1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 66 Artillery ([-])

The inspection that Liu Xingli said was not to drag the newly released gun out for test firing, but to check the shape and size of the product against the design drawings to see if it meets the requirements of the design standards.

Yan Chujie took out a tape measure, and started to check every dimension of the two guns against the design drawings, including length, caliber, barrel wall thickness, and barrel depth. The flashlight scanned the inside of the barrel. Five minutes later, Yan Chujie said that the dimensional accuracy of the two guns had fully met the design requirements, and there were no obvious flaws in appearance.

However, the strict inspection procedures do not end here. The Ministry of Industry also brought a portable ultrasonic flaw detector to check whether the two guns have internal defects such as cracks and pores.This is not a big fuss about the Ministry of Industry, but Liu Xingli's initiative.This is the first time for everyone to cast a cannon, and Liu Xingli is not fully sure about it. If there are any mistakes, the consequences may become very serious.Of course, if the quality of these two guns is up to standard, then today's gun casting process will be carried out as a standardized procedure, and there will be no need for such troublesome detailed inspection when casting guns in the future.

Taking advantage of the inspection by the Ministry of Industry, Yan Chujie asked Liu Xingli, "I just touched the barrel of the gun with my hand, and I feel that it is smooth, but it is not smooth. Should I use a boring machine to deal with it?"

Liu Xingli shook his head and said: "The smoothbore gun doesn't need to be treated so meticulously. After the finalization, we use the central cooling casting method, and the smoothness of the gun chamber will be better than it is now. It will not be too late to finish the gun bore after the rear-mounted rifled gun is installed. Having said that, there is no way to deal with it now, our horizontal boring machine is still on the 'New World', and I don't know when it will come in handy."

Yan Chujie nodded when he heard the words, then turned to Baix and said, "Mr. Bai, those machine tools of yours have been installed on the ship and never been unloaded. When will they be put into use?"

There was a small metal processing factory before Baix crossed, so almost all the processing equipment of the executive committee was organized by him.Bai Kesi heard Yan Chujie's question, and his expression was also very helpless: "The unloading ship can be unloaded at any time, but the question is where do you put it? Before installing the machine tool, the floor of the workshop is to be hardened, and now the people in the construction department are almost They are all busy with the hydropower station, and the cement production capacity is not enough. No one can help me build a factory! Besides, even if the machine tool is installed, there is not enough power available now. I think the fastest time to wait for the hydropower station to start operation Only after that."

Several technical backbones of the Ministry of Construction did not come here today. Among these people, only Tao Donglai had a post in the Ministry of Construction, so the task of explaining the Ministry of Construction fell to him: "This hydropower station project It’s impossible to think fast, although the labor force is enough now, but the cement and concrete have to take time to wait for them to dry, so it’s useless to be in a hurry.”

Yan Chujie sighed and said, "Last night it was so lively, I decided to use the breech gun. I went back after the meeting and was so excited that I couldn't sleep at all. In the end, I could only use this kind of clumsy old-fashioned artillery."

Tao Donglai patted him on the shoulder and comforted: "Okay, these old-fashioned cannons are not made in vain. They will be used to train artillerymen in the future and practice basic skills and tactics. ."

The two guns themselves are not large, and the people from the Ministry of Industry quickly completed the flaw detection and found nothing abnormal.At this point, the on-site acceptance stage of the artillery has come to an end, and the next step is to go to the field for test firing.

In order to avoid unnecessary riots, the shooting range preset by the Military Police Department was not near Tian Du's No. [-] base, but on the large sandbar at the estuary of Tian Du River to the east of Victory Port.After the pirates attacked last time, Yan Chujie once led a team to chase down the escaped pirates, and found that this place is flat and uninhabited. The east side is full of mountains, which is very suitable for setting up a shooting range.So under his suggestion, the Military and Police Department used it as a recent shooting range for artillery and guns.

Before leaving the factory, the two guns were finally passed through the scale, and they were both around 220 kg, with a weight difference of less than 200 grams. Compared with the weight of guns of the same caliber in this era, the weight of the guns often differed by several kilograms or even dozens of kilograms. The metallurgical workshop These newbies can already be called masters.

A few local laborers in the metallurgical workshop took the two cannons and more than 30 rounds of shells to the pier and loaded them onto the ship with trolleys, and the irrelevant people dispersed. Several people from the chemical engineering team.

The reason why there are people from the chemical team is because they have to go to the scene to see how the gunpowder is used.The chemical team was a little bit luckier than the people in the metallurgical workshop. They had been notified by the Military and Police Department a few days ago to try out the artillery to fire gunpowder. Fifty kilograms of granular black powder were handed in as scheduled before the shooting, and for ease of use, they were divided into 250 grams per pack.

In terms of the level of technology in this era, silk is undoubtedly the most suitable material for artillery propellant packs. However, at present, there is no channel for importing silk in large quantities, and it is impossible to use this expensive commodity to make medicine packs, so we can only use it. Temporarily replace with rough paper.But even this is already at the international advanced level.You must know that the most powerful gunner in Daming is only based on personal experience. Before firing, he roughly judged how many kilograms or taels of charge he needed, but he did not have the concept of quantifying the gunpowder and making standardized medicine packs.

Of course, the power of the products produced by the chemical group is still on paper for the time being, and the real use effect can only be reflected in the actual launch.But at least in the two directions of gunpowder granulation and customized packaging, the chemical group has been far ahead of its counterparts in this era.

In addition to saving gunpowder, saving time and improving the firing speed of artillery on the battlefield, the use of standardized gunpowder has two very important functions.

The first is to determine the optimal charge for the gun.The so-called ideal charge is that when all the gunpowder in the gun chamber is completely burned, it just pushes the cannonball to fly out of the muzzle.If the charge is too large, the gunpowder has not been fully burned, and the shell has been released from the chamber, then part of the gunpowder is actually wasted.If the charge is too small and the shell is still in the chamber when the gunpowder burns out, the friction between the shell and the chamber will reduce the muzzle velocity of the chamber.

Considering that the gravitational effect of different firing angles of the artillery on the shell will change, the ideal charge is not static, so it is even more necessary to install the powder pack to simplify the operation process of artillery firing.

The second function is that with the help of the ideal charge, a very practical shooting table can be formulated, that is, the relationship between the shooting angle, the charge and the range.In actual combat, as long as the gunners directly refer to the artillery firing table and adjust the shooting angle and charge, they can effectively hit the target at a certain distance, and the gunpowder can be said to be born for this artillery tactic.With this tactic, the gunner no longer has to rely on experience and luck when firing, all they have to do is to determine the range of the firing range, and then shoot the target according to the firing table, and the real lethality of the artillery on the battlefield will be greatly enhanced.

This method of calculating the range by adjusting the amount of charge and exerting the performance of artillery has actually appeared in Europe as early as the 16th century. European gunsmiths even attached a special gun to the factory artillery to measure the amount of gunpowder. scale bar.At the end of the Ming Dynasty, when the Portuguese sold artillery to China, they also exported their artillery tactics, and sent some artillery instructors to the Ming army to teach this more advanced combat concept.However, the gunners who mastered this technology immediately regarded it as a unique secret technique to keep their jobs, resulting in this "advanced technology" not being widely spread among the artillery units at all.

Along with the artillery arrived at the shooting range, there was also a gun mount sent by the wood workshop.Because the size of the gun was only determined in the middle of the night last night, only one gun mount was driven out of the woodworking workshop with heavy production tasks recently.But the sturdiness of this gun mount is very satisfactory to the Military Police Department. Its weight alone reaches nearly [-] kilograms, and four solid wood wheels are installed below it for easy movement.Cai Hongzhan even clapped his chest and made a package. If the gun mount fell apart during the test firing, he would immediately resign as the current woodworker foreman.Of course, everyone swore at him and didn't take it to heart. Chuanzhong was just such an old carpenter. If he resigned, he would find someone else to work in the carpentry workshop.

In order to measure the range and accuracy of the artillery, people from the Military and Police Department came here early in the morning to set up earth-made targets at different distances.From 300 meters to 1000 meters, every [-] meters, there is a half-meter high, three-meter-long mound as the target and distance marker.The mound is marked with white lime, which can be clearly seen from a distance.On the back of the artillery erection position, a small reverse slope was specially built with soil, so that the artillery mount could reset itself after the artillery was fired.

A semi-enclosed U-shaped trench was dug out at the side and rear of the artillery erection position. This is for safety reasons, allowing observers to enter the trench during the artillery test firing, which can effectively cover the body.

Seeing that they were almost ready, Tao Donglai signaled that Yan Chujie could start the artillery test firing.In addition to Yan Chujie, the gunners in charge of the test firing of the artillery today include Wang Tom, Qiao Zhiya, and Morgan who had experience in firing front-mounted artillery.

(End of this chapter)