After obtaining Browning's personal promise to move the factory to Germany, Chentian's heart collapsed a lot. It seems that Browning, who has been in Belgium for many years, did not have too much anti-German sentiment because of the brazen German invasion of Belgium, not to mention that a good arms dealer should not have obvious national boundaries in the first place.

Regardless of whether Browning and his designers were patriotic or not, Chen Tian had already made a decision in his heart that he would never show even a trace of hostility towards the United States in front of them until they provided the German team with enough excellent weapons.

While Mr. Browning was happily thinking about his bright future, Chen Tian was also planning for his army. Originally equipped with officers and paratroopers, the performance of the Luger 08 is good, but the design and work are too fine, which has two consequences, one is the high cost, and the other is prone to failure, so the Luger fierce, known as the "precision Swiss clock gun", is really not suitable for large-scale equipment of the troops. The German team has never been in the habit of being armed with revolvers, so the M1911, which is simple and reliable, has a low failure rate and is powerful, will be a good choice, and the cost of this pistol is less than 30 marks (about 8 dollars) when it is mass-produced, which is 1/5 of the Mauser pistol and 1/10 of the Luger 08.

Now the only obstacle to making this pistol the standard pistol of the German Army seems to be the worship of the German ** people for the Luger pistol, in fact, the solution is also very simple, as long as this pistol is named Jiji munitions, and then ask His Majesty Chentian, the Kaiser, to do a little publicity, the problem is very simple.

Now that Browning has agreed to move the factory to Germany, with the full support of Chentian, it will not take long for the new factory to start production, not to mention whether Browning's factory can manufacture more than M1911, M1918, M1921, such excellent products, for Chentian and Germany, this can at least reduce the weapons potential of the US Army to a large extent.

After a short period of preparation, a new batch of "exhibits" appeared on the test site - the German Army was ready to complete the renewal of the howitzers in service by 1920, and this batch was a quasi-"competitive bid" for the reference of senior generals and technical experts of the War Department.

In addition to Krupp, the arms companies participating in the exhibition were Friedrich Krup Arms and the Skoda Arsenal. Although it was not the first time that the Scoda Arsenal in Bohemia had participated in a German arms exhibition, the second largest arsenal in Central Europe had become part of Germany's war resources after Bohemia became a German vassal after it seceded from Austria-Hungary. Therefore, although there is no Jiji Arms, a German predator, the pressure on Krupp is not light.

In front of Krupp's HK16 105mm howitzer and Skoda's HS15 105mm howitzer, the unfortunate Friedrich, Krupp arms was once again reduced to a supporting role. As the boss of the German and former Austro-Hungarian artillery industry, Krupp and Skoda were known for their heavy artillery. Even under the same conditions, people will consider adopting their products, not to mention that Krupp this time launched an unheard of "cannon howitzer" (the first cannon howitzer in history was developed by the Germans in 1915), and the new concept of this artillery alone has aroused great interest - it has the characteristics of both cannon and howitzer, both flat and curved fire, direct fire uses specialized grenades and armor-piercing shells, and curved fire uses ordinary grenades and high-explosive grenades, The shells range from 12 to 15.5 kilograms, with a maximum range of 10 kilometers.

The Skoda Arsenal was launched in a traditional howitzer. But their 105mm howitzers are commendable in terms of range, power and maneuverability. The shell weighed 15.7 kg, and the eight-man crew could reach a maximum rate of fire of 8 rounds per minute, with a 20-diameter barrel. The maximum firing range is 9.5 km.

According to the experts of the German War Department, both types of artillery are of high value, and the generals preferred to use the new howitzer of the local enterprise Krupp. At this point, Chen Tian expressed support for the generals' opinions, and only asked the War Department to order in bulk only if they ensured that there were no technical defects in this new artillery.

In the ensuing heavy artillery demonstration, Skoda's 240-mm heavy siege gun surpassed Krupp's 240-mm howitzer for its ease of operation and transportation, which disappointed the Krupp representatives, but fortunately they had a considerable advantage in the first two products, at least not like Friedrich. Krup Arms Company returned empty-handed.

Today's exhibition was supposed to have only three classes of artillery on display, but at the request of the Kaiser. Mauser, Krupp, Gigi Arms and Bergman Arsenal will present their new guns, with Mauser's new gun being included in the semi-automatic rifle category, while the remaining three will all name their new guns "individual light machine guns", that is, submachine guns!

Although the current standard weapon of the German Army, the Mauser rifle, performed well in the previous war, as a person who came over, Chen Tian was very aware of the significance of semi-automatic and automatic weapons, and the Mauser 1898 was too influential in fame and tradition, so that it began to affect the development of the German Army, at this time, the German Army from officers to soldiers mostly used the Mauser rifle as the first sharp weapon. As everyone knows, there is a great flaw in firepower behind its high accuracy and great power, that is, the rate of fire!

Compared with the British Lee Enfield, the rate of fire of Mauser 1898 was already at a disadvantage, in the Battle of Mons in 1914, 12,000 British infantry used their Lee Enfield rifles to completely defeat the attack of nearly 40,000 German soldiers equipped with Mauser rifles in half an hour - no artillery, no machine guns, this is a pure dialogue between rifles, Lee Enfield vs Mauser 1898, the result is a complete victory for Lee Enfield.

Typically, rifle rate of fire can be divided into three subjects: burst rate of fire, sustained rate of fire, and rate of salvo fire. Compared to the Lee Yi Enfield rifle, the Mauser 1898 was at a disadvantage in all three items. In terms of explosive projectiles, if the target is not considered, Li Yi Enfield can fire all 10 rounds in the magazine in 8 seconds; In terms of sustained rate of fire, a well-trained soldier could aim 20 rounds in a minute with a Lee Enfield, and a British soldier had a shooting technique called "Crazy Minute" that could fire 30 rounds in a minute with a Lee Enfield rifle. It should be noted that this is a relatively common technology, not a patent that belongs only to a few elites; And in terms of salvo speed, with good firing organization, the British ** team can achieve 15 salvos per minute. Compared with. Using Mauser 1898 German ** team was able to do only 10 volleys per minute. You must know that the German ** team has been the unit that has paid the most attention to the training of rifle firing speed since the Prussian era, and the Platoon salvo of the Prussian infantry was once called "mobile artillery".

And that's just rifle-to-rifle, the consequences of using a Mauser rifle against a semi-automatic or even automatic rifle can be imagined.

However, the victory in the war and the outstanding quality of the German infantry made most people ignore this, so much so that after the end of the war, the first person to propose to improve the Mauser rifle was Kaiser Wilhelm III himself!

In this context, the Mauser company introduced their M1915 semi-automatic rifle. As a matter of fact. Mauser himself also designed two semi-automatic rifles in the early days, the M1898 semi-automatic rifle and the M1902 semi-automatic rifle, but unfortunately, due to the certain defects of these two semi-automatic rifles, and the disdain of the ruler of the time Wilhelm II and the top of the War Office, both of these rifles gradually fell into oblivion with the death of Paul Moltke.

At this time, the Americans made certain achievements in the research of semi-automatic rifles, and the best of them was the Browning master next to Chen Tian, Garland, who was still researching manual rifles at the Springfield Arsenal at this time. As a matter of fact. Chentian has already sent out an invitation to the 28-year-old designer. It's just that from the current situation, Garland seems determined to stay in the United States. If Chen Tiandi's subordinates can't convince him within the year, I'm afraid there is only one way to choose.

"Mr. Browning. The weapons you'll be testing on are your forte! When Chen Tian spoke, Browning had already set his eyes on the test site not far from here, because it was a firearms display, the staff set up a row of targets at 500 meters, and near the stands were four long wooden tables, on each wooden table were placed two weapons with the same appearance and some bullets, and the testers were making final tests and preparations for these guns.

"Batch 4, exhibit No. 1, Mauser Arms M1916 semi-automatic rifle!" A magnetic baritone voice came from the horn, and the focus of attention was on the two testers who slowly raised their rifles.

Syllable...... Syllable...... Syllable...... Syllable...... Syllable...... Syllable......

In just 15 seconds. The first tester fired eight rounds at a target 500 meters away, and after the gunfire stopped, the whole test site was a little quiet, and it was the first time many people had seen a rifle firing at such a high rate of fire.

After that, the second tester raised the rifle in his hand and said that it was a rifle, which was very different from a traditional rifle in appearance, it did not have the elegant and slender sound of a regular Mauser rifle, and its length was almost as short as a cavalry rifle. There is also no large, straight bolt of the Mauser rifle.

After firing 8 rounds with the same rate of fire, the second tester slowly lowered his rifle, at this time, the first tester had finished loading and re-raised the rifle, and careful people have found that the loading of this rifle and the traditional rifle need a single single load into the built-in bomb bay, the time does not seem to be long, in fact, it requires skillful reloading technology to complete in a short time.

After 5 repetitions, the two testers completed the test demonstration, which took a total of more than 3 minutes. If you switch to a regular Mauser rifle, it will take at least 5 to 6 minutes to shoot 80 rounds in the same way, and there is no room for careful aiming and any adjustments.

After the demonstration, there was a sparse round of applause around the test site.

Chen Tian looked at Browning helplessly, but the master was applauding very hard. In fact, semi-automatic rifles appeared at the end of the 19th century, but due to the rise of countries in the development of magazine-type rifles at that time, and the fact that machine guns were still in the stage of popularization, semi-automatic rifles did not attract enough attention, and even some pedantic aristocratic officers rejected automatic weapons and short-barreled rifles with an aversion to the unconventional shape, on the grounds that "they are not easy to hold during review". The degree of pedantry is probably often directly proportional to the amount of power, and this group of people has a lot of power and influences the development of the country's equipment, so the development of semi-automatic rifles is mired in chattering polemics. For these reasons, Paul Mauser's new design did not receive the attention of the German army department at all, and the relevant patents he applied for were of more attention to some foreigners. Later, the semi-automatic rifle, designed by the master gunsmith Mondragon, was adopted by the Mexican army in 1908, but until 1916, after the end of the war, Germany did not have its own official semi-automatic rifle.

Every time he flips through these files, Chen Tian feels ashamed.

The 8mm caliber M1916 semi-automatic rifle just shown by Mauser seems to have a good burst effect, but in fact, it still follows the old idea of Paul Mauser 10 years ago to use the automatic principle of short recoil of the barrel, and the barrel moves backward for a short distance after firing, and at the same time, the pressure in the chamber has been reduced to a safe range, and the two long movable plates on both sides of the rear of the receiver protrude out of the receiver, so that the bolt locking lever is unlocked, and the bolt is allowed to move backwards, so that the firing hook enters the state of standby, The bolt then moves forward and pushes the next round into the chamber. The gun uses an internal magazine of 8 rounds and can also use magazines of different capacities.

Although such an ingeniously conceived and ingenious design could meet the requirements of a semi-automatic rifle, many problems were found in the course of the test: the safety performance of this rifle was not reliable, and although there was no accident as bad as the injury to the eyes of the old Mauser during the test of 20 sample guns, the failure rate in the process of firing 1,000 rounds of ammunition reached an astonishing 60 percent, and the shooting accuracy was much lower than the level required by the War Department due to the influence of the design structure.

When the observers reported back the shooting results, Chen Tian was really disappointed, the world's largest army power, but now it could not even handle a semi-automatic rifle, and he had to lament Germany's "congenital defects" in the talent of semi-automatic rifle designers.

From the Kaiser's displeased expression, Browning also seemed to see a clue, and the reaction on the scene was not enthusiastic at all, he asked tentatively in a low voice: "Your Majesty, you seem to have a soft spot for this semi-automatic weapon!" But what I don't understand is that the Mauser rifle is recognized as the number one rifle in the world, so why would you want your army to change it to a new weapon? ”

Chen Tian turned his head and said to him in a mysterious tone: "Wrong! I just don't want my soldiers to be constrained by Mauser rifles, tactics, or spirits. And as far as I know, the Mauser company is the least good at semi-automatic rifles! ”

Browning was stunned, he could not read the politics of other countries, and he did not dare to read them.