I want to be emperor

Chapter 314 Two Years Type Rifle

Wu Wenhua said to the third type of Suifa rifle: "This is a bolt designed by our research institute. Although the principle is the same as the previous bolts, they all use percussive bolts, but we have designed an additional one. mechanism."

"The new design adds a safety device and a standby device, which can better prevent accidental fire."

"The second main feature is the addition of a sear mechanism to reduce the consumption of flint and increase the ignition rate, because we found that when the gun is fired, there is no obstruction when the flint is hit by the clip and the flint strikes. Not only does it make the flint more prone to breakage, but it can also lead to ignition failure."

"So we specially added a blocking mechanism to avoid excessive impact of the flint, prevent the flint from being damaged prematurely, and increase the ignition rate at the same time!"

Speaking of this, Wu Wenhua picked up the flintlock gun, pointed at the iron blocking mechanism and said, "Your Majesty, by adding this gadget, the firing rate of this flintlock gun has increased to [-]%. Lifespan was more than tripled."

"At the same time, we have also improved the windproof and rainproof mechanisms for rainy days to ensure that it can also be used in windy, rainy and other weather."

At this time, Luo Zhixue said: "In this way, the ignition rate is comparable to that of the first flintlock gun, and other safety and rainproof structures are also similar. Why do you bother?"

Wu Wenhua immediately said: "Your Majesty, this is because the bolt action of the third type of flintlock gun seems to have more parts than the first type, but the overall processing requirements are not as high as the first type!"

"After our experiments, although some of its core components still need to be manufactured manually, the requirements for craftsmen are not too high, and the processing accuracy is also controlled within an acceptable range. We can completely let workers work together through division of labor. To create standard parts, as long as the tolerances are strictly controlled, assembly line production can be realized.”

"Once this is the case, the production cost of this rifle can be reduced to less than 15 taels if the annual output is [-] pieces. If the subsequent production quantity continues to increase and the processing technology is further improved, then this cost can continue to be reduced. !, the specific cost depends on the size of the output.”

After Wu Wenhua introduced these three types of flintlock guns, Luo Zhixue did not make a choice right away. After all, what he chose now is the main musket equipped by the follow-up military, and it will take many years to equip it if there is no accident... It is impossible to mess around.

Immediately, Luo Zhixue called people from the Ministry of Ordnance and the Ministry of Industry. The three types of flintlock guns have their own advantages and disadvantages, and many things Wu Wenhua said are based on paper data from preliminary tests. Whether this gun is good or not depends on a large scale. It will only be confirmed after the live ammunition test.

At the same time, whether the gun is good or not is not the only factor. Issues such as mass production and cost must also be considered comprehensively.

What Luo Zhixue wants is to be able to mass-produce the musket with the best performance possible while keeping the cost within a certain range.

Rather than talking about the musket with the best performance.

After many discussions, intensive live ammunition tests were conducted on these three flintlock guns.

The test work is carried out by the provisional Fifth Mixed Battalion. Although this mixed battalion does not have all the personnel in place yet, there are already more than 100 people, so it is just right to undertake the live ammunition test work in the early stage.

With the addition of the Fifth Mixed Battalion, they would have been the first batch of flintlock users in the Great Chu Empire, and since they had tested it, it would be considered as a way for them to conduct live ammunition training in advance.

After all, live ammunition training is still very expensive these days.

Because of the expensive ammunition, even the musketeers of the Chu army could not conduct live ammunition training all day long.

At present, the musketeers of the Chu army can only fire a total of fifteen rounds of live ammunition during the three-month recruit training period, and there will be no more.

And in the daily training after recruit training, there is not much live ammunition training. After all, ammunition is precious and must be saved for combat.

It's just that this has also led to the chief officers of many troops, in order to increase the live ammunition training of their musketeers, to find various excuses to suppress bandits and fight against landlords...

It is said to suppress bandits, but most of the time it is purely to find an excuse to get ammunition for live ammunition training.

When the supply of ammunition is not so tight, the superiors often turn a blind eye to this kind of behavior. After all, this kind of thing can be regarded as live ammunition training and suppressing bandits without delay.

And such a Chu army musketeer, in fact, the number of ammunition training is already amazing for this era.

The gunners of the Ming army couldn't fire a few rounds of live ammunition throughout the year when they were not fighting.

Now letting the Fifth Mixed Battalion do this live ammunition test firing can be regarded as giving them more opportunities for live ammunition training and laying the foundation for subsequent training.

For this live ammunition test, the Firearms Research Institute cooperated with Hantian Factory and dispatched a group of craftsmen to make twenty samples of each type of flintlock gun for testing.

The test items include environmental tests in climates such as cold resistance, high temperature, sand, humidity, and high salinity.

This was followed by a live ammunition test to test loading speed, power, accuracy, firing rate, failure rate, and more.

These tests are often extreme tests, simulating fierce battles when firing, continuous firing, or intensive shooting at intervals.

The whole test lasted for three days, and finally Luo Zhixue got the test report.

In various test reports, the first flintlock gun, which was improved based on the quick-fire pistol, has further improved the processing technology and simplified the parts. The quick-fire rifle has won the first place, especially the firing rate and failure rate In terms of these two key data, it ranks first. In live ammunition combat, the firing rate can reach 90.00%.

The failure rate is also very low, and it can be used in various extreme environments.

Ranked second is the flintlock gun designed by the research institute itself. The firing rate is 90.00% higher than expected. Five checks, only 90.00%. Third, the failure rate is a little bit, but not high. Ordinary, nothing too eye-catching, nothing too bad.

Ranked third is the simplified version of the first quick-fire rifle, which has the lowest firing rate and lowest failure rate...

In the end, after feedback from the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Ordnance, it was decided to finally choose the flintlock gun mechanism developed by the Firearms Research Institute as the follow-up main rifle.

Although the performance of this thing is not the best, it is the best it can do under the condition of mass production.

After finalizing the detailed design, Luo Zhixue also officially named this flintlock gun the Chengshun Two-year-style flintlock gun, referred to as the Two-year-style rifle.

To give a formal order to the weapon, and to specify the year, this is a measure that has been taken since last year, but it has not been mandatory before.

In addition, whether it is soldiers or other people, they are used to calling it musket directly, and even the folks continue to call it bird gun.

This time, Luo Zhixue gave the name directly through the imperial decree, which can be regarded as promoting the normalization of the names of weapons and equipment, so don't keep calling them indiscriminately.

The Ordnance Department also felt Luo Zhixue's intention to promote the standardization of weapon names, and soon issued a clear text to all departments, requiring that in official documents, all weapons and equipment should be called by official numbers, and simple guns, artillery, etc. are not allowed to be used as names. replace.

At the same time, it also comes with a serial number of the latest weapons and equipment.

The matchlock guns that are widely equipped today are called Yuannian rifles. Several other field guns and mortars are also numbered with years, and they are basically Yuannian style.

After all, most of these guns were mass-produced and put into service last year.

In this way, there are formal titles such as "the first year's two and a half catties field gun", "the first year's five catties field gun", "the first year's eighteen catties mortar", and "the first year's 48 catties mortar".

Of course, although the Ministry of Military and Political Affairs has done this, the soldiers below still don’t say that in their daily life. They basically just say it as two and a half catties, five catties, nine catties, eighteen catties mortars, etc.

But this two-year-style rifle is originally called simply, and in order to distinguish it from the first matchlock gun, so when people call it, it is directly called the two-year-style rifle, or the two-year rifle.

The two-year-style rifle adopts the bolt action designed by the Wuchang Firearms Research Institute, and has a complete structure such as iron resistance, insurance, wind and rain protection.

The design of the barrel and butt is slightly improved on the basis of the first-year-style matchlock gun. The caliber is 1.2 mm, the gun weighs 1.6 kg, the barrel is [-] meters long, and the overall length is [-] meters (two meters and one barbed). .

In the previous intensive live ammunition test, the musketeer who was familiar with the musket could achieve a rate of fire of two to three rounds per minute.

Maximum range... well, that doesn't make sense.

In terms of the maximum effective range, it can hit 130 meters, but even so, the hit rate will be very low, so it is not recommended to fight like this in actual combat.

After live ammunition tests at different distances, it is finally determined that the best effective range is 60 meters to 100 meters. In this range, the lethality can be guaranteed, and the accuracy can also be guaranteed.

The optimal killing distance is 30 meters. At this distance, the accuracy can be improved to a very high level, and the power is quite amazing.

At this distance, the bullets fired by this musket can penetrate about 120mm thick hardwood, or about ten millimeters of iron.

It may not be intuitive enough to say this, but to put it simply: a heavy armored infantryman wears a layer of chain mail, a layer of cloth face armor in the middle, and a layer of fish scale armor on the outside. This kind of protection is already considered extreme protection on the battlefield. Many soldiers couldn't support it anymore.

But facing the muskets of the Chu army, they still couldn't bear it... It was a single shot and a hole!

Well, not only is the current two-year-style flintlock gun so powerful, but the previous matchlock gun is also so powerful. Otherwise, how did the Ming army comment that the Chu army's guns are sharp...that's how it came about.

In addition to performance, there are two data that Luo Zhixue is most concerned about, namely cost and production capacity.

And these two are often closely related.

After a detailed demonstration, the Ministry of Industry reported the production capacity and cost to Luo Zhixue.

(End of this chapter)