"Your Majesty, the soldiers in the Beijing camp are seriously lacking in training and actual combat experience, so they must make up for it in equipment. Otherwise, it will be difficult to win the battle after going into battle." Yang Fan said quickly.
Li Banghua said: "It is too late to make armor weapons again. In particular, making armor plates is very labor-intensive. I checked and found that there is a serious loss of craftsmen under the Ministry of War, and there are no more than 20 to 30% of the registered amount. And most of them are young and old, There is a particular shortage of skilled craftsmen. There is also a serious shortage of iron materials. It will take at least a year to prepare the equipment for these 50,000 people."
Yang Fan looked at Chongzhen. Said: "Your Majesty, if you want to attack the Tumut and Ordos people, it is best to start the war in March next year. There is no time delay. Spring has begun, the grass is green. The Mongols are about to disperse and nomadic. We don't have enough cavalry, so there is nothing we can do. Scattered across the mountains and plains to look for them. Besides, the combat capabilities of our small unit are worrying. If we gather together, we still have a chance of winning, but if we disperse on the grassland, it’s hard to say whether we can recover them."
Chongzhen nodded. Although he didn't understand military affairs, the truth was still understandable.
After all, it's nonsense for a man to chase cavalry on the prairie on two legs.
"Yang Qing, you are in Zunhua, which is the iron smelting center of the Ming Dynasty. Since Xuanzong, all the northern equipment of the imperial court has used Zunhua iron. Can it be produced in Zunhua? I can make weapons, armor and firearms for you. Charter.”
This is what Yang Fan wants. What he did before was illegal. It was done privately. Although frontier commanders all do this, it is even more different if it is authorized by the court.
"Your Majesty, it's too late to make pierced armor, which requires too much labor. I have a kind of plate armor that can be made quickly. I can definitely deliver 50,000 sets in a month. It can be in time for the army to go on the expedition."
"There are such personal soldiers of Jiawei Chen. You can let them in and let your lords take a look."
Yang Fan knew the level of craftsmen in the imperial court.
Three people have to work hard for more than two months. After all, blacksmithing is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Yang Fan guessed that, in all likelihood, they would purchase it from outside and directly send the soldiers to wear stamped steel plate armor.
"Oh, that's good, let's call a few people in to take a look." Chongzhen said happily.
After a while, three soldiers came in.
They all wore European-style plate armor, but it was the kind that only reached the knees, an enhanced version of the half-body plate armor. There were several people in the back holding several wooden boxes containing installable decks for the legs and feet.
This kind of armor is the kind worn by soldiers in Europe. The skirt is no more than the knees to facilitate the march of infantry.
As soon as these people arrived here, they immediately attracted the attention of the civil and military ministers.
The key is that the shape of their armor is so strange.
Pyramid beak-shaped helmet. The reinforced decks on the shoulders and neck are designed to prevent cavalry from slashing infantry from above.
The front chest is a whole piece of curved plate armor. The joints are all designed to rotate flexibly. The thighs and crotch are both large armor skirts.
Above the knees, except for a very narrow horizontal slit for the eyes, everything is basically covered. There are two small holes in the ears so that the superior's orders can be heard clearly.
These armors are black and gray in color. In order to prevent rust, Yang Fan specially washed it with acid. It also prevents reflection from exposing the target.
What surprised everyone the most was that there were beautiful and complicated patterns on these plate armors. With Tangcao style decoration. These are pressed directly on the mold during stamping. It doesn't take much trouble. Mainly for aesthetics.
These plate armors are stamped from pure steel plates. A hydraulic stamping machine is used. The steel plates are fed in and pressed by the punch to make a piece of plate armor. The production speed is very fast.
These parts are designed in advance, and then the mold is opened and the mold is made. Then there is the assembly line operation, where one machine is responsible for stamping one part. Finally, the women in Xincheng took the parts home and assembled them with pliers, earning a piece-rate wage.
Now, many housewives under the Yang Fan system can get a job to work from home. This is also their income after doing housework.
The stamping machine is working around the clock, and the parts are assembled in various small workshops. Tens of thousands of suits of armor can be made quickly.
These armors are either made of aluminum alloy or steel that has been surface carburized and hardened after quenching. The thickness is only that of aluminum alloy, two millimeters thick on the front and one millimeter thick on the back. The whole set weighs about 30 pounds.
In order to simplify production, there is no leather lining inside. Anyway, this season, the inside is thick cotton clothing, which is not abrasive to the skin. These plate armors are beggars' and simplified versions of Yang Fan's system of plate armors. It is an industrial product produced in large quantities for fast production.
The nobles and the military attachés from the Fifth Army Commander's Office immediately came forward to check. While looking at it, I was amazed. This kind of large plate armor had never appeared in the Ming Dynasty.
The reason why Ming Dynasty used piercing armor was mainly to maintain flexibility. The Ming Dynasty has a vast territory, and infantry must be mobile. Otherwise, how can they enter the battlefield if they cannot walk.
Europe is a small country and does not need to consider long-distance marches of thousands of kilometers, so they build heavy full-body iron cans. The different weapons and equipment routes taken by both sides are closely related to the actual battlefield conditions.
Just like firearms, the reason why the Ming Dynasty did not develop giant heavy artillery like Europe was because they were all small general cannons. They are all small-power artillery pieces with large diameters, short barrels, small recoil, and small charges. It's because the artillery designs of both sides are different.
The Ming Dynasty's artillery was designed to hit people, so it was not big. There are castles all over Europe. Most of the city walls are stone walls, with a thickness of about one and a half to two meters. They built huge cannons to blast through city walls. Therefore, when three-ton cannons such as the Red Coat Cannon came to the Ming Dynasty in the late Ming Dynasty, the gap between the two-flying artillery was already very large.
The reason why the Ming Dynasty did not take this route is because the city walls of the Ming Dynasty were made of rammed earth and bricks, and the thickness was generally about 30 meters. Walls built with Sanhe rammed earth are very elastic, and the outer bricks are very hard. The red-coated cannon couldn't blast through the city walls, but it was just fine at blasting the city gates.
Flexibility is very important when fighting. However, Zhanjia's ability to defend against missing arrows is not very good. Especially when facing powerful bows and arrows like Qing Gong, they are often shot through at close range.
"Yang Qing, why does your armor have no lower legs?" Chongzhen looked at it for a while and asked strangely.
The mandarin duck war jackets and cloth-faced armors of the Ming Dynasty generally have skirts that cover the main knee, close to the ankle. Yang Fan's plate armor does protect his upper body very well, but there is no protection below his knees. It seemed like he was looking at his head rather than his buttocks.
