"That virtuous nephew thinks that it is better for the sailor to wait for another month, or to immediately launch a 'counterattack' against the Japanese state?" Li Xiaogong asked again. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Xia Hongsheng thought for a while and said, "Back to my uncle's words, my little nephew thinks that we might as well wait for him for a month." ”

"Oh? If food is not a problem, why wait an extra month? Li Xiaogong asked.

"In order to complete the battle." Xia Hongsheng said with a smile: "Now the Tang Dynasty is too dominant compared to the Wa Kingdom, even if the Wa Kingdom fights for the whole country, for the Tang Dynasty, it is not much different from the people in the same city as the Datang." If the cost of stepping on an ant is not much different from that of stepping on an ant, why don't we just wait for the ant to write more and step on it more? Therefore, the little nephew thought that we could wait for him for a month, wait for the Japanese to gather all the sea ships and mobilize all the troops, and then go to seek revenge, so that in one fell swoop, we could cripple and wipe out all the main forces of the Japanese state. First, to eliminate as much military strength as possible, and second, the strength of the whole country of the Japanese is not as strong as a few warships of the Tang Dynasty, which is also an extremely powerful deterrent to the Japanese State, so that the Japanese State no longer dares to confront the Tang Dynasty sailors. ”

"Makes sense." Li Xiaogong nodded: "To trample on one ant is the same as to trample on ten ants, both are the power of one foot." Why don't you wait for a few more to crawl and trample them to death together. Moreover, the virtuous nephew said that gasoline should be used against the warships of the Japanese State, and firearms should be used against the Japanese soldiers on the shore. It's just that this time I went to Kagoshima, and this king calculated carefully. In order for the ship's stone thrower to drop bombs on the enemy's line on the shore, it is necessary to dock to the extreme. The soldiers of the Japanese state will not stand and wait for death, once they see the power of firearms, they will retreat and leave the range of the stone thrower. The ship's stone-throwing machines were used to throw firearms, but no more stone-throwing machines were brought ashore under the cover of firearms, and continued to maintain the advantage of firearms on the shore. The terrain of Kagoshima is not conducive to horse warfare. After the soldiers landed on the shore, they had to build defenses to withstand the impact of the Japanese soldiers, and then dismantle the ship's stone throwers and transport them ashore before they could break the city with firearms. According to this king, this move is time-consuming and labor-intensive. After the soldiers landed, they surrounded Osumi and made the people who remained in the castle open the gate and rush in. ”

Xia Hongsheng was stunned for a moment, and his heart was about to use the power of firearms to make the Tang army see another way of warfare, and gradually change the extensive form of warfare that relied on manpower to fight, but if the catapult could not throw the bomb far enough, then it would still need to rely on manpower to besiege the city, and it would not reflect the huge power and deterrence of hot weapons.

The shooting form of the catapult is short, and it can be pushed directly to the front of the city during the siege of the city. But if it is at sea, the place is a ship, a living thing, and it can be moved, and the limitation of short range is highlighted. In addition, if a landing battle is carried out by sea vessels, the scope of fire cover will also be limited to a range that is not long enough, which is not conducive to the next action after landing.

Thinking about it this way, the firing of the catapult is too close, and it is indeed impossible to keep up with the development of the use of firearms, and it is impossible to maximize the advantages of firearms at sea.

This issue must be addressed.

It's just that...... Xia Hongsheng sighed, this son can't be a cannon!

In the industrial revolution made the weapons manufacturing industry use power machine tools to finish steel artillery, rifled guns and breech-loading guns also began to equip the army, the theory and tactics of artillery shooting in Napoleon's practice of new development, at the same time, due to the progress of chemistry, picric acid explosives, smokeless gunpowder and **** began to be used in the military, before the power of the cannonball increased exponentially, the redcoat cannon was the most advanced, the most powerful, the farthest artillery.

In China, during the Ming Dynasty, artillery based on the same principle as the red-coated cannon appeared, which was earlier than the "Hongyi cannon" created in the West, that is, the red-coated cannon. The self-made large-caliber firecrackers in the early Ming Dynasty were exactly the same as these Hongyi cannons in principle, and they were all front-mounted smoothbore fire door ignition type, but the specific production was very different. In the early Ming Dynasty, most of the guns were made of copper, the inner chamber was trumpet-shaped, the barrel was thin, and the barrel was too short for its caliber, and its appearance was basically the same as the earliest existing Yuan Dynasty "bowl mouth gun". Compared with the Hongyi cannon, this kind of firearm has less gunpowder filling, and the gunpowder gas is not well sealed, so the firing range is short, in addition, it is easy to overheat, and the rate of fire is also slow, although it is not easy to explode with copper as the material, but the cost is higher (copper is the metal that casts money), and copper is too soft, each shot will cause the barrel to expand, the shooting accuracy and range drop very quickly, the life as a weapon is too short, and the only advantage is light weight. It's okay to put a few sounds to scare people with such a cannon, but if it is really used on the battlefield, I am afraid that the threat to oneself is no less than the threat to the enemy.

The red-coated cannon, after the Ming Dynasty introduced it from the Netherlands, was imitated and improved. After the improvement, the barrel of the Ming Dynasty's red-coated cannon seems to be made of steel, and the outer part of the steel is wrapped with copper, which means that the barrel is composed of two layers. In this way, the hardness of steel can avoid barrel deformation and chamber expansion, and combined with the toughness of copper, the risk of explosion can be greatly reduced, and the durability of the barrel can be improved.

It can be said that before the achievements of the industrial revolution were applied to military weapons, this red-coated cannon improved by the Ming Dynasty, with a variety of different types of ammunition developed by the Ming Dynasty, was one of the strongest long-range weapons.

For example, the flowering shells of the DPRK have great power for bombarding the army, and can destroy the enemy's living forces to the greatest extent, and Nurhachi was killed by the shrapnel of the flowering shells. For a long time, the Houjin cavalry did not dare to attack strategic places such as Ningyuan, Jinzhou, and Shanhaiguan, which were equipped with Hongyi cannons, which was the credit of the red-coated cannons introduced by the Ming Dynasty.

It is a pity that the Qing army later relied too much on the red-coat cannon, and no longer developed other firearms, nor did it improve and upgrade the red-coat cannon, but only blindly increased the weight in order to increase the firing range, and the manufacturing process of the artillery was far behind the West. During the First Opium War, the cannon of Humen Fortress weighed 8,000 catties, but the firing range was not as good as the British naval guns, and after the Second Opium War, Jiangyin Fortress was equipped with 10,000 catties of iron cannon "General Yaowei". These cannons seem to be mighty, but in fact the range is not as good as those Hongyi cannons imported from the Ming Dynasty, coupled with the loss of special ammunition techniques invented by the Ming Dynasty such as flowering shells, resulting in a lot of losses in the confrontation with the British army. The middle of the nineteenth century, however, was a period of great changes in Western weapons, and artillery technology was greatly improved. On the other hand, the artillery of the Qing Dynasty still used mud fan cast cannons, resulting in a large number of trachoma in the cannon body, frequent explosions, and the processing of the inner chamber was also very rough, the crosshairs no longer existed, the skills of special ammunition such as flowering shells were lost, and the artillery skills of the soldiers who lacked scientific knowledge were not as good as those of the Ming Dynasty, and they were even more unable to resist the invasion of Western powers.

Xia Hongsheng traveled to visit Humen in his later life, saw those red-clothed cannons, and also saw the red-clothed cannons of the Ming Dynasty displayed in the museum, and the basic structure can be roughly recalled. But the skills involved in this are not at all, and I don't understand them at all.

The red-coated cannon now seems to be the most suitable weapon for the ironclad ship of the Datang Naval Division, and it will also be the strategic deterrent weapon of the Datang Dynasty, and its status in the Tang Dynasty at this point in time is probably no less than the nuclear deterrent force in the future. It is a real important weapon of the country.

"Uncle, let's return to Ryukyu, the little nephew immediately writes a secret letter, and sends it to His Majesty as quickly as possible, please ask Your Majesty to send some of the craftsmen in the military machine workshop to Ryukyu, and the little nephew will try to make a weapon that can protect the invincible opponents of the Tang Dynasty for hundreds of years!" (To be continued.) )