The next day, Zhang Yunfei went to the Huanglongxia Industrial Zone.

Riding in the only jeep at the regiment headquarters, accompanied by political commissar Fang Zheng, the jeep kicked up a cloud of dust and drove towards Huanglongxia Industry.

The road leading to Huanglongxia Industry is still the same gravel and dirt road, but the road has been widened, and due to the lack of cement in the base area, cement is not used in some unimportant places.

However, with the construction of the base cement plant, this situation will be slowly alleviated, there is no shortage of coal in Shanxi, there are also stones all over the mountain, there is a lot of clay, and there is no shortage of raw materials needed to make cement, what is lacking is equipment and technology.

Fortunately, several of these Jews were technicians at a large cement factory in Germany, and the technical problem was solved.

As for the equipment, Zhang Yunfei asked the mechanical engineers to carry out research and development together with the technicians of the cement factory, and the arsenal was responsible for manufacturing, and the arsenal had ordinary lathes, drilling machines, milling machines and other general equipment.

The scale of the cement plant is not required to be very large, and the equipment is only small equipment, and the technology is mature in the future, the industrial foundation is strong, and it is not too late to manufacture medium-sized or large-scale cement equipment.

For other factories preparing for construction, Zhang Yunfei also has this requirement, such as mechanical processing plants, steel plants, etc., starting from a small start, and then slowly developing and growing.

In less than two hours, the jeep reached the entrance to the Huanglongxia Industrial Zone, which has changed significantly from two months ago, with strong fortifications built at the entrance.

On the slopes of the hills on both sides of the entrance, several large pillboxes were built, and trenches were dug, and in broad daylight, many soldiers were stationed on them, estimated to be a company.

Seeing that the industrial zone was heavily defended, Zhang Yunfei nodded with satisfaction, in the two months that he was away, it seems that the political commissar has spent a lot of effort for the development of the industrial zone.

After passing through the entrance checkpoint, less than a mile inside, the field of vision suddenly opens up, a huge valley is presented in front of you, and at the foot of the mountain on one side, there are several huge artificially dug caves, in which the machines roar and there are busy figures everywhere.

In a vacant lot at the foot of the mountain, more than a dozen one-story red brick houses are neatly arranged, and Zhang Yunfei knows that these are the living quarters of the workers of the arsenal, including dormitories and canteens.

In the Huanglong Canyon area, except for more than a dozen red brick houses built in this small area, most of the place is still desolate and undeveloped, and even if the scale of the arsenal is expanded tenfold in the future, the place here will be enough.

It seems that the choice of location was a very wise choice.

On the way, I listened to the political commissar briefing, the workers of the arsenal practice a six-day work system, go to work in the industrial zone on Monday morning, go home after work on Saturday afternoon, and must be in the industrial zone from Monday to Saturday and cannot go out.

Workers work 10 hours a day and are paid between two and five dollars a month, depending on the position. This is the job, when the first recruitment, many people broke their heads and wanted to come in, but in the end, after repeated screening, only more than 1,000 reliable and innocent people were recruited.

After listening to the introduction of the political commissar, Zhang Yunfei was full of emotion, it was all caused by the damn war, and it can be seen how difficult it is for everyone to eat together.

If in the future generations, such a labor intensity, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, fully closed management, can recruit so many talents, it is strange.

When the car was parked at the gate of the arsenal, Xu Kaixian, director and chief engineer of the arsenal, had greeted him at the door, and Xu Kaixian was also very happy to see Zhang Yunfei, two months ago, Zhang Yunfei had a design drawing of AK-47, and he was deeply impressed by this old military industry.

Without too many pleasantries, Xu Kaixian led Zhang Yunfei and them to visit the major workshops of the arsenal, several workshops were lined up at the foot of the mountain, and the entrance of the cave could accommodate a truck to enter and exit.

The large workshop has a scale of two or three thousand square meters, which is reinforced with thick cement all around, extending into the mountain to a depth of hundreds of meters, and the small workshop also has a scale of several hundred square meters.

Such a huge project was the result of the hard work of several thousand soldiers of the Eighth Route Army for more than two months.

Walking into the workshop, although there was a smell of engine oil in it, the air was not as dirty as Chang Yunfei imagined, and it was still within the allowable range.

In the workshop, busy workers are skillfully working on various equipment, and occasionally technicians can be seen guiding beside them. Zhang Yunfei rescued several college students majoring in mechanical engineering from Yenching University in Xin'an County a few months ago, and they all took on important technical work, like Zhang Chu is already a technical supervisor of a workshop.

In addition, several of Zhang Chu's classmates, under Zhang Chu's introduction, came all the way to the Huanglongxia Arsenal and devoted themselves to military production with enthusiasm.

After a few days, after those Jewish experts and technicians joined, the technical level of the entire arsenal will be raised to a great level.

After watching for two or three hours, Zhang Yunfei carefully looked at each workshop of the arsenal, and the impression given to Zhang Yunfei of the entire arsenal was that it was on the right track and that the development situation was gratifying.

Before leaving, Zhang Yunfei introduced the situation of Thomas and other Jews to Xu Kaixian, and asked Xu Kaixian and Toms and others to work together to develop the small-caliber antiaircraft guns urgently needed by the troops as soon as possible.

About a dozen kilometers out of the Huanglongxia Industrial Zone, there is a freshly built dirt road to the north, leading to a small iron mine that was discovered just over a month ago.

Zhang Yunfei, it was still early to see the time, and decided to go there to have a look.

Along the winding dirt road, the little jeep drove slowly, controlling the speed at twenty or thirty kilometers per hour, and drove less than forty kilometers, and finally saw the small iron ore being mined.

The small iron ore is not big, but the ore grade is very high, the ore is not buried deeply, it can be mined in the open pit, there are currently hundreds of people mining, the red iron ore looks very gratifying, and it is almost piled up into a hill.

Seeing this scene, Zhang Yunfei felt that he needed to build a steel plant immediately, and several of these Jews had been steel smelting engineers before, and they needed to build a steel plant nearby as soon as possible.

First of all, we can build a small steel plant with an annual output of tens of thousands of tons of steel, and the annual output of tens of thousands of tons of steel can definitely meet our own needs.

In fact, the production of steel is divided into two parts, the first is to smelt iron ore into pig iron, this step is not difficult, ancient China had this level of technology.

The second step is to further smelt the pig iron, remove the harmful impurities in the pig iron, and turn the pig iron into steel, this step requires professional knowledge and equipment, and there are mainly converter steelmaking and open-hearth steelmaking.

No matter which method is used, Zhang Yunfei is confident that he will soon be able to build a small steel plant and smelt qualified steel soon.

Fortunately, Shanxi is rich in coal resources, and now such a good iron ore has been discovered, which is like putting two wings on Zhang Yunfei's industrial dream.

Driven by the three carriages of coal, steel, and technology, the base area will develop rapidly, and Zhang Yunfei is full of confidence in this.

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