21 August 1917
Imperator Pax
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21 August 1917
He watched the electric bulb flicker. His thoughts were really elsewhere. When he'd been a cadet the Academy had made a point of showing them, the prospective corp of engineers, one of the brand new commercial power plants. It was a whole new concept back them. Electrical needing to be piped in from offsite had only become a thing really that decade. But there was more and more demand for electrical power, for bottled lightning, and it made more sense to have a big power plant somewhere... and that meant you could just wire houses to have electric lighting... and well not just houses. "And?" Allen shook his head to clear the cobwebs, and lifted his drink, "The Fukien clique doesn't have the money to run those ships, it doesn't matter."
"Sun has a navy now." The englishman remarked more emphasis on Navy, as if that changed things.
"So he's what going to turn to piracy? Or is going to run off to intern them in Japan. Sun does not have the money to man and pay for those ships. Those ships need maintenance, they've sat up in harbor for years now." and the lack of the use of the navy since 1915 made more sense now, "If the Fukien clique thought he did I think they seriously overestimate what the south's finances are." Not with the war on. "What you asking for, what has he possibly got?"
"He approached the Canton legation, British support in exchange for a declaration of war. You haven't heard anything about this?"
Allen sipped, the thought occured to him that Sun might have assumed he could potentially barter China's navy as an asset for the war... but that didn't add up the ships weren't really up to it... "He's a little late." It had been a little odd that Sun had been adamant about staying out of the war but it did make sense he wanted a little qui pro quo in exchange for going along, "Duan has the consent of parliament," How much strong arming he might have had to do for some seats was up in the air, but with the 'Research clique' and the 'communications clique' had certainly helped local down the finances side of things... if there was going to be any kind of problem it was going to be to the south. "No I haven't heard anything about this Percy." Besides of course the railway and the army, there was of course there were all the other things. The RPF had been a long time ago now, a long time, that had been a quick rustling, little more than a posse thrown together short term, part time at first... with the differences in how businesses differed between the countries, they needed to shift some things around, but they couldn't just copy Japan's model.
It was the matter that was more his focus, than... a bunch of rust buckets. That wasn't fair to the navy, but damn it, what good were they going to do anybody. "What do you think they'll do?"
"Go back to Duan or Feng, at least nominally." Someone had to pay the bills, and prestige was the main reason to even keep up a navy... Duan wasn't going to just write the expense off, and Feng ... well that was a harder question. "Get one of them to agree to abide by the constitution," per the agreement from... before the whole mess with Zhang Xun putting the toddler back on the throne... this year was insanity.
He remembered looking back after 1914 and thinking how insane that year had been, and 1917 had well blown it away....so for that if Powell wanted to be ambitious then let him.
"John Allen?"
"Sorry," He exhaled, and then clipped the question as a drawl on the words, "you going to tell me about your Parliamentarian?"
The conversation went that direction in name only. Percy couldn't tell him much so blustered on about social niceties, and so forth. Apparently the man was something of an academic, he probably would have gotten along well with Reinsch. The Minister could have done with another academic who was involved in official foreign service work or whatever... even Percy thought so. "You really can't tell me any more than that, come on Percy."
"There really isn't anything that comes to mind. Very fascinating ideas about the interplay of nations and the role geography has in shaping nations but what can I say beyond that." Mackinder didn't seem to have served in the army or navy. Percy probably would have mentioned that directly... but it also made sense the English Army, the actual British Army while larger than its American counterpart had still been small, and the Royal Navy had devoured the bulk of British spending on defense.
--
The gradual modifications to uniforms, and their manufacture had been simple enough. Dress uniforms were hand fitted for officers and some utility uniforms had Chinese sleeve work which had some practical utility in the field, but it wasn't standard. The true utilitarian changes to the uniforms had begun with changes to the shoulders in 1913, no epaulets. Then changes to the stiching for machine needles to deal with wear and tear in the field triple aught needle work to shore up sleeves, and gussets. Larger pockets, and more pockets, four on the chest. It went on like that , and it went both ways, the Army's dress jacket had turned into the preferred business jacket, slim fit, large pockets, but as much that Europe wasn't exporting as much in fashion these days.
Those manufacturing tasks had been picked up by clothing shops with machine tooling otherwise meant to produce men's wear for the states. It was part of the reason they hadn't considered going for anything in different colors until Cullen had slipped in that the Gendarmes pattern uniforms while identical in cut were to be in black.
"Tch, the navy? What good are those bastards." Cole snorted pulling a handful of six and half spitzers for his scoped rifle, and adjusted the position of his legs feeding them into the internal magazine. He cocked his head towards the piece of wire strung sheet metal, "What do you make that twenty twenty five mile winds."
Allen looked over, "Closer to twenty five," He replied looking at the movement of the trees bending under the western wind.
The hundred twenty three grain spitzer had more of a crack than the thunderclap of a larger 200 gr eight mill. There was a chime as the piece of steel was rattled at eight hundred yards the far right edge having taken the impact right before the wind gusted.
"So what do you think the doc is going to do?"
Allen shrugged, he still didn't think Sun had the money to actually keep the ships up, but that could be why he was ferretting around for British support, "What do you think?"
"He might follow everyone else's recent example, say Canton is independent."
"That's a thought." Allen replied. It might even make things simpler.
Cole eased the bolt back on the rifle, "British money, with the way Duan is accusing him of silver dollars coming from Kaiser Bill?"
He thought back to his comment at the beginning of the year, and then to the conversations in spring. "I would have thought he'd have been taking money from the Japanese. Something like the loans Qirui is taking from Mister Nishihara. The notion it might be German money," It was possible, "It might explain Sun Yat-Sen's opposition to declaring war." Or not. China was a big country. Sun taking the navy and running south put a lot of space between him and Peking... a navy was always going to be pricier than an army... the sea tried a lot harder to kill a fella.
Regardless of who his foreign backers were that kind of money meant he'd be able to pay for troops, and weapons. At the very least he'd be able to carve a niche out in the south. How much, that was the question.
The rifle shouldered as the wind died back down, "On the other hand it could be bullshit to try and erode the support Sun has in the national assembly." That seemed a bit more likely, but stranger things had happened.
"Are you the slightest bit worried about this?"
"Naw, I reckon that's your job. Big stuff is your job brother John, I'll do the detail work" He rang the plate again.
--
They had filed back in the study, short Elliot Kemper and young Carter, "Now." The Texan rumbled, "Say he does say Canton is independent, what then, you can't hold a city with just ships."
Which meant it would probably only last until one of the warlords down south got tired of him, and muscled him out of the rich port city. "Then of course he'll," Presumably he meant Duan, but it wasn't clear, who Cullen meant, "say something about the 1912 constitution to placate the navy." Or whoever else wanted to cling to the document written after the Fall of the Qing publicly. It hadn't been worth the paper it had been written on, and it had never really had much in the way of legal standing before Yuan Shikai had tossed it into the trash.
They continued through the bookshelf lined room, and the Texan blew a breath out, "I suppose they'd have a better point if they'd written the damned thing after they'd toppled the Qing," Or at least something they could claim had actually succeeded the provisional constitution, "So as to say it was what they were fighting for."
Allen was tall, but Bill had almost half a foot of height over him. "What is that?" He asked finally. He had originally thought it was a 1911 but now that he was beside the other man it was clearly not.
"Oh, yeah me and Sam," The other Georgian tossed a look at the two taller men, "took another look at Lewis's idea. The open bolt idea," He shrugged noncommittally, "If it was automatic then you could excuse the weight, because it'd need to be. I was nearly in favor to scrap the whole idea. Fifteen rounds though." He whistled, "This is provisionally mind you the P.45/15. We took Lewis's mag idea," Sam snorted at the 'we', the Texan was using "and built a Browning for it." The gun had a strangle toggle where the magazine release button was on his model 1911. Seeing his look, "Yeah, we took Lewis's magazine release and rotated it ninety degrees to make it ambidextrous. If you look at the magazines you can see where it locks in as well," That more or less confirmed to him that Bill planned to have a second pistol whenever he could needle Griswold into it. "It'll actually take with the way we did the magazine well standard 1911 magazines, but they do wobble in the well."
The gun would probably fit his hands well enough, but it would be too large for most men. The 1911 with its single stack magazine was quite ideal in that respect, though some people needed time to adjust to the sights. It was increasing in popularity over its only real rival the Mauser 96. There were still a number of various revolvers used, but they, and handful of other semi automatic pistols were steadily falling behind. With it nearly impossible to get guns from Europe though even the Broomhandle was losing ground to the 1911 pattern pistols now being produced domestically. The Lugers remained popular but harder to get than the the Mauser pistol.
"The swiss have a set of tooling for that," Cole remarked, handling the pistol, "I saw it when I was looking after our office out there, I think they're the only other ones with a set outside of Germany. Mausers, Tsingtao's arsenal has the tooling to make copies of the 96," and they probably weren't the only ones. Certainly Spain and Italy had tooling if not one of the other arsenals in China.
Sam took the large frame automatic from Cole, "I've been talking shop with Yan's chief machinist, he's worked up a forty five caliber one that runs." To forestall questions, "Its hand made, lovely vine engraving." He made a bunch of squiggly winding motions with his left trigger finger. Before the war had broken out one of the 1906 batch Luger trials pistols had been given to Griswold from DWM's representative on account of their existing friendship with Paul Mauser and the licensing of his rifles. Serial no 5 was in Sam's reference case, but they'd never even considered production of it given that in 1913 there bloody well hadn't been a point... and in 1914 Belgium had been occupied and FN had needed hard cash and had the Browning patents for everything under the sun. That technically had made them beholden to FN's agreement of noncompetition for those patents for pistols in the United States or Canada but they hadn't been aiming to compete with Colt anyway.
--
Notes: A couple of things, firstly it is a little ahistorical that Shansi Machine Bureau / Taiyuan Arsenal would be working on the 96 45ACP this early. Hence the implication here that it is a tool room prototype.
Yan Xishan for whatever reason made the decision to adopt and standardize on 45ACP whether he believed in stopping power or whatever (which I doubt since I've seen pictures of him carrying what appears to be a colt 1903 the 'pocket hammerless'), he authorized the production of both pistols and submachine guns (including Thompsons) in Taiyuan in the late twenties. It is possible that Yan (as indicated here) had already made that decision, and he may have been convinced by his own experts that adopting the 45 made sense (but OTL I suspect that it probably didn't occur any earlier than 1919). Here though he has more reasons to do it earlier
Secondly there may be instances where 93 and 96 are misplaced. This is because originally there was a rifle conversation as well, but I noticed I was making that mistake and dropped most of that in favor of dealing with pistol development. So yes Luger tooling, IIRC DWM made a grand total of four Luger tool sets period through the entire history of the gun. (And two of them haven't been built yet IIRC) Mauser meanwhile had 96 tooling built or contracted out for or just tooling was made in the dozens. Colt and FN and Kongsberg, and everyone else who got tooling to make the 1911 that's really up there there were a lot of tooling sets by the end of world war 1. Its one of those facets of industrial history.
Which brings us to the 1911, the trick with the magwell is actually something that had been done a couple of times in history. You only really see it with niche guns. The Makarov had a service version that would take the original single stack magazines of the design as well the version specific expanded capacity. It never went anywhere. Double stack 1911s basically in the modern day all competition guns but its one of those zany prototype things people did back then (including turning the 1911 in the twenties into a machine pistol). Some of these changes will be incorporated later.
The ambi controls yes, the double stack mag, no that will wait really until when Xian, the Chinese Army and Navy, goes to 9mm after the war for service pistols (and goes to double action), but the controls yes those will change in Xian's side arms (With looking into the future the Air Force and Police largely remaining with the 45 single stacks, we will get to why later). The Grip Safety on the 1911 was requested by the US Cavalry because they liked it on the Luger. There will be mentions of the grip safety being pinned in place, and then in later domestic production runs it being one of the features that gets deleted to save time in favor of the manual safety on the frame
This also sets up for the adoption of a first generation submachine gun in 45 ACP (effectively a 45 acp version of the Lewis gun, which never went anywhere historically because Lewis was hated by Ordinance branch) and that will see some use later on, though as a specialist weapon (and getting into the trend of police usage of submachine guns during the interwar years) in the forthcoming years.
He watched the electric bulb flicker. His thoughts were really elsewhere. When he'd been a cadet the Academy had made a point of showing them, the prospective corp of engineers, one of the brand new commercial power plants. It was a whole new concept back them. Electrical needing to be piped in from offsite had only become a thing really that decade. But there was more and more demand for electrical power, for bottled lightning, and it made more sense to have a big power plant somewhere... and that meant you could just wire houses to have electric lighting... and well not just houses. "And?" Allen shook his head to clear the cobwebs, and lifted his drink, "The Fukien clique doesn't have the money to run those ships, it doesn't matter."
"Sun has a navy now." The englishman remarked more emphasis on Navy, as if that changed things.
"So he's what going to turn to piracy? Or is going to run off to intern them in Japan. Sun does not have the money to man and pay for those ships. Those ships need maintenance, they've sat up in harbor for years now." and the lack of the use of the navy since 1915 made more sense now, "If the Fukien clique thought he did I think they seriously overestimate what the south's finances are." Not with the war on. "What you asking for, what has he possibly got?"
"He approached the Canton legation, British support in exchange for a declaration of war. You haven't heard anything about this?"
Allen sipped, the thought occured to him that Sun might have assumed he could potentially barter China's navy as an asset for the war... but that didn't add up the ships weren't really up to it... "He's a little late." It had been a little odd that Sun had been adamant about staying out of the war but it did make sense he wanted a little qui pro quo in exchange for going along, "Duan has the consent of parliament," How much strong arming he might have had to do for some seats was up in the air, but with the 'Research clique' and the 'communications clique' had certainly helped local down the finances side of things... if there was going to be any kind of problem it was going to be to the south. "No I haven't heard anything about this Percy." Besides of course the railway and the army, there was of course there were all the other things. The RPF had been a long time ago now, a long time, that had been a quick rustling, little more than a posse thrown together short term, part time at first... with the differences in how businesses differed between the countries, they needed to shift some things around, but they couldn't just copy Japan's model.
It was the matter that was more his focus, than... a bunch of rust buckets. That wasn't fair to the navy, but damn it, what good were they going to do anybody. "What do you think they'll do?"
"Go back to Duan or Feng, at least nominally." Someone had to pay the bills, and prestige was the main reason to even keep up a navy... Duan wasn't going to just write the expense off, and Feng ... well that was a harder question. "Get one of them to agree to abide by the constitution," per the agreement from... before the whole mess with Zhang Xun putting the toddler back on the throne... this year was insanity.
He remembered looking back after 1914 and thinking how insane that year had been, and 1917 had well blown it away....so for that if Powell wanted to be ambitious then let him.
"John Allen?"
"Sorry," He exhaled, and then clipped the question as a drawl on the words, "you going to tell me about your Parliamentarian?"
The conversation went that direction in name only. Percy couldn't tell him much so blustered on about social niceties, and so forth. Apparently the man was something of an academic, he probably would have gotten along well with Reinsch. The Minister could have done with another academic who was involved in official foreign service work or whatever... even Percy thought so. "You really can't tell me any more than that, come on Percy."
"There really isn't anything that comes to mind. Very fascinating ideas about the interplay of nations and the role geography has in shaping nations but what can I say beyond that." Mackinder didn't seem to have served in the army or navy. Percy probably would have mentioned that directly... but it also made sense the English Army, the actual British Army while larger than its American counterpart had still been small, and the Royal Navy had devoured the bulk of British spending on defense.
--
The gradual modifications to uniforms, and their manufacture had been simple enough. Dress uniforms were hand fitted for officers and some utility uniforms had Chinese sleeve work which had some practical utility in the field, but it wasn't standard. The true utilitarian changes to the uniforms had begun with changes to the shoulders in 1913, no epaulets. Then changes to the stiching for machine needles to deal with wear and tear in the field triple aught needle work to shore up sleeves, and gussets. Larger pockets, and more pockets, four on the chest. It went on like that , and it went both ways, the Army's dress jacket had turned into the preferred business jacket, slim fit, large pockets, but as much that Europe wasn't exporting as much in fashion these days.
Those manufacturing tasks had been picked up by clothing shops with machine tooling otherwise meant to produce men's wear for the states. It was part of the reason they hadn't considered going for anything in different colors until Cullen had slipped in that the Gendarmes pattern uniforms while identical in cut were to be in black.
"Tch, the navy? What good are those bastards." Cole snorted pulling a handful of six and half spitzers for his scoped rifle, and adjusted the position of his legs feeding them into the internal magazine. He cocked his head towards the piece of wire strung sheet metal, "What do you make that twenty twenty five mile winds."
Allen looked over, "Closer to twenty five," He replied looking at the movement of the trees bending under the western wind.
The hundred twenty three grain spitzer had more of a crack than the thunderclap of a larger 200 gr eight mill. There was a chime as the piece of steel was rattled at eight hundred yards the far right edge having taken the impact right before the wind gusted.
"So what do you think the doc is going to do?"
Allen shrugged, he still didn't think Sun had the money to actually keep the ships up, but that could be why he was ferretting around for British support, "What do you think?"
"He might follow everyone else's recent example, say Canton is independent."
"That's a thought." Allen replied. It might even make things simpler.
Cole eased the bolt back on the rifle, "British money, with the way Duan is accusing him of silver dollars coming from Kaiser Bill?"
He thought back to his comment at the beginning of the year, and then to the conversations in spring. "I would have thought he'd have been taking money from the Japanese. Something like the loans Qirui is taking from Mister Nishihara. The notion it might be German money," It was possible, "It might explain Sun Yat-Sen's opposition to declaring war." Or not. China was a big country. Sun taking the navy and running south put a lot of space between him and Peking... a navy was always going to be pricier than an army... the sea tried a lot harder to kill a fella.
Regardless of who his foreign backers were that kind of money meant he'd be able to pay for troops, and weapons. At the very least he'd be able to carve a niche out in the south. How much, that was the question.
The rifle shouldered as the wind died back down, "On the other hand it could be bullshit to try and erode the support Sun has in the national assembly." That seemed a bit more likely, but stranger things had happened.
"Are you the slightest bit worried about this?"
"Naw, I reckon that's your job. Big stuff is your job brother John, I'll do the detail work" He rang the plate again.
--
They had filed back in the study, short Elliot Kemper and young Carter, "Now." The Texan rumbled, "Say he does say Canton is independent, what then, you can't hold a city with just ships."
Which meant it would probably only last until one of the warlords down south got tired of him, and muscled him out of the rich port city. "Then of course he'll," Presumably he meant Duan, but it wasn't clear, who Cullen meant, "say something about the 1912 constitution to placate the navy." Or whoever else wanted to cling to the document written after the Fall of the Qing publicly. It hadn't been worth the paper it had been written on, and it had never really had much in the way of legal standing before Yuan Shikai had tossed it into the trash.
They continued through the bookshelf lined room, and the Texan blew a breath out, "I suppose they'd have a better point if they'd written the damned thing after they'd toppled the Qing," Or at least something they could claim had actually succeeded the provisional constitution, "So as to say it was what they were fighting for."
Allen was tall, but Bill had almost half a foot of height over him. "What is that?" He asked finally. He had originally thought it was a 1911 but now that he was beside the other man it was clearly not.
"Oh, yeah me and Sam," The other Georgian tossed a look at the two taller men, "took another look at Lewis's idea. The open bolt idea," He shrugged noncommittally, "If it was automatic then you could excuse the weight, because it'd need to be. I was nearly in favor to scrap the whole idea. Fifteen rounds though." He whistled, "This is provisionally mind you the P.45/15. We took Lewis's mag idea," Sam snorted at the 'we', the Texan was using "and built a Browning for it." The gun had a strangle toggle where the magazine release button was on his model 1911. Seeing his look, "Yeah, we took Lewis's magazine release and rotated it ninety degrees to make it ambidextrous. If you look at the magazines you can see where it locks in as well," That more or less confirmed to him that Bill planned to have a second pistol whenever he could needle Griswold into it. "It'll actually take with the way we did the magazine well standard 1911 magazines, but they do wobble in the well."
The gun would probably fit his hands well enough, but it would be too large for most men. The 1911 with its single stack magazine was quite ideal in that respect, though some people needed time to adjust to the sights. It was increasing in popularity over its only real rival the Mauser 96. There were still a number of various revolvers used, but they, and handful of other semi automatic pistols were steadily falling behind. With it nearly impossible to get guns from Europe though even the Broomhandle was losing ground to the 1911 pattern pistols now being produced domestically. The Lugers remained popular but harder to get than the the Mauser pistol.
"The swiss have a set of tooling for that," Cole remarked, handling the pistol, "I saw it when I was looking after our office out there, I think they're the only other ones with a set outside of Germany. Mausers, Tsingtao's arsenal has the tooling to make copies of the 96," and they probably weren't the only ones. Certainly Spain and Italy had tooling if not one of the other arsenals in China.
Sam took the large frame automatic from Cole, "I've been talking shop with Yan's chief machinist, he's worked up a forty five caliber one that runs." To forestall questions, "Its hand made, lovely vine engraving." He made a bunch of squiggly winding motions with his left trigger finger. Before the war had broken out one of the 1906 batch Luger trials pistols had been given to Griswold from DWM's representative on account of their existing friendship with Paul Mauser and the licensing of his rifles. Serial no 5 was in Sam's reference case, but they'd never even considered production of it given that in 1913 there bloody well hadn't been a point... and in 1914 Belgium had been occupied and FN had needed hard cash and had the Browning patents for everything under the sun. That technically had made them beholden to FN's agreement of noncompetition for those patents for pistols in the United States or Canada but they hadn't been aiming to compete with Colt anyway.
--
Notes: A couple of things, firstly it is a little ahistorical that Shansi Machine Bureau / Taiyuan Arsenal would be working on the 96 45ACP this early. Hence the implication here that it is a tool room prototype.
Yan Xishan for whatever reason made the decision to adopt and standardize on 45ACP whether he believed in stopping power or whatever (which I doubt since I've seen pictures of him carrying what appears to be a colt 1903 the 'pocket hammerless'), he authorized the production of both pistols and submachine guns (including Thompsons) in Taiyuan in the late twenties. It is possible that Yan (as indicated here) had already made that decision, and he may have been convinced by his own experts that adopting the 45 made sense (but OTL I suspect that it probably didn't occur any earlier than 1919). Here though he has more reasons to do it earlier
Secondly there may be instances where 93 and 96 are misplaced. This is because originally there was a rifle conversation as well, but I noticed I was making that mistake and dropped most of that in favor of dealing with pistol development. So yes Luger tooling, IIRC DWM made a grand total of four Luger tool sets period through the entire history of the gun. (And two of them haven't been built yet IIRC) Mauser meanwhile had 96 tooling built or contracted out for or just tooling was made in the dozens. Colt and FN and Kongsberg, and everyone else who got tooling to make the 1911 that's really up there there were a lot of tooling sets by the end of world war 1. Its one of those facets of industrial history.
Which brings us to the 1911, the trick with the magwell is actually something that had been done a couple of times in history. You only really see it with niche guns. The Makarov had a service version that would take the original single stack magazines of the design as well the version specific expanded capacity. It never went anywhere. Double stack 1911s basically in the modern day all competition guns but its one of those zany prototype things people did back then (including turning the 1911 in the twenties into a machine pistol). Some of these changes will be incorporated later.
The ambi controls yes, the double stack mag, no that will wait really until when Xian, the Chinese Army and Navy, goes to 9mm after the war for service pistols (and goes to double action), but the controls yes those will change in Xian's side arms (With looking into the future the Air Force and Police largely remaining with the 45 single stacks, we will get to why later). The Grip Safety on the 1911 was requested by the US Cavalry because they liked it on the Luger. There will be mentions of the grip safety being pinned in place, and then in later domestic production runs it being one of the features that gets deleted to save time in favor of the manual safety on the frame
This also sets up for the adoption of a first generation submachine gun in 45 ACP (effectively a 45 acp version of the Lewis gun, which never went anywhere historically because Lewis was hated by Ordinance branch) and that will see some use later on, though as a specialist weapon (and getting into the trend of police usage of submachine guns during the interwar years) in the forthcoming years.
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