I want to be emperor

Chapter 496 Plate Armor Mass Production
And such soldiers are liked by every commander, and they have begun to take on more combat tasks, such as wearing heavy armor and transforming into heavy infantry... For example, a strong and strong grenadier directly pulls a door on foot. The two-and-a-half catty field artillery approached the front line and turned into an infantry artillery...

As a result, over time, the grenadiers in the Chu army were no longer grenadiers, but evolved into an elite infantry unit.

The grenadiers in the third battalion are also the only troops in the third battalion that have always been equipped with part of the whole body heavy armor, standard half body armor, and [-] meters long spears. When necessary, they can directly transform into heavy armored infantry!
The other five musketeers with fusiliers were all equipped with light half-body armor exclusively for musketeers.

This kind of armor is relatively light, mainly anti-bow and arrows and cold weapons, and the defensive effect on firearms can only be said to be better than nothing...

However, when fighting in the mountains, and faced with a lack of firearms, the Ximing army or various chieftain troops who still use bows and arrows in large quantities, this light half body armor is very suitable.

In fact, in recent years, all armors on the entire eastern battlefield have poor protection against firearms!
It cannot be said that the armor is not good, but the armor-piercing ability of the firearms on the eastern battlefield is too strong!

And this is all because the Chu army was the first to equip the Yuannian-style matchlock guns, which led to the rampant use of various large-caliber short-barreled matchlock guns on the Eastern battlefield.

The Dongyao people also gave up on the bird gun and came up with the so-called Shenwu Thief Killer... Who knows why they added the word "Shenwu" before the Thief Killer.Whether it is the two-year-style flintlock guns equipped by the Chu army, the first-year-style matchlock guns, or the first-year-style matchlock guns imitated by the Ming army, or the Shenwu Exterminating Bandit Guns captured by the East, they are all large-caliber short-barreled muskets. Although the calibers of the muskets of the Ming army and the Dongyao people are difficult to ensure a uniform caliber due to the manual production method, they basically fluctuate around [-] mm.

This kind of large-caliber short-barreled musket is characterized by its great power.

The disadvantages are also obvious, the accuracy is relatively poor, if you fire from 150 meters away, the bullet will fly there, even the soldier who shoots does not know...

However, it was originally a smoothbore gun, and the accuracy of this thing was very random. When fighting, it relied on barrage to kill, not precise hits.

Therefore, the disadvantage of poor precision is not worth mentioning in front of its powerful advantages.

In the early days, Chu Jun himself did the test, using a hand-made steel plate as a target, but he tried one hole at a time, one hole at a time, and then he simply stopped testing.

Because the thickness of the test steel plate has been increased to six millimeters later, such a thick steel plate is too heavy to make armor.

And the six millimeters didn't refer to iron armor, nor those junk steel plates, but steel plates handcrafted by experienced craftsmen, the kind that couldn't be mass-produced by machines these days, but they couldn't stand it either.

If it is replaced by the armor that is equipped in batches in the Chu army or the Ming army, let alone the armor that is piled up to ten millimeters thick is useless.

Then don’t think that Eastern armor is useless, Western-style plate armor can withstand it. At present, Western-style plate armor is generally made of low-carbon steel, also known as mild steel. The thickness of the full-body armor is usually between two millimeters and three millimeters. , even against the early matchlock guns, let alone those large-caliber muskets above [-]mm.

So now there are some three-thirds armor in the West. Under the condition of weight limit, the thickness is increased by reducing the protective area, but this kind of armor is still not very easy to use, because it still cannot stop large-caliber muskets.

According to the current trend, the armor will develop towards reducing the protective area and increasing the thickness of the armor.

In the future, the musketeers will even cancel their armor equipment, leaving only the cavalry who need hand-to-hand combat to be equipped with breastplates.

Therefore, in the contemporary Eastern battlefield, aside from some special cases, in front of the [-]mm short-barreled muskets of the Chu army and the Ming army, let alone the protective ability of armor, it is useless.

However, the Chu army is still equipped with a large number of armors, and the front-line soldiers even have a 100% armor rate!
Why is this?

Because it could be the Ximing Army on the opposite side, or the Eastern captives, or the Western Mongolia, various ethnic groups in the Western Regions, chieftains in the Southwest, and other messy enemies.

None of them popularized and equipped new muskets on a large scale!

Even the most powerful Eastern exiles at present, the proportion of their new matchlock guns is relatively low, and they are mainly equipped in the Han Eight Banners. As for the Mongolian Eight Banners, they are mainly cavalry. For the troops with heavy armored infantry as the core, muskets are only auxiliary.

On the whole, including cavalry and infantry, their arquebus equipment ratio is relatively low, and more infantry firepower still relies on bows and arrows or simply cold weapons for close combat.

This is the case for the Dongbao, not to mention the others, all of them are still holding bows and arrows as the main infantry long-range weapons.

In this way, although the Chu army has popularized muskets and even started to engage in line tactics, they are still equipped with a large amount of armor, which is used to resist the enemy's bows and arrows and other weapons.

These light armors can't stop bullets, but it's okay to block a bow and arrow.

When the main enemies of the Chu army are all equipped with muskets, and the light half-body armor of the musketeers loses its final effect, the Chu army will naturally eliminate infantry armor.

But that's all for the future.

Now, armor is still an indispensable and important defense in the Chu army. There are special armor factories in all major arsenals to produce armor, and the arsenal behind the Chu army is also constantly researching and improving armor.

From improving performance, to increasing production, reducing costs, etc., to improve.

The armor factory under the Hantian Armor Factory has already begun trial production of plate armor, but this plate armor is not a concept like the various sophisticated plate armor used by western-style knights and lords, but mass-produced plate armor worn by ordinary soldiers.
The material used is mild steel.

In fact, in the Great Chu Empire, plate armor has long been able to be manufactured, even excellent plate armor can be produced. Luo Zhixue himself has a plate armor made by senior craftsmen, but this kind of armor needs to be built slowly by senior craftsmen. The plate armor is meaningless to the Great Chu Empire.

As for the plate armor made of inferior materials such as mild steel, in fact, the Great Chu Empire could also be mass-produced before, but it was still not produced and equipped.

There is a very real problem here, that is cost performance.

The production of various weapons in the Great Chu Empire, including armor, is not based on craftsmen as in traditional handicrafts, but on machines.

The emphasis is on industrial mass production.

In the case of industrial mass production, the cost of cloth face armor with mature manufacturing technology in the Great Chu Empire is actually very low. The iron sheet is directly forged with wrought iron, because it is not processed in a large piece, but in small pieces, so the processing is simple and the production Easy, large output, and wrought iron drilling, deburring and other processes are relatively simple.

It is also particularly suitable for mechanical production. The hydraulic forging machine can produce these palm-sized iron pieces in large quantities, and then assemble them into cloth face armor.

But the plate armor is different. For the industrial production of the Great Chu Empire, the biggest difficulty lies in the processing of large-area curved materials, and then there are many small parts with curved shapes. Although it can be done, the cost will increase. up.

The Great Chu Empire industrialized the production of a set of cloth-faced infantry full-body heavy armor, which only cost more than 20 taels of silver, but to produce a set of plate armor-style infantry full-body heavy armor, the price would rise to 40 taels of silver.

Based on cost considerations, the Great Chu Empire had never mass-produced plate armor before, but continued to use large quantities of cheap cloth face armor.

As for what you said, the defensive performance of cloth face armor is not as good as that of plate armor under the same material.

As for the protection of bow and arrow cold weapons, the performance of the cloth face armor can also meet the demand.

However, although the Great Chu Empire has never carried out industrialized mass production of plate armor, it does not mean that the Great Chu Empire has stopped research on plate armor.

The armor factory under Hantian Arsenal has been studying the production process of plate armor!
The focus of their research is not to make better plate armor, but purely to study how to reduce costs and make plate armor suitable for mechanical industrial production.

After several years of research, the armor factory under the Hantian Armor Factory has successively solved a large number of technical problems. In particular, it has joined hands with the Hantian Machinery Factory to design more than ten kinds of machinery specially used for the production of plate armor parts. A lot of equipment and even molds have been developed.

After they were almost done, they estimated the production cost and came to a conclusion: the price of a set of plate armor-style infantry full-body heavy armor can be controlled at around 25 taels of silver, and the more production in the later stage, the price can still be reduced. Further down to around 20 taels of silver.

This price impressed the top management of the Ordnance Department, and placed an order for Hantian Armor Factory to produce a batch of plate armor first, and try to equip the troops to see the effect.

However, the bulk of the orders placed by the Army Ordnance Department were the light busts for musketeers and light busts for cavalry, each with [-] sets.

As for those full-body armors and standard half-body armors, the Army only gave each a symbolic order of [-] sets.

From the number of orders, you can see that the Great Chu Empire's army pays more attention to light half body armor and cavalry half body armor.

Because the Great Chu Empire Army has been fully reorganized and changed, the future infantry will be all fusiliers. In the future, only grenadiers will wear full body armor or standard half body armor. Fusiliers, in order not to affect mobility Xing has always used half-length light armor.

The same is true for the cavalry. The Great Chu Empire Army now attaches great importance to the development of the cavalry. The plate armor-style cavalry light half-body armor has better protection performance, so even if the current cavalry does not lack armor, they plan to replace it.

(End of this chapter)