The sparks on the slipway near the sea burst out with a sonorous sound, and the inland munitions factories were also surging with fire and the sound of gold and iron. From Alsace to East Prussia, from Bavaria to Schleswig, vast military empires are smelting and nurturing incredible energy to encompass Russia and annex France in one fell swoop.

In that offensive and defensive drill held in East Prussia, the new combat skills displayed by the defenders under the command of Qing Ying greatly stimulated the staff officers who did not yet have a clear understanding of the situation of World War I. The power of rapid-fire weapons such as machine guns is so great that when they are used in large quantities, they are enough to completely overturn the tactical pattern pursued by the countries of the current world. No matter how loose the infantry is in a long line, they are vulnerable to these automatic weapons, which can fire 10 rounds per second; As for the cavalry in the face of this situation, the only thing they could do was to squat far behind the battlefield and cook for the infantry!

Although Schlieffen refused to abandon his plan of "scythe" on the Western Front after this exercise, citing that "the French army did not attach importance to machine guns and did not build a strong defensive line on the Franco-Belgian border," this did not prevent him from drawing on the experience of modernizing the German army through this exercise. Schlieffen, who was committed to keeping the German Army at number one in the world through enhanced training and equipment renewal, did not turn a blind eye to the horrific toll of machine guns on infantry and cavalry, even though the weapon's outstanding performance in the exercise disgraced him. Under the signing of Schlieffen's edict, a new upsurge in the manufacture and development of machine guns was set off in German military factories; Countless factories have improved production or developed new products in order to win a large number of additional orders from the military department. And in the midst of this. The German Arms and Ammunition Manufacturing Company (DWM) is the most notable.

January 1906. Faced with the temptation of the golden mark of the military department. DWM Military Industry launched a machine gun exhibit that integrates the technology of the times, and officially pushed it to the eyes of those bigwigs in the military department. When Qingying accompanied Schlieffen to visit this machine gun, her pupils couldn't help but shrink slightly; The heavy four-legged bracket like the skeleton of a beast, the disc-shaped flame shield and the long cloth bullet chain are all eight points similar to the MG08 heavy machine gun, which was the most widely used by the German army during World War I! And when he asked about the performance of this machine gun, the answer he was given was almost exactly the same as the historical data.

This type of heavy machine gun has a total length of 1.2 meters, a body weight of 27kg, a caliber of 7.92mm, and a water-cooled design that makes it contain 4kg of cooling water in a water-cooled sleeve. It is possible to maintain its firing in a high-intensity combat situation for a long time. The ammunition is fed by a standard-length cloth chain with 250 rounds of ammunition, which can be used to fire for half a minute at the theoretical rate of fire, which is very easy to produce and carry. What made Qingying's eyes shine was that this machine gun was equipped with armor protection at the cooling water barrel and gun carriage to protect the cooling water system and the main shooter, which obviously had a lot of role and foresight in keeping this expensive killing weapon playing its due role on the harsh battlefield. Although Qingying did not see the Zeiss 2.5x scope like the MG08 in history, this is nothing more than a matter of words for him.

The only thing that makes me a little sorry is the weight of the stand. In order to provide a stable firing platform for the machine gun and to have a certain degree of protection in key parts, the weight of the entire stand reached 36kg. The weight of the whole gun is close to the 70kg mark. Such a bulky weight makes it quite cumbersome to move around the battlefield, and its stupid and coarse nature is undoubtedly revealed in this regard.

From the perspective of the Hereafter. This machine gun was apparently in a relatively primitive form; The relatively high cost and heavy weight limit their use in the army to a large extent, and it is already extremely good to be able to distribute them to the battalion level. Historically, MG08 was only incorporated into the infantry regiment as a machine gun company at the beginning of the war, and it was not until 1916 that the number of machine gun companies increased before it was assigned to the battalion. However, Qing Ying only dabbled in the general field of land weapons, but he did not know anything about their specific mechanical structure and design and development, and could not give machine gun engineers the same finishing touch as he did in the design of warships, let alone reduce the weight. For this situation, Qingying can only express helplessness, as a traverser, he can only give a general direction for future development, and the performance of specific equipment can only rely on professional engineers to tackle key problems. To be sure, the MG08 machine gun is on the heavy side, but the design accuracy is quite good; Its service experience throughout the First World War, and the indisputable fact that the German army during the Second World War was still equipped with a large number of MG08, is enough to prove that the weapon in front of Qingying is almost a copy of the MG08, and it can still be of considerable use in World War I.

Because the heavy machine gun itself is not light and expensive, it cannot enter the grassroots troops to provide fire support for it, and finding a light machine gun suitable for the German army to match it has become another urgent problem to be solved by Qingying. At this point, Qing Ying first thought of the British, whose Lewis light machine gun, which was widely used during World War I, was clearly an excellent copycat.

Unlike the traditional Maxim heavy machine gun, Lewis replaced the bulky water-cooled system with air-cooled heat dissipation, while reducing the weight of the gun by appropriately reducing the firing power. After all, the effective killing distance of more than 2,000 meters of the Makqin MG08 does not have much significance in a relatively small battle. Based on the significant reduction in power, the weight of his own gun and the weight of the mount, the total weight of Lewis as a light machine gun is only 14.9kg, which is less than a quarter of the MG08 heavy machine gun, which is tantamount to a huge boon for infantry. In terms of cost, Lewis is only about one-sixth of the heavy machine gun in the same period, and the MG08, which was obviously higher and more sophisticated during World War I and World War II, has a huge advantage.

However, it is obviously not easy for Lewis to come out of the copycat, as Qingying of the BB Party has no idea what kind of automata design is in Ludao, and if he rushes into the game, it will definitely cause considerable risks. In view of this, Qingying could only throw this idea to the domestic military industry, hoping that they would be able to make a breakthrough in the field of technology. Since it was not the British who completed the design of this type of machine gun, but Colonel Lewis from the United States; The experience of coming to Europe after trying to sell the machine gun to the American military in vain also provided Qingying with an opportunity to win the favor of the British and let Lewis equip the German army in large quantities.

However, light machine guns are a problem that needs to be solved at the moment. In line with Bao Xiangguo's famous saying of "not tossing", Qingying, who knew less about the design of infantry weapons, had to adopt the doctrine of taking it first, and introduced imitation copycats to the existing weapons in the current world. Before Lewis appeared, the Madsen light machine gun, which was officially equipped in the Danish army in 1904, was included in the German Army's development list under the influence of Qing Ying, and after purchasing a license, mass production began in German military factories.

The Madsen light machine gun also uses air-cooled cooling, the whole gun weighs only a little more than 10kg, and the shooting accuracy and battlefield reliability are absolutely first-class, but its fly in the ointment is that the firepower sustained ability is relatively weak: the gun uses a magazine to feed ammunition, and the number of bullets in a magazine is only a tragic 30 rounds, and it will be emptied in less than 4 seconds. In addition, the Madsen machine gun has a very high cost due to its complex structure and strict tolerance requirements. However, the latter is not a big problem for Germany. German industry has always been known for its rigor and precision, and the production of this type of industrial product is exactly their forte, not to mention that they have the second largest economy in the world, and they are not short of money at all. The ambitious German military was ready to popularize this light machine gun into companies and even platoons, so that German infantry units would have overwhelming firepower against the enemy in battle!

After the problem of machine guns was temporarily resolved, mortars, which Qingying had high hopes for, also showed themselves in the subsequent weapons exhibition.

Because Qing Ying knew a little about this simple, crude and effective weapon, and often exchanged views with relevant factories in the process of its development, the mortar had a rather strong modern atmosphere when it was born in Germany. The design with buffers overcomes the shortcomings of the rigid connection between the gun body and the gun mount, and the small and sturdy bipod and the seat plate at the rear of the gun form a structural system that supports the gun body, and the seat plate placed on the ground can also greatly absorb the recoil of the shell when fired. The shell with tail allows it to maintain high accuracy without rifling, and the sophisticated optical sight gives it the ability to strike accurately at the target.

The finalized mortar has a caliber of 60 mm, fires 1.2kg shells at a muzzle velocity of 200 m/s, and has a maximum range of 2,200 meters. Because the chamber pressure of the mortar is much smaller than that of ordinary army artillery, the wall of the mortar shell can be further thinned, and the charge will be greatly increased, making it even more powerful than that of howitzers of the same caliber. The sheer power of the mortar, the fool's handling, the durability, the high-throw ballistic attack without dead angles, and the simple production process made the conservative German generals completely conquered, and they immediately issued a large number of orders to the industrial giants. At the same time, larger-caliber mortars have also begun to enter the research and development stage, and this pure explosive B, which is superior to howitzers, has completely entered the German Army. (To be continued......)

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