In 1939, a rumor was widely circulated among the Japanese army in North China, and the content of the rumor was:
At that time, the Eighth Route Army was equipped with "Dam bombs"
Soldiers injured by this ammunition will have a strong tingling sensation at the wound due to the splattering of lead from the bullet in the body. The bullets used by the Eighth Route Army at that time did give these Japanese troops similar pain, and a Veteran of the Japanese Army who was hit by the "Dam Bomb" of the Eighth Route Army wrote in his memoirs
"The moment the ammunition crossed the body, the whole shoulder seemed to be a piece that had been gouged out."
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However, in fact, the Eighth Route Army never used the "Dam Bullet" banned in the 1899 Hague Convention on the anti-Japanese battlefield, hitting the Japanese army and inflicting great pain on the Japanese army, which was a kind of homemade bullet of the Eighth Route Army at that time, which imitated the Japanese 6.5 mm Type 38 pointed rifle bullet, but the more obvious differences with this Japanese bullet were:
The bullet's warhead showed a conspicuous dark red color, so it was called "red round head" by the Japanese army.
Moreover, the moment the bullet is fired, it will produce a harsh scream, accompanied by either a corpse that has been knocked to the ground, or a Japanese soldier hiding in the trench and afraid to look up.
This made the "red round head" bullet of the Eighth Route Army one of the few combat weapons of the Japanese army to be afraid of the Eighth Route Army on the anti-Japanese battlefield.
(The "red round head" bullet preserved at the Taihang Memorial Hall of the Eighth Route Army)
So, why did the eighth route army's soil "red round head" bullets have such great power? What kind of military science mysteries or international friendly support are behind the name "soil"?
However, the origin of the "red round head" bullet may disappoint some listeners: because the "red round head" bullet itself does not have too advanced military scientific principles, nor does it involve the support of international friends.
It was more a product of the Eighth Route Army's response to the increasingly severe war situation in that harsh anti-Japanese environment.
(Eighth Route Army during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression)
Since the Red Army was reorganized into the "Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army", the army's ammunition and other resources have been mainly provided by Chiang Kai-shek's National Government in Nanjing.
The ammunition commonly used by the Eighth Route Army at that time was the 7.92×57 mm Mauser rifle cartridges made in Hanyang
, convergence with the national army troops. However, after 1939, Chiang Kai-shek gradually reduced the supply of ammunition to the Eighth Route Army. The reason for this is that after the Battle of Wuhan broke out in 1938 and the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression entered a stage of strategic stalemate, Chiang Kai-shek, who had suffered repeated setbacks in front of the Japanese army, tried in vain to preserve his strength and at the same time curb the development of our party and our army. Around 1939, border conflicts provoked by the Nationalist army broke out many times in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and Chiang Kai-shek used this as an excuse to interrupt ammunition assistance to the Eighth Route Army
"Before the Eighth Route Army withdraws from Suide and heads to Hedong, do not fire ammunition."
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After losing the ammunition supply of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government, the Eighth Route Army in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region could only rely on two ways to obtain ammunition supplies: one was to do it itself and have enough food and clothing; the other was
"No guns, no cannons, the enemy made for us"
(Anti-Japanese guerrillas in shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region)
Influenced by film and television works, the public has long believed that the capture of enemy ammunition is the main source of ammunition for the Eighth Route Army, and the capture of enemy ammunition should be an easy task. But in fact, the process of capturing enemy ammunition on the anti-Japanese battlefield was not easy. Because in order to capture the ammunition of the Japanese army, there must be two conditions: first,
The formed Japanese army had to be wiped out
Second,
While ensuring the elimination of the Japanese army, the Japanese army still retained bullets that had not been fired.
Although the conditions are only two points, it is more difficult to achieve these two requirements on the anti-Japanese battlefield: First, the Japanese army has an equipment advantage on the anti-Japanese battlefield, and under the same scale of the army, it is difficult for our army to take advantage of it for a while.
A total of 30 rounds of ammunition can be accommodated, and generally a Japanese rifleman will be equipped with 2 "Meiji 30-year ammunition boxes", so a total of 60 rounds of ammunition will be carried by a Japanese infantryman
It is stronger than our army in terms of individual firepower. It is often the case on the battlefield that when the bullets of our soldiers are almost exhausted, the bullets of the Japanese army are still more than enough, which is one of the reasons why the Eighth Route Army often carries out white-knife battles with the Japanese army. The second factor affecting the capture of Japanese bullets was that after 1940, the Japanese army also gradually realized the risk that its soldiers might be disarmed, so it was later restricted
The Japanese soldiers fighting in the Eighth Route Army carried no more than 40 rounds of ammunition
As for the puppet army units with relatively low combat effectiveness, the Japanese army strictly limited the amount of ammunition they carried to prevent them from being disarmed by our army.
(Japanese "Meiji 30-year- style" ammunition box)
Around 1940, however, the conditions for our army to capture ammunition from the Japanese army were even worse: at that time, Japan carried out a severe blockade of the revolutionary base areas in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia and Jin-Cha-Ji Border Regions on the battlefield in North China for ten miles and one pillar and eight miles and one fort, which was for the "cage policy." These large and small cages not only limit the inflow of military resources outside the border areas, but also shrink the scope of our military's activities to carry out large-scale operations. Around 1940, our army "had fewer big battles and more small battles", so there were fewer opportunities to capture enemy ammunition in large quantities: in the Battle of Dalonghua in April 1939, our army consumed and captured 50,000 rounds of Japanese ammunition;
However, in the Battle of Loess Ridge in November 1939, our army captured 53,500 rounds of Japanese ammunition and consumed 116,000 rounds of ammunition.
In the long run, the combat effectiveness of our army will certainly be affected.
Therefore, there is only one way left before our army: it must have the ability to build its own bombs, and Chairman Mao also proposed at the meeting during the War of Resistance Against Japan:
"Every base area must do its best to set up its own arsenal, to the extent that bullets, rifles and grenades can be made, so as to ensure that guerrilla warfare is free from the risk of lack of arms."
However, with the "great sweep" of the Japanese army and the "great blockade" of the nationalist army, Mo said that bullets, and even the introduction of raw materials such as copper and saltpeter for making bullets became a problem. Therefore, the arsenals in the base areas can only find another way:
To make self-made reloads, in short, it is to collect old shells, load new gunpowder, and "build new from the old"
This is also the origin of the "red round head" bullet during the War of Resistance Against Japan.
(The growing problem of bullets in the Eighth Route Army around 1940)
Since 1941, the Eighth Route Army has launched a huge "movement to collect bullet casings", and fighters in various base areas have actively cleaned up the battlefield after the battle and collected bullet casings to assist the arsenals in the rear base areas to re-reload these bullets that have been shot out. Zhu De, commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, personally ordered in that year:
"Those who receive bullets in the future must exchange the bullet casings for bullets, one for one, otherwise they will not be fired."
Under the call to "collect bullet casings", the Eighth Route Army also launched many beautiful ambush battles during this period:
In the Linyi ambush battle launched by the 868th Regiment of the 115th Division, our army successfully ambushed a group of Japanese troops, although it could not completely annihilate them, but after the end of the campaign, more than 400 shell casings were collected on the battlefield.
And handed over to the superior, so he was praised by the superior. After that, the Attitude of the Eighth Route Army in collecting bullet casings was even more attentive, and some soldiers would find the specific location of the enemy and our machine gunners deployed at that time for the comrades who cleared the battlefield according to the memories of the war, so that our army could find more bullet casings from the discarded bullets shot out by the machine guns.
However, the Eighth Route Army's action of collecting bullet casings also gradually attracted the attention of the Japanese army, and for a time the Japanese army also carried out the activity of "collecting bullet casings", although for them, these bullet casings could not be replaced by old ones, but they also brought some trouble to our army. After learning that our soldiers searched for shell casings by recalling the location of the machine gunner,
The Japanese army even placed a cloth bag outside the shell window of the machine gun, and took away the shell shell shot out of the machine gun at one time.
This shows that the cunning of the enemy army at that time and the difficulty of our army's 14-year war of resistance were not easy.
(Japanese Machine Gunners)
Even if our army actively collects shell casings on the battlefield, it is still impossible to completely solve our army's ammunition problem: because bullets are mainly composed of two parts, the shells and warheads loaded with gunpowder, our soldiers can never find warheads from their comrades-in-arms, so the remaining part of the bullets can only be solved by their own manufacture. The main material of the warhead is made of lead and copper,
The Japanese 6.5 mm bullet was packed with a lead core inside the warhead and wrapped in copper armor outside the warhead.
For the Base Area of the Eighth Route Army at that time, lead ore was more readily available, but copper used to make warhead armor was very scarce. Later, the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army discovered that the copper dollars from the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty could be used as a substitute for the copper needed for warheads, so they collected these copper dollars from the Guangxu period, squeezed and beaten, and then poured lead into the interior, and finally produced bullets of soil in the border area. However, because this bullet copper is mainly derived from copper dollars in the Guangxu years, it is in
The appearance is also very similar to this copper element, showing a dark red color, so it is also called "red round head" or border area manufacturing.
After solving the shell casing and warhead, the rest is to solve the problem of gunpowder inside the ammunition: at the beginning of the birth of the red round head, our army mainly used black gunpowder made of potassium nitrate, sulfur and carbon, which was born in China at the end of the 9th century AD and later spread to all parts of the world, which can be called the originator of the world gunpowder. However, during the War of Resistance Against Japan, this kind of black powder exposed a more obvious drawback: that is, at the moment when the rifle opened fire, the burning gunpowder produced a strong black smoke, which not only affected the soldier's subsequent aiming, but also exposed the position of our army. therefore
Our army tried to improve the gunpowder of the "red round head" and make "smokeless gunpowder."
Initially, our army used the method of dismantling the Japanese artillery shells to launch cartridges and removing smokeless powder strips to fill our army's bullet gunpowder, but later because this method was too dangerous, it finally adopted homemade smokeless gunpowder:
In 1940, in Tang County, Hebei Province, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Industry Department made a pottery tower with a water tank
, successfully refined nitric acid and sulfuric acid. Since then, the "red round head" bullets of our army units have been equipped with smokeless gunpowder.
(Machines used by the Eighth Route Army Arsenal to produce smokeless gunpowder)
After many explorations and improvements on ammunition, warheads and gunpowder, the "red round head" bullet could eventually be used to kill all sides on the anti-Japanese battlefield, becoming a lingering nightmare for the Japanese army. However, because most of the raw materials of the "red round head" bullet are "old for new", it is still slightly inferior to the conventional bullet in terms of accuracy, and in the process of "red round head" launch,
Moving at high speeds causes a thin layer of copper quilts to fall off, revealing lead cores that sputter off wounds when hit on soldiers
It will bring similar great pain to wounded soldiers, which is why the Japanese army suspects that our army uses "dam bombs".
However, the power generated by the "red round head" bullet was not intentionally done by our army, but was indeed a product of last resort in the difficult environment at that time. After the War of Resistance Against Japan came to an end, the supply of bullets in our army gradually improved, and the "red round head" bullets disappeared into the long river of history on their own. According to relevant statistics,
From 1937 to 1945, the anti-Japanese base areas built 130 arsenals, with 20,000 employees and a cumulative production of 7.8 million rounds of bullets
In the years at the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the improvement in the quantity and quality of bullets produced by the arsenal was obvious to all. It was also the concerted efforts of the military and the people, and the people's hammer and plough, which finally repelled the Japanese invaders and enabled the Chinese nation to embark on the road of rejuvenation from then on.