On the second day after the capture of Taiyuan, Zhang Cheng took a group of military cadres such as Li Yulin and Gao Yuan to inspect the Taiyuan Arsenal. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Taiyuan Arsenal is one of the three major arsenals in the history of the Republic of China, along with the Hanyang Arsenal in Hubei Province and the Shenyang Arsenal in Northeast China. As early as 1898, Hu Pingzhi, the governor of Jin Province, was influenced by Zhang Zhidong's Westernization to establish the Hanyang Arsenal, and built 22 factories in the Thousand Buddha Temple of the Cypress Garden outside the small north gate of Taiyuan, which was named the Machinery Bureau.

The initial equipment of the machine bureau was rudimentary, and there was a shortage of craftsmen, so it could only repair spears, sabers, rifles, small cannons and other objects. Later, a group of craftsmen were hired from Pingjin and other places, and the more complex waste weapons could also be repaired as new.

After Yan Laoxi ruled Jin Province, he was afraid that Yuan Shikai would be eradicated because of his suspicion, so in 1914, he changed the Machinery Bureau to the Jin Provincial Army Repair Institute. It was not until after Yuan Shikai's death that Yan Laoxi dared to let go and boldly expand military manufacturing.

In order to solve the problem of funds, Yan set up a copper yuan bureau in the repair institute, and used the huge income from the minting of copper coins to expand the factory building, add machinery, and recruit mechanical technicians from Tianjin and other places, increasing the number of employees to five or six hundred.

In March 1920, Yan ordered the merger of the Repair Institute and the Tongyuan Bureau, and renamed it the Jin Provincial Military Craft Factory. At this time, the number of employees of the military craft training factory has increased from more than 200 to more than 800, with 63 machinery and equipment, and 16 branches under its jurisdiction, producing bullets, grenades, explosives, pistols, machine guns, mountain artillery, and field artillery. It has an annual output of 12 75 mountain guns and 88 field guns, and more than 3,000 rifles.

From 1923 to 1930 was the peak of the development of the Taiyuan Arsenal, Yan Laoxi's power expanded greatly, and the weapons produced were not only used by his own 300,000 troops, but also sold to Li Zongren, Ma Hongkui, Ma Bufang, and Yang Hucheng.

During this period, Taiyuan Arsenal had 17 branches, including machinery, submachine guns, artillery, rifles, machine guns, gun cartridges, ironwork, bombs, fuses, pressure medicine, smokeless medicine, acid production, electrical, artillery shells, shell pressing, smelting, carpentry, etc.

There are as many as 15,000 employees, 3,800 machinery and equipment, 35 light and heavy guns, 100 mortars, 3,000 rifles, 15 machine guns, 900 submachine guns, 15,000 shells, 9,000 mortar shells, and 4.2 million bullets.

From 1923 to 1930, the arsenal produced more than 600 Type 13 75mm mountain guns, as well as Type 17 75mm mountain guns, Type 14 75mm field guns, 120mm heavy guns, and 150mm mortars. The 75,82mm mortar has a firing range of more than 3,000 meters, and the Type 13 75mm mountain gun has a firing range of 7,000 meters.

In 1931, after Yan Laoxi was defeated in the Central Plains War, he said to Chang Kaishen that "to save the country by production, to build the northwest, not to make weapons, not to fight a civil war", and put forward a "10-year plan to create production to save the country", to produce civilian products abroad, and secretly restore military production, in 1933, there were more than 6,000 employees and more than 3,000 pieces of equipment.

From 1934 to 1937, Yan Laoxi established the Northwest Industrial Company to manage all industrial and mining enterprises in Shanxi, and the Taiyuan Arsenal was integrated into 18 branches, with 8,088 employees and 4,350 sets of equipment, with the highest monthly output: 800 65 rifles, 3,000 79 rifles, 3,000 submachine guns, 600 Czech light machine guns, 90 92 heavy machine guns, 150 mortars, 80,000 shells, 300,000 grenades, 1.5 million bullets, and 123 tons of explosives.

It is worth mentioning that the grenades manufactured by Taiyuan Arsenal are famous all over the world, and the grenade body made in Jin is divided into two types: iron sheet and cast iron. After many experiments and battlefield practice, the body of the wooden-handled cast iron grenade can burst into dozens or even hundreds of shrapnel, with great lethality, and has become a famous brand in the Jin-made armaments, with a maximum daily output of more than 100,000 pieces. Nanjing's Jinling Manufacturing Bureau and Shenyang Arsenal have both copied Jin-made grenades, and the grenades developed by Taiyuan are recognized as the most powerful and the best.

On the eve of the fall of Taiyuan in November 1937, Yan Laoxi moved out more than 500 pieces of equipment, more than 1,000 tons of semi-finished products and 300,000 tons of materials. They were moved to Chenggu, Xingping, Guangyuan, Liuba and other places in southwest Shanxi, southern Shanxi, Shaanxi Province and Sichuan Province.

After the Japanese army occupied Taiyuan, they found that many of the equipment in the arsenal were newly purchased from European and American countries, so they planned to disassemble and transport the equipment of the Taiyuan arsenal back to their own country.

Fortunately, it has only been less than half a month since the Japanese army occupied Taiyuan, and more than 3,000 pieces of equipment that have been dismantled and packaged are still parked in warehouses, and more than 500 pieces of equipment at the Taiyuan Railway Station have been captured by our army before they can be transported away, and more than 500 pieces of equipment have been transported away.

After entering the Taiyuan Arsenal to inspect it, Zhang Cheng felt that after the equipment of the Taiyuan Arsenal was demolished, the factory had become an empty house, and it had little value except for the land.

However, Zhang Cheng didn't care about this, what he wanted most was the staff information of the Taiyuan Arsenal, you must know that the Taiyuan Arsenal had 15,000 employees at its peak, and these employees were the core wealth of the Taiyuan Arsenal.

If the Yulin Arsenal has such a large number of workers, why can't it develop a thousandfold of the situation, and the Taiyuan Arsenal once manufactured airplanes in the 20s, if we can get back those old workers who made airplanes back then, with the help of Soviet experts, the Yulin Arsenal can also launch the aircraft project.

With the help of Li Mengshu, the old director of the Taiyuan Arsenal, Zhang Cheng finally found the information of the employees of the Taiyuan Arsenal in the past ten years, and then Zhang Cheng mobilized the officers and soldiers of the Eighth Route Army to look for the old workers of the arsenal door to door.

Although Yan Laoxi took away a group of old workers, after all, the people who love their families account for the majority, and most of the workers in the arsenal still stay in Taiyuan City, which is not difficult to find.

Almost all of the directors of the eighteen branch factories that Zhang Cheng attached the most importance to were also found, and even some old factory directors who had left their posts were invited back by him one by one, the most famous of which was undoubtedly Zhang Kai, who invented the "armor explosive".

In addition to Zhang Kai, a large number of technical backbones from the gun and ammunition factory, the electric welding factory, the willow pot factory, the instrument repair factory, the hydraulic press factory, the fire factory, the wood factory, the iron factory, the steel factory, the oil refinery, the auto repair factory, the bomb factory, the artillery shell factory, the smokeless medicine factory, and the acid factory were also forcibly invited by Zhang Cheng.

After a series of actions by Zhang Cheng that were half ordered and half invited, almost all the factory directors and technical backbones agreed to move Zhang Cheng to Yulin with the arsenal.

Zhang Cheng was surprised that the tech gurus agreed to relocate so easily, but after some in-depth study, he quickly figured out why.

The so-called no comparison, no harm, Yan Laoxi had also mobilized them to move with the Jin Sui army before, but they thought that Japan was also a civilized country after all, and thought that the Japanese army would not do anything to them, but it turned out to be a big mistake, and what the Japanese army did made them suffer.

Now that the Eighth Route Army has returned, they also wanted to return to Yan Laoxi to continue to serve the Jin Sui Army, but they remembered the weak combat effectiveness of the Jin Sui Army, and quickly dispelled this idea.

As the saying goes, it's good to enjoy the shade under the big tree, and after thinking about it, in the end they thought that the Eighth Route Army was more reliable, so these technical masters decided to follow the Eighth Route Army and relocate to the Yulin base area.