Wu Yunduo, known as the "Paul of China", is a famous military engineer in China, and an autobiographical novel based on his real experience, "Giving Everything to the Party", has touched generations of Chinese. In 2009, he was named "100 Heroic And Exemplary Figures who made outstanding contributions to the founding of New China". The reason for his glorious selection is not only that he developed gun grenades and flat-fire guns under extremely difficult conditions during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, nor was he not only the famous "82 none" who presided over the development of the famous "82 none" in the 1960s, but the most important thing is that from 1947 to 1949, during his work in Dalian, he made major achievements in the manufacture of artillery shells, especially the design of shell fuzes, and made a major contribution to the victory of the Liberation War.
Wu Yunduo, who had just arrived at Dalian Jianxin Company
At the end of 1946, with the all-out offensive of the Kuomintang army being crushed, our army won victories on various battlefields one after another, capturing a large number of relatively advanced breech artillery made by Japan and the United States, but there was a serious lack of supporting steel breech shells, and the original arsenals in the base areas were all built out of ugliness, and could only produce mortar shells, gun grenades, and other breech shells with cast iron body. The Kuomintang army has begun a new round of so-called "key offensives."Our army has prepared a strategic counteroffensive in the local areas, and the form of war is gradually changing from guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare to large-scale offensive and position warfare.
The Japanese 75 mountain guns captured by our army during the Great Counteroffensive in 1945
Taking advantage of the fact that the Dalian area in the northeast at that time was under the control of the Soviet garrison and the remnants of heavy industrial enterprises such as Dalian Machinery, Manchuria Chemical, and Dahua Steelmaking, our party dispatched Comrade Zhu Yi to lead a large number of cadres and technicians to Dalian in early 1947, and together with Han Guang, secretary of the Brigade Dadi Committee, made many representations with the Soviet side to win over the relevant factories to our side for management and use by the garrison authorities, thus establishing a relatively complete joint arms industrial enterprise, including steelmaking plants, artillery shell factories, fuse factories, copper shell factories, and gunpowder factories. Internally, it is called Dalian Ordnance Industry General Factory, and externally it is called Dalian Jianxin Company.
Wu Yunduo participated in the installation of the hydraulic press of the Yuhua factory for suppressing the shell body
In order to build Dalian into an important rear military base to support the Liberation War, in the early spring of 1947, Wu Yunduo, who had just been married for more than a year, together with other former new Fourth Army ordnance and technical cadres sent to the northeast to work, assembled in the Jiaodong area in batches, and then crossed the sea from Yantai to Dalian and went to the Ganjingzi area to start establishing a new joint production enterprise. According to the arrangements made by his superiors, Wu Pingzhou, former deputy political commissar of the Military Industry Department of the Second Division of the New Fourth Army, served as the political commissar of the Jianxin Company and the director of the Yuhua Factory (the shell factory), and Wu Yunduo served as the deputy director of the company's engineering department and the director of the Hongchang Factory (the fuze factory).
At first, The company copied the Japanese 75 mountain shell and the Type 88 "Yamano ka" fuze, which was relatively backward in structure and performance
Everyone worked in a sleepless manner, only thinking of producing their own new breech shells as soon as possible. Wu Yunduo was busy preparing to build a fuze factory, helping the Yuhua factory to install a hydraulic press for the manufacture of shell shells, and also innovating to solve the technical problems of the cartridge embedding. The production began to be a Japanese-style 75 mountain shell, which has been in contact with people for a long time and has a relatively mature technical mastery. However, due to the lack of special shell steel, after the trial production of the first batch of finished shells, in order to test whether their explosive power and the number of fragments are qualified, in order to find out whether the heat treatment process of the projectile body is appropriate, it is still necessary to carry out a stationary explosion test on the shell. On September 23, 1947, Wu Yunduo, together with Wu Pingzhou and Liu Zhen, deputy director of the Yuhua Factory, used the soil method to conduct relevant tests. However, during the test, due to a late fire accident of a shell, Wu Pingzhou died on the spot, only 31 years old, Wu Yunduo was seriously injured, the lower end of his right leg was blown up, his right wrist was broken, and the only remaining right eye also burst into a small piece of shrapnel. Ye Ying, Wang Xujiu and other factory technicians, who were Wu Yunduo's colleagues in the New Fourth Army, went forward and continued to study on the basis of them, changed to the method of electric ignition, and finally completed this test in November and obtained accurate results.
Statue of the martyr Wu Pingzhou who died gloriously in the stationary explosion test
Wu Yunduo was in a coma for more than 1 month before he woke up. Others are in the hospital bed, their hearts are in the factory, and when they think that the war is at a critical juncture and the shells are urgently needed ahead, they cannot rest in the hospital. Soon after he was able to sit up, based on his previous experience in dismantling fuzes and the information he had read about fuses, he began to write a pamphlet called "Gossip Fuzes" from his hospital bed to popularize the basic knowledge of fuzes among workers. He also invited a female teacher to teach himself Japanese so that he could translate Japanese materials on fuzes and explosives. In April 1948, just after being able to walk on the ground, Wu Yunduo asked his superiors for permission and set up a small laboratory in the hospital to try to develop high-grade explosives.
With the deepening of the War of Liberation, our army captured more and more American artillery, and the demand for American artillery shells was also increasing
At this time, the situation on the battlefield is changing in a direction favorable to our army, and a strategic decisive battle will soon be launched in the northeast, north China, and other places. At that time, our army had captured a large number of US-made 75 mm howitzers, which were relatively light and powerful, and were very suitable for combat tasks such as fire support and urban attack, and the captured US M48 series 75 shells had better performance, especially the M48 fuze used, which was more perfect than the Japanese Eighty-Eight Type "Wild Mountain Plus" fuze performance, more sensitive to fire, and safer to use. According to the requirements of the superiors, dalian jianxin company began to prepare for the imitation of the American 75 mountain shells, and the task of equipping the new shells with new fuses was once again entrusted to Wu Yunduo. He moved drawing boards, workbenches, tongs, and tools into the ward and began to study fuzes day and night.
Wu Yunduo risked his life to dismantle the Fuze of an American M48 shell many times
In the absence of any information, in order to imitate a fuze, it is first necessary to disassemble it, so as to clarify the working principle, and then map the size of each part, and then test the agent in it, analyze and clarify its composition, in order to lay a good foundation for imitation. However, fuses are very sensitive and extremely dangerous to disassemble, especially in the case of unknown construction. Compared with the 88-type "Wild Mountain Plus" that was already mastered at that time, the structure of the m48 fuze was more complicated, and the number of parts reached as many as 77. In order to remove the sample of the agent in the fuze, Wu Yunduo had to use the most dangerous method, using two wooden boards to clamp the fuze, clamping it tightly with a tong, and then using a knife to dig out the metal sealing piece little by little. As soon as the first fuze saw the white potion, it exploded with a "bang", and the steel opening of the tongs was also broken, and the debris punched a large hole in the ceiling. But as soon as the comrades who heard the noise left, Wu Yunduo clipped the second fuze to the tongs and continued to risk his life, slowly peeling off the sealing sheet until he finally took out the sample.
The standard charge M48 high-explosive grenade with m48 fuzes is fully stocked
On January 24, 1948, the imitation of the American 75 Mountain Shell was successfully trial-produced, and to commemorate this day, the product was also called "one-two-four" shell. Although the shell was successfully developed, it lacked a supporting American fuze, and the performance could not be maximized. In the middle of this year, Wu Yunduo, whose wounds had not yet healed, returned to the factory on crutches, continued to engage in research work in the production line, and concurrently served as the director of the factory's fireworks laboratory. He first designed a connection device, so that American and Japanese shells with different screw sizes can achieve universal fuzes and solve emergency problems. Then, despite fatigue and continuous combat, he dissected multiple m48 fuze objects, made them into sections, carefully measured and studied each part, and finally mastered the structural principle of this new fuze, and improved it according to the actual conditions of the factory. While comparing the fuze sections he had made, he pressed the drawing with his crippled left hand and drew the drawing with his right hand, and finally completed the final assembly drawing in September.
The "one-two-four" type artillery shells produced by Dalian Jianxin Company
In the winter of 1948, under the auspices of Wu Yunduo, the first batch of imitation M48 fuze samples were successfully manufactured, and their performance met the requirements after live-fire tests. The superior approved it to be included in the factory's 1949 annual production plan, and it is planned to produce 500,000 rounds of imitation M48 fuzes throughout the year. Wu Yunduo led the whole factory staff, from raw materials to production processes, to solve one difficulty after another, and worked closely with the Yuhua factory that produced shells, in the first quarter of 1949, a total of 60,000 rounds of imitation American 75 mountain shells with imitation American fuzes were produced. This batch of shells is characterized by the appearance painted white, so it is also called "white shells". With the joint efforts of Wu Yunduo and his comrades-in-arms, until the beginning of 1951, Dalian Jianxin Company produced a total of 541,700 Japanese Type 38 and Type 9475 mountain shells, Type 124 mountain shells and imitation American 75 mountain shells during the four years of existence, and produced 656,000 Japanese Type 88 "Wild Mountain Plus" fuzes, Eighty-Eight grenadier fuzes and imitation American M48 fuzes, making indispensable contributions to the victory of the Liberation War and the establishment of New China.
In the Battle of Huaihai, former migrant workers used carts to push shells made in Dalian to support the front line
However, the 60,000 imitation American mountain shells were produced late and did not catch up with the three major battles. In the Battle of Huaihai, although our army fired more than 200,000 shells made in Dalian, and even some leaders attributed the victory of the battle to the small carts of Shandong migrant workers and the "big shells" made in Dalian, they did not actually include these 60,000 shells. At the same time, because the progress of the Liberation War was much faster than expected, under the new situation, the construction of a new company in the second quarter of that year suspended the production of imitation American fuzes and mountain shells. The 60,000 imitation American mountain shells produced by this were not in vain, and were finally used on the battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and played a huge role in dealing a heavy blow to the US imperialist invaders. According to the feedback of the volunteer army representatives who returned to China in 1951, they all believed that the "white shells" on the battlefield were the best to use, and there was never a problem such as bore bombing, and the hundreds of bore bombs that occurred in the entire War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea were all caused by Japanese or imitation Japanese shells after inspection. This also indirectly proves the reliability of this fuze designed by Wu Yunduo.
Volunteer artillery covered enemy positions with artillery fire and covered tank and infantry charges
The imitation M48 fuze has also played an important reference role in the development of domestic shell fuzes, and is a key transition from the old non-insurance fuze to the more advanced all-insurance fuze. In the 1950s, on the basis of the introduction of Soviet data, the 523 factory developed from the Hongchang factory finally successfully trial-produced a full insurance fuze, which realized the complete isolation of sensitive fireworks components such as detonators and explosives columns, and avoided the explosion of artillery chambers and export explosions. The fuze of a domestic shell finalized in 1987 is still evolved from the m48 fuze. Therefore, the imitation M48 fuze developed by Wu Yunduo has a milestone significance in the history of domestic fuzes. Later, the book "Shells and Fuzes" edited by Ye Ying deliberately included the imitation M48 fuze general installation drawings from the hands of Wu Yunduo, who only had a primary school education, leaving an eternal memorial for the descendants of the military-industrial front.
Although the Hongchang factory no longer exists, a statue of Wu Yunduo is still erected in Dalian Park