September 17, the sixth year of Chengshun, in the middle of the night on October 31, 1640 AD.
At the Weihaiwei Naval Base in Dengzhou Prefecture, Shandong Province, the sky is clear and cloudless, and the big, round moon hangs upside down in the night sky, giving the night sky a dark blue color.
In the large open space in front of the port terminal, many army soldiers were lining up to board the ship.
These are the first batch of soldiers from the 23rd Division to land. They are all neatly dressed and carry many field daily necessities for soldiers, including blankets, lunch boxes, and a multi-functional tarpaulin. This multi-functional tarpaulin Interesting.
The Chu army started in Huguang and fought in the south for a long time. They often fought in the rainy season and even winter. At the same time, the Chu army paid special attention to field marches, so they paid special attention to waterproofing issues in the early days.
At first, simple raincoats were used, including various primitive raincoats. Later, tarpaulins brushed with tung oil began to be used on a large scale to make raincoats.
Then I discovered that soldiers often used this kind of raincoat directly as a daily cloak, and even used it as a simple individual tent when fighting in the field.
Therefore, the technical staff of the Logistics Department simply changed the design and designed interconnected buttons for this waterproof cloth to facilitate the construction of tents. At the same time, in order to meet the hiding needs of some scouts, waterproof cloths of various colors were also specially designed to meet Concealment needs in different environmental terrains.
Of course, the need for concealment is generally only met by scouts, not ordinary soldiers.
In wars these days, especially when fighting in formations, officers are not allowed to dress their soldiers in as bright a color as possible... Otherwise, when the guns are fired, the smoke fills up and makes it difficult to see clearly.
As a result, this kind of multi-functional tarpaulin appeared. It was first put into use on the Yunnan-Guizhou battlefield this spring. After the frontline soldiers received good feedback, they began to promote the equipment throughout the army.
Almost every soldier of the Seventh Army now has a piece of this kind of tarpaulin.
Because this kind of waterproof cloth can be easily formed into a small tent in the field, and the Chu army also distributed quilts or blankets and other cold-proof materials to the soldiers. When the two are combined, during the emergency march operation, the frontline troops can be fewer With or without a large number of tents, the rear logistics troops should carry backup.
Although field tents may seem inconspicuous, they are actually the bulk of the supplies carried by troops when they march in the field. If they can be cancelled, the transportation pressure on emergency marches of field troops will be much less and they can be freed up. More transportation capacity is available to transport ammunition, food and other materials.
However, don’t think that because the emergency march did not bring tents, you think that the Chu army let the soldiers get wet in the rain and freeze in the wild. In fact, when this kind of rainproof cloth and marching blankets or cotton quilts are combined with each other, it is enough to keep the soldiers in the wild. Had a cold night.
Not to mention, Chu Jun has always attached great importance to winter clothing.
When the autumn wind just started this year, winter clothes were distributed to the troops on the Northern Front in advance. The soldiers all had thick cotton jackets to wear, and even the shoes were special thick cotton military shoes.
In terms of logistics, the Chu Empire Army has always attached great importance to it.
The same is true for this time's landing on the Liaodong Peninsula. In order to meet the needs of the landing troops, all kinds of messy materials were prepared and in sufficient quantity.
In terms of dry food alone, the logistics department has prepared enough to feed 50,000 people for a month!
This is not ordinary food, but military dry food. In fact, soldiers usually don't eat dry food. They only eat it when there is no time to bury a pot to make rice, such as when marching and fighting.
After all, dry food is actually very unpalatable, and the taste is not very good. If circumstances permit, frontline soldiers still hope to eat hot meals.
However, as a precaution, the Logistics Department directly prepared enough dry food for 50,000 people for a month in advance.
In order to make the soldiers' nutrition more balanced, the people in the logistics department also prepared a lot of pickled foods that can be stored for a long time, such as sauerkraut, and finally some canned foods.
This was developed by the Grain Processing Plant of the Ministry of Industry entrusted by the Naval Logistics Department, because after their warships go to sea, they often do not get a supplement of fresh food, especially fruits and vegetables. If they do not eat fruits and vegetables, they will suffer from sepsis.
Although you can take mung beans and soybeans out to sea and eat bean sprouts... But you will get bored eating bean sprouts all day long!
As a result, the Navy commissioned the Ministry of Industry to develop a food preservation method that can be preserved for a long time without losing nutrients.
Based on the experience of many pickled foods and the experience of making folk preserves, the Ministry of Industry finally came up with a lot of pickled products, either pickled with sugar or pickled with salt... But these two things are expensive……
Sugar and salt are not cheap these days, and there is no way to mass-produce them and supply them to the army on a large scale.
Finally, under the reminder of several teachers from the Royal Institute of Technology, they began to think about ways to seal and preserve after high-temperature sterilization, and then the earthenware jar appeared.
This thing is very simple. The processed food is sterilized by high-temperature steam, and then quickly sealed and stored in a clay pot. This way, the food can be stored for a long time.
It is low cost, can preserve more of the original food taste, and can be stored for a long time.
Therefore, after this kind of canned food appeared, it was immediately purchased in large quantities by the Navy, and then the Army also followed up with large-scale purchases. For this reason, the Ministry of Industry has successively established more than ten canneries in different places. In addition to supplying the needs of the military, it also serves the needs of the civilian population. Make supply.
The emergence of canned food not only solved the problem of long-term storage of fruits and vegetables for the army, but also led to the emergence of a new industrial category, that is canned food...
At the same time, the emergence of canned goods also increased the income of some farmers.
Canning requires a variety of fruit and vegetable raw materials, and the purchase volume is often large, so this is a way for farmers near the cannery to increase their income. They can grow fruits and sell them to increase their income.
There are even some gentry with vision and capital who have begun to invest in the construction of canneries on their own. Some gentry take advantage of their position in the countryside to recruit people to grow large areas of fruit to supply canneries.
Whether it is cans or tarpaulins, although these things were only needed by the military at first, after the military started, they often developed into specialized industries.
This situation actually also applies to the textile industry. The earliest development of the textile industry in the Chu Empire was purely due to military needs. The army needed a large amount of low-cost various cotton fabrics and woolen fabrics. In order to reduce costs, the Ministry of Industry was thinking about improving weaving. Cloth machines and spinning machines finally greatly improved the efficiency of spinning machines and looms, creating what people call machine-made cloth.
This kind of machine-made cloth is actually no different from the cloth produced by the original traditional loom and spinning machine. Strictly speaking, it is cloth produced by hand spinning and weaving, but compared with the original cloth, it is more efficient. , large output and low cost.
However, this kind of machine-made cloth was originally specially supplied to the military. In less than a year, it has become a bulk consumer product among the people.
Today, traditional imitation towns such as Huguang and Jiangnan in the Chu Empire have basically adopted this new type of looms and spinning machines on a large scale.
After all, no one is stupid. As soon as they see how efficient your loom is, others will immediately follow suit... Su Qin Textile Company, which is now well-known in the Jiangnan area, took advantage of this wave of textile innovation. Private textile company.
They took the lead in introducing new spinning machines and looms, and successively invested in the establishment of three large-scale textile factories. Coupled with the Qin family's rich experience in the cloth industry, contacts, channels, etc., they created Su Qin The cloth turned out to be of better quality and lower price than the cloth of Hantian Textile Company.
In just a few years, Su Qinbu has bought it all over the country. It has even been purchased by many maritime trading companies and then trafficked to Fuso, the Korean Peninsula and even various parts of Southeast Asia.
Because Su Qinbu has successively invested in the construction of multiple textile factories, it currently has as many as eight large and small textile factories, not only in Jiangnan, but also in Guangzhou and Tianjin.
Now in the textile industry in the Chu Empire, Su Qin Textile Company has surpassed the government-run Hantian Textile Company and has become the largest textile company with tens of thousands of employees.
It's just that even though Su Qin Textile Company is prospering in the civilian market, it still cannot enter the military textile market.
The main reason is that Hantian Textile Company is a government-run enterprise. It has focused on various military textiles from the beginning and has accumulated a wealth of technical barriers in this field. For example, waterproof cloth may not seem simple, but in fact, for contemporary times, technology The content is still very high.
How to mass-produce this kind of military tarpaulin while controlling costs is not simple.
Nowadays, on the dock of Weihai base, the tarpaulins carried by many soldiers are the exclusive products of Hantian Textile Company, and other companies are far behind in imitating them.
And as these soldiers got on the boat, the sky gradually became brighter!
On the outside of the harbor, many warships have set sail and left the harbor ahead of schedule.
Admiral Xia Qiuyang also boarded the cruiser Songjiang and personally directed this huge landing operation.
Because there are many people and more supplies, more than five hundred ships may seem like a lot, but in fact there is really no way to bring more than 50,000 people and a large amount of weapons, equipment and supplies at once.
This operation will be divided into three batches!
The first batch includes the 2nd Marine Regiment of the Navy and the 23rd Army Division, engineering units and materials used in a large number of projects.
The second time was the 20th Division and the 104th Division.
The third batch includes logistics and transportation troops, heavy artillery troops, and cavalry troops.
Today, Bai Yangrong will personally command the fleet to escort the first batch of troops, a large number of materials, engineering personnel, and material transportation across the sea.
Their target is the Jinzhou Wei Zhongzuo Station in the Liaodong Peninsula, which is Lushunkou!
