I am an industrial worker during the War of Resistance

Chapter 79 A Different Type 92 Infantry Gun
The Type 92 infantry gun was a 70mm caliber gun that the Japanese finalized in 1932. It was used as a support artillery piece for infantry.

Its total weight is 212 kilograms, or 424 jin.

The cannon is 2.74 meters long.

With the shield cannon, its height is 62 centimeters.

With the shield removed, the cannon is 50 centimeters tall.

The elevation range is -10 degrees to +75 degrees.

The left and right shooting range is approximately 5 degrees.

This artillery piece can fire directly at targets, or it can have the trajectory curve of a mortar.

It can fire high-explosive shells, shrapnel shells, and smoke shells.

One of its high-explosive shells weighs about 3.8 kilograms and has a kill radius of about 22 meters.

When the first charge is applied, the muzzle velocity is 198 meters per second.

Maximum range is 2788 meters, minimum range is 100 meters.

Rate of fire: ten rounds per minute.

The cannon barrel is 723 mm long, 8.79 times the caliber.

The artillery is designed with a recoil-reset mechanism.

It adopts a split screw breechblock locking mechanism.

Mechanical sights or optical sights.

This artillery piece was specifically designed by the Japanese to take into account my country's terrain, road conditions, and the characteristics of its combat troops.

my country's terrain is mostly mountainous, and its roads are narrow and rugged.

Local troops are poorly trained and lack heavy firepower.

Basic heavy firepower consisted only of heavy machine guns and mortars.

Even the bald man's main force doesn't have much heavy firepower.

Moreover, due to command issues, in the bald man's troops, the command of almost all artillery was in the hands of the high command.

Even the smallest caliber anti-tank guns, such as the 37mm anti-tank guns and the 60mm and 82mm mortars, are at least under the command of a regiment.

The 120mm mortars, on the other hand, belong to the division-level command.

As for artillery with a caliber of 75 mm or larger, almost all of them are used by army-level and theater-level command.

This fire command hierarchy leaves grassroots company-level combat units with virtually no heavy firepower.

If you're lucky, you might be assigned a heavy machine gun, or you could stay near the battalion headquarters and receive fire support from 60mm mortars.

The Japanese army's firepower configuration against the bald-headed troops, combined with my country's terrain and road conditions, was a perfect example of this.

That's why this ultralight artillery was specially developed, designed to accompany infantry and provide them with fire support at any time.

When facing heavy machine guns and mortars.

This highly concealed artillery piece rendered the Chinese army virtually helpless when used in attack tactics.

Throughout the entire War of Resistance against Japan.

This artillery piece could enable a standard Japanese infantry battalion of 1,100 men to withstand three to four divisions of domestic troops without being at a disadvantage.

Sometimes they can even rout our army, which has a numerical advantage.

In this world, no weapon is designed without a specific target.

When they appear, it means there must be an enemy they need to specifically fight, or a battlefield they are suited to.

What Director Yu is seeing now, following Chen Changzai, is this Type 92 infantry gun, which is extremely well-suited for the domestic battlefield.

"Director Yu, the cannon you see now is almost a copy of the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun."

Although we have limited data, we are still able to deduce the performance and advantages and disadvantages of this cannon through some key data.

With the trade-offs and optimizations made between barrel length, chamber pressure, range, and weight, there is basically no room for improvement in this artillery.

However, we discovered that they had some problems in designing the gun carriage for this cannon in order to drastically reduce weight.

Their gun carriages are made of cast steel plates, connected by riveting and welding, as are their legs.

However, this type of gun mount is still relatively heavy in actual use.

Moreover, their artillery designs have a high center of gravity.

Based on the data from their original design of the retraction and reset mechanism, we discovered that their damping coefficients also had issues.

When these problems are combined, the cannon will frequently misfire during firing.

If the gun barrel bounces, it will affect the hit rate of the first shell and the accuracy of continuous firing.

I calculated it based on the caliber of the cannon and the amount of propellant in the ammunition.

It generates a recoil force of 0.2-0.3 tons upon launch.

However, data from their gun mounts shows that the mounts cannot withstand such large recoil for extended periods.

After using it for a period of time.

Their gun mounts may experience problems such as breakage or deformation.

This will seriously affect the firing accuracy and hit rate of this artillery.

To solve this problem, we made a complete overhaul of the cannon's carriage.

Although Director Yu couldn't understand some of the specialized technical terms, he was still very interested in them.

So he quickly asked, "Director Chen, what changes did you make?"
"Can it be better than the Japanese artillery?"

Chen Changzai smiled and said, "Actually, the gun carriage we designed is lighter and more sturdy than the Japanese gun carriage."

The Japanese gun carriages aimed to reduce weight while maintaining high strength to withstand the enormous recoil of the artillery.

This is such a contradictory problem that there is no good way to solve it; the only option is to find a balance.

However, this can also cause a problem in practical applications.

That means wanting both sides, but in the end, you end up getting nothing from either side.

We came up with a new gun mount design.

It's different from the very first thing you see, starting with its material.

Our gun mounts are made of medium carbon steel based on molybdenum alloy steel.

The crossbeams and support beams are made of thin-walled square steel tubes with holes drilled in the tube walls and internally welded with V-shaped corrugated reinforcing plates.

In this way, the structural strength of these three main load-bearing beams is fully capable of meeting the recoil impact strength of this artillery piece, which is about 0.3 tons.

Moreover, in this respect, our gun carriages are 15 percent lighter than the Japanese gun carriages.

The second thing is its wheels.

The Japanese cannon used a 700mm diameter wooden wheel covered with iron, or a steel wheel.

However, wooden wheels are not strong enough and are easily damaged by the strong vibrations of artillery fire.

However, the steel wheels are extremely heavy.

Furthermore, a 700mm diameter gun wheel would raise the center of gravity of the artillery.

This is one of the reasons why this cannon is prone to misfiring when firing.

Therefore, we adopted 550 mm diameter stamped steel plate welded wheel hubs, plus hollow rubber tires.

The advantage of doing this is that it directly lowers the center of gravity of the artillery by about 70 millimeters.

This greatly reduces the possibility of the gun barrel bouncing off course.

Moreover, using small-diameter rubber wheels, it is 15 percent lighter than the wooden gun wheels of the Japanese.

This further reduced the weight of the gun wheels.

To compensate for the poor maneuverability of small-diameter gun wheels.

We used a Z-type, screw-adjustable crank arm axle.

When the cannon is in use, the axle is lowered to its lowest point, which effectively reduces the height of the cannon and lowers the center of gravity.

When the artillery is being towed and transported, the boom is adjusted to its highest point, which raises the height of the artillery beam off the ground by seven centimeters.

This improves accessibility.

Simply inserting a limit locking pin can ensure the stability of the crank arm during long-distance artillery movement and reduce screw wear.

This structure is very simple and doesn't add much weight.
The most important issue is the poor recoil and reset mechanism of the Japanese artillery.

The stroke of the hydraulic spring retraction and reset machine has been lengthened.

This increases the recoil travel of the artillery after firing, resulting in better recoil control.

This greatly reduced the pressure on our legs and provided us with good prerequisites for widening the lateral firing arc of our artillery.

So, Director Yu, the cannon you see now, although its overall design is similar to the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun, is almost identical except for the barrel, elevation mechanism, swivel mechanism, and sights.

The rest of the place is completely different now.

We also made improvements to its high-low gear and rotary gear.

It allows for smoother and more stable adjustment of the artillery's angle.

The locking mechanism is also more secure.

It can be said that when our artillery was fighting against the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun...

Their artillery is no match for ours.

After saying that, Chen Chang patted the small cannon wheel on the cannon and continued, "Let's talk about the accuracy of the first shot and the stability of continuous firing."

Our cannon is definitely better than the Japanese one.

Although Director Yu did not understand what V-shaped wave reinforcement plate was.

What is a Z-shaped rocker arm shaft?

But he could tell.

This cannon was launched from here by Chen Chang.

It is definitely lighter than the Japanese artillery.

It has better stability and higher accuracy.

This makes it even more powerful.

However, at this moment, Chen Changzai added, "But this cannon is not without its flaws."

"Oh, this cannon has some shortcomings?" Director Yu asked.

Chen Changzai nodded helplessly and said, "The choice of what kind of weapon to make depends on the trade-offs among various requirements."

It might be 100% perfect there.

The drawback of this cannon is that, compared to the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun, its manufacturing process is relatively more complex.

Its cost is also higher than that of the Japanese.

However, considering the benefits of this cannon, we believe this is acceptable.

For example, the lifespan of this gun mount.

I did a simple calculation.

In theory, the lifespan of our gun carriages should be three to four times that of the Japanese gun carriages.

In this way, the unit price of our gun mounts might be higher than that of the Japanese.

However, in terms of overall cost comparison...

Our gun mounts are much cheaper.

To achieve this effect, its processing technology must be more advanced and more complicated than that of the Japanese.

However, I think it's unrealistic for us to compete with the Japanese in terms of production output right now.

This is determined by our industrial base and the overall size of our industry.

Therefore, when facing the Japanese devils, we can only try to be more precise.

To the greatest extent possible, we should explore the potential of each weapon individually.

Make its individual units as effective as possible when facing weapons of the same level as the Japanese.

It can achieve a ratio of one to two, or even one to three.

This way we can offset some of the pressure the Japanese are putting on us in terms of industrial scale.

At this point, Chen Changzai smiled again, remembering the little mustache.

He then continued, "But this so-called 'using high-quality materials to improve rough ones' doesn't mean that the more refined the better."

The quality of a product is closely linked to its technical difficulty, processing technology, manufacturing costs, and output.

The more refined the product, the lower the production volume, the higher the cost, and the more complex the manufacturing process.

If you only strive for perfection...

So, what happens when this weapon faces an opponent with crude manufacturing processes, low price, but an overwhelming number of them?

It's like a person with a rifle facing a hundred archers, even though the rifle can quickly and accurately kill five or ten archers.

But the ants kill the elephant.

When quantity reaches a certain level, it can overwhelm quality.

Therefore, both of these aspects need to be taken into account.

Failing to focus on any one aspect will lead to failure.

After listening, Director Yu nodded in strong agreement and said, "Director Chen is right."

No matter what it is, once it goes to an extreme, it will inevitably bring about the opposite result.

Does everything reach its extreme and then reverse?
I think the same principle applies to weapons manufacturing.

Chen Changzai also smiled and said, "That makes sense."

Things will inevitably turn into their opposites when they reach an extreme.

The wisdom left by our ancestors is something those foreign devils can't understand.

Whatever they do, they always go to extremes.

At this moment, Chen Chang was thinking about Hitler's weapon refinement and the Russians' weapon simplification.

Neither of these two directions leads to a dead end.

After inspecting the cannon, Director Yu asked Chen Changzai, "Director Chen, will you be testing the cannon today?"

Chen Changzai said, "Of course we need to test the cannon. If we don't test it, how can we understand its ballistic characteristics?"

Although we had already calculated its basic ballistic characteristics during the design phase before manufacturing.

However, there will inevitably be some differences from actual use.

These adjustments need to be made through test firing.

"Let's go, Director Yu, to the testing range and see if our new cannon can bring us any surprises."

When Director Yu saw the small cannon being pulled by two students, he quickly ran out of the workshop.

He couldn't help but click his tongue in amazement.

Director Yu had seen artillery before; although he had never fired a cannon, he had at least pushed one around.

He knew all too well how heavy those cannons were when pushed.

But seeing those two of Chen Changzai's students seemingly effortlessly pull the small cannon away with their bare hands, I felt that I had truly opened my eyes today.

So he asked Chen Changzai, "Director Chen, how heavy is this cannon? I see them pulling it so easily."

Chen Changzai said, "This cannon weighs a total of 185 kilograms."

It is about 13 percent lighter than the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun.

Moreover, it uses rubber tires, which make it lighter and more agile than wooden or steel wheels.

Director Yu nodded and didn't ask anything further.

At the artillery test site.

The legs of this newly manufactured small cannon have been opened, and the spade shovels are deeply inserted into the two spade shovel pits behind the cannon barrel.

The cannon has now been lowered to its lowest point, and the entire cannon is almost touching the ground.

The gun barrel was pointed straight at the target two kilometers ahead.

There are white circles drawn with lime powder over there to mark the target points.

"Teacher, the preparations for the test firing are complete, and the site has been cleared. May we begin the test firing?"

“Let’s begin,” Chen Changzai replied.

"It's time to begin testing the cannons."

After saying that, the squad leader of the test firing team who came to report ran to the gun position and loudly ordered: "Start the test firing, target 2,000 meters away, target point number one."

Load the grenade, first charge.

Following his command, the gunners, ammunition handlers, aiming operators, and azimuth machine operators in the artillery platoon shouted back, "Lock on the target!"

"Personnel evacuate, prepare for test firing."

The cannon fired, and it hit its target.

(End of this chapter)