My Pen Pal Zhu Yuanzhang

Chapter 338 Everyone performs their duties
Although they scolded him, Zhu Yuanzhang was absolutely confident in the ability of Xu Da and others to get things done.

Soon, Xu Da and his companions became busy.

To establish a navy, the first thing to be solved is the problem of manpower. Xu Da, Li Wenzhong and Tang He were in Xu Da's Duke's Mansion, preparing to discuss the establishment of the navy behind closed doors.

But after a while, Zhu Yuanzhang sent someone to deliver a full one hundred roast geese. When Li Wenzhong and Tang He saw the roast geese delivered to their door, they were stunned.

Your Majesty is too kind to Xu Tiande. He even gave him roast goose?
Xu Da was also confused by Zhu Yuanzhang's move. It was a while before he remembered that when he suffered from back carbuncle, the emperor said he would give him a hundred roast geese when he came to visit him. The emperor had fulfilled his promise.

Since the roast goose is already delivered to our door, we might as well open a few bottles of good wine and discuss the important matter of building the army while eating and drinking.

Anyway, many key battles in the past were decided upon while a group of people were eating and drinking. This is a fine tradition.

So the three of them discussed it for a whole night. After consuming three bottles of Guojiao 1573, two bottles of Wuliangye, and several roast geese, the three of them decided to set the personnel standards for forming a navy based on the strange man's navy formation suggestions.

Of course, the most basic standard is that one must be able to read and write, and also be able to do arithmetic.

According to His Majesty, the navy is a serious professional and technical branch of the military. If you can't read a single word and don't even recognize the scale on the artillery, how can you fire the artillery?
Moreover, all naval personnel must enter the factory and participate in the warship manufacturing process together with the workers. If a layman is sent there, he will be like reading a book without words and will not understand anything.

According to this standard, the three people would be the first to exclude the garrisons. The soldiers in the garrisons were all from military households, and not many of them were literate. In the garrisons, they were basically all officials above the rank of small flag.

Fighting wars today is different from before. Now equipped with semi-automatic rifles, the tactics of fighting are fundamentally different from before. A garrison has thousands of people working together in combat. The role of the small flags and the general flags is irreplaceable. They are the backbone of the garrison and are invaluable.

If they really pry away someone else's treasure, the thousand households will be furious.

Although considering the seniority of the three men, every captain had fought with them and they had to respectfully address them as "Duke" when they met, and they didn't dare to really turn their backs on them, but there was no need to embarrass the captain, right?
Therefore, after much discussion, they decided to select people from the Beijing camp, where there were many people who could read and do arithmetic.

Xu Da also planned to find someone directly from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, but was quickly rejected by Tang He and Li Wenzhong.

Those in the university are the real pillars of the country, the scarce talents, and are all your majesty's treasures. If we go there to ask for them, not to mention your majesty, Li Min alone will have to roll up his sleeves and fight with those warriors.

After deciding on a plan, the three men carefully selected a number of literate and clever soldiers from the Shouzhong Guard and Shen Ce Guard, the most powerful units in the Beijing Camp. Li Wenzhong also served as the Left Commander-in-Chief of the Central Military Commandery that managed the Beijing Camp.

After selecting the right people, training must begin, and the first step in training is to make everyone learn how to swim!
Xu Da even transferred a ship from the maritime trade fleet for training purposes. However, when they went out to sea for the first time, the three were surprised to find that many people vomited.

Well, let’s get used to taking a boat first.

In addition to the Beijing Camp, the existing navy responsible for coastal defense must be reorganized into the navy. However, although the existing naval personnel are good at swimming and many of them have experience in sailing, not many of them can read, so they have to find teachers to teach them to read first.

While the basic training of naval officers and soldiers was in full swing, Li Min and Yang Siyi were not idle either.

After getting the blueprint, Li Min summoned researchers from the Industry Department, as well as relevant technical personnel from the steel plant, shipyard, and the Military Equipment Bureau. Of course, Liu Sanwu couldn't escape. Today, the Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry has basically left the scope of production and has become a specialized research institution.

It has a Smelting Bureau, which is an institution specifically responsible for the research and development of new steel materials, as well as departments such as the Shipping Bureau, Steam Bureau, Railway Bureau, Radio Bureau, and Ordnance Bureau. Under the Ordnance Bureau, there are several research institutes such as the Firearms Institute, Explosives Institute, and Artillery Institute.

The main work of these research bureaus is to connect with factories, make suggestions for factory production, improve production processes, optimize processes, and solve technical problems that factories cannot solve on their own.

At the same time, each department will conduct exploratory research on new technologies on its own, and in their spare time, they will also discuss technology with Imperial College London.

In just one year, Li Min has built the Industry Department into a comprehensive research institution, and its research scope almost covers all current industrial categories of the Ming Dynasty.

In addition, each factory also has its own technical research department, but compared with the Industrial Department, although the scope is narrower, it is more specialized.

After distributing the research tasks, Li Min would return to school to continue his electromagnetic research when he had time.

After several efforts, Wu Daoxing and the teachers at the school updated the electromagnetic generator to several versions. Now they are waiting to connect it to the steam engine and use it to generate electricity instead of manpower.

At the same time, Yang Siyi ordered people to prepare detailed survey forms for the Jiangnan region, and then selected a number of smart and capable officials from the Ministry of Revenue to go to various prefectures in Jiangnan to conduct industrial statistics.

……

Within the Ordnance Bureau, each research institute selected its best personnel to concentrate on researching the main gun of the warship.

Even Liu Sanwu stopped the work at hand. As a fifth-rank official in the Ministry of Industry, he was in charge of the entire Industrial Department and was responsible for all the details of the research and trial production of the main gun. Therefore, the burden he shouldered was no less than that of Li Min.

There was no other way but to stop the research on the fully automatic rifle that he had been focusing on and hand it over to other researchers at the Institute of Firearms to ensure that the development of the fully automatic rifle would not stop.

Then we will focus our work on the research of new artillery.

Although artillery is not his area of ​​expertise, Liu Sanwu has two advantages. First, after being trained in assembly line production, he is good at breaking down all projects into smaller parts and then seeking breakthroughs from the simplest places.

The brand-new artillery included the gun barrel, the millstone-type turret, the hydraulic power device for rotating the turret, etc. The hydraulic power device in particular was a brand-new thing, and it was impossible for the Ordnance Bureau alone to produce it.

Therefore, he also sought cooperation from other bureaus of the Industry Department, including the Machinery Bureau, Steam Bureau, and Steel Bureau to develop the product.

The task of smelting the new type of steel used to develop gun barrels was given to the Steel Bureau, the hydraulic power unit to the Steam Bureau, and the rest, such as smokeless explosives, artillery shells, etc., were handled by the Ordnance Bureau itself.

(End of this chapter)