1888, the Qing government was able to copy the Maxim machine gun. Why is it not mass-produced?

Do you know the 30 heavy machine gun?

This is the China shanzhai of American heavy machine gun M 19 17.

At first, an American arms dealer with a M 19 17 heavy machine gun found Wu, the head of the direct warlord, to promote the heavy machine gun.

The time is 192 1 year, and the Republic of China was founded1year.

After seeing the heavy machine gun M 19 17, Wu managed to stall the Yankee and then found the director of Hanyang Arsenal.

Hanyang Arsenal was the best gun factory in China at that time.

Wu asked, do you think this machine gun can be copied?

The director studied it carefully and said it could be copied.

So Wu put the hapless American arms dealer under house arrest on charges of arms smuggling.

Here, Hanyang Arsenal dismantled all the M 19 17 heavy machine guns and copied them one by one. It took half a year before and after, and finally the imitation was successful.

Wu released the Yankee, returned the heavy machine gun to him, and gave him some travelling expenses.

At that time, warlords in the Republic of China were fighting, the international community imposed an arms embargo on China, and it was illegal for American arms dealers to smuggle arms.

He had to eat YaBaKui, admit cowardice, and leave.

Originally, Wu was very happy, thinking that the imitation of American-made heavy machine guns was successful, so he would not have to spend huge sums of money to buy them in the future.

Who knows, this is a heavy machine gun, named 30 knots. The imitation was successful, but the performance was extremely unstable.

As long as you keep shooting, it's easy to break down, and it's rare to light up one magazine at a time.

Then, thirty knots is actually equivalent to being unavailable.

Wu was so angry that he called the director of Hanyang Arsenal and scolded him.

The factory director said that the structure of heavy machine guns is too complicated to be solved by disassembling fake parts and assembling them again.

In desperation, Wu had to take money to buy the transfer right of this technology from Browning Company in the United States.

After obtaining all the information, the serious quality problems of 30 sections were solved and some improvements were made.

Even so, when the factory was first built, the monthly output was only a few, and later it increased to 25.

Let me see, it is still difficult to copy heavy machine guns in the1920s, not to mention the late Qing Dynasty more than 30 years ago.

In fact, it was impossible to equip these things in large quantities in the late Qing Dynasty.

Aside from the quality problems of imitation, Manchu did not have the ability to manufacture a large number of heavy machine guns. Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, with the largest output in Qing Dynasty, only produced 1500 rifles a year.

As for the making of bullets, even Li Hongzhan, the minister of Beiyang, knows all about it. 1878, he complained in the memorial: only rifles and bullets are produced? In case of war, ten years' storage is not enough for several months. . When production is booming at ordinary times, it is not enough to fight alone.

You see, even the most basic rifles and bullets are seriously inadequate, let alone heavy machine guns. How much can we produce every month after more than 30 years!