of Guizhou could not be transported northward due to the turmoil in Guizhou and the activities of the Red Army in northern Sichuan. It could only be transported out of Guizhou through the Xiangxi route, which had a good relationship with them. As a result, those people who were ridiculed by Tan Xiao for being slaughtered again sent a large quantity of opium to exchange for the remaining 3,000+ Hanyang-made and 1,000 domestic imitation 98k German-style rifles, 14 domestically-made Czech-style light machine guns with poor quality and non-interchangeable parts, and a solitary French 81mm mortar!
Tan Xiao, the old father-in-law with the most assets in the Tan family army, once again showed his true colors as a military merchant. He changed his previous strategy of investing small amounts and mainly making profits from transportation costs, and instead swallowed up an entire batch of opium to hoard it. According to his judgment, as the war dragged on, the price of opium would skyrocket, and he estimated that this investment would yield a profit of 30 million! Since the entire investment was in that batch of military supplies, Tan Xiao took up about 75% of the dividend, which meant that if everything went as planned, he would make over 22 million. This made Tan Xiao ecstatic, despite having spent nearly 5 million on the Mesto-Stokes-Brant recoilless gun.
In addition, Gui Jun's opium going north can only go all the way on the Xianggui Road. The security fee handed over this month has increased greatly. Tan Xiao's opium tax dividend for this month is actually in six figures, reaching 1,004,000 and more. Moreover, according to Tan Xiao's vague memory of the Red Water Battle, it seems that they fought for several months, so this situation will continue for several more months, what a wonderful thing!
With the money, of course, to spend, the next day, Tan Xiao came to the artillery training ground in a great mood, personally watching the British-made 57mm cannon conduct its first non-training and live warhead penetration experiment on steel plates. He had already decided to expand the artillery troops. The two British engineers from the trading company hadn't left yet, because they received a new task from the trading company: to persuade Tan Xiao to purchase more of these 57mm infantry cannons that the British army had in large stockpiles.
The test results are out: the smoothbore cannon easily penetrated a 30° inclined 40mm steel plate at a distance of 1100 meters using British-made new-type armor-piercing shells, while the rifled cannon also had no problem using British-made tungsten-core shells. However, the effect of using British-made ordinary steel-core armor-piercing shells was greatly discounted: the guaranteed penetration distance retreated to within one kilometer. The result of using domestically-made steel-core armor-piercing shells was even more dismal: at a distance of 750 meters, five test shots were fired, four of which failed to penetrate, and one that seemed to mockingly embed its ugly deformed steel core halfway into the steel plate! It seems to be mercilessly ridiculing Tan Xiao: choosing me to deal with Japanese tanks, you are too wise!!
"Colonel, sir, I suggest you should use the products of the British Empire, especially that new type of armor-piercing shell. I guarantee that as long as it's within range, those steel plates will be turned into sieves! And tungsten carbide shells can penetrate targets 1500 meters away." The fat engineer, Xie Te, who looked like Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, was very proud of British shells.
Tan Xiao really wanted to shout out that English profanity with a similar pronunciation to the surname of the dead fat man. Of course, he knew how deadly this AP shell was, which used hollow charge technology, but such shells couldn't be produced domestically. Even if he could solve the technical problem of the hollow charge, the process of removing the shell casing wasn't something he could handle. Moreover, the smoothbore cannon, with its short range, was more suitable for use on tanks. Tan Xiao had included it in the test mainly to study enemy artillery fire.
The plan to use the 57mm British cannon to deal with Japanese tanks was entirely based on later information that this type of cannon was found by British soldiers to be the best light cannon for dealing with German tanks, and it could destroy all four types of German tanks in the early days of World War II. Moreover, it is the strongest armor-piercing ability among the same level of cannons, and a single soldier can control the aiming and firing very well. Of course, there is also an important reason that it is much cheaper than anti-aircraft guns!
The reality and legend are too far apart! Undoubtedly, its performance can only be brought into play when used in the British army. In the National Army, how can they afford those expensive armor-piercing shells? Tungsten-core shells cannot be chosen either. The price of this type of shell, which was only equipped by the German army for elite troops during World War II, is also unbearable. Moreover, whether before or after the United States entered the war, the National Army could not have obtained many imported tungsten-core shells. After all, the support given to China by the United States was actually very little, less than one-tenth of what it gave to its later archenemy, the Soviet Union. As for the domestic metallurgical level, producing tungsten carbide? Unless another metallurgical engineer from a parallel universe joins!
According to the original intention of Tang Yu, this test was mainly to examine the effect of domestically produced steel-core armor-piercing shells. The original tactical design was to utilize the flexible control and super-strong armor-piercing ability of the British 57mm cannon, as well as its high accuracy within a thousand meters, to create a "death zone" for the enemy at a distance of 800-1000 meters where Japanese tank cannons were not accurate. However, China's poor metallurgy and high-explosive manufacturing capabilities ruthlessly shattered his dreams. As infantry support artillery, their firepower was clearly inferior to that of the Japanese Type 92 infantry cannon. Moreover, its mobility was fundamentally unable to be compared with mortars. The remaining role of this thing could only be to utilize its relatively flexible manipulation and higher firing rate to destroy the enemy's heavy machine guns and engage in close combat with the enemy's war defense cannons. Does it still have such important significance? Furthermore, the legendary single-soldier operation, which can complete aiming, manipulation, and shooting, is clearly only suitable for those robust Saxons. As for the National Army gunners who were not physically strong enough, it was clear that not everyone could handle this task.
Disappointment and frustration suddenly came, Tan Xiao was a little at a loss, his mind still flashed the scene of himself boasting in the Xiangxiang Pavilion that this British six-pound cannon could make Japan's heaviest tank scrap iron at a distance of one thousand meters. He looked at the shell stuck on the steel plate and thought: Maybe a more powerful explosive can push it to the other side of the steel plate? High-energy explosives are what he will eventually come up with, after all, this is not difficult for him as a traverser who knows the formula, and in his plan, the hollow-charge grenades and anti-tank hand grenades made using empty-shell filling technology will be used later. The reason for choosing 57mm cannon was to push the annihilation distance far away, combining with other anti-tank weapons to form a thick enough anti-tank firepower defense line, without this link, the defense line would not be complete.
For the Japanese army, what he dreaded most was those Japanese thin-skinned turtles that were ridiculed by later generations. It was these thin-skinned turtles that killed the largest number of loyal and brave National Army soldiers - those fearless dare-to-die squads who used explosive packs and hand grenades to deal with tanks are undoubtedly the backbone of the anti-Japanese troops. He would never allow such soldiers to be exchanged for a tank or armor in the time-space he had traversed. Therefore, his most thoughtful thing was anti-tank warfare!
Is it better to put the treasure on high-energy explosives or simply create hollow-charge shells? If it's the latter, then using a 37mm anti-tank gun would be enough, why do you need a 57mm cannon? And he can only make hollow-charge warheads, but not the complex and delicate process of discarding sabot, without which the accuracy of the smoothbore cannon will inevitably decrease by a thousand meters. Using hollow-charge warheads directly on the smoothbore cannon is also possible, but such shells need to be re-developed, and according to the calculation of the charge quantity, they must be longer than the original shells. In this case, which kind of ammunition should the gun barrel be adapted to? Apart from dealing with tanks, this 57mm cannon in Tan Xiao's combat requirements must also serve as infantry support fire... Tan Xiao was very confused, on the one hand, he ridiculed himself for being an incompetent traverser, unable to get what he wanted like other big traversers, and on the other hand, he cursed everything that came to mind as unfair: As a major tungsten-producing country in the world, it is impossible to provide tungsten carbide for its own national defense...
"I won't let the troops use British shells, I don't need them!" Tan Xiao said to that "Peng Dingkang" with a bad tone. He calmed down: "It seems that you have to give me a plan to make the six-pounder use our domestically produced shells and meet the requirements, otherwise, maybe I'll have to change the equipment plan and no longer consider the six-pounder!" He shrugged his shoulders.
As for Tan Xiao's direct statement, Xie Te was very headache, he really didn't know how to solve this problem, and he knew that domestic ordnance manufacturers were already developing more powerful anti-tank guns, while the inventory of six-pound cannons was an obstacle to new products entering government procurement. The new task given to him by his company, Jardine Matheson, was to promote the sale of six-pound cannons to the Chinese army with all his might. Help the Chinese build a metallurgical plant or a factory that can produce armor-piercing shells? Or is there another way? No! The opponent is just a small unit, not the full equipment of the Central Army, and it's not worth thinking so much for him. Xie Te was no longer headache.
The hardest thing for a person is to define himself, but I did it. Tan Xiao comforted himself while making new adjustments to his ammunition factory, purchasing 3 million worth of equipment and 1 million worth of ammunition production materials from EWO.
Just as Shet was pleased with himself for having made another big deal, he received a telegram from EWO accusing him of not doing his best to get the order for the cannons and considering replacing him as project manager! The reason was simple: Tan Xiao had just placed an order for eight Schneider 75mm field guns with the French in one go!
Tan Xiao did not know that the order for these eight cannons made him an immediate target customer of all foreign firms, and also caused dissatisfaction from Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing.
For Tan Xiao, who was used to seeing cannons in the future, he really didn't know what eight big cannons represented. He really didn't know that at this time and space, in early 1935, the entire National Army hadn't even had a single division equipped with as many large-caliber guns as the 23rd Division currently had thirteen 75mm caliber cannons! Such a cannon enthusiast naturally immediately caught the attention of various foreign firms. Almost within a week, all the arms dealers selling cannons in China sent representatives to Lingling, including Italians and Argentines, oh, and also Japanese and Soviets.
But the one in Nanjing was very dissatisfied with a temporary division privately purchasing a large number of artillery from foreign firms. If it weren't for concerns about the special location of this division's garrison, mishandling might have led to them joining the Guangxi clique, and Chairman Chiang would have immediately taken action against the 23rd Division! Tan Xiao laughed at those who had crossed over into this world, thinking only of learning from all the big brothers who had also crossed over, using every means possible to get money to build a super-strong army. He didn't know that in the original historical reality, this was impossible, and this was precisely what Chairman Chiang forbade! As for the Central Army privately buying and selling weapons and equipment, Chairman Chiang had always severely punished them!
Tan Xiao, who had gotten into big trouble, was still very pleased with himself because after he placed the order with the French, that British fellow Shete began to rack his brains to think of ways to help him, from improving the ammunition to improving the cannon itself, and came up with countless possibilities, but these uncertain methods were not convincing to Tan Xiao at all.
Tan Xiao could only take another route: learning from the Germans in the Spanish Civil War and later on the African battlefield and against the Soviet Union, using anti-aircraft guns to deal with tanks! This was a plan he had considered before, which was finally launched after rejecting more economical flat-trajectory guns. Now he just needed to confirm which type of anti-aircraft gun to use, because he believed that with the ultra-high initial velocity of anti-aircraft guns combined with his high-energy explosives, dealing with Japanese tanks should be very effective. However, he would not choose the terrifying 88mm heavy anti-aircraft gun like the Germans; what was sufficient would be enough. He was now considering either the British 40mm anti-aircraft gun or the German 57mm anti-aircraft gun. The former could basically solve all types of enemy tanks outside their precise firing range, except for the Japanese Type 97 main battle tank that appeared later. The latter was a classic work that was the first in the world to adopt a folding cannon design. Moreover, based on Tan Xiao's repeated experiments with six-pounder armor-piercing shells, if he chose the 57mm Krupp anti-aircraft gun and used his high-energy explosives on domestically produced steel-core armor-piercing shells, theoretically it could even penetrate the frontal armor of the Japanese Type 97 main battle tank at a distance of 1,200 meters. One step back, hitting within the original design range of 800 to 1,000 meters was completely no problem.
The only problem now is the price, German cannons and British cannons are different, they must be transported from Europe, while British cannons can be shipped from India. The difference in freight costs plus the value of the cannons themselves and the agency fees of the foreign firms made Tan Xiaoyu hesitant to equip twelve Krupp 57mm high-speed guns. He felt like a prodigal son, money was just passing through his hands but he couldn't keep it: the cost of ammunition for a year's high-intensity training and increased personnel costs would spend 13 million out of the 22 million profit from opium sales, and he would spend the remaining 9 million on equipment needed to produce rifle grenades and hollow explosive shells in the future, as well as a military food factory that could produce canned goods and compressed biscuits, an emergency medicine factory, and 1,000 sets of Zeiss four-power telescopes and 2,000 new Type 38 rifles. After all this was done, three months later, he would only have 4 million left in military expenses - this was still under the condition that the Guangxi Army maintained its current opium transit volume. If the price of opium rose or the Guangxi Army's opium transit volume did not meet expectations, Tan Xiaoyu might soon find himself with no money to use.
Never mind, taking advantage of the silver dollar's rise in price and the US dollar's devaluation by 40%, it's a good opportunity to splurge! Inform the German firm to discuss the price of the 57mm anti-aircraft gun! As for the British six-pounder, let the German tanks enjoy it instead!
Disaster, the more you rush, the bigger it gets!
At this moment, Nanjing has formed a wind eye due to the temporary 23rd Division. People who were drawn in, apart from Chairman Chiang, also included Dai Li's special agency, the CC's central party department, He Yingqin's military and political department. Of course, there was also Tan Xiao's good brother, He Shaotang.
