readx; In late January 1941, Yan Aoyun returned to Shanghai from Nanjing, and after returning to Shanghai, he convened a meeting of senior executives of Fule Electric, and formulated a large-scale expansion of production capacity development strategy, according to the expansion plan, Fule Electric's subordinate business departments will greatly increase production capacity, and this large-scale expansion of production capacity plan naturally requires a huge amount of upfront capital investment, although Fule Electric is known as the largest enterprise in China, but Fule Electric's capital is more reflected in the physical assets, Their liquidity is also limited, so in order to obtain financial support for expanding production capacity, on the one hand, the military directly signed various orders and R&D contracts with Fule Electric and allocated funds, and on the other hand, the more important source of funds is bank loans

Huaxia Bank, China's largest bank, which has a strategic partnership with Fule Electric, has provided a loan of up to 600 million Chinese yuan, which is the largest commercial loan in China's banking industry in decades. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 In addition to the normal commercial loans, the state-controlled Bank of Communications also provided loans of up to 200 million Chinese yuan to Fowler Electric.

Fule Electric, which has received huge financial support, began to expand production in an all-round way, and Fule Electric, as a leading enterprise in China, although its various products are not direct military products, but the products they provide are the core components of various ordnance products, and these core components are necessary for major arsenal enterprises to expand production capacity.

When Föhler Electric expanded its production capacity, those arsenals also expanded their production capacity, and finally increased the production capacity of China's ordnance products by a large margin.

Like Föhr Electric, many other large enterprises in China have also received support from the political axe and the military, and have begun to expand their production capacity in an all-round way, and the Northern Arms Company has built three new factories in North China and Northeast China, increasing the number of direct employees from 30,000 to 50,000, and the production of their flagship product, the "1937-style semi-active rifle", will be doubled.

The initial development goal of this semi-automatic rifle was to provide better infantry firepower for mechanized troops, which means that his design goal was not to completely replace the 1916-style bolt-action rifle, but to use it as a special equipment for mechanical troops, which was the same goal as the submachine gun development goal of that year.

As for the all-round replacement of semi-active rifles, most of the generals of the army are opposed to this, including Shen Gang, many generals believe that although the fire density of semi-active rifles is very high, but it also has the same obvious disadvantage, that is, the consumption of ammunition will also increase exponentially, and the rapid consumption of ammunition of semi-active rifles makes the soldier's combat endurance decline rapidly, and in the same fierce battle, the bullets carried by the soldiers when using the 1916 bolt-action rifle can allow them to use it all day, And if you change to a 1937 semi-automatic rifle, you won't even be able to use it for a few hours.

This would result in an exponential increase in the supply of ammunition to the front, which is nothing if it is placed in a small army, but if this situation is magnified to the entire army, in the case of the Chinese army, which was already more than 5 million at the end of 1940, then the pressure on logistics is very considerable. In addition to the increase in logistical pressure, the more direct is to increase the cost of combat, which is also a challenge for the domestic industrial capacity, don't look at the small size of the bullet, it is also very troublesome to build, especially in China because of the lack of copper production, after the development and production of steel-shelled bullets, the process requirements are higher than those of steel-shelled bullets, the production capacity of this bullet is also a big problem, you must know that once the world war starts, the consumption of bullets is not a small number, but in billions or even tens of billions to calculate. When the amount of anything is scaled up to this extent, the impact is enormous.

Army generals are reluctant to fully replace the 1937 semi-automatic rifle, but the advantage of firepower density brought by semi-automatic rifles is also impossible for army generals to ignore, especially in last year's Sino-Soviet Olav conflict, the main force involved in the war, the semi-active rifle used in the mechanized infantry of the Chinese Fourth Armored Army brought good firepower density, creating favorable conditions for victory. In addition, Chen Jingyun knew that it was a matter of time before he was fully equipped with semi-automatic rifles, and from Chen Jingyun's point of view, increasing the firepower of the infantry was obviously less expensive than increasing the firepower of other technical arms, and the firepower of the Chinese Army was not too advantageous in the world at present, and the advantage of the Chinese Army actually lay in the armored troops, while the ordinary infantry units actually had no advantage in firepower compared with the firepower of Britain, France, Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Although it is said that the effect of increasing artillery firepower is greater, it is also more expensive.

After Chen Jingyun's intervention, the Chinese Army's rifle armament further expanded the proportion of 1937-style semi-automatic rifles, and for the first time equipped ordinary infantry divisions, while a few key units, such as the Ninth Division, known as the first ace of the Chinese Army, began to fully replace the 1937-style semi-automatic rifles.

The unit fully equipped with semi-automatic rifles already existed before the Ninth Division, that is, the Guard Division, which was the first Chinese unit to be equipped with a 1937-style semi-automatic rifle.

The Guard Division is a very special force in China's military forces, since the first day of its establishment, it has been built as Chen Jingyun's personal guard unit, and has always been by Chen Jingyun's side, and at the same time, in order to maintain the combat effectiveness of the Guard Division, in every war, the Guard Division will send troops with regiments as command units to the front line to participate in the battle.

Due to the special surname of the guard division, this also leads to the establishment of the guard division is very special, and the establishment is different from the ordinary mechanized infantry division and the traditional infantry division, it is a multi-arm composite force, and the establishment is not the traditional three regiments and three battalions, etc., due to the synthesis of the arms, especially more importantly, the guard division in the mid-to-late thirties also carried out a large-scale expansion of the establishment, from 18,000 to 28,000 people, and this scale is actually not a division, and it is not an exaggeration to call it an army. In order to solve the command problem, the guard division took the battalion as the core, and then turned several different battalions into a regimental battle group, so that the previous regimental establishment could operate alone and serve as a tactical command unit. Because judging from the past experience of guard divisions, their division-level headquarters will not go directly to the battlefield, and when they go to the front to participate in the war, they are often regiment-level headquarters.

Under the guard division, three regiment-level battle groups have been established, and under the regiment-level battle group, there are a number of battalion-level troops under their jurisdiction, including a tank battalion, two machine infantry battalions, a self-propelled artillery battalion, a self-propelled engineering battalion, a self-propelled air defense battalion, a baggage battalion, and other units directly under the communications and reconnaissance departments. However, artillery units and engineering units under the division level of guard divisions will no longer be set up under the division level. To put it simply, the guard division is to directly subordinate the troops of the previous division to the regiment, greatly expanding the regiment-level establishment.

In this way, on the surface, the guard division has three tank battalions, six machine infantry battalions, and three self-propelled artillery battalions, which are almost the same as in the past, but it is worth noting that in order to allow the three regiment-level battle groups to have the ability to read and fight, these regiment-level battle groups are assigned corresponding subordinate units, and this has caused a large increase in the number of non-direct combatants in the guard division, and this is also the reason for the large increase in the number of guard divisions.

Although in terms of the establishment of guard divisions, these regiment-level battle groups are still called 'First Guard Regiment' and 'Second Guard Regiment', but these regiment-level battle groups are two different things from ordinary regiment-level troops, with ** thousand regimental troops, which cannot be seen elsewhere, in fact, these regiment-level battle groups are already small division-level establishments, and there are only 10,000 people in one division of the Soviet Union. To a certain extent, this can be regarded as a curve plan adopted within the guard division for expansion, after all, since the day the guard division was established, the successive high-level leaders of the guard division all wanted to expand, but they were opposed by the army generals, Shen Gang, Zuo Yugang and others even shouted that the guard division was a guard force, and when the enemy hit Nanjing, the whole country would be finished, and whether the guard division was 10,000 or 20,000 people could not change any outcome.

In Chen Jingyun's opinion, in fact, he doesn't really want to see the guard division expanded to two or even three divisions, because this unit is his guard army, and it can only be better controlled by controlling it on a certain scale, which means that the loyalty of this force is far more important than their number.

In the end, the new commander of the guard division, Lieutenant General Lin Jingfei, no longer directly asked for the expansion, but began to reform the organization, and put forward the concept of multi-arms combined into regiment-level battle groups, and proposed to integrate infantry, tanks, artillery, and other arms to carry out sophisticated joint operations, so as to achieve the greatest combat effectiveness.

I have to say that Lin Jingfei's concept of a regimental-level battle group is extremely new even to Chen Jingyun, so he approved his change plan, and Lin Jingfei took this opportunity to realize the first expansion of the guard division in more than 20 years.

After the reorganization of the guard division, there is still a great difference from other troops, not only the detailed establishment of regiment-battalion and other units at all levels is different, but at the same time, the proportion of their fighters is very low, far below the average level of the Chinese army, and the detailed establishment of the three regiment-level battle groups is also different, ranging from 8,000 to 9,000 people, and among these **,000 people, the real front-line combatants are actually less than 4,000, and the rest are all kinds of auxiliary personnel, that is to say, if the regimental combat group under the guard division goes to the battlefield, There were actually 4,000 people who were actually fighting in the front, and the rest were all in the back to provide all kinds of volunteers.

And this model of the guard division also made the army generals sarcastically 'carry the sedan chair', that is to say, the fighters of the guard division are all masters, and several servants have to carry the sedan chair to the battlefield.

The fact is also that during World War II, the regimental-level or brigade-level battle groups were actually somewhat out of touch with reality, and while the cost was huge, the combat effectiveness was improved to a certain extent, but it was also limited.

For example, a regimental battle group of 9,000 people had to fight against a 10,000-strong division of the Soviet army, and the gap between the combatants in the actual battle was very large.

Since the number of combatants is far less than that of other troops, if you want to fight two or even three combat infantry against one combat infantry on the battlefield, then you have to make a fuss about the superiority of firepower, Lieutenant General Lin Jingfei spent countless saliva to persuade Chen Jingyun to increase the funds of the guard division, and then purchased a large number of advanced weapons for the guard division, equipped the whole guard division with semi-automatic rifles, purchased a large number of self-propelled guns, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, and even planned to assign an aviation battalion to each of the three regiment-level battle groups. That is, fighter jets and front-line support bombers, as soon as this plan came up, Admiral Wu Shizhong of the Air Force slapped the table at the joint military meeting and scolded Lin Jingfei for declaring war on the Air Force, and released cruel words on the spot: If Lin Jingfei dares to set up an aviation battalion, he Wu Shizhong will go directly to his house with a saber the next day.

The aviation battalion will naturally not be able to deal with this matter in the future, and it can be seen from the plan of the aviation battalion that Lin Jingfei is unwilling to let the guard division be just a simple guard force, in fact, it is also understandable that the guard division stays in Nanjing all the year round, and it is understandable to equip tanks, but why are you equipped with so many self-propelled guns and self-propelled air defense guns, and your guard division does not need armored troops to run around, and it can be seen from this that Lin Jingfei is building the guard division as a pure field force.

Chen Jingyun also has the intention of using the guard division as a guinea pig to test various tactics and new weapons, and has always had a tradition of giving priority to equipment testing various weapons, and they use the test to feed back various data back to the equipment department and the factory, and then the equipment department makes modifications or decides to equip the army on a large scale based on these use data. The Guards Division was the first unit to be armed with a 1935 submachine gun, the first to be equipped with a 1937 semi-automatic rifle, and the first to be armed with self-propelled guns and anti-aircraft guns.

To some extent, the Guards Division was also an experimental unit.

The role of the guard division is diverse, it is Chen Jingyun's personal guard unit, it is also a test unit of various weapons of the army, and it can also directly go to the front line to participate in the war when necessary.

In terms of the surname price ratio, the guard division is extremely poor, and the cost of establishing a guard division is enough for the army to raise three divisions, and the combat effectiveness is definitely not comparable to the three divisions of the army, but the special surname of the guard division is destined not to be compared with ordinary army units.

The special surname of the guard division made it the first unit in China to be fully equipped with 1937-style semi-automatic rifles, and after the guard division could understand the surname of the 1937-style rifle, several mechanized infantry divisions in China, including the ninth division, were successively equipped with 1937-style semi-automatic rifles, and participated in actual combat for the first time in the Sino-Soviet armed conflict in the first half of 1940, and at that time, the number of semi-automatic rifles equipped by the Fourth Panzer Army was actually very small, and there were only two semi-automatic rifles in an infantry squad. Others were armed with 1916 bolt-action rifles.

After the Sino-Soviet armed conflict, the army felt the need to increase the infantry firepower of the front-line troops, and Chen Jingyun also strongly supported it, so it was equipped with semi-automatic rifles on a large scale in the whole army, but it was impossible to have a 1937 rifle for each soldier overnight, or to follow the establishment of mechanized infantry divisions, an infantry squad was only equipped with two semi-automatic rifles, and others still used traditional rifles.

The size of the Chinese Army has reached more than 5 million, and it is still expanding on a large scale, and the number of 1937 rifles needed here is very large. And for Chen Jingyun, it is not possible to fully popularize semi-automatic rifles for the time being, but as the war continues, full semi-automation is certain, it is just a matter of how long it will take, two years or three or four years. In the history of World War II, the German army and the Soviet army were semi-automated in the later stage of the war, and as Chen Jingyun's number one imaginary enemy, the United States, was already fully semi-automated when it entered the war, Chen Jingyun knew that it was incomparable to the Americans to compete with the firepower advantage, and the gap in industrial scale between the two determined that China could not be as extravagant as the US Army, but the gap could not be too big, at least it was necessary to barely maintain the balance of firepower, and then rely on the advantage in manpower to form an overall advantage.

The comprehensive expansion of the Chinese army has enabled all major arsenals in China to obtain a huge number of orders, and the expansion of the production of the Northern Arms Company is only one of the changes, and even a relatively minor link, and more importantly, the expansion of tanks and artillery.

In order to increase the output of various self-propelled weapons, the State Military Commission has ordered several specialized arsenals, including the Wuhu Special Machinery Company, to transfer technology licenses to several major domestic automobile companies and machinery companies, so that the huge domestic production capacity can be converted into tanks, self-propelled artillery and other production capacity.

After all, the production capacity of these specialized arsenals in China is also limited, and it is okay in peacetime, but after the large-scale expansion of the army, considering the consumption in wartime, it is necessary to ask domestic civilian enterprises to join in.

According to the preliminary forecast made by the State Military Commission, China's annual tank production will exceed 15,000 units after the wartime economy is carried out in an all-round way.

It is precisely considering the need to use the production capacity of major automobile companies in wartime, which is also the fundamental reason why the Chinese Army has always used gasoline engines on tanks, China's tank industry is actually built on China's automobile industry, especially on the extremely important engine, Wuhu Special Machinery Company itself is not able to develop engines, Wuhu Special Machinery Company, as China's most professional tank design and production enterprises, what it has done is actually integrated design, All kinds of core components are actually provided by major enterprises, including tank guns, engines, and armor steel, which are provided by other enterprises, and Wuhu Special Machinery itself cannot produce these things personally, if everything is produced, then Wuhu Special Machinery Company has to establish a comprehensive industrial system.

The main reason is that the diesel engine market is limited in these years, and the actual gap between vibration and noise and gasoline engine is very large, which limits the use of diesel engines in the private automobile market, and the research and development of an engine is also expensive, and the establishment of a new engine production line is a huge cost. They are more willing to invest heavily in the research and development of gasoline engines that are in the civilian market, and the gasoline engines used in tanks are not necessary for them to provide a qualified engine for the army through simple technical improvements.

Even though the army has proved through experiments in the past two years that diesel engines have a lot of advantages, especially the large torque that makes the army very interested, but several major engine suppliers in China are almost unanimously not interested in diesel engines, and the army can use diesel engines even if they want to.

The situation is very similar to that of the United States, and it is unrealistic for the army to completely switch from gasoline engines to diesel engines, which is not a question of the merits of the tank's use of gasoline engines, but a cost problem caused by the limitations of the domestic industrial system.

However, China's gasoline engine technology is not bad, it is much stronger than the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union, and it is cheap and practical to produce on a large scale, and there is no need to spend huge sums of money on the research and development of diesel engines when the war is approaching, and then invest heavily in the construction of diesel engine production lines, which involves costs that are unacceptable to the army.

In other words, there is no need for this at all.

What kind of weapons a country's military uses is determined by strategic theory and the domestic industrial base, not by what looks good, let alone what is actually not much better.

A variety of weapons equipped by the Chinese Army are the product of trade-offs, theoretically China can produce more superior equipment, but the cost problem makes these seemingly advanced weapons completely unable to be used on a large scale, the most obvious example is the Chinese Army has developed a test tank, the test tank from the surname can far exceed any of China's active and research and development tanks, but the cost is far more than these tanks, get a few tests are OK, if you want to large-scale equipment, it is estimated that it will take more than ten years.

The surname-to-price ratio is always the most important factor for the military.

The Army is intensively implementing the plan of 10 armored divisions, calling for the expansion of four armored brigades into armored divisions and the establishment of one new armored division on the basis of the existing five armored divisions and four armored brigades. Of these ten armored divisions, six are regular armored divisions, one heavy armored division, and three light armored divisions. Conventional and heavy armoured divisions are reserve units to the north, while light armoured divisions are deployed in the south as well as in the east.

In addition to the entire expansion plan, there are also several kinds of reading tank battalions, which will be widely deployed in various regions, and will be equipped with different tanks according to different combat areas.

And the entire plan will require the addition of more than 4,000 tanks, and the total number of tanks in the Chinese Army will reach nearly 10,000 after the completion of the plan.

In the first half of 1941, China's navy, army, and air forces began the largest expansion in history, supported by sufficient military spending.

All that remains is, when did China enter the war.

In March 1941, Hitler once again sent a secret envoy to Nanjing to meet Chen Jingyun, reiterating the necessity and benefits of the Sino-German alliance, and saying that if China could join the German side, if a war broke out with the Soviet Union, the vicious Soviet Russia would be completely defeated under the attack of China and Germany, and then Germany could divide the territory of Soviet Russia equally with China, Germany occupied the European part of Soviet Russia, while China occupied the Asian part of Soviet Russia, and even the Caucasus could be given to China. Moreover, Germany will support China's occupation of Southeast Asia and India in advance.

"There will be two great countries in Eurasia, Germany in Europe and China in Asia!" These were the exact words of Hitler's handwritten letter brought by the German secret envoy.

On the other hand, in order to cooperate with the diplomacy of the special envoy, Hitler said in a public speech in Berlin: "President Chen Jingyun is the greatest leader in Chinese history, and the Chinese and the Germanic nation are the two greatest peoples in the world." ”

After Hitler made this speech, which was almost openly about his desire to form an alliance with China, the British were also afraid that Chen Jingyun would really form an alliance with Hitler with a fever in his brain, and if this was the case, it would be a huge disaster for Britain, and Churchill even sent a signed secret telegram reiterating the friendship between the British people and the Chinese people since ancient times, claiming that the friendship between the Chinese and British people has a long historical tradition.

In addition, the British ambassador to China also appropriately expressed that Britain is willing to negotiate with China on the Hong Kong issue, and said to Chen Jingyun: "Britain can hold talks with China on the Hong Kong issue at any time!" ”

Throughout March, Germany's diplomatic offensive against China has become public, German diplomats in China and even German expatriates shouting long live Sino-German friendship every day, and some newspapers with German backgrounds have also begun to frequently publish articles on Sino-German friendship and other articles, vigorously advocating the Sino-German alliance.

In order to prevent China from joining the German alliance, Britain is also engaged in intense diplomatic courtship, and British diplomats in China hold diplomatic receptions with Chinese military dignitaries almost every day.

And in this context, in late March, a large-scale armed rebellion broke out in Myanmar, and the Burmese People's Army swelled from less than 10,000 people last year to more than 100,000 almost overnight, and I don't know where to get a large number of weapons, some made in China and some made in this way, but who is behind this The people of the world can guess with their eyes closed, except for China, who is still in the mood to make trouble in Myanmar.

Overnight, Myanmar was in complete chaos.

When the situation in Burma was chaotic, China's State Military Commission issued Order No. 26, requiring the troops deployed in the Liangguang and Yunnan-Guizhou regions to strengthen their vigilance, and to mobilize troops in Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, and other places to begin to enter this area.

China's sudden build-up of forces in the south, coupled with the daily clamor of a Sino-German alliance on the part of Germany, could not but make Britain and the United States, as well as the Soviet and Russian sides, suspect that China had secretly formed an alliance with Germany.

On March 29, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a public speech, saying: "At present, the situation in Asia is chaotic, and I hope that our Chinese friends will maintain the necessary sanity!" ”