It seems that Colonel Chatham is indeed a very friendly person. He did not hide anything from Fang Lang and even revealed to him the news that a convoy was coming today.
"Mr. Colonel, is there any room for maneuver here?"
Fang Lang's answer obviously confirmed Colonel Chatham's question.
After thinking for a moment, Colonel Chatham asked:
"you mean?"
"I am developing industry in Brazil, and of course I am in great need of machine tools. If I could find some high-quality and low-cost machine tools here, that would be great!"
"But these machine tools have been registered, and there is a special fleet responsible for transporting them back to France, which is not easy to operate."
Fang Lang didn't want to force it. If there were any irreplaceable equipment, Fang Lang would definitely find a way to transport them back. However, he didn't know what other equipment was there, so it was hard to say more.
After thinking for a while, he said:
...
...
"Colonel, I wonder if I can go inside these factories to see what kind of equipment they have."
Such a trifle was but a matter of words to Colonel Chatham.
"Of course, no problem. Do you need me to accompany you personally?"
"Mr. Colonel is very busy with his duties, so I dare not trouble you to make a trip. You can just arrange someone to take us on a tour."
Fang Lang mainly didn’t want to go out with this guy. If he was attacked, he would be in trouble.
"Oh well!"
After saying this, he turned to his adjutant:
"Adjutant, you take Colonel Fang to the machine tool factory in Stuttgart today. You must meet all of Colonel Fang's needs and ensure that Colonel Fang is satisfied. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
The adjutant stood at attention and saluted very decisively, then motioned Fang Lang to follow him.
Fang Lang was not polite and did not stay in Colonel Chatham's office for long. He expressed his gratitude directly and followed the adjutant out of Colonel Chatham's office.
As soon as I walked to the parking lot outside the headquarters, I noticed a very handsome young captain sitting in a Willys Jeep and parked downstairs of the headquarters.
When the other party saw the adjutant, he took the initiative to step forward and greeted the adjutant. Because both of them communicated in French, Fang Lang knew that the other party was a captain of the transport company named Gerard.
Although Fang Lang himself is also a young man, he is also somewhat curious about the existence of such a young captain in the French army.
On the way to the machine tool factory, he did not forget to sigh:
"The officer just now was really young!"
After hearing Fang Lang's sigh, the adjutant looked at Fang Lang and said, "Don't you even look at how old you are?"
"Yes! During wartime, capable young people are promoted very quickly."
This made Fang Lang feel curious:
"Oh! Is this Captain Gerard very powerful?"
After hearing this, the adjutant introduced it with great pride.
"Yes, although Captain Gerard is young, he is a veteran.
He joined the guerrillas when he was sixteen. During the war, they were often besieged by the Germans behind enemy lines.
Gradually, his comrades around him fell down, and at a young age he finally took up the banner of the guerrillas.
However, he had only been the leader of the guerrillas for two months when France was liberated.
He also joined the army and originally served as a company commander in a combat unit.
Two months ago, he took the initiative to apply to be transferred to the transportation company to serve as the transportation company commander.
Now we are mainly responsible for transporting the machinery and equipment dismantled from Germany to the designated factory in France according to the government’s plan.”
After hearing the adjutant's introduction, Fang Lang didn't think much about it. After all, no matter which country it is, there will be such people emerging when facing invasion. There is also a youth league in his hometown!
"That's really amazing. If you have the chance, please introduce me to such heroes in the future."
When the adjutant heard Fang Lang praising his comrade as a hero, he felt proud and said with a smile:
"No problem. They will rest in Stuttgart for a few days. I will introduce them to you next time we meet."
Fang Lang also expressed his gratitude after hearing this.
They chatted and laughed all the way to a large machine tool factory. Fang Lang discovered that there were French soldiers standing guard at the door. No wonder Mayor Jonas asked him to find the occupation headquarters.
The convoy stopped at the factory gate, and after a brief communication with the adjutant, the convoy was allowed to pass smoothly.
Soon the convoy stopped at the door of a huge production workshop. Accompanied by his adjutant, Fang Lang entered the long-awaited German machine tool manufacturer.
At first glance, this is a factory building with a height of more than ten meters, a width of more than forty to fifty meters, and a depth of nearly a hundred meters.
Unfortunately, the situation inside was far from what Fang Lang expected. Most of the huge production workshop was empty. From the traces left on the ground, Fang Lang could tell that many places were originally the locations of fixed machine tools.
However, now only some screws that fix the machine tools are left protruding from the ground in these places, and the number of remaining machine tools in the entire workshop should be less than one-fifth of the original number.
This disappointed Fang Lang. However, the remaining twenty or so machine tools were still working. Fang Lang was not an engineer by training, so he did not know much about machine tools.
However, I have seen some machine tools in TV and movies, and these machine tools in front of me are very similar in shape to the machine tools used in China in the 1980s.
Fang Lang's impression of machine tools is limited to turning, cutting, planing, milling, grinding, boring and the like, and he is not particularly clear about how to operate them specifically.
Originally, he thought that as a machine tool manufacturer, Fang Lang would have the opportunity to see what the legendary industrial hen was like. However, what he saw now seemed not much different from the machine processing workshop in his hometown in the 1980s.
Fang Lang looked around as he walked. When he reached the end of the workshop, he saw several craftsmen using tools to measure the processed workpieces. He curiously went over to take a look.
When the workers saw outsiders coming, they quickly stood up. Fang Lang smiled politely and asked:
"Master, what is the processing accuracy you can achieve?"
The translator next to him translated Fang Lang's question, and the master smiled shyly and said:
"0.01 millimeter."
This really shocked Fang Lang. Could such precision be achieved during World War II?
That's not right! Fang Lang seemed to have heard somewhere that the processing accuracy of the 88mm anti-aircraft guns produced by the Germans during World War II was 0.1mm! How come the processing accuracy here is 0.01mm!
If you don't understand, you have to ask. Fang Lang directly asked the question in his mind:
"Master, I heard that the processing accuracy of the 88mm artillery produced by Krupp can only reach 0.1mm at most?"
Soon the master smiled and said:
"That's the machining accuracy of the drilling machine. It's already very impressive that such a long artillery barrel can be drilled with a machining accuracy of 0.1 mm.
But we are a machine tool processing factory here, so the precision requirements must be higher in order to produce other machine tools with higher precision.”
At this moment, Fang Lang was filled with envy! He never thought that the Germans had achieved such a terrifying level of machine tool processing accuracy at such an early stage.
I couldn't help but give the master a thumbs up.
After leaving this workshop, Fang Lang came to an assembly workshop and saw workers combining and installing various parts together to form some basic machine tools.
Fang Lang understood that these were the machine tools that Germany could still produce, and the production of more advanced machine tools should be restricted.
It was estimated that there was nothing left to see in these factories, which made Fang Lang feel a little discouraged.
Looking at the empty workshops in the huge factory, Fang Lang sighed, thinking that he was too late. All the good things had already been snatched away by the occupying forces.
I just don’t know if we can recruit some advanced machine tool designers this time to go to Brazil and produce machine tools that can reach the current processing precision of Germany.
After a round, I went to the warehouse and saw a lot of machine tools tightly packed in wooden crates. Obviously, these were all ready to be shipped away.
Through the packaging, Fang Lang could tell that these were all recently produced by the factory and were not particularly advanced machine tools. In this case, Fang Lang could only shake his head helplessly and left the machine tool factory with a look of disappointment.
I don't even have the interest to visit the next factory.
Because Fang Lang knew in his heart that the French would not leave anything for the Germans.
The machine tools left here are not even as advanced as the ones Fang Lang brought back from the Japanese artillery factory.
At least, among that batch of machine tools, there were several large machine tools made in Germany for processing gun barrels, but the factory no longer has these equipment.
Thinking about how Germany's machine tools were able to quickly rise from this situation, I can't help but admire them.
It seems that talent is the ultimate driver of technological development! It should be right to recruit excellent machine tool designers and skilled workers. I believe that with excellent talents, we will be able to produce excellent machine tools.
After all, talent is the most valuable asset! In terms of processing technology, Fang Lang has heard that a master can easily process a screw rod for a lathe on the same machine tool, but some masters can only scrap a hundred pieces of material without a single success on the same machine.
The precision of the processing is even more different, so Fang Lang feels more and more that as long as he has excellent talents, the technical level will definitely reach excellent standards.
As for the machine tools needed by the factory in the early stage, it seems that they can only be purchased from Switzerland, Italy and the United States.
After leaving the factory, Fang Lang went straight back to the hotel, no longer pinning his hopes on obtaining high-quality, low-cost, ready-made machine tools from Germany.
After all, I am about to build an automobile industrial system in Brazil, which also requires a large number of machine tools.
Purchasing from abroad is a considerable expense. It would be great if we could directly use this opportunity to promote the localization of the machine tool industry.
I couldn't help but feel a little regretful. After all, I was not trained in engineering. Why didn't I think of first settling on the machine tool manufacturing plant and then introducing the automobile factory?
Thinking of this, Fang Lang did not hesitate and drove directly to the city government to meet with Mayor Jonas.
"What? You mean that your Aachen University of Technology established a machine tool laboratory as early as 1907?"
When Fang Lang arrived at the city government, Mayor Jonas was meeting with several outstanding mechanical engineers for the machine tool industry technical talent recruitment program that Fang Lang needed.
Two of them, intellectuals who looked to be almost fifty years old, were particularly eye-catching because it seemed that the people around them were mainly these two.
Seeing Fang Lang coming, Jonas naturally took the initiative to introduce them to each other.
Through the introduction, Fang Lang learned that several machine tool designers here actually graduated from the same university, and the two old gentlemen were outstanding talents from the machine tool laboratory of Aachen University.
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