Bright Sword: From Border Region Manufacturing to Major National Heavy Industry

Chapter 59 Scrap Yard

Fujita Ichiji wasn't angry when Hirata Ichiro hung up on him.

Looking at the mess left by Hirata Ichiro, Fujita Ichiji was quite confident.

The military police are severely understaffed, but it's not a major problem.

When Fujita Ichiji came to take up his post, he also brought quite a few people with him.

Fujita Ichiji summoned all the key personnel of the military police and said in a meeting: "The fact that the Eighth Route Army was able to attack the county town twice in a row is enough to show the significance of their heavy artillery threat. But to completely eliminate the hidden danger, it is not actually about the heavy artillery."

"Captain, where is it?" someone asked.

“It’s the Eighth Route Army itself,” Fujita Ichiji said. “The previous military police captain, Hirata-kun, always focused on the Eighth Route Army’s heavy artillery leads, which was a complete misdirection. He sent so many people to investigate and offered such a high reward, but what was the result? It was all for nothing. The Eighth Route Army even raided them again overnight, and the military police headquarters was also attacked. It was utterly foolish!”

Immediately afterwards, Fujita Ichiji said, "Therefore, I will take the initiative."

"How can we launch a proactive attack?" a Japanese officer asked suspiciously. "We don't even know where the Eighth Route Army is right now."

“You could say Hirata Ichiro is stupid, but his men are stupid too,” Fujita Ichiji retorted sarcastically, then continued, “We can fish for them. First, we’ll set up an ambush. Didn’t the Ninth and Fourth Brigades mobilize their encirclement forces? We can just bring those over. Once the ambush is set up, we’ll bait the hook. So, whether the Eighth Route Army is hiding in the grass or in the cracks of rocks, as long as the bait is good, they’ll bite. When they come with their heavy artillery, we can wipe them out in one fell swoop, solving the problem directly!”

"Captain, that's brilliant!"

"Captain, that's brilliant!"

"Our Captain Fujita is still the best."

Most of the Japanese personnel present were flattering Fujita Ichiji; of course, these were all Fujita Ichiji's men.

Hirata Ichiro's men reluctantly clapped along.

Captain Hirata has used this tactic before.

If the Eighth Route Army were so easily fooled, would the counterinsurgency campaign in the rear have gotten bogged down in a quagmire?
"Captain, what should we use as bait?" asked one of Fujita Ichiji's trusted men.

"What does the Eighth Route Army lack most right now?" Fujita Ichiji asked.

"Needless to say, they lack everything: weapons, food, medicine, salt, and so on," the confidant replied.

“That’s it! There’s bait everywhere, just grab whatever you can.” Fujita Ichiji laughed. “Let’s see what we can use right now and just grab it as bait.”

"Yes."

……

Border Region Arsenal

"Factory Director, as per your request, these are the newly made shells, two each of the assault type and the casualty type," Lao He said politely to Li Muzhi, who was drawing a diagram.

"Wait a minute, let me finish drawing." Li Muzhi didn't even look up, continuing to draw the rocket launcher blueprints.

Due to limited resources, even if the power source problem were solved, it would be impossible to directly copy the rocket launchers of later generations.

We need to create a simplified and optimized version based on the conditions here at the arsenal.

The simpler a weapon is, the lower its failure rate on the battlefield.

"Yes." The old man stood upright, not disturbing Li Muzhi.

Old He, still curious, looked at the blueprint. It seemed to be: a cannon barrel with a bomb attached to the front.
Old He was immediately very curious, after all, he had never seen a shell mounted in front of the cannon barrel before.

As far as I can remember, the shells were either loaded into the breech at the rear of the cannon or slid in from the muzzle and fired.

I've never seen a cannonball loaded directly into the muzzle of a gun.

Even if the shell can be fired, it won't go far or be accurate without being accelerated by the rifling of the gun barrel.

However, Lao He suppressed his suspicions.

The new factory director, Li Muzhi, can even make a hell cannon using large-caliber steel pipes, and the cannon barrel does not need to withstand strong chamber pressure.

Perhaps they have a way to solve the ballistic problem of this new guy.

Five minutes later, Li Muzhi put down his pen.

When Lao He saw that Li Muzhi had finished drawing, he quickly asked, "Factory Director, are you preparing to make new cannons?" "Yes." Li Muzhi nodded and changed the subject, "Where are the shells? Take me to see them."

"Yes, Factory Director." Old He was tactful; since Li Muzhi didn't continue the topic, he didn't press further.

Old He led Li Muzhi to the workshop, where four cannonballs from the Hellfire Cannon were quietly placed in boxes.

Li Mu stepped forward to inspect the shells and, after confirming there were no problems, said to Lao He, "Send someone to deliver the shells to the 386th Brigade. Tell them to conduct tests as soon as possible and bring back the data. Once it's confirmed there are no problems, the arsenal should immediately go into full production capacity to manufacture shells."

These four shells certainly can't be used to hit rocks; that would be a waste.

Same old rules, use Japanese soldiers for the test!

The reason Li Muzhi had to personally test the Hell Cannon was because the combat troops did not believe that the border region's arsenal could manufacture cannons, so Li Muzhi had to leave the arsenal and go to Kan Xuan in person.

Now that the Hell Cannon has won over the combat troops, Li Muzhi no longer needs to go there in person.

As military personnel, we can't just go to the front lines of the battlefield.

In some novels, military industrial workers are depicted as following combat troops to the front lines to kill Japanese soldiers every day, which is utter nonsense.

"Yes, factory director."

……

386th Brigade Headquarters

"Brigadier, one of the safes has been opened."

The deputy brigade commander walked up to the brigade commander with several folders and handed them to him: "These are the documents we took out of the safe."

The brigade commander quickly took it, tore it open, and took a look.

"This is no longer useful."

"This is useless too."

"This is probably useless now."

……

The brigade commander flipped through the folder quickly; it was indeed full of important documents.

However, the Japanese are certainly not stupid.

If the safe is lost, they will definitely take remedial action as soon as possible.

Therefore, the information in the first few folders will also become invalid.

The brigade commander's expression froze as he opened the last folder: "This one might still be somewhat useful."

This folder contains a Japanese military junkyard.

Inside were scrap guns, helmets, knives, vehicles, and other items salvaged from the battlefield.

The Japanese army didn't have many resources, so these things were collected and melted down to be smelted again.

Because fuel is precious, this waste is only transported away in batches at regular intervals.

Therefore, the brigade commander judged that even if the Japanese army knew that the intelligence about the scrap yard had fallen into our hands, they might not be able to transfer the scrap in time.

After all, for the Japanese, fuel was much more valuable than scrap.

Supply Station No. 5 was raided by Li Yunlong, and the Japanese lost a lot of fuel, so they will be more careful with their fuel.

Therefore, it's highly likely that the scrap metal at this recycling station is still there.

The deputy brigade commander glanced at it and said, "Brigade commander, isn't the profit from this scrap yard a bit too meager?"

If they're all good stuff, we don't mind giving it a try.

It's all junk and broken stuff, not very good, just a waste of money.

(End of this chapter)