Canteen System Assistance Notes

"Northern Shaanxi is poor and sparsely populated, so it is difficult for our army to obtain supplies locally. The supplies we consume need to be transported by relay from the rear, which involves a lot of transportation and makes supply difficult. When attacking, we often lack the strength to continue.

Instead, the Red Bandits counterattacked successfully."

"Although our army has the right time to attack, the Red Bandits have been operating in northern Shaanxi for a long time and have the advantage of familiarity with the terrain. As the art of war says, favorable conditions are less important than favorable terrain. Our army has unparalleled offensive and defensive capabilities on the plains, but we are not adept at suppressing the Red Bandits in northern Shaanxi." They also argued, rather unconvinced, "If our army were to deploy its forces and confront the Red Bandits on the Guanzhong plains, we would surely win."

With the First Army boasting, the report entered its second half. Compared to the fantasy style of the first half, this section took a turn for the more magical, and its theme became:

"Although our army lost, we worked very hard and there are still many shining points!"

Many "advanced deeds", "pillars of the country" and "martial arts masters" began to emerge in the report.

At dawn... the headquarters of Yuan Pu of the Eighth Division and Li Mengbi of the Twenty-Eighth Division were surrounded by 80,000 Eighth Route Army troops. The bandits gradually pressed on, shrinking the area they held. The bandits advanced with intensive firepower, but our officers and soldiers bravely resisted with their flesh and blood, each wounded but still fighting to the death. Later, the bandits used artillery to clear the way, breaking through the defenses and advancing from all sides. Our soldiers engaged the bandits in heroic and fearless street fighting... During this time, Division Commanders Yuan Pu and Li Mengbi, along with their personal guards, shouted desperately, summoning officers and soldiers to engage the bandits. Hundreds of them responded, fighting the bandits with their lives: with swords when their ammunition ran out, with earth and rocks when their swords were rolled... After both Yuan and Li had killed the bandits with their own hands, they heroically shot themselves with their last bullets, preferring death to capture by the bandits...

"Li Zhiwu, commander of the 78th Division... was attacked by bandits that night. The Red Bandits arrived prepared, their firepower fierce. Our troops were caught off guard and were caught in close combat, rendering our artillery fire ineffective... In the midst of the chaos, Commander Li shouted, "We are here to stay, spare the officers and soldiers!" He then charged into the enemy lines alone, killing over ten bandits in a row. However, due to their sheer numbers, he was surrounded inside a house. Perched at the door, Commander Li killed several, making it difficult for the bandits to advance. He shouted, "Li, Guan Gong, here we come! Li, Guan Gong, here we come!"... Later, the vicious Zhu Jiande ordered his soldiers to bring in a cannon, empty-loaded with gunpowder, and fire at Li, knocking him unconscious before successfully capturing him. In his agony, Commander Li glared in anger. A sudden strong wind arose, followed by thunder and lightning. His display of loyalty and righteousness even changed the very sky and earth......"

All in all, this fantasy storytelling report has finally come to an end.

The intelligence officer, dizzy from reading it, could only write a simple summary on the side, then simplify it to less than 100 words, and include it in the internal reference for reference by all commanders.

Unfortunately, we don't know whether the Nationalist troops will get used to reading this report, nor do we know whether they can learn anything from it. Soon, another expedited intelligence report came back through the intelligence network. Chiang Kai-shek slammed the table and cursed, "Fuck you!"

Then, Chiang Kai-shek said angrily, "I will strengthen my military and expand my armaments. One day, I will bring peace to the world!"

At this point, the National Army's powerful, great, magical and wonderful "National Army Armament Plan" that spanned the entire War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression began.

Chapter 295 I Want 100 Soldiers

(Update)

Chiang Kai-shek's face was like the weather in June, changing at a moment's notice. The Nationalist army initially thought that Chiang Kai-shek's thunderstorm would eventually pass, clearing up the sky and returning everything to normal.

But this time, perhaps because he was slapped in the face too hard, the dark cloud floating in the sky like Chiang Kai-shek turned into a swirling tropical cyclone, and seemed to be rapidly developing into a typhoon. He sent a telegram to the embassy in the United States, then called his loyal dog Chen Cixiu, and began to work on a set of compilation plans.

Not long after, a draft of the "29-Year Plan for Strengthening the Military" emerged. Oh my goodness, are they serious about this?

With reverence and trepidation, everyone opened the lead seal of the "Draft Plan for a Strong Army in the 29th Year" (for convenience, we will call it the "29th Plan"). At first glance, they quickly saw the four big words "Elite Troops and a Strong Army!" written by Chiang Kai-shek. The font was hot-stamped in gold, and a heavy exclamation mark was specially added to show his excitement when he was creating it.

The title page of the book is Chiang Kai-shek's concise and powerful instruction, which roughly means that our generation should work hard, endure humiliation, be patient for two years, accumulate strength for three years, and then use five years to wipe out the Communist bandits, so that the world will be clear and the country will be stable. Anyway, the whole book does not mention the anti-Japanese war much. Apart from these nonsense, all readers can grasp is the ambitious plan goal.

"We need to build 100 armies within three years!"

"We are not targeting just any army, but a powerful army that can defeat the Communist bandits!"

Then, the plan began to enter the more professional part - the "29th Year Enhanced Organization" of the National Army.

As the head of the "Civil Engineering Department", a graduate of the "Yi Ze School" of the Baoding Military Academy, and the main architect of the plan, Chen Chi-hsiu did have some abilities after all. He based the plan on the Japanese-style organization that he most admired, took into account the previous organization system of the National Army, and absorbed a lot of guidance and opinions from Chiang Kai-shek. Together with the instructors of the Guocui Army University, he compiled a "more reliable" organization system, which was the "Twenty-Ninth Year Enhanced Organization".

Chen Chi-xiu was not unaware of the current reality of the Nationalist army. With the imperial sword in his hands and the advice of some military experts, he proposed the core of this military reorganization: "downsizing."

That is: reduce the empty and bloated establishment, compress the paper size under the same establishment, make the size of the troops at the same level smaller and the establishment more streamlined, and squeeze out some empty salaries from the system - as for the lack of combat effectiveness due to the loss of people, there are other measures to ensure it.

First, this plan innovatively incorporated a light machine gun into the Nationalist Army squad. This wasn't a first for the squad, but rather a plan to "ensure the effective use of this light machine gun within the squad through the Party-State's executive power." Based on the Soviet-era experience with attack armies, Chen Chi-xiu believed that including a machine gun within a squad would encourage the entire squad to hold their ground and courageously engage the enemy.

Secondly, Chen Cixiu planned to put a Japanese-style grenade launcher into the platoon consisting of three squads, add a heavy machine gun company into the battalion consisting of three companies (the company headquarters had no heavy weapons), and then put a mortar company and a communications platoon into the regiment consisting of three battalions - in this way, a regiment of about 800-1000 people would have basic combat effectiveness - he believed that if the organization was strengthened, it should be no problem to defeat a Japanese squadron.

So far, the plan seemed quite plausible: a division would consist of three regiments, each equipped with a company each of engineers, cavalry, communications, and special forces. Furthermore, given the Nationalist army's lack of horses and poor troop quality, divisions would typically maintain one to three unarmed supplementary regiments, each consisting of a similarly small 1000 men. These men would primarily serve as livestock transport, providing logistics for the division. In times of war, when losses were severe, they would serve as reinforcements to the front lines. Together with the division's direct forces, a division would have a strength of approximately 7000 to 11000 men.

The organization of an army is more casual. Generally speaking, it can be composed of 1-3 divisions, depending on the distance of the unit.

At the army level, a directly subordinate supply transport regiment, a battalion each of mountain artillery, engineers, communications, and special forces, and an additional search company could be deployed, bringing the total strength to approximately 3000. However, since this was a new organization, and the "new policy" was being implemented, even though the less powerful miscellaneous armies could only have around 1500 troops, Chen Chixiu still intended to keep the average strength at the general level above 2 to avoid significant disparities in combat power that would make planning difficult.

The second core of this idea emerged from then on: "Simplify military command and downgrade its use."

In other words, it is "Tian Ji's horse racing"

Chen Chi-hsiu's plan was to create a mini-regiment, which would be combined into a mini-division or mini-army, and then in actual combat command, the small regiment would be treated as a battalion, and the division as a brigade or regiment.

Use the army as a division, take advantage of the numbers, and besiege the Eighth Route Army or

The Japanese army's second-level units: In this way, even if Chiang Kai-shek likes to transfer division-level troops here and there and change their affiliations, once the troops are downgraded, based on the several times manpower advantage and basic light and heavy firepower, they can wear you out by attrition of manpower.

If this set of "Twenty-nine Enhanced Organizational Grips" can be implemented seriously, it may be a plan that can really improve the combat effectiveness of the national army and reap good results. Although the firepower of these one hundred troops with the name of "army" is still weak, they are armies used as divisions after all. Compared with the previous situation of the national army where "the well-organized ones are afraid of fighting, and the brave ones are under-organized", they can still improve their combat effectiveness and at least increase the difficulty for the enemy to destroy them.

However, before Chen Cixiu's plan could be further implemented, he encountered the first problem.

"No! This system isn't strong enough, not brave enough!"

A number of division commanders, corps commanders, and commanders, who had somehow gotten hold of Chen Cixiu's organization plan, suddenly emerged and began reporting it upwards through various channels. It's said that they tearfully shared their thoughts, objectively analyzing the pros and cons and listing numerous shortcomings of the "Twenty-Nine Enhanced Organization":

For example, the troops were too small to complete daily operations; the troop size was too small to cover the entire front line in defensive operations; and the rapid personnel changes made coordination "difficult." Even more amusing, many people suggested that organizing these small regiments and divisions meant that the entire regiment and army would be required to annihilate a small group of Japanese or Communist troops, effectively "boosting others' morale while undermining one's own prestige."

How could Chen Cixiu, the old warlord and veteran, not know what those people were thinking?

As the leader of the "Wood Department", he naturally knew why this system could improve combat effectiveness: the reduced military establishment would squeeze out a certain amount of unused wages and limit the severity of corruption. Although Chen Cixiu, who was well versed in the unspoken rules, still left a loophole for making money in the "Supplementary Regiment", allowing officers to make money according to a certain proportion, it was obvious that people who had eaten enough of the feast of corruption would not be satisfied with eating a few "limited dishes"?

Chen Cixiu hurriedly started working with his own civil engineering department, promising them that they could earn more profits from future arms imports, in the form of strong US dollar foreign exchange. Then he began to use his extensive network of relationships in the officialdom of the Republic of China to contact, negotiate and exchange interests with other factions, trying to continue to promote this system.

But at this time, another big faction in the military system, He Jingzhi and He Po Po, emerged. He pulled in Chen Yu, a top student from the 13th class of the Army University, and put together a set of 29 Jingwu organization to compete with Chen Cixiu's organization plan.

Compared with the "Twenty-Nine Enhanced" system, this "Twenty-Nine Jingwu Organization" is truly worthy of the adjective "jingwu". In Chen Yu's writing, the existing organization of the National Army has the problem of "too many personnel and insufficient firepower". He also speculated that one of the Eighth Route Army's divisions had 24 ten-caliber cannons and 12 fifteen-caliber cannons, which was a typical embodiment of the Soviet-style artillery doctrine. In order to fight against it, it is necessary to abandon the "spirit of human bomb assault" and emphasize "countering artillery fire with artillery fire, armor with armor, and aircraft with aircraft".

In the "Twenty-Nine Jingwu" plan, each grassroots combat unit should be based on the battalion as the bottom line. The battalion would have a grenade launcher platoon and a mortar platoon. The regiment headquarters would have a light howitzer company (mountain gun) and an anti-tank gun company. The division headquarters would have 36 75mm field guns, 12 150mm howitzers, 8 150mm howitzers, and 4 100mm long-barreled cannons, forming "unparalleled powerful fire suppression capability."

Of course! All this consumed an astonishing amount of ammunition, and artillery formation was difficult. However, this top student emphasized, "This mistake was necessary for combat. If the artillery firepower was insufficient, the infantry would still have to advance on their own, and if they continued to follow the path of human bombardment, it would be impossible to defeat the Japanese and Communist armies!"

What does it mean that the national army is the most powerful? This is the national army is the most powerful!

Chapter 296: National Weapon, Nationally Made (1) Nationally Made Machine Gun

What should you do if you want to ruin a plan that is a little difficult to execute but is actually within your capabilities? A more feasible option is to come up with something even more unreliable to disrupt the situation.

Honestly, even the Eighth Route Army, with its historical records and the ability to speak with hindsight, was shocked when it learned of the Nationalist Army's "29 Jingwu" plan. After all, while the "29 Enhancement" plan had some flaws, it was ultimately feasible and had the potential to enhance the Nationalist Army's strength. Given the principle that the fight against Japan must ultimately take priority, a slightly stronger Nationalist Army would have been somewhat beneficial to the war effort.

Fortunately, if it were ordinary preserved fruits, they would probably argue with each other and then delay for a while, so that neither of the two compilation plans would be successful.

So that they gave up halfway. And this time because of Chiang Kai-shek's "knowing shame and then

The motivation for strengthening the army's armaments was greatly increased. Chiang Kai-shek's staff finally decided to base the new military system on the more reliable "Twenty-Nine Strengthening" plan.

However, similar to the idea of ​​the "29 Jingwu", Chiang Kai-shek believed that the National Army had suffered from the firepower of the Communist Army in this friction, and the replenishment of heavy weapons should also be strengthened.

- These aspects can be improved by assembling specialized heavy firepower units and

It is distributed to combat troops during fighting to make up for the shortage.

As a result, Alexander's Ordnance Department received a weapons supply plan that gave them a headache - one hundred "armies" of light and heavy weapons.

The Nationalist Army had its own weapons production capabilities, producing rifles, light and heavy machine guns, grenades, small mortars, etc. Although many factories were small and had backward production organizations, factories such as the Jinling Arsenal, which relocated from Shanghai and Jiangsu Province, and the "First Factory" formed by the merger of the Gongxian and Hanyang Arsenals, still had considerable production capacity.

However, due to corruption and internal friction within the Nationalist army, military factories lacked raw materials and outdated equipment, making it difficult for these relocated industries to fully realize their productivity and achieve sufficient production capacity. For example, the largest factory, the 21st Arsenal, produced approximately 8.6 Zhongzheng rifles and 2.8 Hanyang rifles between 1931 and 1945, an average annual production capacity of only 2.1 rifles. Other smaller factories, such as the 41st Arsenal, the Guangyuan Arsenal, and the Zhejiang Arsenal, could only produce a few hundred rifles per month.

This was for a bolt-action rifle, a relatively simple structure. The problem was even worse when it came to producing machine guns. For example, during the entire War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Factory 21, which accounted for over 60% of the country's arms production capacity, could only produce the Type 24 Maxim machine gun at a low rate of around 1,800 to 2,600 per year, with a peak production capacity of only 300 (in 1945). The widely used Type 24 Maxim machine gun, on the other hand, only produced about 12,000 during the war, an average of about 730 per year. It was simply impossible for Factory 21 to meet the demand for this replacement through domestic production.

There is no other way but to buy it.

Good news came from the Ministry of Finance. Wang Zhengting, the diplomatic representative in the United States, had reached an agreement with the American banking consortium through "capable and well-connected intermediaries" that "soon" a "huge sum" of money, estimated at $6 million, would be loaned to the country at a preferential interest rate. At least the funds for foreign purchases were now less scarce. By this time, it was the second half of 1940, and the personnel of the Ordnance Department had begun preparing to screen a large number of light and heavy machine guns from around the world in preparation for equipping the troops.

They put forward several demands: they needed to use German-style bullets to facilitate logistics, they needed to have enough stock for timely delivery, and they needed to be willing to transfer technology to facilitate domestic imitation production.

These requirements were reasonable and without issue. However, the selection of machine guns was notoriously difficult in the second half of 40. By then, the European War had already broken out, and Eastern European countries had fallen. German ammunition and weapons on the European continent had been largely seized by the German army for military expansion. The United States did not have many German ammunition and machine guns, and the few captured Soviet weapons had been largely scrapped by the Eighth Route Army, making them unavailable.

The British, however, offered some German-style machine guns, such as the "Besa," for a US dollar. However, due to limited domestic production capacity, they needed to relocate production to Canada, which would take some time. By this time, signs of American involvement in the war were becoming increasingly apparent, and Roosevelt had begun releasing information on numerous occasions, intending to advance the Lend-Lease Act. They approached Guosi and sent a tentative inquiry:

We don't have many German weapons here, but would you mind investing some money in "somewhere in the north" and having them produce light machine guns for you? They're said to be able to maintain the supply of German weapons, and their production capacity has a lot of room for improvement. Want to give it a try?

Now it's the Ordnance Department's turn to be in trouble. They can't buy it, and they can't produce enough. Asking the "North" to produce it is indeed likely to be a problem, but wouldn't that be putting the country's most important weapon in the hands of the red-headed people? No, no, no way.

While one could say "no" with absolute certainty, one couldn't produce a gun. The shortage of machine guns in the army's reorganization grew so large that even Chiang Kai-shek personally inquired about the shortage of rapid-fire machine guns.

Among the weapons in short supply, the water-cooled "Min 24" had a slightly better production capacity and was not in such a serious shortage; the lighter air-cooled light machine guns that used bipods had higher production technology requirements and were in great demand, so they were in greater shortage. Based on the minimum standard of the "Twenty-Nine Reinforcement Plan", a division had only 17 light machine guns. Even the 103rd Division of He Shaozhou's direct line of defense, the troops of He Jingzhi's "nephew", could only get 98 light machine guns, which was about half the shortage.

In order to make up for these shortages, the Ordnance Department even converted a large number of original Czech spare barrel installation mechanisms into light machine guns, but it still could not meet the demand.

Finally, in this frustrating situation, a new option emerged.

Use the Madsen light machine gun!

As the Ordnance Department frantically searched for guns, an old plan surfaced. Two years earlier, in 1938, the department had planned to procure a copy of the Danish Madsen machine gun. While this machine gun, a World War I-era artifact, was heavy and expensive, its fully milled components proved reliable enough to be used in World War II.

In early 1939, the Ordnance Department paid the Danish side an authorization fee, purchased blueprints, tooling, equipment and even a power workshop, and established the Spring City 51 Arsenal Preparatory Office, preparing to set up a factory there to manufacture Madsen machine guns. However, this crucial matter was later forgotten by the Southwest Transportation Office, which was responsible for transportation.

They paid no attention to the transport and receipt of the equipment, resulting in the equipment, which had already arrived, being stored on the Yunnan-Myanmar border for nearly a year. According to Song Ziliang, director of the Southwest Transportation Office, in the history of this time and space, this batch of equipment was bombed by Japanese planes in June 1940, completely burned and lost.

But can these steel equipment really be burned to the point where they are completely unrecognizable, with nothing left?

In this time and space, the arsenal, desperate to make up for its losses, brought in Chen Cixiu's research department's "Intensive Investigation Armed Forces" and, led by Chen Gongqia, followed the clues all the way. As a result, along the long Burma Road, from Lashio, Myanmar to the border city of Wancheng, they discovered thousands of equipment of various sizes, all with the "Madsen" factory logo and the blue sky and white sun emblem. These were the tools and equipment that had been "burned".

After overcoming numerous difficulties, the 51st Arsenal located in Wuhua Mountain, Spring City, was finally able to utilize these equipment and materials to begin production of the Madsen light machine gun. However, with the increasing shortage of Czech-style machine gun materials and the subsequent outbreak of several Communist spy incidents, production at the entire 21st Arsenal was temporarily stagnant. However, thanks to Long Dengyun's relatively relaxed relationship with the Eighth Route Army, the 51st Arsenal, facing the brunt of the storm, was not significantly disrupted and even occasionally received supplies of high-quality steel. For a time, it became one of the few factories in the Nationalist Army's arsenal to maintain production, producing over 300 guns per month at its peak.

In September 1942, the domestically produced "Madsen" light machine gun finally completed acceptance and finalization with the help of the United States and the Eighth Route Army. The first batch of products was produced and caught up with the Double Tenth Day celebration that year for review.

A delighted Chiang Kai-shek named it the "Fenwu Machine Gun" to inspire his soldiers to fight bravely and strengthen the nation. However, despite its usefulness in the war against Japan, Chiang Kai-shek never dreamed that this factory, located in Wuhua Mountain under the Ordnance Department, would become a thorn in his side as he sought to stabilize the rear, hindering his "great cause of unification."

(The previous chapter on the National Army artillery organization is from

#陈默.艰难的演进——抗战相持阶段国军的编制嬗变(1939-1944)[J].抗日战争研究,2015(02):77-92.

The source material is from Chen Yu's "Discussion on Army Construction," Volume 1, Issue 1, 1939, page 7 and the accompanying table. Some information is currently available in "The General Counsel's Proposed Organization of the Infantry Divisions of the Republic of China," National History Museum, Taipei, President Chiang Kai-shek Archives, 002/080102/00067/008, page 146.

Chapter 297: National Weapons, Nationally Made (2) "Nationally Made" Artillery

In addition to guns, we also need cannons.

While it was unlikely to pack so much heavy artillery into a single division, it's undeniable that Chen Jian, the "artillery enthusiast," claimed that the Nationalist army lacked firepower. During the February Incident, the Eighth Route Army concentrated its "Fifteen Large Artillery" to attack Gaojing, quickly annihilating the garrison on three sides and breaching the city walls. During the Battle of Xingcheng (the capital of Hunan Province), Japanese General Okamura Yasuji also mobilized the field and mountain artillery of multiple units, causing significant trouble for the Nationalist army.

Therefore, when looking for artillery, it was necessary to look for barreled artillery and field artillery, preferably with ready stock and fast delivery. This became a consensus within the National Army.

Due to the lack of logistical organization, the Nationalist army at that time did not have the ability to use motor vehicles on a large scale. Even mules and horses were scarce, and the soldiers who replaced them could not pull the artillery. So, how should the field artillery be used? Chen Cixiu handed the problem to his staff and assigned outstanding staff officers to discuss it.

Chen Chi-hsiu had a team of highly capable staff officers under his command. They brought together representatives from the Ordnance Department and the military for a thorough discussion. After thorough and careful research, they concluded that, given the Nationalist Army's current restructuring, with its divisions and regiments being smaller, cramming so many heavy artillery pieces into these units would likely render them inoperable. At the very least, corps-level units would need to be equipped with field artillery to keep pace with the troops. Even then, even with artillery, these corps-level units likely wouldn't have enough ammunition to fully exploit their firepower advantage.

One of the chiefs of staff, surnamed Guo, summarized the discussion: Instead of dispersing the artillery according to the new organization, it would be better to follow the tradition of independently organizing the field artillery into artillery divisions and artillery brigades, and split them into artillery regiments in normal times. They would be placed at the war zone level as direct troops, and vehicles, mules and horses would be dispatched for independent support, and unified training would also be carried out by the war zone.

In wartime, these artillery units would be deployed according to theater orders. This would not only facilitate personnel training but also logistical support. For artillery, avoid choosing "15-caliber cannons" or even "10-caliber cannons." Instead, it would be better to follow the example of the Japanese invaders and select some 75-caliber long-range field artillery: after all, in China, as long as the artillery could reach about 20 miles, it would be enough to suppress the Japanese mountain and field artillery.

This was very useful advice, and Chen Cixiu thought it made perfect sense. After all, even the Japanese 75mm field guns (modified 38mm and 90mm field guns) at the time had a range of only 16 to 18 miles (without firing sharp-edged rounds, but with firing sharp-edged rounds, it could reach over 10 kilometers). If they had field guns with a range of 20 miles, they would have been able to achieve a suppressive advantage in most situations.

The strategy and direction have been decided, so it’s time to execute it.

But at this critical juncture, He Jingzhi, who had suffered a loss in the discussion on infantry organization, launched a counterattack: on behalf of his forces, he opposed the plan to strengthen the strength of the war zone - the superficial reason was that "long-barreled artillery is the country's important weapon and needs to be uniformly controlled and commanded by the Shancheng Command Headquarters", while the actual reason was that "strengthening the strength of the war zone will significantly enhance the power of the central faction such as Tumu, Hu, and Tang."

This dragged on and on, and time finally came to 1941.

Throughout World War II, the Nationalist army lacked the ability to produce long-barreled artillery, not even the ability to drill and draw barrels from blanks. Consequently, long-barreled field artillery had to be purchased from abroad. The Nationalist army initially chose the Soviet F22, a divisional-level artillery piece with a range of 14 kilometers and excellent performance, perfectly meeting the Nationalist army's requirements. However, the Russians, engaged in a fierce battle with Germany, clearly had no time to bother with the Nationalist army's demands, and the preserved fruit was rejected by the Russians.

At that time, Western Europe, with the exception of Britain, which was "struggling to protect itself", had already fallen under the iron hoof of the Nazi fascists, making it even less likely to provide artillery. After looking around, the only foreign aid that Guosu could choose was the United States.

Fortunately, a US Army advisory group had already arrived in China. After listening to the Nationalist Army's request and conducting an investigation, they proposed using the French M1897 "Miss 75" gun as the primary equipment for these independent artillery brigades and divisions.

As a relic of the previous World War, the French 75mm gun had a large inventory in the United States. The ammunition and accessories were manufactured in the US, allowing for rapid delivery. US military advisors suggested that the US-produced M1897 (the original US-made, licensed version of the 75mm gun) be modified to the M1897A5 configuration, using an open-frame mount and a new 75mm round with a different propellant, before being provided to the Nationalist Army.

Moreover, the National Army had experience in using the M1897 and did not need to start from scratch.

75小姐在美国有2000门的库存，且在完成改造后，A5状态75小姐将拥有60度的左右射界，以及至少12.7公里的射程

1.5 tons weight; can be used for indirect fire and can also be used for flat

The artillery fired armor-piercing shells to carry out anti-tank operations; its gun carriage was modified for motorized traction, making it convenient for trucks to tow it, and it could also be hooked up to the front vehicle and towed by animal power, which was sufficient to meet the needs of the national army.

Then, after all, the US dollar in Luo Quezi's time was not a piece of waste paper that could be used for quantitative easing. The US representative in charge of the lend-lease program once again proposed a "Northern OEM" plan: considering that the "North" of the country - that is, the Eighth Route Army - had good industrial production capacity, the United States suggested that some of the non-critical and replacement spare parts of these artillery pieces be handed over to the "Northern Factory" for OEM to save precious transportation capacity.

This really touched Chiang Kai-shek's sensitive spot. You used this trick on me when I was working on machine guns, and now you use this trick on me when I'm working on cannons! You might as well just ask me to invite the red-headed people from the north to the capital! This is intolerable!

Inspired by this, Chiang Kai-shek spoke passionately at the third Nanyue Military Review Conference in October 1942:

Since the 29th year of the Republic of China, the number of friendly nations selling arms to us has dwindled. Shamelessly, Germany even acknowledged the Wang Puppet regime and owed us billions of dollars in arms. Now, is our military's armaments still subject to control by others? What kind of disgrace has this great Party-state become?

"As the backbone of the Party and the country, we have all worked tirelessly and diligently. At this critical moment, we must work hard and persist in independence! All our efforts,

This is to ultimately realize that the party-state's ammunition is made by the party-state, and the party-state's machine guns are made by the party-state.

The Party-state’s cannons are made by the Party-state, and the Party-state’s tanks are made by the Party-state!”

There is no problem with introducing the Miss 75, and there is no problem with improving the Miss 75 in the United States, but Chiang Kai-shek is very angry now and wants to see the "75 field gun" produced by the Republic of China itself.

I also want to equip the troops quickly. What should I do?

At this moment, the only people in the country who could process cannon blanks and carry out barrel drilling and bore pulling operations were the red-headed people in the north. But even they could only produce 75mm mountain cannons (the Kuomintang army did not know that our army could produce howitzers), and they really could not produce the 36-caliber long barrel of the Miss 75.

What's more, the entire artillery is not enough with just a barrel. It also needs a recoil brake, aiming equipment, a kickstand...all of which are very difficult for domestic military industry to handle.

The Ordnance Department was in a dilemma. They couldn't let the highly anticipated import plan get stuck here. So they secretly sought out Chief of Staff Guo, Chen Chi-hsiu's deputy, for advice. Soon, armed with a brilliant plan, they put their heads together and successfully launched four "75mm field guns" at the Double Tenth Day ceremony in 1942.