Chapter 104 Mortar Equipment Plan

Meng Enyuan suppressed his anger and then hummed heavily: "The more than 100,000 taels of silver obtained by the suppression of the bandits were all recovered by my Meng who drilled in the northern mountain ravine for more than a month. When my cavalry brother is fighting with the bandits in the north, you, Liu Tinggui, can stay in the barracks!"

Liu Tinggui showed no weakness: "It seems that your two cavalry battalions are fighting, and Wei Anpo's mortar team is also fighting."

Kong Guanbei also interrupted at the right time: "My first battalion also went to war. The battle to suppress bandits is a major military operation in which all departments in my third town participated. When did it become your business alone, Brother Meng!

"You..." Meng Enyuan looked at Liu Tinggui and Kong Jingbei fiercely. In the face of these two sharp-toothed people, Meng Enyuan was so angry that he couldn't speak for a moment. Finally, he turned to Zhao Dongyun and said, "Your Excellency, you know the significance of the mortar to the cavalry..."

Meng Enyuan's aggrieved plea is already very obvious. Speaking of war, he is a good hand, but in today's battle for the interests of his troops, he is obviously not the opponent of those young people. He knows that he will continue to be entangled with Kong Jingbei and Liu Tinggui. At that time, he is afraid that the cavalry will be one. The mortars could not be found, and he had no choice but to ask Zhao Dongyun for help.

When Zhao Dongyun saw it, he had to glance at Kong Weibei and Liu Tinggui and signaled them not to be too presumptuous!

Then he pressed his hand, but then his eyes turned to Wang Zhanyuan: "Brother Wang, your colleagues have also said a lot just now. I don't know what your opinion is about this mortar?"

Wang Zhanyuan couldn't help scolding in his heart. I can have a fart opinion. Before today, I didn't even know what the mortar was. After listening to the debate for more than half an hour, although I knew a little about the simple situation of the mortar, I was far from having any opinion.

But today's situation is obviously the struggle for the ownership of mortars between cavalry, infantry and artillery. Wang Zhanyuan doesn't care whether he has any opinions or whether he is Wang Yingkai's person or not, but first of all, he is the sixth assistant commander and a serious infantry officer, so he must maintain the infantry like Chen Guangyuan. Power.

So he said slowly: "The Ministry of Education has come for a short time and has not heard much about mortars. Today, I will talk about some simple opinions to throw bricks to attract jade. Although I have not seen the actual mortar, from the information in hand and the dictation of my colleagues, the gun has a short range, fast firing speed, and is light and easy to maneuver.

In addition, because it is necessary to launch shelling at any time to support infantry operations, if it is still under the jurisdiction of artillery, it may take time and there is a suspicion of continuing fighters. Therefore, at this point, my suggestion is to assign mortars to each infantry unit and be directly commanded by our infantry officers, as far as possible. It can give full play to the advantage of close shooting with convenient maneuvering of mortars.

Wang Zhanyuan's view has actually been said by Kong Guanbei and Chen Guangyuan just now. He just repeated this view, but he can be stuffed by Wang Yingkai to the Sixth Association. Even with Wang Yingkai's recommendation, Yuan Shikai can abandon other candidates and choose him, which naturally has his advantages.

"In addition, I heard from General Office Zhao just now that in addition to the existing 80mm mortars, the Fuzhou Machine Factory has begun to develop smaller or smaller caliber mortars. Among them, there are two new calibers, 60mm and 120mm. I wonder if this is okay. The weight of a 120mm mortar may have to be 300 to 400 kilograms. Such a weight is naturally not suitable for the following marches to carry with the army. You can set up a battalion in the artillery team logo for large-scale battlefield fire. Support the battle!

The 80mm mortar, weighing nearly 100 kilograms, can be separated and carried, but it is still not easy to carry it in the troops below the battalion, and the required amount of equipment directly in each battalion is also relatively large. It is better to have a mortar battalion in each infantry standard, with four gates as a team, with three teams with a total of 12 gates. The cavalry standard can also be appropriately assigned to a battalion.

There is another 60mm mortar. This gun is extremely light and does not need to be carried by horses. It can be carried directly by soldiers and can be directly decentralized to the infantry. There is no need for more. One step and two doors can greatly improve the firepower of the grassroots infantry in my third town!"

Zhao Dongyun was slightly surprised to hear Wang Zhanyuan's words. This man is more flexible. He hasn't said anything about the equipment of 60mm and 120mm mortars. He has noticed this from everyone's discussion just now. In terms of the observation of affairs**, it is far better than his own direct line!

Zhao Dongyun nodded: "Say yes, since the mortar is easy to use, we naturally need to use it, and the development of mortars of different calibers has formed a multi-level strike firepower. Fuyuan Machine Factory has reported to me a few days ago that they have begun to deploy 120mm and 60mm mortars. In the R&D and design of the artillery, the 60mm mortar is relatively simple. They have made a sample gun. The people in the Ordnance Department have gone to the Fuyuan Machine Factory to inspect the performance data of the sample gun. If there is no accident, they will place an order for the gun from the Fuyuan Machine Factory in the near future!"

Liu Tingui's face was full of expectation: "What about the 120mm mortars? I don't know how their research and development is going?"

Zhao Dongyun said, "This gun has a slightly larger caliber and has relatively high requirements for the barrel. Fuyuan Machine Factory is still doing preliminary research and development, and it is estimated that it will take some time to produce a sample gun!"

After listening to this, Liu Tingui's face was full of disappointment. Unlike the 80mm and 60mm mortars, the 120mm large-caliber mortar is destined to be only the gun in his artillery standard. Naturally, he will inevitably be disappointed if it has not been developed for service.

At this time, Zhao Dongyun took a look at Lin Yongquan: "A few days ago, I also asked the Education Department to make a mortar equipment plan. How's it going?"

Lin Yongquan has not said anything since he made his opening remarks at this meeting. Unlike Chen Guangyuan, Meng Enyuan and others present, he does not serve in the field troops. His subordinates are also a group of civilian officers, who are the leaders of the staff officer faction in the third town. Naturally, there is no need to participate in it on weekdays. In the struggle of grassroots forces.

After hearing Zhao Dongyun's instructions, Lin Yongquan said, "According to the previous instructions of the adults, my education department has made several mortar equipment plans!"

At this point, Lin Yongquan opened a thick folder. As the general office of the Education Department, it is naturally impossible for Lin Yongquan to talk about the mortar equipment plan just like the chief officers of the troops present. What he made needs to consider. The problem is not only the tactical application, but also the acquisition cost, the later cost, and the officers and soldiers needed to train the mortar force. At the same time, it is also necessary to consider the impact and changes caused by the application of mortars on the existing infantry tactics, and what changes the infantry should make to adapt.

Naturally, these problems cannot be explained by the chief officers of the army in a few words. You should know that the more than ten professional staff members in the education office that presided over the mortar equipment program, especially those members in the supervision office under the jurisdiction of the education office, are young officers with professional background, which are all set of sets. .

And the plan is also as detailed as possible, as far as a few shooters should be used for mortars, several gunners should be used, what equipment should be equipped by the commander of the mortar, what matters need to be paid attention to when fighting, to the coordinated attack tactical theory of mortars and infantry, and the cooperation between mortars and traditional field guns. Combat problems.

If the various arguments of the Education Department are put together, it is estimated that it can be a hundreds of pages of mortar application book, and the documents in Lin Yongquan's hands are just a summary of the general plan.

"The mortar plan of our army's equipment, considering the lack of mortar officers and archers in the early stage, will try to achieve centralized training. At the same time, considering that the consumption of ammunition by mortars is very large, and the logistics supply capacity of our army's grassroots forces is poor, so in principle, we will use mortars as much as possible. Considering the need for front-line commanders to command mortar operations in real time, our Education Department has formulated a series of equipment plans.

The infantry battalion will have a mortar platoon with four 60mm mortars and two 80mm mortars.

The infantry is directly under the jurisdiction of a mortar platoon with four 80mm mortars.

The town belongs to the artillery standard to control the first mortar battalion, equipped with 16 120mm mortars.

The cavalry has two 60mm mortars in the battalion and four 80mm mortars.

The engineering team and the heavy team each have two 60mm mortars in the battalion headquarters.

So the whole army has 60 60 mm mortars, 40 80 mm mortars and 16 120 mm mortars. Since the mortars are concentrated in the battalion and standard troops, it is also planned to further strengthen the late personnel of the battalion and standard troops.

In fact, this equipment figure is still exaggerated, which has exceeded the logistics supply capacity of the third town, and will also cause a shortage of military expenditure in the third town. However, the reason why Zhao Dongyun approved this costly plan is mainly considering that his subordinates have such a third town, as long as the combat effectiveness can Zhao Dongyun doesn't care how much money it costs.

Of course, more importantly, the suppression of bandits went smoothly some time ago, and it is expected that there will be a lot of income from suppressing bandits in the future, so this funding is not too serious, so take advantage of the opportunity to put the mortar equipment in place at one time.

If the mortars had not been equipped with enough officers and shooters, he would have planned to directly transfer the 60mm mortars to the first level of the team instead of concentrating them on battalion-level troops.

Hearing Lin Yongquan's plan, everyone didn't say much for a moment, because they found that what they had fought before was in vain. Meng Enyuan's cavalry also had mortars, Liu Tinggui's artillery also had 120 mm mortars, not to mention those infantry troops, almost 60 mm and 80 mm. It was occupied by them.

For a while, everyone was satisfied, especially the infantry officers led by Chen Guangyuan, who showed satisfaction one by one, and then Lin Yongquan's next sentence made them more satisfied.