Shanghai doesn't have much history. Compared with ancient capitals such as Yanjing and Xi'an, Shanghai is young.

There should be no vicissitudes when you are young.

Probably not. In modern history, even if it is the "Paradise of Oriental Adventurers", even if she is drunk and golden, she has been covered in bruises.

The Huangpu River makes a bend in downtown Shanghai and flows north into the Yangtze River. The place that enters the river is Wusongkou.

In the 60 years after the Opium War, the Manchu Qing Dynasty once attached great importance to coastal defense, and like many forts such as Dagukou, Guangzhou, and Xiamen, they began to strengthen the construction of Wusong Fort, and built four forts in the southeast and north of Wusongkou and in the Lion Forest. A new breech gun was added, either a Krupp gun purchased from Germany, or an imitation artillery from the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, realizing the purpose of locking the river with the Jiangkou Fort.

After the liberation, in view of the fact that the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are the lifeblood of China's economy and industry, there is no navy's ruling axe to face possible foreign interference at any time, and the Wusongkou Fort is too backward to block the attack of foreign ships, so it is necessary to update the shore artillery, and the Wusongkou Fort has become a long sword to defend Shanghai, choking the throat of the Yangtze River estuary leading to the sea.

The General Staff of the Guangfu Army immediately approved this plan, and the Wusong Fort was once again expanded, although the new artillery was insufficient, but the reinforced concrete was used to realize the fortress and fortress. The cement base is adopted, the ten-timber structure is used, the position is cultivated, camouflaged with turf and paint, the ammunition depot is waterproof and insulated, the sealed door and air duct are installed, and the moisture-proof equipment is added. And on the basis of the original ancient fort, the retaining wall, the sound insulation wall, the drainage ditch, etc., were built, so that the Wusong fort had a new look.

Compared with the exposed forts in the past, the main guns of the forts at this time were all hemispherical steel plate shield turrets, and small and medium-caliber guns below 150 mm were either equipped with hemispherical steel plate shield turrets, or into reinforced concrete fortresses.

All guns of the turret can fire 360 degrees. There are also more than a dozen machine-gun pillboxes and two fortress-type ring defensive trenches built around the fort, and there is also an underground troop transport road in the large shelter to communicate with the barracks.

During the "tariff incident," new rapid-fire shore guns were brought in, with 152 mm caliber and 120 mm caliber, with a firing range of more than 10 km, which posed a threat to medium-sized and above enemy ships, but after the fire of the east and west batteries, Zhongwen still had a gap of about 2,000 meters, and the enemy ships could pass through smoothly and could not form a fire blockade network.

Jiang Fangzhen, who was the chief of staff of the Liberation Army, personally took a naval ship to inspect the terrain of Wusongkou in detail, and took a fancy to a small reef in the middle of the sea area, named Jigu Reef. Therefore, it was decided to build a shore battery on the chicken bone reef, so that the east and west batteries plus the middle battery of the chicken bone reef could completely block the channel with the fire of the three guns. The chicken bone reef is in the middle, which can be exchanged with the fire of the east fort and the fire of the west fort, and has become the latch that guards the gate of Wusongkou.

However, it is not easy to build a fort on the chicken bone reef, it has only one piece of exposed sea, and the bottom is a reef composed of three reefs, it is on the cusp of the storm, and the construction is quite difficult and difficult. The task of building this fort fell on the naval engineering brigade, the initial construction was fruitless, the cement poured at night was swept away by the big waves during the day, poured during the day, and swept away by the big waves at night. Each time, only a few steel bars were left to tremble in the waves.

However, when the navy could not defend the sea frontier, the fort had to be repaired. No matter how difficult it was, it had to be repaired, but an old battery soldier finally came up with a clever plan, using an old ship to rush into the central sea area of the three reefs at high tide, and then drilling holes in the bottom of the ship, driving steel drills, pouring cement into the cabin, and even the ship and cement were fixed on the reefs, becoming a link connecting the three reefs. Then gradually take advantage of the opportunity of the ebbing tide to expand outward, and constantly pour cement, so that the base will continue to expand and be solid, and it will become the foundation of the fort. With this platform foundation, everything else is easy to do.

It was drizzling, but the lights were bright in the darkness of the estuary, mixer trucks roared, and naval engineers in raincoats were sticking steel bars and nailing slabs along the base fort, and the sea-proof cement concrete was constantly pouring into the four-meter-thick frame that was about to be made.

A ship moored next to the fort construction site lifted the base of the armored fort weighing several tons or dozens of tons onto the pedestal, and in this bright light, hundreds of soldiers were busy like worker ants, and while they were busy, an officer on a US [***] ship that had just entered the mouth of Wusong was depicting something on a nautical chart.

"Humen in Guangdong, Xiamen in Fujian, Dinghai, Zhenhai, Wusongkou in Zhejiang, Jiangyin, Zhenjiang and Shogunate Mountain...... Almost half of China is building fortress forts! ”

Put down the map in your hand, Paul? Jones's brow furrowed, this time along the coast of China, but unexpectedly found that the whole of China was building coastal defense forts, and as he bit his pencil, he glanced at an English-language newspaper he had bought when he docked in Hong Kong.

"The Chinese Admiralty ordered 15 twin 12-inch armored turrets for ships from Armstrong and Krupp......"

The newspaper report puzzled him, could it be that China was ready to build warships?

Paul, who thought so in his heart, shook his head again, China does not have the technical strength to build warships now, but why did they order these ship turrets, "Completed and delivered before February 1......" Paul, who was puzzled, once again cast his eyes on the small battery, he always felt that China now seemed to be preparing something, or preparing for something, "I came to Germany to ask us about the principle of machine operation, and the research methods of science and technology, They have always worked tirelessly to learn various institutional structures, hoping to return to China for development. The Manchu bureaucracy didn't seem to have much interest in all this, they only asked the guns about their surnames and prices, and all they cared about was whether the foreign machines they bought back were worth it. Therefore, Ben must be the victor. ”

Perhaps it is thanks to the short-sightedness of the Manchu Qing Dynasty that to some extent, China's ordnance machinery is not backward compared with other countries in the world, Jiangnan Naval Manufacturing Bureau, after several months of expansion, the Jiangnan Naval Manufacturing Bureau in Shanghai has become the only factory in China that can provide heavy marine and shore defense guns, which is the largest steam hammer in Asia, a 3,000-ton steam hammer purchased from Germany more than 20 years ago, It was thanks to this large steam hammer that China was able to manufacture 150 mm rapid-fire guns and 305 mm coastal defense guns nearly eight years ahead of the curve.

However, this large steam hammer that can be called a giant in China has not been fully used in the past few years, and even because of poor use and maintenance, the forging pressure has decreased, until the dismantling of the northern battery of the "Xinchou Treaty", and the navy has no need to replace rapid-fire guns.

In the steam hammer workshop of the gun factory, the steam hammer that was hoisted by the rail block roared, and the red nearly two-foot-thick gun blank was splashed under the forging of the steam hammer, and the material of the gun blank became more and more fine and symmetrical.

"Finish a 305 millimeter every day...... Millimeter coastal artillery blanks are manufactured, and by the beginning of next year, at least 36 305-mm coastal guns can be added to coastal and riverside batteries! ”

Although he has been back to China for several months, Zheng Zifan still occasionally says that the millimeter is a dense mile, staring at the tube blank that still needs at least 8 hours to complete the hammer forging, this new long-range coastal gun, which he refers to the long-range coastal cannon designed in the United Kingdom, 52 times the body tube adopts a 7-layer tight type, and there are 2 parallel liquid-gas re-entry machines and station-and-retreat machines. The twin-mounted armored turret weighed a total of 620 tons and was attached to a ring seat with German-made ball bearings. The three body tubes have a reading power pitch, a high and low firing range of -5-+25 degrees, an electric bomb pusher loading, a rate of fire of 1.5-1.7 rounds per minute, and a range of 24,000 meters at the maximum elevation angle, which can far exceed the main gun of any warship in the world.

"15 twin 12-inch armored turrets, arranged in 15 batteries along the coast from Guangzhou to Wusong, and old guns and new small and medium-caliber artillery and machine guns form a coastal defense fortress system, which can be ...... It is still up to the navy to defend the sea! ”

Xiao Lie, who was in charge of designing the re-entry and retraction devices, shook his head helplessly and sighed lightly, relying on those fortress-like and fortress-like forts that could only be defended along the coast, and were far from satisfying the needs of defending the sea frontier.

"Zike, now we don't have a navy! In the tariff case, although the great powers did not interfere in the end, who dares to guarantee that they will not interfere in the future, we must now take precautions, and it only takes a few months to train artillery soldiers, but it will take several years or even more than ten years to build a navy to defend the sea frontier. ”

Straightening the old-fashioned gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, Zheng Zifan continued.

"Although this artillery is based on the design of the British 25 nautical mile long-range coastal gun, you and I have no exception in the design of the battleship armored turret, which is not only for survivability, but also to lay the foundation for our design and manufacture of warships in the future, with this experience, it is better to build larger artillery in the future!"

Glancing at the cannon blanks contemplatively, Xiao Lie nodded.

"The armored turret is entrusted to Germany and Britain to manufacture, according to the contract 15 turrets in February, handed over to Shanghai, Guangzhou Port, Xiamen, Fuzhou and Shanghai, now the question is whether Krupp can be delivered before March next year, the railway gun base that can rotate 360 degrees is delivered, the problem of the 203 mm gun is not big, the problem is the 360 degree firing boundary of the 305 mm railway gun, if this problem cannot be solved, the whole of North China, can only rely on the ground artillery to defend the coastal defense."

The Xinchou Treaty stipulated that the Dagu Fort and all the forts that hindered the passage from Beijing to the sea were to be flattened, making North China truly defenseless at sea, and these had to be solved by relying on railway artillery.

"The problem of artillery should be solved by the Germans, but what about the problem of railways? This problem needs to be solved by ourselves! ”

"Isn't it now repairing the Pinghan Railway? It is believed that the issue of transportation and use of railway guns should have been taken into account. ”

(To be continued)