I want to be emperor

Chapter 313 Three Kinds of Flintlock Guns

The establishment of the temporary Fifth Mixed Battalion is of great significance. Luo Zhixue did not let the staff and others to toss about it, but personally participated in it.

Luo Zhixue took part in it personally from the preliminary preparation to the formulation of tactics.

Although Luo Zhixue was not a military professional in his previous life, not even a military fan, but thanks to the explosion of information in his later life, he knew a little bit about it.

How should I put it, I haven't seen a pig running, but I have eaten pork.

So no matter what Luo Zhixue is, he also knows that in the original time and space for a long time, some countries have popularized such a strange tactic as queuing up and shooting.

In later generations, he was still very surprised by this strange tactic.

How could Absolute War be fought so old-fashioned or even weird... Both sides lined up and fired foolishly until one of them collapsed...

But after coming to this era, Luo Zhixue has been thinking about wars and other matters every day, but Luo Zhixue gradually understands this tactic, and even feels that this tactic is the inevitability of technological development.

Nowadays, regardless of whether it is the Chu army, the Ming army, or the Dong captives, their armies are equipped with guns on a large scale, regardless of the gun technology of these three parties, but it is undeniable that in these three armies , guns are becoming the main equipment of the army.

In particular, artillery plays an increasingly important role in warfare.

Needless to say in the Chu army, the current Chu army’s influence on the outside world is that the guns and artillery are sharp. When they stormed Linxiang, they directly used more than 100 field guns and more than 100 mortar guns of various types. Field short-barreled shotguns represented by squatting cannons and two-hundred-pound tunics are generally not included in artillery when the Chu army counts artillery, but are regarded as infantry equipment.

The proportion of musket equipment is also very large. In the main force of the Chu army, the proportion of musket gun equipment exceeds half.

The Ming army, their guns and equipment ratio is not low, you don't think the Ming army used guns less when fighting the rogues, but that's because the Ming army didn't use them because of the particularity of the rogues, it doesn't mean they didn't have them.

On the contrary, the Ming army also had a lot of guns. On the front line of Jiliao, the Ming army relied on all kinds of guns to defend the city. Without the Hongyi cannon, the cities outside the pass had already been captured by Dong captives.

In field battles, the Ming army also widely used various types of artillery guns, tiger squatting guns, three-eyed blunderbuss, bird blunderbuss and other firearms.

When the Central Plains and the Chu army were at war, the Ming army also used a large number of guns. Zuo Liangyu's troops on the northern line and Wu Sangui's troops all had a lot of guns, even the extremely heavy Hongyi cannons. few.

Ye County, the headquarters of Zuo Liangyu's troops, has now deployed at least [-] Hongyi cannons and at least [-] blunderbusses of various types.

During the Battle of South Chu, not to mention the Ming army under Yang Sichang’s command, dozens of mobile field guns were produced, and there were more than two thousand imitation thief-killing guns. There were also many original bird guns. There are tens of thousands of other types of old firearms.

Now Shi Kefa is guarding Jiujiang and the front line of Anqing. People do not rely on swords, spears, bows and arrows to guard. They also have a lot of guns. The Ming army guarding Jiujiang is equipped with at least four to five thousand bird guns and red cannons. There are more than [-] doors.

The Ming court, or to be precise, the dignitaries and gentry in the south of the Yangtze River, in order to prevent the Chu thieves from advancing eastward, many people contributed money and effort, even the Zheng family in the coastal area contributed a lot, and bought a lot of red barbarian cannons for Shi Kefa Sent it over.

Today's Jiujiang, Susong and other cities stationed by the Ming army on the eastern front are the first line of defense against the eastward advance of the Chu army. They are deployed with a large number of artillery and Ming soldiers equipped with muskets.

Otherwise, the Chu army on the edge of the Jiujiang River would have killed them long ago, so why wait for more than half a year and spend so much time preparing to go east.

The Chu army and the Ming army were like this, and Dongyao was no exception. Since they accepted the Ming rebel Kong Youde and others, they also began to form large-scale artillery units and used them on a large scale in wars.

Speaking of which, the number and quality of the Hongyi cannons cast by Dongyao are no less than those of the Ming army, and they are even stronger.

And when they first started using the Hongyi Cannon, they found that it was too heavy for an army cannon and it was difficult to maneuver, so they built various two-wheeled gun mounts to directly pull the artillery down to use on the battlefield.

They are not weak in muskets, and the muskets used by Dongyao are more inclined to bird guns, rather than the various messy three-eyed guns and other fire guns like the Ming army.

In the Battle of Songjin in the original time and space, Dongyao has completely surpassed the Ming army in terms of guns.

Today, the three major military forces in East Asia, the Chu Army, the Ming Army, and the Dongyao Army are all equipped with guns.

When guns were used on a large scale in the war between these three parties, the generals of all parties had to start thinking about how to increase the power of guns.

The current series of formations and tactics of the Chu army are also based on this consideration. In order to increase firepower, the Chu army directly increased the proportion of musketeers to more than half.

But by this time, it has basically reached its limit.

Due to the limitations of the matchlock gun itself, it is difficult for the Chu army to increase the proportion of matchlock gun equipment. If it continues to improve, the number of spearmen will be reduced.

And once there is a lack of spearmen, then there is also a lack of the ability to line up and charge hand-to-hand combat.

Only relying on the musketeers equipped with matchlock guns, their loose formation and firepower cannot cope with the impact of the enemy's heavy spearmen.

Therefore, in the age of arquebus, the coexistence of spearmen and musketeers is an indispensable requirement.

However, the emergence of the flintlock made it possible to further increase the firepower density of the musketeers and further enhance the tight formation of the musketeers.

Matchlock guns and flintlock guns, the difference between them is not such things as rate of fire, accuracy, and power. In fact, there is no essential difference in performance between the two...

The biggest difference between matchlock guns and flintlock guns, and there is only one reason for military reform from beginning to end, that is, after replacing matchlocks with flints, the musketeers can be arranged closer together!
This brought more intensive firepower and a tighter formation!

And these two points directly led to the change of tactics!
And what did this tactical change ultimately lead to?
Luo Zhixue didn't know what the people from the Western countries in the original time and space thought. Anyway, after he calculated, when he thought that the musketeers who used the flintlock guns in two formations would be able to perform seven or eight times better than the current infantry battalion. More than ten times the firepower density.

He simply put aside all his worries, and made up his mind to build a pure firearms unit that has always used flintlocks even though the flintlock was expensive.

Even though it may seem silly to line up and shoot, this is the most effective way the Chu army can find to improve their combat effectiveness.

The fifth mixed battalion temporarily organized is currently responsible for exploring the tactics of queuing up and shooting.

Of course, the word queue and shoot can be used as a joke, but it is not very friendly to use it as a tactical tactic. Therefore, the official name of this tactic in the Chu army is: line tactic!

It means that the soldiers lay out a tactic for shooting in a horizontal line.

It is a pity that although the tactics and tactics have begun to be formulated, and the personnel of the fifth mixed battalion have also begun to be transferred from the whole army, the drill will not be able to be carried out for a while.

Because they don't have flintlock guns yet.

Even the Hantian factory has said that it will first mobilize a group of senior craftsmen to produce a batch of Suifa rifles by hand for the fifth mixed battalion, but this will take time.

At any rate, we have to wait for the Firearms Research Institute to design a sudden-fire rifle first.

And the Firearms Research Institute didn't let Hantian Factory let Luo Zhixue wait too long.

Wu Wenhua, the director of the Firearms Research Institute, got a few quick-fire pistols as a reference, and soon took out a variety of quick-fire rifle samples of different designs and presented them to the imperial court.

Luo Zhixue looked at the three unpainted quick-fire rifles in front of him!
These three quick-fire rifles have been carefully looked at. The core, that is, the action part is similar. It can be seen that these three actions are all born out of the action of the cavalry quick-fire pistol-all are percussion-type flintlock guns. .

However, there are many differences in the specific detail design. Anyway, the principle of the percussion flintlock gun is simple and easy to understand: the flint is struck by the force of the spring, and sparks are generated to ignite the gunpowder.

After understanding this principle, there are various ways to realize the specific bolt design.

On the other hand, Wu Wenhua explained the three different bolt mechanisms to Luo Zhixue: "Your Majesty, the bolt mechanism of this first flintlock gun is still modeled after the bolt mechanism of the cavalry's quick-fire pistol. High, we have also improved the original design, using several core components with higher performance, and the firing rate can be increased to about [-]%."

"However, this bolt has very high requirements for processing technology. With our current processing equipment level, I am afraid that we can use large-scale mass production of important parts. Some important parts need to be handcrafted by skilled craftsmen, and the cost is relatively high. We have calculated with the Hantian factory that if this kind of bolt is used, the cost of each gun will reach more than 25 taels."

"Besides, several core components of this type of bolt cannot be made mechanically. If they are purely made by hand, the output will be limited in a short period of time. The annual output of [-] pieces may be the limit. After all, the number of skilled craftsmen we have is very limited now."

"At the same time, these handmade parts, because of the particularity of manual processing, it is difficult to carry out large-scale parts exchange. If there is no way to carry out parts exchange, it will cause great trouble to our mass production and subsequent maintenance. .”

Luo Zhixue looked at the flintlock gun in his hand and frowned slightly. He understood Wu Wenhua's meaning, that is, this thing is a good thing, but large-scale equipment is unrealistic...

Wu Wenhua continued at this time: "The second model is our improvement based on the first model!"

Speaking, Wu Wenhua: "The main reason is to reduce some performance requirements to achieve mass production, but the firing rate has been reduced. In our early tests, it can only achieve about [-]%, which is similar to the previous quick-fire pistols. , and the failure rate has also increased a lot.”

"However, we can mass-produce this kind of flintlock gun, and the cost can be less than 15 taels!"

Luo Zhixue pointed to the third item: "What about the third item?"

Wu Wenhua said: "The third type of action is a new type of action designed by us based on the principle of the action of the sudden fire pistol..."

(End of this chapter)