may really respond to the old Chinese saying "stay in the army for three years, the sow becomes a sable cicada", the gentle and playful Tokyo Rose became the popular lover of the American soldiers at that time, the reason is that the sweet voice of the "Tokyo Rose" is a gift that accompanied them through the difficult years, and many American soldiers just held the idea of "must fight to Tokyo to see this Tokyo Rose" to survive. Mike was one of the American soldiers at the time, so he and his comrades around him had a deep affection for Tokyo Rose, so when he learned that Ikuko Toguri was going to be punished for treason, he spontaneously organized himself to work hard for her affairs.

And Tang Ning was in charge of the Propaganda Department when he first arrived in Japan, so he naturally knew something about the legends in this field, but after he saw the photos of Tokyo Rose and Sea Banshee, he didn't have any other thoughts. Today, when I heard Mike mention this person, I brought back my memories of being in the Propaganda Department.

In Tangning's heart, he didn't want to take care of this kind of thing, but Mike, an old friend, rarely opened his mouth once, and he couldn't refuse directly. And he doesn't need to run around, just make an attitude and send a telegram to Jimmy. But in order to show his attention, he deliberately told Mike that he would personally go to the United States to run for this matter, but in fact he was just an excuse, and the real place he was going to was England.

The purpose of Downing's trip to England was to find a man, a German metal stamping expert named Grunov, whose name may not be known to many people, but one of his inventions is almost unknown to everyone, that is, the famous MG42 general-purpose machine gun during World War II.

The successful research of MG42 is actually an important breakthrough in firearms production technology. Dr. Grunov himself was not a gunsmith, he was an expert in metal stamping technology, and at that time, due to the large demand for machine guns in the German front-line troops, he thought that it would be difficult to meet such needs according to the traditional firearms manufacturing process (the original process was machined, and a solid piece of metal was processed by a lathe, milling machine, etc., to cut off unnecessary parts). The utilization rate of metal is only about 25 percent, which is a waste of materials and a lot of man-hours), he believes that it is an inevitable trend for machine guns to be manufactured by metal stamping process. In practice, the MG42 produced by the metal stamping process not only saves material and man-hours, but is also more compact, which is very practical for Germany, which is short of metal resources.

But when the MG42 was just born and equipped with troops. In the eyes of Western spies lurking in Europe, this is actually a crude weapon, a patchwork of several pieces of iron and an iron pipe. However, the superiority of MG42 in actual combat is undoubtedly revealed, whether it is in the ice and snow of minus 40 degrees Celsius in the Soviet Union, or in the low bushes of Normandy; Whether it was the hot desert of North Africa or the rubble heaps of Berlin, the MG42 was an absolute firepower pillar for the German army and a nightmare for the Allied soldiers. American soldiers called MG42 'Hitler's chainsaw'.

Although Grunov was not a master of firearms like Karanishkov or Garand (the inventor of the M14), his research ideas were very much in line with Downing's requirements, if Germany during World War II was desperately short of metal resources. Then there are almost no metal resources in Japan now, so if you can save it, you can save it.

After nearly two years of construction and a lot of manpower and financial resources, Downing's military factory in Kogura finally began to see scale, which could produce some light firearms, and due to the influence of the imminent establishment of Red China, the United States and China accelerated the "light rifle research program" (in fact, this plan began to start at the end of World War II in 1945, mainly because the mass of the M1 is too large, the ammunition capacity is too small, so it has always wanted to develop a new rifle to replace), and now all arsenals have been allowed to come up with sample guns to participate in the campaign.

Since the military factories in Downing did not even have formal qualifications to operate. So he couldn't invite those gunsmiths at all, and originally wanted to use the prophetic advantage to get Karanishkov's AK47, and after Takeda Takeo's failure, he began to look around for good light weapons designers. But the result made him very frustrated, and now good weapons designers are either in the USSR or in the United States.

In the end, when Tangning saw the information of Grunov, a weapons expert who was not a weapons expert, his eyes lit up and his mind was opened. His idea was that although his military factory did not have the strength to design new weapons, it would take advantage of its geographical and identity advantages. He will definitely get a part of the military orders for small arms, so if he can save more information at that time, the more profits he will make, so it seems that this Grunov is the most suitable person.

And for Grunov, the MG42, although world-famous, was a nightmare for him personally, first of all, he was a specialist in metal stamping, not a weapons designer, and the design of the MG42 was just an unintentional move. Secondly, the MG42 did not bring him any glory, but brought many negative effects, and during World War II, there were even agents who came to assassinate him for this. And after the war, because Germany was a defeated country and he was a well-known R&D personnel in the German army, almost no one hired him. The Soviets would never accept a German devil as their colleague, and although the United States did not mind his nationality, it had a completely different approach to research, so he did not go. As for other countries, they are all working on restoring the economy, no one wants to develop weapons, and naturally no one will hire him.

Therefore, when Tang Ning came to look for him, although he felt very surprised, he still agreed to meet, but when he heard Tang Ning's request, he still looked very depressed, hugged his head and said: "My God, do all the people in the world now regard me as a weapon designer?" But I'm obviously a metal stamping doctor! ”

Tang Ning reacted for a moment before he understood what Grunov meant, so he explained with a smile: "Dr. Grunov, I think you have misunderstood, I did not invite you to design weapons this time, I valued your research on metal stamping, which can save time, effort and resources in the production process." ”

Grunov looked at Downing in disbelief and asked, "What you said is true?" Didn't you come to me to make a machine gun? ”

Tang Ning shrugged: "Like you just said, you are a metal stamping expert, not a machine gun expert, so why am I looking for you to be a machine gun?" Your task is to reduce my costs by saving more metal on the existing process. (To be continued.) )