The sea breeze in the middle of the night was unusually fresh, and Kan Shu was wearing the same uniform as the sea and land in blue-gray and strolling on the deck. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

According to Xuanjun's regulations, if a staff officer wants to be promoted to a higher position, he must have work experience in a front-line combat unit, which is also a precautionary measure to fully tap the ability of officers and to avoid the appearance of people who talk on paper among middle and upper-level officers.

Chen Xin talked to him specifically about the unit in which Kanshu was served, and originally according to Chen Xin's intentions, he wanted Kanshu to go to the field unit of the expeditionary force.

At present, the main force of the Xuan Army is adjusting its new establishment and tactics, and there will be no major battles in a short period of time, but it will only clear up the rebellion in the Kyushu region, and occasionally land on the island of Honshu of the Wa Kingdom to carry out a surprise attack, and the intensity of the battle is more suitable for training people.

However, Kanshu was unwilling, and at his own request, he was transferred to the raiding fleet formed half a year ago as the deputy captain.

The assault fleet is now the main force in the war against the Japanese state, and their tasks are:

striking at the maritime power of the Japanese state;

blockade its maritime trade, fishing and other economic activities, and cut off the enemy's finances and arms imports;

intercepting the smuggling of enemy troops into the Kyushu administrative region;

With the cooperation of the intelligence department, the enemy shipyard was burned and the marines were carried to destroy the enemy's domestic grain area;

Carry out raids on special targets in enemy territory with Ranger units or reconnaissance and search units.

In the half-year blockade raid on the Japanese kingdom, Kanshu performed excellently, provided suitable battle plans many times, effectively attacked the sea power of the Edo shogunate, and successfully intercepted two enemy sea crossing operations, and finally accumulated merit not long ago and was promoted to the rank of captain, and took the captain's exam, defeated most of the opponents with excellent results, and became a real captain.

Now this ship is the latest assigned to Kanshu, the new warship produced by the shipyard, originally as an improved model of the fast crab-9 type, was designated as the fast crab-10 type, in the past, every time the improved model of the fast crab completed the sea trial, the navy will send the previous fast crab model to the shipyard for upgrading, as far as possible to make all the fast crabs closer to the combat effectiveness of the new model.

However, after the fast crab-10 was finally built, the Admiralty believed that this model had changed too much and was not suitable as an improved template for the fast crab and was not accepted, but finally after sea trials, the strong performance of this type of ship impressed the Admiralty, and the Navy decided to allocate funds to purchase this ship, and the ship was rowed out of the fast crab model separately, named the Sea Shark class, and continued to upgrade and develop.

As the first captain of the Seashark-class lead ship, Kan Shu defeated 15 officers who also took the exam to get this position, including 2 Tiger Ben, and he was full of pride as the first person in the navy to defeat Tiger Ben.

It was a particularly slender and graceful boat, with its bow sticking out like a shark's head, and the waterline slightly concave inward.

After carefully wiping the steering wheel, the data of the ship resurfaced in Kanshu's mind.

Thanks to technological advances in steel keels, the ship's length-to-width ratio was not the 4:1, or 3:1 that was common in this era, but instead reached an astonishing 6:1.

It is 54 meters long, 9 meters wide, 5.4 meters draft, and has a displacement of 500 tons, which is indeed much larger than the previous 200-ton fast crab.

Kanshu sometimes can't help but wonder, "Could it be that those technicians in the shipyard are tired of the manufacture of fast crabs and deliberately made such a ship to relieve their boredom." Still, it's a good ship. ”

When you look up, you can see the white sail, which is another big change, the fast crab used a hard sail in the past, and when it reaches the sea shark level, it is replaced with a soft sail.

And the height of the mast has also been greatly increased, directly reaching 40 meters high, because there are not so thick and tall trees, cast steel masts are used directly, and masts are also installed between the upper and lower sails of each mast.

The foremast, mainmast, and aftermast are all hung with huge mainsails and topmast sails with sail widths exceeding the width of the ship, and additional spinnakers such as rope sails and wing sails, plus a spinnaker hanging on the mast with the hollow bow sticking upwards, the sail area is extremely amazing, and the speed of the ship can reach an astonishing 20 knots (1 knot equals 1.8 km/h) with a full sail downwind.

This speed, in this era, is unthinkable, and it is this super-speed that impresses the Admiralty to make them willing to pay for this unplanned ship, otherwise the shipyard will wait to lose money this time.

At the first glance of the ship, the Admiralty decided that the width of the ship was relatively narrow, and it was not suitable for large-scale use of artillery.

However, the clever shipyard technicians solved this problem at the beginning of the design, using the proven all-steel keel technology and using a special steel in large quantities in key parts of the ship, which can reduce weight and live for a long time without sacrificing sufficient strength.

Because the bow of this type of ship must be slightly raised in order to sail quickly, the bow gun cannot be installed, and with the low freeboard, the number of guns is still slightly weaker than that of a professional warship of the same displacement.

However, this defect is no longer a problem after the development of a new type of artillery at the Ordnance Factory. Although due to the lack of production capacity of the new guns, there are only 2 guns on the left and 1 stern on the ship, and a total of 5 75mm caliber long-barreled breezed guns, Kanshu is confident that he can sink any wooden ship of this era.

Because the rifled gun uses a pointed projectile, it is much stronger than the round iron egg in terms of armor-piercing ability, and in the case of the same caliber and charge, the armor-piercing effect of the pointed bullet is at least 3 times that of the circular projectile, plus the rotation effect brought by the rifling, the penetration can be increased by at least 5 times.

For rifles with relatively small calibers, lead bullets cannot be used due to lead problems, and copper bullets cannot be processed accurately enough to stably manufacture copper bullets with a small caliber of 18.5mm.

On large-caliber artillery, this problem is relatively easy to solve, for 75mm such a large-caliber gun, it does not matter if the machining accuracy is a few millimeters worse, anyway, it is loaded from the back threaded gun latch, the ductility of copper is relatively good, and it can be successfully extruded through rifling under high pressure, complete rotation, and increase range and penetration.

Of course, the ordnance factory has not yet had the luxury of using all-copper shell warheads, 75mm rifled gun shells, after wrought iron casting, when casting, leaving a circular pit in the thickest part of the middle, and finally in this pit, pour a copper cartridge belt, this place will be slightly larger than the caliber of the gun breech, when passing through the rifling, the rifling will squeeze the copper cartridge belt, and then drive the entire warhead to rotate.

Kan Shu very much hoped that all the 34 gun positions reserved on the ship could be equipped with this 75mm breeched rifled gun, but after going to the ordnance factory to see the production of this kind of gun, Kan Shu died, the processing of the threaded gun bolt is too difficult, and if you are not careful, the manufactured gun bolt will leak and burn the gunner.

For the safety of his crew, Kan Shu decided to wait patiently for the ordnance factory to produce fully qualified artillery.

Anyway, the current 5 guns are enough to clean up the country, after the use of high-strength steel and central water cooling technology, the 75mm diameter has reached 20 times, and the 13-kilogram warhead can be fired, but it can achieve the power of the previous 30-kilogram long-barreled heavy cannon, while the weight of the artillery is only one-fifth of the 30-kilogram long-barreled heavy cannon, that is, 1000 kilograms.

The ability of the gun to be loaded from the rear with shells slightly larger than the muzzle caliber had a huge advantage that it did not have before, and that was that the gun could fire at negative angles.

The shells of the smoothbore gun are smaller than the muzzle, once the muzzle is tilted, the shell will fall out, and the small-caliber light smoothbore gun can be loaded with a barrier device in front of the shell to achieve the ability to shoot downward, but the large-caliber artillery, the shell is often dozens of catties, and it is completely impossible to use this method.

The breech gun is completely different, it is completely possible to tilt the muzzle downward and fire at the enemy's waterline, which is the key point of the ship's vital point, where it can be considered to be incapacitated.

Before World War II, the Little Devil Navy practiced long-distance and small-angle shooting on the sea surface in a vain attempt to penetrate the waterline of the enemy's battleships from a long distance by means of shells, and listed this tactic as a "decisive battle winning tactic for the Grand Fleet."

Although this way of fighting is very unreliable, it also shows the Navy's thirst for breaking through the waterline, as long as one shell penetrates the waterline, even the huge steel battleships of later generations will have to return to the factory for overhaul, not to mention the wooden ships of this era.

In the current era of the world's smoothbore guns, rifled guns have a range and lethality far beyond the same caliber artillery, and also have the ability to shoot down that is impossible for large-caliber smoothbore guns.

While he was wiping the rudder, the lookout on the foremast held up his binoculars and shouted, "Captain, see land." ”

Kanshu immediately regained his mind, returned to the captain's room, opened the toolkit, calculated the current position according to the astronomical stars, and then carefully checked the map under the oil lamp.

He muttered to himself, "The right location." He packed his things and walked to the cabin.

In the cabin, on the deck where the artillery was supposed to be housed, Kanshu found the commander of the army unit who needed to be transported this time, and the other party was sleeping.

Kan Shu stepped forward and shook the other party awake and said, "Comrade Captain, wake up, the destination has arrived, you need to be ready, we don't have enough time." ”

Zhao Qingyu opened his confused eyes and forced himself to wake up, and he also understood what the comrade captain in front of him meant.

Since the continuous raids on the Wa Kingdom began half a year ago, the Wa people have deployed a large number of peasant soldiers in the coastal areas to guard them, and now if they want to sneak into the Wa State, they can only take advantage of the dark period of time, and they must move quickly.

"Okay, Comrade Captain, please make preliminary preparations, and I will gather the troops immediately."