During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Eighth Route Army Mobile Working Group, which centered on Shanxi, carried out military industrial construction in the base areas, and it was a quasi-military industrial enterprise that provided relevant weapons and ammunition for guerrilla warfare of the Eighth Route Army. Because of the needs of guerrilla warfare, they were ready to move with the main force at any time, and often tied large bags of instruments and equipment on the back of donkeys, so they were called "arsenals on donkeys' backs."
It is no exaggeration to say that its members came from all over the world, including international students returning from Europe, overseas Chinese returning from Nanyang, professors and students of Chinese institutions of higher learning at that time, technicians who had worked in industry, skilled craftsmen, more than 100 of them and students of institutions of higher learning who came from wealthy families, who walked out of the comfort zone of the time for the ideal of resisting Japan and saving the country, left a good and comfortable life, crossed rivers, lakes and seas, climbed mountains and waded through the waters, and rushed from all directions to scarce resources. Life is harsh in the Taihang Mountains. They worked with the local anti-Japanese people to build base areas, worked hard to develop weapons, and personally realized the ideal of "saving the country through science and technology."
At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, because many new soldiers in the Eighth Route Army had no guns in their hands, only machetes and spears were used to fight with the Japanese army. And the eighth route army is only the configuration of millet plus rifles, some remote guerrillas do not even have a few rifles, more shotguns, bird guns, bows and arrows, large knives, spears and other hot and cold weapons that are far behind the times, but the Eighth Route Army did not dare to go into battle to kill the enemy because it only had a large knife and spear in its hand.
At that time, the mobile working group of the Eighth Route Army was anxious for soldiers, based on the military knowledge learned in the West, starting from the objective conditions of the base area, and quickly designed the structural diagram of the new rifle, under the guidance of advanced experience in the West and the personal operation of Fu Fu, a teacher with 13 years of experience in gun making, the "Bayi-type Rifle" that absorbed the advantages of Czech, Hanyang, And 38 rifles at home and abroad was born on August 1, 1940. This is a new type of 79 rifle with light weight, small size, high shooting accuracy, easy to carry and dexterity, which has been tested by actual combat to be far more powerful than the Japanese Type 38 rifle.
At first, the mission was limited to repairing captured weapons, reloading bullets and producing grenades and explosives. Later, there was the Huangyadong Arsenal, which relied on manual work to produce grenades and explosive packages that were urgently needed at that time without electricity supply.
At that time, the problem of explosives was imminent, and the mines, grenades, and guns of the Eighth Route Army were mostly filled with black powder, and the power to kill and injure the enemy was limited. Some front-line fighters once reported that "a grenade was thrown next to the Japanese soldiers, and after it was blown up, what I saw was the little devil standing there in black and screaming." It can be seen that this kind of black powder can only produce some skin and flesh wounds, but not fatal. In order to solve the problem of gunpowder, the Eighth Route Army Arsenal brainstormed and designed the idea of using the cylinder chamber method to manufacture sulfuric acid and solve the raw materials for explosives first. The advent of the sulfuric acid factory upgraded the gunpowder of the Eighth Route Army to modern explosives, and then smokeless propellants and ammonium nitrate explosives were solved one by one, and the mortar shells, grenades, grenades and guns produced by the arsenal could show their true power on the battlefield! Greatly improved the killing effect of the Eighth Route Army.
Later, the arsenal also copied the captured Japanese grenadiers. At that time, the steel used to manufacture weapons was all railway steel that dismantled the enemy's rails. At that time, it was jokingly called "The Eighth Route Army is really a 'pickpocket road army'!" ”
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the New Fourth Army also built an arsenal in central Jiangsu, and unlike the mobile work regiment, they could rely on the distance advantage near Shanghai, secretly obtain some scarce machines and steel pipes, and their production capacity was stronger, and at one time they built hundreds of 51 mm caliber light mortars, and even let the troops use homemade gun grenades.
China's War of Resistance was essentially an agricultural China rebelling against the aggression of an industrial Japan, and the gap in national strength between the two sides was huge. The conditions in the anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines of the Eighth Route Army were harsh, as sung in the "Guerrilla Song": "There are no guns, no cannons, the enemy has built for us." "The Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army can still have more captures in fighting against the puppet army with poor combat effectiveness, while the Japanese army that faces the brainwashing of the Bushido spirit is difficult to capture, and can only rely on its own production of some weapons." In particular, we produce relatively simple weapons such as grenades and mines.