Artillery is not a single object, but a conglomerate of various technologies. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

During the day, in addition to eating, the craftsmen spent the rest of their time in their respective sheds researching and designing the things that needed their own pieces of drawings to make samples, and at night, everyone gathered together to discuss how to put these things together and become a sample of a cannon.

Xia Hongsheng holds the concept of not doing it, if you want to do it, you must do it as advanced as possible, and make artillery.

In fact, the earliest and simplest artillery, at the current level of the Datang Military Machinery Workshop, does not need to be so time-consuming and laborious to make. But the drawings that Xia Hongsheng drew for them were not so simple.

The drawings drawn by Xia Hongsheng are actually at the level of the mid-nineteenth century in later generations.

Originally, the redcoat cannon was a front-loading cannon, that is, the projectile was to be stuffed through the exit of the front end of the barrel. The intermittent firepower of this kind of front-loading gun is relatively large, and there are also many obvious defects in terms of rate of fire, firing range, and accuracy. In the period from the time when artillery became an artifact on the battlefield to the middle of the nineteenth century, no matter how innovative artillery technology was, its main premise was the same, and there was not much change. It can be said that the innovations are limited to the length of the barrel, the diameter of the barrel, the thickness of the barrel wall, the overall performance of the explosive charge and the weight of the projectile, the improvement of mobility, the improvement of the establishment, and the change in tactics and shooting technology. While these changes increased the power of artillery, they did not change the way it was used. Artillery is generally a smoothbore front-loading gun, which fires solid ball shells, and some guns fire spherical explosive shells, shotguns, and howitzer shotguns.

For artillery, the most historic reform was the emergence of rifling, as well as the rear-loading style brought about by the appearance of rifling.

The rifling is the threaded line in the barrel, one convex and one concave, the concave part is called the yin line, and the raised part is called the yang line. It can be said to be the soul of the barrel. The role of rifling is to give the warhead the ability to rotate, so that the muzzle velocity of the warhead has been greatly increased, and after the discharge, it can still maintain the established direction.

The original rifled guns were rifled, and the main purpose was to facilitate the frontloading of the projectile. This artillery has a slow rate of fire, low accuracy of fire and a short range. In order to increase the range of the artillery, people began to experiment with spiral rifled guns, firing long explosive shells with conical heads. The spiral rifling rotates the projectile and stabilizes the flight, which improves the power and accuracy of the gun, and increases the range of the gun.

But rifling alone is not enough. Because of the front-loading method, the speed is too slow. Gun barrels are divided into smoothbore and rifled. The so-called smoothbore means that there is no rifling in the barrel, it is straight and smooth, and the soldier can directly load the projectile from the muzzle into the barrel. In the barrel of the rifling, because the projectile must be embedded in the rifling in order to rotate with the rifling and enter the barrel, the diameter of the projectile must be greater than the diameter of the male wire of the rifling, which makes the loading very laborious, and the soldier often needs to hit the feeding stick with a hammer to load the projectile into the chamber. As a result, the rate of fire was reduced to a third of the smoothbore, or even slower. Such a low rate of fire was intolerable for the army - before a single shell was loaded, the enemy had already rushed in front of it and cut it down.

Therefore, the experiment of the rear-loading method began again. The rear-loading method actually appeared very early, but the rear-loading method is not as suitable for smoothbore guns without rifling as the front-loading method, so it is not popular. Because in smoothbore guns, the projectile is often smaller than the diameter of the barrel, and the rear loading is easy to leak out the gunpowder and block the barrel. The appearance of the projectile shape of the breech and the pointed vertebrae makes up for this shortcoming.

The early rear-loading guns, which China had prevented during the Ming Dynasty, were the Furlong machine guns. However, the Franc cannon was smoothbore.

Xia Hongsheng's drawing, to put it simply, is to make the rear loading method of the Franc cannon above the red-coated cannon, and then add rifling to the barrel of the red-coated cannon. A movable gun carriage was also added.

Of course, there are many types of artillery, but at present, Xia Hongsheng wants to concentrate on making this improved rear-loading rifled red-coated cannon to become a deterrent weapon, and then let those people in the military aircraft workshop study various artillery for other purposes.

Therefore, when the craftsmen were discussing the drawings and samples, Xia Hongsheng pulled the old blacksmith who was the leader among these blacksmiths, the master who was dug from the imperial court as a supervisor, Master Mao.

Master Mao turned his head and saw that Xia Hongsheng gave him a look, so he immediately understood and walked out with Xia Hongsheng.

"Master Hou?" Coming out of the shed, Master Mao asked.

"Master Mao, in terms of cannon barrels, this is another very difficult and difficult task, I think that among the blacksmith masters in our military machine workshop, only you can have this skill." Xia Hongsheng lowered his voice and said to Master Mao: "I have to talk to you about this matter alone." ”

Master Mao nodded: "Master Hou, you command." ”

Xia Hongsheng said: "This part can be said to be the most important part of artillery. Because it's too important, too confidential, and too difficult, I don't think others can do it, so I didn't draw it on the drawings. ”

Master Mao was stunned for a moment, and then listened intently to Xia Hongsheng and continued: "This thing is called rifling. There are two threads, one convex and one concave, roughly speaking, just like the screws used in our military machine workshop, the threads are elongated. This thing is made on the inside of the barrel, so it is difficult to make. I guess you've got to be in the battle yourself. ”

"What does Master Hou mean by carving a spiral line into the barrel? When the projectile comes out, won't it have to collapse along the spiral? Master Mao made a gesture of turning, frowned, and said: "It's not difficult to carve a spiral line on the inner wall, in fact, it's just the same as when we made internal threads in our military machine workshop." The difficulty is that the barrel is too long to reach! ”

"Yes, that's why I think you're the only one who can figure it out." Xia Hongsheng sighed and said: "Also, the degree of rotation of this spiral, as well as the width of the interval, are not clear, you have to try to find a number that can make the projectile shoot the farthest, the most stable, and not turn around." It's going to be a tough job again. In addition, you have to pick a few people who can do it most trusted. Don't let too many people know that there is one of these things in the barrel. ”

Master Mao thought for a moment and nodded: "Okay!" Master Hou, the old man has a number in his heart. However, the old man had to think about it for two days, and the old man had to think of a way to carve threads into the inner wall of the barrel. (To be continued.) )