I want to be emperor

Chapter 227 The Crying Child

Luo Zhixue was very satisfied with the series of drills of the five-jin bronze cannon.

This kind of artillery is much more powerful than the two-and-a-half catty field artillery, the main force of the rural protection army.

In the precise bombardment within 500 meters, the hit rate of this five-jin bronze cannon is quite amazing, and more importantly, it is powerful.

Especially at a distance of 500 meters to 800 meters, the power is much greater, and the hit rate is also higher. This means that the field artillery units of the Township Protection Army can completely attack clusters at a distance of 700 meters or even further. The target is bombarded with coverage.

The previous two-and-a-half-pound field artillery, after a slightly longer distance, let alone the problem of hit rate, even the power is far from enough.

As a result, the Township Protection Army basically rarely launched shelling on enemies at a distance of more than 700 meters, and more often the shelling distance was within 500 meters.

Even at a distance of 500 meters, the lethality of a two-and-a-half-pound field gun is not good, and it often takes about 350 meters to obtain a more objective lethality.

But now, this five-jin bronze field gun still maintains considerable lethality at a distance of 700 meters.

Even shelling a target 1000 meters away has some lethality.

The installation of this new type of field gun will directly increase the long-range attack distance of the rural protection army from about 600 meters to 800 to 1000 meters.

Of course, the hit rate of bombardment at this distance is relatively average, and only large-scale cluster targets can be covered by bombardment.

But the problem is that in wars these years, regardless of whether it is the rural protection army or the Ming army, they are all playing in dense arrays. When fighting in the wild, they are all assembled by huge infantry phalanxes.

Under such circumstances, even if the hit rate of long-distance coverage shelling is not good, a certain shelling effect can be obtained.

In addition to being more powerful, what Luo Zhixue valued very much was that the weight of this five-jin field gun was controlled in a relatively good range, and its maneuverability was good.

Field cannons, those that can run in the field are called field cannons, and those that cannot accompany infantry marching and maneuver in the field are not considered field cannons.

After watching a few rounds of live ammunition shooting from the five-pound bronze field cannon, Luo Zhixue watched another round of live ammunition shooting from the two-and-a-half-pound bronze field cannon, and watched live ammunition shooting from the mortar.

There is nothing new about these. The reason why I still watch it is purely that since I have come here, I can’t say that I just watched the test firing of the five-pound field gun and left.

The other artillery units in the First Artillery Regiment also wanted to show off in front of Luo Zhixue.

As a good boss, occasionally you still have to give your subordinates a chance to act aggressive.

After watching the live ammunition tests of other artillery pieces, Luo Zhixue inspected the barracks and infantry training while he still had time.

That night, Luo Zhixue hosted a banquet for the military generals, mainly artillery officers, to have a talk and boost morale.

In this regard, Zhang Malin, the director of artillery, is very happy.

Although the First Artillery Brigade was downsized into the First Artillery Regiment, Zhang Malin, who had been serving as the commander of the brigade, also resigned. .

Today, although Zhang Malin is no longer serving in the field troops, he is still the most important artillery general in the Rural Protection Army, responsible for the construction of the artillery units of the entire army and the command of large-scale artillery operations.

As the leading figure in the artillery, Zhang Malin was naturally happy to see Luo Zhixue attaching importance to artillery.

After the banquet was over, Zhang Malin came over to find Luo Zhixue at the end of the banquet, saying that he was reporting the recent development of the artillery.

Luo Zhixue could also see that Zhang Malin was simply looking for an opportunity to get close and avoid being marginalized.

But he didn't object. It's a good thing that his subordinates took the initiative to come to directly report to work, and their enthusiasm should not be suppressed.

Zhang Malin saw that Luo Zhixue seemed to be in a good mood, and immediately added a few more words to complain: "Your Majesty, the overall development of the artillery departments is still relatively good, and the First Artillery Regiment has begun to replace the five-jin field artillery. It is estimated that there will be another whistle installed next month.”

"However, the current artillery output is still relatively limited. Now, except for the first artillery regiment, which is fully staffed, the other four artillery regiments are far from being fully staffed!"

"Among the current artillery units, apart from the first artillery regiment, which is fully staffed and is preparing to gradually replace it with five-pound field artillery, the second artillery regiment, the third artillery regiment, the fourth artillery regiment and the guard artillery regiment, The current number of artillery is much worse!"

"The Second Artillery Regiment now only has eighteen two-and-a-half-pound iron cannons, the Third Artillery Regiment only has twelve, and the Fourth Artillery Regiment has only six second-hand iron cannons transferred from the First Artillery Regiment for the time being!"

"The Guards Artillery Regiment only has twelve iron cannons!"

"It's still difficult for our artillery now!"

Listening to Zhang Malin's complaints, Luo Zhixue didn't say much. Zhang Malin's complaints were useless. The production of artillery was only so small that it was impossible to meet the needs of several artillery regiments in a short period of time.

The Xiangyang Arsenal has gradually entered the peak production capacity of the original design, but according to Ding Gangyi's report, the artillery production capacity of the Xiangyang Arsenal has now shifted to five catties of bronze field cannons, and the number of two and a half catties of bronze field cannons is start to decrease.

At present, only twelve five-jin field guns and nine two-and-a-half-jin field guns can be produced each month.

This output is already the output after working overtime, and the large-scale equipment used for large-scale artillery has also been used to the limit. Even if there is a subsequent increase, it will not increase much.

If you want to expand production capacity, you can only build a new artillery factory.

Luo Zhixue is clear about this, and Zhang Malin is also clear about it directly. After all, the artillery from the arsenal is basically taken over by the artillery director, and then distributed to the artillery units.

The director of artillery also has someone who stays at the Xiangyang Arsenal all day long to supervise the production of artillery.

Marin knows exactly how many copies there are in this output.

And the reason why he complained today was because Luo Zhixue was in a good mood and complained habitually.

After all, children who cry have more milk to drink.

Zhang Malin wanted to build up the artillery unit of the Rural Protection Army and make it the most important unit in the Rural Protection Army. Naturally, it required Mr. Ge's hard work, especially for blowing the wind to Luo Zhixue from time to time.

It's just that Zhang Malin doesn't know yet. In fact, Luo Zhixue is more aware of the importance of artillery than Zhang Malin himself, and he also pays more attention to the application of artillery than he does.

Cannon is the god of war, Luo Zhixue has never forgotten this.

It's just that food needs to be eaten bite by bite, and the road needs to be walked step by step. This army also has to expand step by step.

——

The next morning, after Luo Zhixue finished the morning meeting, he went out to inspect again, this time to inspect the new construction and refitting of the navy's warships, and also to see the construction of a large number of ordinary small boats that were expected to be used to cross the river. .

In this battle across the river, in order to send more troops across the river as soon as possible to avoid the formation of refueling tactics, the Township Protection Army needed to gather more ships at once.

Only in this way can the beachhead be held in the event of the enemy's counterattack, and then cover the engineering troops to build the pontoon bridge.

Therefore, the Township Protection Army is now searching for ships everywhere, and at the same time urgently building some small ships and even rafts.

After arriving at the naval camp outside the city, Lu Xingye, Minister of the Navy, pointed to a piece of houses along the river in front of him and said, "Your Majesty, this is the shipyard dedicated to our navy. ship."

"After we entered Hanyang, the gentry's house was ransacked because of his stubbornness, and the shipyard fell into the hands of the Ministry of Industry. After the Ministry of Industry sent people to renovate it, it became our main shipyard!"

"We also had a shipyard in Xiangyang City before, but it was too small in scale and had limited technical capabilities, so we could only build some ordinary small inland river vessels. Now that we have this Xiangyang shipyard, our [-]-material warships are only able to make their own."

"However, it takes time to build new ships, so in order to catch up with the follow-up crossing operations, our navy decided to refit the existing warships and some transport ships, mainly to install artillery, to improve the combat effectiveness of our navy when it comes! "

Luo Zhixue listened and watched. The ships in front of him were refitted or newly built. They were nothing new. They were traditional inland warships commonly used by the Ming army. There were still a large number of ships on both sides of these ships. What about paddles.

But at the current level of technology, it would be nice to have a slightly more reliable warship, and there is no way to pursue better ships.

Anyway, the ships of the Inland River Navy of the Ming Army on the opposite side were not doing well.

When the time comes to fight, the competition will be the firepower of both sides and the hand-to-hand combat ability of the marines.

As for these two points, the Rural Protection Army Navy can still occupy a greater advantage.

In terms of artillery, the Township Protection Army is short of artillery, but what it lacks is a new type of field artillery. As for the traditional short-barreled artillery, there is actually no shortage.

The two-hundred-jin and three-hundred-jin short-barreled shotguns produced by ourselves have a huge output because of their simple technology and short time consumption. At the same time, they also captured a large number of various traditional artillery of the Ming army.

At present, in the various army units of the Township Protection Army, field artillery is scarce, but there are too many short robes directly assigned to the infantry battalion.

Most of these inexhaustible artillery were brought to the navy.

Especially the traditional short robes weighing more than two hundred catties are not used by the field troops of the army and can only be used in the city. In the navy, it is installed on all warships.

At the same time, the Xiangyang Arsenal also specially built a batch of [-]-jin short-barreled iron guns for the navy's warships.

Therefore, the warships in the Navy of the Township Protection Army did not have any long-barreled artillery, but there were many short-barreled artillery.

In terms of firepower, the Rural Protection Army Navy is still very confident.

Coupled with the powerful Marine Corps soldiers, Lu Xingye is full of confidence in the follow-up battle of crossing the river.

"Even if we can't directly injure our opponents, we are absolutely sure to block them in Wuchang Port, so as to cover the army's crossing of the river and the subsequent construction of floating bridges!"

With such confidence in the navy, Luo Zhixue was naturally very satisfied. With a wave of his hand, he approved another 10 taels of funding for the navy.

Let them design and build larger and stronger warships for subsequent use in the Yangtze River and coastal operations in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Although their Great Chu Empire is still nestled in Chubei in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Luo Zhixue and the others have the confidence to march into the south of the Yangtze River and fight all the way to the sea!
In this way, the navy needs to prepare large-tonnage warships that can be used in wide rivers and even offshore operations in advance, so that it can better cover the army's operations after the army enters the south of the Yangtze River.

(End of this chapter)