The Fourth Outstanding Person of Huangpu Military Academy

"Operational Decision-Making" was published last month in the Journal of the Institute of War Studies. Chen Tianheng brought over the OODA loop, retaining the original name—Observe, Assess, Decision, and Execute—still abbreviated as OODA.

As for whether the nickname "Chen Tianheng Cycle" will appear in the future, that is not something I can control.

"Xu Xiangqian finally agreed to write something. It's really not easy."

Ye Jianying: "Now I know that Xu Xiangqian likes forum-style interaction. If there is interaction, he will write something. If there is no interaction, he will not write even if you give him a topic."

Chen Tianheng held two issues of the Academy's journal, both of which contained articles by Xu Xiangqian. The journal's subject matter was broad, encompassing military strategy, tactics, military equipment, logistics, and more. Anything meaningful was welcome. Since 1927, besides Chen Tianheng, Liu Bocheng had published the most articles in the journal. Among the members of the Whampoa Military Academy/War Research Association, Huang Wei, Zuo Quan, Lu Deming, and Liu Yongyao also contributed the most.

Xu Xiangqian was a man who published relatively few articles. From 1925 to 1930, he only wrote one and a half articles (one co-authored with Chen Kui).

Ye Jianying recently launched an "Academic Forum" column in his magazine. Every six months, he selected two topics, with ten short essays per month on each theme. Each essay was asked to express his or her views on a particular military issue, limited to 500 words. Essays exceeding 500 words were also permitted, but they would not be included in the forum, but in separate articles. Xu Xiangqian immediately took to it, and his essay appeared in three consecutive issues.

Chen Tianheng: "Dai Anlan's article in the previous issue refuted some of the views in Tukhachevsky's June article. Are there any new submissions continuing to discuss the theory of mobile warfare? If there are many articles responding to it, we could open a new academic forum topic."

Ye Jianying: "Yes. My idea is that we should be less open about the topic of armored mechanized warfare."

Chen Tianheng: "Hmm..."

The institute journal is not a public publication, but it is not confidential either. It is a magazine for internal circulation.

"Then, let's organize an academic conference on armored and mechanized warfare at some point in time. Commanders and staff officers from all units will attend, and the instructors must be in attendance. The papers and viewpoints presented at the conference will be compiled, but this collection will not be made public."

Ye Jianying: "I think it's possible, and we can hold regular meetings to discuss it."

The world in 1931 was...quite peaceful.

The First World War destroyed the iron-blooded fighting spirit of Britain and France. Although Germany was holding its breath, the Nazis had not yet come up. The Soviet Union was improving its internal strength (as was China). The United States has now returned to isolationism. Therefore, there has been neither a major war nor large-scale local wars in the world.

Japan is the most ruthless among all the great powers, but it has not yet found an opportunity to attack China.

Because there have been almost no local wars in recent years, the regimental-level battle on the Ganjiang Plain has become the only example of actual combat of armored forces that can be used as a reference for other countries.

Britain and Germany took a cursory look at the battle, understanding it through field visits to the battlefield and interviews with the people involved.

China opened the archives of military orders and telegrams of the Second Army and the Training Division Staff before and after the battle to the Soviet staff inspection team, so the information the Soviet Union obtained was much more detailed than that of Britain and Germany.

Because when you visit the people involved, you can only know what happened at the time, but they don't know the specifics of how it all happened. They will only tell you "Tanks! Lots of tanks rolling over!"

If you ask him to recall it carefully, he would probably add, "It was 3:30 p.m. on Xth day of Xth month, and we were run over by a tank."

The information the Soviet Union knew was that "at 1:30 p.m., the staff of the training division learned about the battle situation of XX and XX. At 2 p.m., the battle situation of XX was learned. At 2:15 p.m., the staff sent a telegram to the armored regiment, ordering it to raid a certain place."

The Frunze Military Academy and the Advanced Staff Institute obtained armored warfare cases to guide the construction of Soviet armored forces, and China was able to order T-26s from the Soviet Union and make some requirements during the design stage to obtain its own "customized" tanks.

Of course, the Soviet Union could also equip a version developed according to China's customized requirements, but it depends on whether the Soviet army has this idea.

"They've abandoned the twin-turret configuration of the Vickers 6-ton tank. Now the design is finalized, with a single turret. However, they still designed a model without a radio."

戴安澜和苏方在广州的参谋代表团刚讨论过坦克的事。T-26已于10月份投产,第一批包括100辆T-26A和15辆T-26TL，都是苏军自用的。TL就是“指挥型”，装了电台，T-26A则没装电台。

Chen Tianheng: "With this production ratio, are they planning to equip a tank company with two tanks equipped with radios?"

Dai Anlan: "Yes, the company commander and deputy company commander are in the car."

The Soviets insisted that tank units could equip only a portion of their tanks with radios. Indeed, during the Ganjiang Armored Battle, the armored regiment achieved its goal of advancing deep into the enemy's territory using only vehicle-mounted Morse code radios.

Another reason is that the Soviet Union was unable to produce radios on a large scale. The core components of the radios they imitated were actually imported. Even so, the imitation radios were very unreliable, and the good ones had to be imported from Motorola.

China actually now also needs to import radios and manually install them on the Vickers MKE-CT.

But the Soviet Union was in another different situation from China: they were now planning to produce 4000 or even 6000 T-26s. If each of those tanks was to be equipped with a radio, they would have to import 4000 radios.

In the end, the Soviet Union made a compromise, although some officers at the Institute of Advanced Staff believed that fully equipped armored units with radios would make them more flexible, and that it was not appropriate to equip only command vehicles with radios.

Dai Anlan: "Our T-26K will roll off the production line at the end of next year. It's basically a modified version of the T-26TL, but I don't know if the tank factory in Shaoguan will be able to assemble it by then."

Qian Deng Ruoxian: "It's just lifting the turret and installing it on the chassis shipped from the Soviet Union, and lifting the engine and installing it in the rear compartment of the chassis. It's semi-finished product processing."

Chen Tianheng: "The turret might be easy, but installing the engine will really test the assembly plant's skills. The engine power needs to be output to the drive shaft. Whether the tank can be driven properly depends on the docking precision and debugging level after the factory installs the engine."

Qian Deng Ruoxian: "I'm very confident in the docking accuracy and debugging level. Their tank factory now has technicians making 80 yuan a month! 80 yuan!"

Qian Deng Ruoxian was very upset about the "monthly salary of 80 yuan" because as the division chief of staff, his current monthly salary was 78 yuan.

The Shaoguan Tank Factory was responsible for converting 50 Vickers tank chassis imported from the UK into various modified vehicles, mainly assault guns equipped with 75 mountain guns and self-propelled guns equipped with 75 field guns.

To ensure the Transformer could be built and completed successfully, the tank factory recruited talent from all over the place. The two modification experts they found had worked as export laborers in a French automobile factory in 1917. After returning to China, they worked in auto repair shops in Shanghai and Guangzhou. Despite their advanced skills, they earned only 70 yuan a month while working in the repair shops.

However, the effect of the technicians who earn 80 yuan a month is immediate. The six 75mm "Vickers assault guns" delivered to the training division have been praised by the armored regiment after use. Not only are the guns smooth in swinging left and right and pitching up and down, the armor plates are tightly welded, and the center of gravity balance of the entire vehicle is also very good.

"The Shaoguan Tank Factory can even modify its own assault guns, so why is it so difficult for the First Arsenal to design a 75mm mountain gun?"

Chen Tianheng read the annual report on military research and production submitted by Nie Rongzhen and found that the new 75mm mountain gun that had been requested earlier was still in the stage of project approval but not officially launched.

Guangzhou was now capable of producing the K-75 mountain gun. Furthermore, the revolutionary army possessed several 75mm mountain guns from Krupp, the Soviet Union, Japan, and other countries for reference. Chen Tianheng had earlier tasked the First Arsenal with designing their own 75mm mountain gun. They would base their design on the Type 41, replacing the single-leg mount with an open one. They would also slightly increase the range from 6.3 kilometers to 7-8 kilometers.

Then a year passed, and now the First Arsenal project is still in the "new folder" stage.

Nie Rongzhen: "The artillery department of the First Arsenal is now focusing almost entirely on the development of the Type 57 and Type 75 recoilless rifles. There are no extra designers to work on mountain artillery. Well, let's put it this way, the only person in the entire arsenal who can be the chief artillery designer is Chief Engineer Lin. This old Lin is now also the chief designer of the Type 57 and Type 75 recoilless rifles."

Chen Tianheng: "It seems that before we can mass-produce artillery, we must first mass-produce chief engineers..."

Nie Rongzhen: "Two engineers from the First Arsenal are studying and investigating in the Urals, and two from the Second Arsenal have gone to France. After they return, the ordnance talent pool should improve somewhat. But the First Arsenal has assured me that design work on the new 75mm mountain gun will begin next year, in March 1932."

"General, this is General Staff Order No. 1 of 1932."

一份文件放到了陈天衡案头。1932年总参1号令，全称是“革命军年度开训动员令”，1932年1月1日发布。

Sign. After signing, I looked at the date. There were still ten days until 1932.

In 1931...

The September 918 Incident did not happen. Zhang Zuolin maneuvered slickly between Japan, the Soviet Union, and the Nanjing government, and managed to save his own life.

But Zhang Zuolin did not avoid paying a price. Intelligence gathered by the Special Intelligence Bureau showed that Japan's peaceful encroachment on Northeast China continued, and Zhang Zuolin himself was making concessions bit by bit, such as conditionally allowing Japanese expatriates to rent land in Northeast China and giving the green light to Japanese investment and factory construction in Northeast China, thus giving up some benefits to avoid excessively angering the Japanese.

But such small concessions can probably only prevent Japan from turning the table on the spot, and Japan's appetite has not been satisfied.

Chen Tianheng: "Wang Erzhuo, how is the military training going on over there with Chiang Kai-shek?"

"They will definitely not issue an annual training mobilization order." Chen Tianheng: "Go to the Intelligence Department and ask. I want to find out what kind of troops they have formed with the tanks they bought from Britain."

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