The ash iron simmering stove in the Liugou Arsenal.
Guan Jiayuan, grab the soil, the shannun of the cannonball cut through the hand, the cannon popped out of Ma Lantou, the devil's brain flowed, the Japanese pseudo-Qing suppressed the dragon lived, we made the shells did not stop. A Shanxi Wuxiang folk song "We Made Cannonballs Never Stopped" praised the glorious history of Liugou Arsenal during the Anti-Japanese War.
Liugou Arsenal is located in the area of Liugou, Malantou and Zhuangdi Village in the southeast canyon of Panlong Town, Wuxiang County, Shanxi Province. It was a "bomb factory" that produced grenades, mines and artillery shell blanks for the Eighth Route Army, and it was also an arsenal that the enemy "could not blow up" during the Anti-Japanese War.
A small factory started and made bombs. The predecessor of the Liugou Arsenal was a small arsenal opened by the Shanxi Wuxiang County Workers' Anti-Japanese Salvation Association in the Bailongdong Temple in Caocun. In October 1938, in order to obtain the pig iron needed to manufacture grenades nearby, the factory moved to Liugou Village, which is rich in coal and iron in the southeast of Wuxiang County, and used crucibles and earthwork furnaces to make iron, with a daily output of more than 200 grenades.
On April 1, 1939, after the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army took over the factory, the factory was reorganized and expanded, and was officially renamed "Liugou Arsenal of the Ministry of Military Industry", known as "Liugou Iron Factory" to the outside world, and codenamed "Jiaozuo". Considering the advantages of Liugou's abundant coal and iron production and ease of smelting, the Ministry of Military Industry relocated all the personnel and equipment of the 129th Division's Liaoxian Yangjiazhuang Bomb Factory and the 115th Division's Huguan County Bomb Factory here. In addition, several batches of technical workers for the manufacture of hand grenades have been transferred from the repair institutes of the southern Hebei and Shanxi-Hebei-Henan detachments, and the number of workers at the Liugou Arsenal has increased to more than 460.
The Liugou Arsenal originally copied the small wooden-handled grenades manufactured by the Kuomintang Gongxian Arsenal, which was called the "border area-made" grenade at that time. Due to the lack of raw materials and technical personnel, the quality of the grenades manufactured by the plant in the early days was not up to par, not only the level of moisture resistance was low, the blind fire rate was high, and the shrapnel produced after the first was very small.
In May 1940, under the organization of the Military Industry Department of the Eighth Route Army, the Liugou Arsenal concentrated a group of technical backbones to tackle various problems of self-made grenades. The technical workers have successively adopted measures such as using oval bullet bodies, prefabricated checkered patterns on the surface, increasing the number of fragments, adding moisture-proof caps to the friction fire caps, changing the design of ignition detonators, and changing the ignition powder from match heads to potassium realgar chlorate, etc., to improve the manufacturing process of the Liugou Arsenal, and effectively improve the reliability, rate and lethality of our army's self-made wooden handle grenades, and the average effective number of shrapnel has increased to more than 50 pieces, which is more powerful than the grenades made by the Kuomintang Arsenal and is very popular with the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army.
Promote experience and kill enemies with grenades. The experience of the Liugou Arsenal in improving the quality of grenades laid the technical and material foundation for the development of a mass blasting campaign. In November 1941, according to the instructions of the Ministry of Military Industry, the Liugou Arsenal not only provided all military subdivisions with standard patterns, wood samples, core boxes, whole bombs, accessories, firing burst tubes, first-class ratios, assembly moisture-proof and other technical procedures, but also sent some cadres and technicians to various military subdivisions in Taihang to serve as consultants and guide the establishment of bomb factories, so as to help the base areas improve the quality of grenade production, so that each military subdivision can produce according to uniform specifications and quality requirements, and greatly promote the production of grenade factories in each military subdivision.
As the experience of the Liugou Arsenal was extended to the anti-Japanese base areas, bomb factories capable of mass production of hand grenades were established in many base areas, and homemade grenades began to be installed in large quantities. Due to its small size, great power, and simple operation, not only did the main forces of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army use homemade grenades as a means of fire support and suppression, but also anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians such as armed engineering teams and militias in various localities also used them as a sharp weapon for guerrilla warfare. When the arrogant Japanese invaders "swept away" our base areas, they were often attacked by sudden grenades.
In May 1942, during the anti-"sweeping" operation in Jizhong, Li Sanzi, a militiaman from Zhaohu Village, threw more than 180 grenades in one day, single-handedly defending a street entrance, killing and injuring more than 80 Japanese puppet soldiers. According to incomplete records, during the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, more than 4.5 million grenades were produced by military factories directly under the military industrial departments of various anti-Japanese base areas, which effectively supported the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and the militias in various places. Behind this figure, the Liugou Arsenal has made great contributions.
Improve the process, cast shells. After the Battle of the Hundred Regiments, the Eighth Route Army captured a number of 50-mm grenadiers with strong lethality in mountain operations. In accordance with the instructions of the Ministry of Military Industry, the factory technicians were organized to try to manufacture 50-mm grenades, and the Liugou Arsenal was responsible for casting 50-mm grenade blanks. Previously, the Liugou Arsenal could only smelt hard and brittle white pig iron, which could not be cut after casting into elastic blanks. In order to solve this problem, the Liugou Arsenal organized technical workers to set up an iron-making test team, and under the guidance of engineers from the Ministry of Military Industry, they built a flame reflex heating furnace and adopted the soil method of simmering and toughening technology, which finally toughened and softened the surface of the bomb blank, which was convenient for cutting and processing, and initially solved the problem of manufacturing shells for artillery shells. In April 1941, the Liugou Arsenal began mass production of 50-mm grenade blanks. Since then, the Liugou Arsenal has become a casting shell blank factory of the Military Industry Department of the General Headquarters, and the shell blanks are continuously transported to the No. 1 Water Kiln and the No. 3 Gaoyu Village Institute for processing.
In 1942, the Japanese army stepped up its "sweep" of the Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan base areas. In order to preserve the strength of the military industry, the Ministry of Military Industry decided to reduce the scale of the Liugou Arsenal and moved to Zhuangdi Village, Buniu Village, and Baisi Kyaukmu Village in March of that year. The three branches are still organizing production under the direct leadership of the Liugou Arsenal, and the factory headquarters is located in Zhuangdi Village. At this stage, in order to cope with the frequent "sweeps" of the enemy's troops, the factories in Liugou implemented a combination of labor and military force, did a good job of transmitting information in peacetime, adhered to production posts, stepped up the production of shells and grenades, and transported them to the back mountains in a timely manner, and never stayed in the factory. In the hidden area of the ravine, the workers dug many small caves, holes in the holes, and hid the machinery and equipment in the holes, or placed them in the mines of abandoned coal kilns, and hung mines at the entrances of the holes, so that the enemy did not dare to disperse and search.
In May 1944, the Japanese army was forced to evacuate Panlong Town under the blow of our anti-Japanese army and civilians. In July of the same year, the Ministry of Military Industry sent engineers to Zhuangdi Village to rebuild the Liugou Arsenal, which was named the No. 4 Factory of the Ministry of Military Industry. After the reconstruction of the Liugou Arsenal, the factory concentrated its technical strength to further study and improve the simmering process. Although the original method of boiling pig iron in Baikou created the history of making shells in the Taihang base, the quality of the blanks of the shells it boiled was not stable. Engineers and skilled workers worked together to transform the earthwork furnace and create a flame reflex heating furnace by adopting the American-style blackheart toughening treatment method, which increased the qualification rate of simmering products from 30% to more than 95%. The successful improvement of the simmering technology laid the foundation for the exponential increase in the output of artillery shells in various factories.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Ministry of Military Industry decided to expand the Liugou Arsenal. In July 1946, the Ministry of Military Industry decided to merge the Sugong Artillery Shell Factory and Xianwang Forging Factory and Liugou Arsenal in Zuoquan County to form the Sanhesheng Arsenal, and the three factories were still producing in situ. In October 1946, Sanhesheng Arsenal was renamed the First Ordnance Factory of the Military Industry Department of Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan Military Region, and the factory headquarters was located in Liugou.
During the War of Liberation, the campaign to create a "** factory" launched in February 1947 stimulated the enthusiasm of the workers of the Liugou Arsenal, and the factory produced 30 mm grenades throughout the yearMore than 920,000 rounds, three times the production in 1946. In 1948, the Liugou Arsenal strengthened production management, and produced a total of 48 50mm grenades throughout the yearMore than 350,000 rounds, which is the largest production in the history of the year. Throughout the war of liberation, the Liugou Arsenal produced a total of 117 50-mm grenadesMore than 230,000 rounds, and the production cost is decreasing year by year, and the quality is improving year by year, making an important contribution to winning the victory of the Liberation War.
Edit|Produced by Danni Lui|Zhao Jie.
*: China National Defense News.
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