To this, the elder Ford's answer was that the reason why he invested in the border areas was only to be optimistic about the future of the Red Party and China, and wanted to share the rich dividends of China's rise; relatively speaking, although the foundation of Germany and the Soviet Union was better, the development potential of the Soviet Union and Germany, which had completed industrialization, at least preliminarily, was far from being comparable with China. Come on,.! In fact, the old Ford did make a lot of money, although the establishment of New China in the years after the establishment of these joint venture heavy industry enterprises have been nationalized, but the Red Party and the People's Government of New China have never treated these old friends of the Chinese people badly, as the first enterprise to invest in the border area, Ford Company received the most generous compensation, plus the dividends obtained during the joint venture, the cumulative income exceeded 1.5 billion US dollars (and the value of the dollar was very stable before the collapse of the Bretton Woods system), and the profit margin exceeded 400%, And that's just a relatively minor direct benefit. The reason why the Ford family was able to remain the richest man in Shijie for more than 20 years after the war is that the Chinese factor cannot be ignored in any case, of course, these are all later stories

Since he returned to Luoyang, Hu Weidong also adjusted the scientific research in the Central Plains border area by the way, mainly to increase some naval equipment projects, among which the research of new equipment such as hovercraft is a new project from scratch, and the special shipborne radar is a branch and extension on the basis of the existing Jishu achievements, and the 240 tail stabilized shelling armor-piercing bullet has long been finalized, but it is only now starting to be produced. But this is not surprising, after all, against land fortifications, cloudburst shells are better than armor-piercing shells, and they are now used on captured warships. Hu Weidong ordered the production to be put into production. The 240 tail stabilized shell-piercing bullets produced by the Gongxian Arsenal are divided into three types: alloy steel bullet core, tungsten alloy bullet core and depleted uranium alloy bullet core, and the power is increased in turn, and the cost is greatly increased one after another

Similar products include Hu Weidong's 152 cannon howitzer, which was improved from the Type 83 152mm cannon, which has a long range, low cost, and not slow rate of fire. However, because the caliber is a little different from the caliber of the 150 cannon of the 15th Army's heavy artillery brigade, it is precisely impossible to use ammunition, so Hu Weidong has never made up his mind to let the arsenal produce it, but now anyway, the secondary gun on the "Dingyuan" also happens to be of this caliber. Instead, Hu Weidong made a decision. In fact, the performance of this new gun is very good, even when used as a naval gun. The range of the concave projectile can reach more than 36 kilometers, and the rate of fire is also 4 rounds per minute, which is obviously better than the 152 naval guns equipped on the "Dingyuan", and the length of the barrel is not much different, there is no problem with direct reloading, and the shells are completely versatile.

As for the production line of 356 shells, Hu Weidong only let the Jishu personnel study it internally for the time being, but he was not in a hurry to lay it, after all, even Hu Weidong did not have the absolute certainty of Qingdao and those warships at this time. And this kind of giant shells weighing more than 1,000 catties, the investment required for a production line is not ordinarily high, and it would be a waste if it was laid but not used

In addition, Hu Weidong also assigned some imitation tasks to the Gongxian Arsenal. For example, the Devil 75 and 120 caliber Type 98 anti-aircraft guns, but there are also some weapons that cannot be produced for the time being because the equipment conditions cannot be met, or cannot be produced in large quantities, such as the 203 cannon howitzer designed by Hu Weidong as the prototype of the W90 type 203 mm towed howitzer, and there are only two 3,000-ton free-type hydraulic presses and 8,000-ton die-forged hydraulic presses in the border area. It will also affect the production of other weapons. Now that he knew that Mao Zemin had made a lot of money, Hu Weidong naturally wanted to make another big purchase from the Germans

However, at this time, the telegraph personnel of the 15 th Group Army learned through the deciphering of the devil's telegram that Japan was assembling a huge fleet to prepare for an attack on Qingdao, and Su Yu, deputy commander-in-chief of the 15 th Army Group Army, hurriedly sent a telegram to inform Hu Weidong, who was still in Luoyang. When Hu Weidong learned the news, he had to put aside the matter of doing business with the Germans. And he also realized that if he couldn't keep Qingdao, then the large-scale equipment he wanted to order would not be shipped in at all. At the same time, once the devil and the Germans form an alliance, then China will not want to buy anything from Germany anymore, and the reason why Germany has formed an alliance with the devil in history is nothing more than the strength of the Japanese navy

Although he had long anticipated the determination of the Japanese army to recapture Qingdao, with the enrichment of intelligence, after learning that the Japanese had sent almost all the battleships, Hu Weidong still couldn't help but feel numb in his scalp. ’。 ”

Unlike Hu Weidong's fears, the commanders and fighters of the 15 th Group Army, who had never seen the power of battleships with their own eyes, were full of confidence in defeating the incoming enemy, and this somewhat relieved Hu Weidong's nervousness. And after calming down and thinking about it, Hu Weidong also felt that although those six battleships sounded terrifying, they were not necessarily invincible

"The devil's aircraft carrier has sunk, and even if it is fished up, it will not be repaired so quickly, and it is also impossible to repair the airport of the brigade in the past few days, that is, the enemy has no air force to help in the war. Historically, one British battleship, one battlecruiser, and four destroyers were easily killed by less than 100 Japanese land-based bombers. ”

However, a series of miraculous victories during this period of time interfered with Hu Weidong's judgment, and he forgot that there was an obvious difference between the two, that unlike the well-trained Japanese bomber pilots in the early days of the Pacific War, the bomber pilots of the North China Air Corps, especially the pilots of torpedo bombers, were very inexperienced. And the remaining two dozen aviation torpedoes are enough for their mission......)

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