Wusongkou Fortress, backed by Baoshan and facing the Yangtze River, is the western gateway of Shanghai City, once lost, the enemy fleet will be able to go straight to Shanghai City along the Huangpu River, the strategic location is very important.

Since the Shanghai army seized the Wusongkou fortress, Li Weiguo has spent a lot of effort here, whether it is manpower, material resources or financial resources, all priority construction.

However, Li Weiguo still personally came to Wusongkou Fortress every other month to inspect it, and he knew that this would be the main battlefield to face the British and French forces head-on, so he tried his best to find problems and then patch the omissions in time.

The military exercises at the Wusongkou fortress were held once a month, just when Li Weiguo came to inspect them.

"This time we envisage the enemy landing from the Northwest Shoal—"

"No, you can't see the problem in this deduction!"

Li Weiguo rejected the original plan of the fort defender Li Xiang's exercise, and he proposed: "We should calculate the worst-case scenario, we have no naval support, and the enemy forces occupy the landing shoals we have set for Nos. 1 to 5 and launch a full-scale attack on our fortress battery." ”

Li Xiang said confidently: "The fortress has 5,000 defenders, and with the fortifications of the fortress, it can block the attack of 50,000 enemy troops, plus there is a whole town garrison in Baoshan, which can be reinforced at any time." If the enemy wants to take the fortress, it is impossible not to leave 100,000 corpses! ”

Li Weiguo said sharply: "Even if you leave 100,000 corpses, the fortress can't be lost!" ”

Li Xiang immediately straightened up and replied, "Yes!" People are in the fortress! ”

Li Weiguo nodded, suddenly remembered something, and asked, "By the way, how did you arrange the new large-caliber fortress gun that I sent you some time ago?" ”

Half a year ago, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau received four heavy fortress guns imported from the Prussian Krupp factory, two of which were sent to the Jinshanwei fortress and the other two to the Wusongkou fortress.

The Krupp cannon is a world-famous cannon, of course, it was the Krupp factory ten years later, and the current Krupp factory is not famous. But they have already successfully developed Krupp steel, and completed the manufacture of Krupp artillery with Krupp steel.

As early as six years ago, when Li Weiguo sent people to Europe and the United States to purchase industrial equipment and raw materials, he specially told him to focus on contacting the Krupp factory and find a way to obtain the core secrets of the Krupp factory, especially the production technology of Krupp steel and Krupp cannons.

It's just that six years ago, although the Krupp factory successfully developed Krupp steel, at that time their secrecy about the new steel technology was very high, and the Krupp cannon was still under development, so that the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have not succeeded in obtaining these two technical information.

Until three years ago, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents bought off local Prussian police officers. At the same time, the Prussian police broke into the Krupp factory under the pretext of collecting incriminating evidence, opened the safe and obtained the manufacturing technology of Krupp steel, which was soon resold to S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and the details of Krupp steel were sent back to Shanghai, so that the engineers of Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant could quickly master the production technology of Krupp steel, and soon they could also produce high-quality Krupp steel.

After his release, Krupp was furious when he learned about the new steel and the leaks. From then on, he became very careful.

Two years ago, Krupp finally succeeded in developing the Krupp steel cannon, and the Krupp factory successfully developed the 80 mm Krupp small steel cannon and the 200 mm caliber Krupp cannon, respectively, and Krupp originally wanted to sell it to the Prussian military. But in the end, the Prussian military purchased only small Krupp steel cannons in small quantities and was not interested in 200-mm large-caliber Krupp cannons.

The Prussian intelligence station of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been keeping an eye on the Krupp factory, and after they got the news in time, they carried out several operations one after another. However, no details of the Krupp cannon were obtained.

Finally, under the authorization of Li Weiguo, the Prussian intelligence station of S.H.I.E.L.D. entrusted Danish businessmen as intermediaries. I ordered four Krupp cannons from the Krupp factory, and I planned to ship them back to Shanghai to study them slowly, while continuing to wait for the opportunity.

The Krupp plant started development and production according to the order, and since it was the first foreign customer, the Krupp plant attached great importance to the complete design and manufacturing to the highest specifications.

After a year of manufacturing, 4 Krupp cannons were finally built.

The final delivered Krupp cannon caliber is 201 mm, 30.5 times the diameter, the total length of the gun body is 13.9 meters, the total weight of the gun is 59 tons, the firing range of the cannon is 4030 meters at a 5-degree elevation angle, the firing range at a 30-degree elevation angle can reach 11760 meters, and the rate of fire of the cannon is 2 rounds in 3 minutes.

Half a year ago, four Krupp cannons were shipped back to Shanghai, each Krupp cannon itself cost 80,000 taels of silver, plus each cannon needed to pay an additional 50,000 taels of silver for freight, as well as supporting armor-piercing shells, blasting shells and maintenance parts, etc., all cost a total of 600,000 taels of silver.

The value of this silver spent, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau quickly tested and imitated this Krupp cannon.

Since it has mastered the production and smelting methods of Krupp steel, Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant can provide the steel needed to build Krupp cannons, and even the special steel of Jiangwan Iron and Steel Plant, so the conditions for steel raw materials have been met.

At the same time, Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau has a large tonnage hydraulic press and a new lathe, the requirements of barrel forging, rifling and precision cutting of parts and components have been met, engineers carefully dismantled the two Krupp cannons, and soon all the parts were copied one by one, after several months of testing, to meet the standards of the imitated Krupp cannons.

However, after testing, the artillery experts of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau found a serious problem, the Krupp cannon is very good in terms of shooting accuracy, artillery power, or operability, and it is in line with the Shanghai army's requirements for the use of fortress guns, but the Krupp cannon has a fatal flaw, that is, the accuracy of the first fifteen shells is very high, and then the rifling in the gun chamber will be seriously worn, and the accuracy will be seriously reduced.

Regarding the wear and tear of rifling, the larger the caliber heavy artillery, the more the end of its life, the only solution is to coat the barrel with a protective film, galvanized, copper, chrome, and so on.

Li Weiguo didn't know much about what materials to plate, and he could only ask the artillery experts to find their own ways to find their own materials, and then conduct experiments one by one to select the best materials. The help that Li Weiguo can provide is that he knows the names of some wear-resistant materials, such as chromium and molybdenum.

Of course. It is not necessary to have a hard coating on the inside of the barrel, and sometimes some corrosion-resistant materials are plated if necessary to prevent corrosion of the barrel.

These need to be explored by those artillery experts themselves, anyway, Li Weiguo has already pointed out the correct research direction for them, as long as they are attentive, with their knowledge and wisdom, I believe that they will be able to solve it soon.

Li Xiang accompanied Li Weiguo to the east and west forts, two 200 mm Krupp cannons were installed on the east and west forts of Wusongkou, after Li Weiguo's reminder, the base of the two giant cannons was poured with reinforced concrete. Usually hidden in the anti-artillery hole, wartime through the railroad track into the battery position, and the artillery mount can rotate 360 degrees, the range of fire not only covers the Huangpu River and the Yangtze River, but also the entire Wusongkou fortress other batteries are covered, even if the enemy captures the adjacent battery, the main battery can also be artillery strike, eliminate the enemy occupying the battery.

"The artillery enters the position, ready to shoot!"

"Ready—"

The gun commander was about to give the order to open fire. Li Weiguo suddenly stopped: "Stop!" No more cannons! The life of this cannon is limited, there are only fifteen rounds in total, and one less shot is missed, and one less enemy ship is sunk! ”

Li Xiang agreed: "What the adults said is extremely true. The normal lifespan is only fifteen rounds, this cannon is really expensive, I just don't know how effective it will be when it starts a war? If you sink an enemy battleship with one shot, you will make a lot of money. ”

Li Weiguo nodded. "That's right, a 200-mm Krupp cannon costs 150,000 taels of silver, and a British steam battleship costs several million taels of silver." ”

Li Xiang said: "I believe in these fortress artillerymen. They were the best gunners I have ever met, and they would surely sink a few more British battleships, as the adults wished. ”

Li Weiguo thought for a while and asked, "What is the intensity of your usual training, and what is the hit rate of artillery bombardment?" ”

Li Xiang thought for a moment and replied: "According to the orders of your lordship, in the past year, we have been training desperately in both artillery and infantry. The hit rate of artillery is about 40%, mainly because most of our artillery are smoothbore guns, the accuracy is too poor, and some even do not reach 20% hit rate, but our artillery has a hit rate of up to 75% when firing with the remaining rifled guns. ”

The smoothbore gun had a low hit rate, which was expected by Li Weiguo, and he was not surprised, nor did he blame Li Xiang.

"With an average of two out of five hits, that's pretty good!"

Li Xiang hurriedly said: "Thanks to your guidance, my lord, you asked our artillery to draw the terrain around the entire Wusongkou fortress into an accurate sand table, and mark it with an equally spaced coordinate system on the sand table to divide into small divisions. In normal times, when the artillerymen train to open the artillery, they will record the small division where the shell impact point falls, as well as the angle of fire of the artillery, the required propellant, the multiple shells fired and other parameters, so that the next time the artillery is fired at this small division, the gunner will directly load the propellant and the shell according to the previous record, and the hit rate will naturally be 8*9 and 10. ”

"Good!" Li Weiguo nodded with satisfaction, this is the method he came up with according to the modern artillery strike theory, and it was written in the fortress defense chapter of the artillery drill code.

In the era when there was no precise positioning of satellites, this tactic could only be used for fortress defense.

Next, Li Weiguo, accompanied by Li Xiang, successively inspected other places in the fortress, and was very satisfied on the whole.

"My lord, there's a minefield ahead!"

Li Xiang stopped Li Weiguo, and the two of them stood on a high ground, under the slope was a forest, but all the trees with thick arms or more than half a meter were cut down, and the horizon was open, and in the middle was a barbed wire fence to prevent the enemy from raiding.

However, the barbed wire fence was all on the surface, and mines were laid everywhere under the stones and in the grass, and if the enemy attacked by surprise, there would be heavy casualties.

"This area is the side and rear of the west battery of the fortress, and the location is extremely important, so the density of mines is very large, and there is almost a mine within two or three steps."

Li Weiguo nodded and listened carefully, when there was a sudden explosion in the distant minefield, and a mine was triggered.

"What's going on?"

Li Xiang shouted at the sentry on the watchtower.

Soon the sentry replied: "Someone has sneaked into the minefield!" It looks like it was blown up! ”

"Send someone over to take a look, be careful, don't step on the thunder!"

"Yes!"

Li Weiguo suddenly frowned and asked, "What's the matter, there are military restricted areas all around, how did this person get in?" ”

Li Xiang smiled bitterly: "My lord doesn't know, this person must be sent by foreigners to spy on the terrain and military deployment of the fortress, and it has become more and more frequent in recent months, and we have already caught five or six live mouths!" At least two dozen of them were killed by us! ”

Li Weiguo suddenly said angrily: "These damn spies, if they have the information of the fortress, it will be too bad for us!" ”

Subsequently, Li Weiguo, accompanied by Li Xiang, came to the fortress prison, only to see five people imprisoned inside, only one British, and the others were Han.

"What's going on?"

Li Xiang explained: "The foreigners are very cunning, they generally do not go out in person, and often give some money to the local people, and instruct these local people to sneak into the fortress defense area to step on the terrain and listen to intelligence. Because they are all local people, it is sometimes difficult for us to distinguish whether they are spies or not, so we can only wait for them to enter the defense zone before arresting people. ”

Li Weiguo sighed, these ignorant people are really a headache.

However, there is no way to do this, under the rule of the poor and backward Qing Empire, the common people have no patriotic concept, and second, they have to do this kind of spy work because they are forced by life. Even in modern times, there are still many people who provide intelligence to foreign spy agencies, and they are willing to give even a few dozen yuan for one piece of intelligence.

This is the reality, Li Weiguo thought a lot, he knew best how harmful espionage on the eve of the war was, so he had to act immediately.

"Take all these spies on a parade through the streets, not too far, just walk around a few villages and towns around the fortress, and make sure that all the people know that these people are spying on the military and committing capital crimes, and then all of them will be beheaded for public display."

Li Xiang suddenly understood: "My lord, this is to kill chickens and make an example of monkeys!" ”

Li Weiguo snorted coldly and said: "Not only is it killing chickens and monkeys, the local government has implemented the system of protecting armor and sitting together for several years, but there are still people who dare to defy the law." It doesn't seem to work for these people to reason with them, so let them be afraid. ”

Li Weiguo's face turned cold, and he said to a personal soldier: "Pass my order, notify the Baoshan County Yamen and the Police Department, immediately verify the household registration of these locals who act as spies for foreigners, strictly implement the system of protecting armor and sitting together, and let them know that there are some things that they can't do or touch!" ”

Li Xiang also trembled, as if he knew Li Weiguo for the first time, and a tremor rose inexplicably in his heart, which was in awe of the superior.

If he only felt that Li Weiguo was a benevolent magistrate before, then at this moment, in Li Xiang's heart, Li Weiguo in front of him had clearly revealed the king's thunderous means. (To be continued......)