Munitions Empire

Chapter 666: 625 industrial layout

The recent operations of the Tang Army’s Armored Corps had been quite monotonous, as they lost the opportunity to make rapid flanking maneuvers and surge forward aggressively. They could only follow the infantry, slowly squeezing forward, inch by inch advancing.

This was completely at odds with their previous tactics, and left them somewhat at a loss: The prefer the unrestrained rush forward, and were not particularly interested in covering infantry.

Thus, equipping infantry with assault guns was actually a relief for the Armored Corps, freeing them from the heavy burden of supporting the infantry.

Moreover, the senior commanders of the Tang Army were unwilling to sacrifice tank units in siege battles. They preferred to let these armored units run like cavalry, strike the enemy like lightning, encircle and destroy their opponents.

So, on Luff’s recommendation, both Tagg and Redman withdrew their armored units. The 1st and 4th Armored Divisions began to rest and resupply, handing over the main offensive tasks to the cheaper infantry.

On the other hand, in order to reduce infantry casualties and test new weapon systems, the main thrust of the attack could only be delivered by units equipped with assault guns.

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The Air Force was also deliberately stockpiling fuel, conserving ammunition, and reducing the number of aircraft sorties, as the rear factories had decreased their output capacity due to expansion efforts.

In addition, with the Air Force reallocating some of its units to coastal defenses, this directly resulted in a drastic decrease in bombing runs by the frontline Tang Air Force and a steep drop in support density.

As a result, the offense of the Tang Army had slowed down, which also aligned with the continued strategy of luring the enemy.

It seemed that this situation had given Shen Country and other nations a misconception: they believed the Tang Army was running out of steam.

Planes were fighting less and less, armored units were almost invisible, and more and more tanks without turrets were appearing — all signs seemed to point to the weakening of the Tang Army!

For everyone, this news was undoubtedly exhilarating; it was also another reason why Shen Country kept reinforcing Beiyuan City without halt.

In fact, Tang Country’s reduction of front-line engagements and slowing of the offense aimed partly to entice Shen Country to continuously reinforce Beiyuan City, and partly to reallocate resources and improve the domestic industrial production environment.

Alice had lately been restructuring the industrial capacity within Tang Country, which was a necessary task: many new factories needed to start production, which required withdrawing skilled workers from mature facilities, inevitably reducing the output of some existing factories.

Although the Great Tang Group’s apprenticeship program had gone a long way to mitigate the shortage of workers, the construction of new factories would still inevitably affect the production of the old ones.

It couldn’t be helped: the country’s industrial development could not stop, and the need for more factories meant that existing human resources had to be allocated rationally.

Recently in Anpu, a new production line was being built to manufacture a type of armored vehicle known as the Model 113. This all-tracked armored personnel carrier was not complex in design and relatively cheap, potentially a good fit for large-scale equipping of the troops.

Supporting this new factory meant withdrawing 100 skilled workers from the tractor factory and the plant producing tank chassis for the Model 4.

The new factory was spearheaded by Parker and was a new project personally approved by His Majesty the King. Naturally, it was taken very seriously by everyone, from top to bottom.

Another project, for convenience, was set up in Tongcheng, just like the tank factory. This project was to produce a brand new type of wheeled armored vehicle for the troops.

Tang Mo momentarily lapsed and named the project “Cougar,” unaware that nowhere in this world was there a place called “America.”

Then he had to spend ten times the effort explaining to the confused engineers and military commanders just what a “Cougar” was.

Drawing the design probably hadn’t taken as much time and energy: the new wheeled armored reconnaissance vehicle was promptly renamed “Lion,” simple and straightforward, fooling no one, young or old.

However, a meticulous Minister did find a city named “America,” meaning “beautiful sandbank,” situated on the edge of a desert, quite fitting the naming criteria.

Regrettably, that city lay on the borders of Qin Country, tens of thousands of miles away from Tang Country — it wasn’t exactly unrelated, but it was quite a stretch.

Yet, from a certain perspective, this perhaps revealed the King’s deep-seated grand ambition—in the same way Liu Bei named his son with the intent of holding a grand imperial consecration of the empire.

As for the fact that there were no lions near that “America,” it was selectively overlooked by all. Two or three days later, as the Lion armored vehicle plant’s construction began, the matter faded away with the wind.

Besides these two new equipment production factories coming into operation, Alice was also working to transfer as many of the immigrants as possible from Dragon Island to places like Linshui, Dongwan.

Although Dragon Island was the most industrialized and densely packed industry location owned by the Great Tang Kingdom, concentrating so many factories there was actually inconvenient.

Apart from the aircraft manufacturing plants, the immovable oil fields, and the shipyards, the island was really not suited for producing anything else.

Because whatever is produced here needs to be transported across vast oceans to other locations, the cost is prohibitively high.

What’s more frustrating is that this kind of transportation sometimes also means a reduction in timeliness: tanks produced in Tongcheng could be delivered to the frontline in a week, but it would take a month for tanks produced on Dragon Island to reach Linshui.

For the Great Tang Kingdom, which urgently needs a massive production capacity, this is absolutely intolerable. That’s why Alice helped Tang Mo, striving to optimize the industrial structure as much as possible.

She planned to build more factories in places like Linshui, Tongcheng, and Dongwan to replace Dragon Island, becoming the new industrial core of the Great Tang Kingdom.

Even, she had already begun transferring the production of the Tang Army’s 105mm caliber shells to the industrial area of King City in Qi Country.

Now renamed to Pingning, it had become the largest industrial base in the northern part of the Great Tang Kingdom and, under Alice’s planning, would not only produce a third of the explosives and shells needed by the Tang Army but also be responsible for manufacturing automobiles and trains.

Soon, the Great Tang Kingdom’s civilian shipbuilding factory would be set up in Beiyuan, automobile production in Pingning, light industry in Nanye and Luo Town, armored vehicles and artillery production in Anpu, tank and steel production in Tongcheng, naval shipbuilding in Linshui Dongwan, submarine and aircraft manufacturing on Dragon Island.

The capital Chang’an would exist as a political center rather than an industrial one, serving more as a symbol, a representation of the Great Tang royal family.

The main reason for being able to do this was the great victory at Dragon Island, which gave Tang Mo enough confidence: his navy could move northward, signifying that a new reserve force that had yet to engage in battle could be deployed in subsequent combat.

Tang Mo’s calculation was to assign the task of severing the enemy’s maritime supply routes and encircling Beiyuan City to the navy fleet, which hadn’t been involved in battle. This would minimize casualties and alleviate the pressure of siege warfare.

He had confidence in his own fleet, or rather, he had great confidence in the Dongwan-class battleships. As long as these warships reached the battlefield, the situation could fundamentally change.

As a result, the military supplies for Shireck’s forces would be completely cut off, and the ground troops trapped in Beiyuan City would be in a dire situation.

All along, Tang Mo had been mindful of at least 100,000 Shireck prisoners of war in Beiyuan City! With these laborers, Tang Mo could undertake his next development plan, laying two new railways and building a large number of factories.

Anyway, these laborers were free of charge and didn’t need much consideration for their life or death. If Shireck wanted to negotiate peace, they would have to pay a war indemnity, which would be an additional income.

In short, Tang Mo was already contemplating the post-war division of spoils, his sights set beyond the current battle situation.

The Great Tang Group hadn’t slowed down its growth due to the war, but rather accelerated it significantly.

And the advisors from the Shireck Consortium who were stationed in the Ice Cold Empire finally saw a pile of junk from the front lines of the war with Qi Country.

As expected, most of the equipment didn’t reveal much; their understanding of these weapons was still too superficial.

The entire world was actually being dragged forward by the industrial production ideas of Tang Country; they couldn’t even keep up with copying, let alone learning, understanding, and surpassing.

Tang Mo was able to present a mature metal formula that had been validated through countless experiments and practice, whereas the same formula would require Shireck’s technicians to experiment repeatedly, retracing the steps taken by Earth’s civilizations in the past.

That was the disparity between them; the more precise and complicated the technology, the more pronounced this was. By the time Tang Mo introduced even more advanced things, perhaps these Shireck engineers still pondering over the old technologies wouldn’t even understand what they were looking at.

“Damn it, can’t they obtain some finished products?” a Shireck advisor complained irritably as he tossed a piece of rusty metal onto the table.

How could he discern anything from a machine gun wreck that was severely warped and deformed, lacking many parts…

“Stop complaining! Getting these things already isn’t bad at all,” an advisor from the Shireck Consortium suggested without lifting his head, “You should know that the Great Tang Kingdom hasn’t retreated a step since the war began!”

“They’ve always been on the offensive, and any abandoned or damaged equipment would be left behind them, not falling into our hands! These few items were obtained by those below at great risk to their lives.” He put down a paratrooper’s steel helmet still stained with blood and sighed as he explained.

“Let’s go see that thing called an airplane and see if it can inspire some ideas,” another impatient Shireck engineer from the side suggested.

He had come all the way from Brunas to the Ice Cold Empire just to take a look at the wreckage of an airplane…

———-

I have something unexpected today and can’t make up the chapter. I will make it up tomorrow.