In many film and television dramas reflecting the War of Resistance Against Japan, the appearance rate of the "Hanyang-made" rifle was the highest, and it and the "Zhongzheng" rifle were the most equipped rifles in the Chinese army at that time, and a large number of units such as the Nationalist Army, the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and the Anti-Japanese Coalition supported China's 14-year War of Resistance.
"Hanyang-made" is a weapon imitated according to german rifles in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, which was the main equipment of the Qing Dynasty's new army, and later experienced the Beiyang period, the Nanjing government period, and the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and did not stop production until 1944. China has been in use until the 1950s, which is the longest-used rifle in Chinese history.
The history of the emergence of the "Zhonggong" rifle is several decades later than that of "Hanyang-made", it was born in 1934, and its purpose of appearing is to replace "Hanyang-made" and replace the National Army.
"Hanyang-made" and "Zhongzheng" are almost a modern Chinese military history, and these two weapons are like brothers, because they are all from Germany and have fought in the War of Resistance. But what is unknown is that the emergence of "Hanyang-made" was the result of the Germans deceiving Chinese, and in the "medium formal" production process, the Germans also made a stumbling block.
As the main weapon of the Chinese army from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, what is the quality of the "Hanyang-made" and "Zhonggong" rifles? Who were the main rifles in the War of Resistance?
First, standard weapons are a dream of Chinese
The scientific name of the "Hanyang-made" rifle is the "Hanyang Eight-Eight Rifle", which is a weapon that Zhang Zhidong began to manufacture during his tenure as governor of Huguang, and behind its birth is the ideal of a strong army Chinese.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, under the slogan of saving the people and trying to survive, the Han bureaucracy launched a foreign affairs movement, with the slogan of "first the army and then the people", first to solve the problem of the army's equipment, and then to solve the needs of the people.
At that time, not many people in China really understood Western military, and when the term "standard weapon" was proposed, it only received the attention of a small group of people, including Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang. Zhang Zhidong supervised arms in the 1880s, and in 1889 moved the arsenal in Shimen, Guangdong, to Hanyang, Hubei Province, and negotiated with the Germans to introduce a production line.
Unexpectedly, before guns were introduced, the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War broke out, and the Chinese army was defeated. The caliber of weapons and equipment is different, and the style is complex, which is the shortcoming of the Chinese army, so Zhang Zhidong is determined to manufacture China's own "standard weapons".
Zhang Zhidong sent representatives to Germany to buy guns, and the Germans had just produced a weapon that was not very satisfied, called the "Type 1888 Committee Rifle", that is, GEW1888.
The gun used the newly popularized "smokeless gunpowder" technology, with a rifle caliber of 7.92 mm and a Mauser round-headed rifle cartridge. The GEW1888 rifle was still relatively advanced at the time, but it had many shortcomings, such as the difficulty of loading and retracting the 5-round magazine, the difficulty of cleaning the sleeve outside the barrel, the high rate of explosion, and the lack of lethality of round-headed bullets.
The German army was not satisfied with this weapon, so the German government studied the new rifle itself and sold the weapon as a foreign trade brand. At this time, the ministers of the Qing government came to buy guns.
Chinese at that time, they were very fond of the "Mauser" brand guns, because the "GEW1888 rifle" used the "Mauser round-headed bullet", so the Germans lied about it as the "Mauser rifle" and sold the design drawings and machines to China.
The Qing Dynasty was thus fooled into buying this weapon, and after obtaining the weapon drawings, the Hanyang Arsenal in Zhangzhidong began to imitate the gun in 1896, because there was a long metal sleeve at the upper barrel of the gun to protect the barrel, so the first Type 88 rifle produced was also called "old sleeve".
The domestic "Hanyang 88-type rifle" has a total length of 95 cm, weighs 3 kg, and has a bullet caliber of 7.92 mm. Although the scale has an astonishing range of 1800 meters, the maximum range of the weapon is only more than 500 meters, the effective killing range is 300 meters, and it is definitely one of the most advanced rifles in the world at the end of the 19th century.
The output of Hanyang Arsenal in the early stage was not large, and at the beginning it could only produce more than 1,000 "Hanyang-made" per year, so in 1899, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau also began to manufacture this weapon. At the beginning of the 20th century, the "Hanyang-made" was heavily re-equipped with the new army of the Qing Dynasty, and the new army in the Wuchang Uprising used this rifle.
Second, the leap in the lethality of the rifle: the evolution of the warhead
In 1911, the Qing Dynasty collapsed and the Republic of China was established, and the new government was weak in both prestige and ability, so the military industry basically inherited the original appearance of the Qing Dynasty. In the early years of the Republic of China, during the Beiyang period, the warlords were in a scuffle, and the national economy actually did not advance or retreat, but the warlords looted a lot of property, which was used to buy weapons and open factories to build guns. During this period, the "Hanyang-made" has been greatly developed, and 300,000 have been built in just a dozen years.
After more than ten years of fighting by the warlords, the Nationalist government began the Northern Expedition and re-attacked the Jiangnan region to establish a central government in Nanjing. After establishing a government in Nanjing, Chiang kai-shek was determined to enrich the country and strengthen the army, so he first began to reorganize the army. At that time, the "Hanyang-made" rifle had undergone several modifications, but they were all minor modifications, such as removing the strange sleeve, changing the shape of the ruler, and increasing the handguard on the barrel.
None of these modifications can change the lethality of the weapon, because the "Hanyang-made" shot uses a round-headed bullet, but the lethality of the bullet is less than that of the pointed bullet, which is light in weight, fast in initial speed, small in flight resistance, and more lethal.
In 1930, the Nationalist government began negotiations with the German government to introduce the German "M1924" Mauser rifle, which was the main equipment of the German army at that time. The Nationalist government bought 20,000 M1924 Mauser rifles within two years, which were 110 cm long and weighed 4 kg, playing 7.92 mm pointed rifle cartridges, with a maximum range of 800 meters and an effective range of 500 meters.
After the M1924 came to China, it was well received by the Chinese army, and the Nanjing government decided to directly introduce its production line.
In 1934, China again purchased 10,000 M1924s, and by the way purchased drawings from Germany, and as a result, the Germans had problems with the inspection boards given to China, and the guns they built were not qualified.
In 1935, China had to buy drawings and inspection panels from Germany again, this time the Ministry of Foreign Affairs came forward, took a large amount of money to open up relations, and finally after the Nazi German government nodded, China got all the technical information.
M1924 was copied by the Gongxian Arsenal in Henan Province, and in the process of improvement, the Gongxian Arsenal shortened its gun body to make it more suitable for Chinese body shape, and increased the length of the bayonet and increased the ability to fight.
In August 1935, the M1924 improved version was officially rolled off the production line, when Chiang Was the chairman of the Military Commission of the Republic of China, in order to show respect for the chairman of the committee, the official responsible for changing the gun took its name and named the new gun "Zhonggong Rifle".
Third, "Hanyang Manufacturing": the mainstay of China's War of Resistance
In 1935, the eve of the all-out War of Resistance, both the "Zhongguan" and "Hanyang-made" rifles were fully equipped with the Chinese army, and although the "Zhongguan" was more advanced, the output was low. In addition to the Gongxian Arsenal, Guangdong First Arsenal, Jinling Arsenal, and Hanyang Arsenal are also in production " in the formality" of production.
However, after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the Gongxian Arsenal was destroyed by the Japanese army, and other eastern arsenals were also damaged to varying degrees, and the production of "medium formality" was affected.
Fortunately, the Hanyang Arsenal that was withdrawn to Chongqing, the Forty-first Factory was well preserved, when Chongqing officially produced more than 1,000 pieces per month, and more than 4,000 Hanyang were made, and the most weapons in the hands of the Nationalist soldiers were still Hanyang Made.
After decades of hammering and polishing, craftsmen throughout China have made perfect efforts to produce "Hanyang-made", and in addition to the south, the arsenals of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army have also imitated Hanyang-made in small workshops.
In 1940, american journalists Smedley and his wife visited the military factory of the New Fourth Army, and the soldiers of the military factory took out their homemade Hanyang-made guns for hundreds of rounds in a row, until the barrel of the gun was hot and smoked, which showed the reliability of its quality.
In the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the weapons in the hands of the Chinese army were still diverse, and the "Zhongguan" was only equipped with about 400,000 pieces, but the "Hanyang-made" had more than 1 million pieces, and like the "Three-Eight Big Cover" of the Japanese Army, the "old sleeve" that was more than half a hundred years old became the iconic weapon of the Chinese soldiers.
The last war in which "Zhonggong" and "Hanyangzao" participated was the Korean War, in which many soldiers in the volunteer army fought with such captured weapons, and these two old rifles finally played a residual heat. After the end of the Korean War, our army changed a large number of Soviet-style equipment, and these two weapons gradually withdrew from the organization and disappeared into history.
Text/Shogakuno
References: 1, "From Hanyang to Type 95, Individual Weapons Column Biography" Qin Mengqi 2, "Stereotyped Manufacturing and Anti-Japanese War Synchronization In the Formal: Standard Rifle for Combat Against Japan" Wang Xiaoyun