I want to be emperor

Chapter 687 That's it, buy it now
As for the technical authorization cooperation between the two parties, Guangzhou Machinery Company naturally has no opinion on this, because of the authorization fee, most of the profits will belong to Guangzhou Machinery Company.

This model is purely to use the on-site production base of Dangtu Machinery Company to expand its own production capacity in the short term, and grab a fortune before other manufacturers come up with high-pressure steam engine technology and increase the production capacity of high-pressure steam engines.

Although Dangtu Machinery Company was reluctant, on the one hand, the higher-ups were urging for more high-pressure steam engines. As a government-run enterprise, they still needed to bear some responsibilities.

On the other hand, they can only be self-reliant, saying that they can verify and improve their technical ability to produce high-pressure steam engines through this kind of technical authorization and cooperation.

In this way, after they get their own high-pressure steam engine out and bypass the patents of Guangzhou Machinery Company and Tianjin Machinery Company, they can adjust the production line and directly produce their own high-pressure steam engine
In this way, the three major domestic steam engine manufacturers all have the production capacity of high-pressure steam engines, which immediately increases the production capacity of high-pressure steam engines in the empire to supply the huge domestic demand for naval steam engines.

In this way, the navy can place orders for dozens or hundreds of steam engines at every turn.

When the domestic steam engine industry was booming and the navy began to commission or refit motor sailboats on a large scale, a firearms test was being held at the Firearms Research Institute on the outskirts of Jinling City.

A dozen or so technicians were looking ahead at the people testing the guns.

The three young Guards soldiers, each holding slightly different guns, are constantly loading and shooting.

It's just that when the three Guards soldiers loaded and fired, they would load a small brass-colored cap into the firing mechanism, and there was no flint when firing...

This is a smoothbore gun that doesn't need a flint!
The crisp gunshots continued to ring out, and the dozen or so technicians behind them became more and more happy as they watched.

This is the biggest project in their firearms research institute in recent years: the flash cap percussion gun!
The Great Chu Empire’s research on muskets began when the country was formally established, and the production of matchlock guns began in the early years. The service time of matchlock guns in the domestic regular army was Chengshun for ten years, and the official service time in the militia lasted until Chengshun Around 16 years, and in fact in many overseas regions, there are still many militiamen or ordinary young and strong who continue to use matchlocks in private.

And the production of arquebus guns in the Great Chu Empire has never stopped, but it started about ten years ago in Chengshun, and the arquebus guns produced were basically for export.

The matchlock gun is the fist export product of the Great Chu Empire. It is very popular in overseas indigenous countries. Many vassal states and armies under the control of the Great Chu Empire are equipped with the export version of the matchlock gun of the Great Chu Empire.

However, the research and production of flintlock guns took a longer time. The second year of Chengshun was officially developed and started small-scale production. It completely replaced the matchlock gun and became the standard equipment of the imperial military police and militiamen.

Its latest model, that is, the 13-year-style Suifei rifle and its subsequent improvements, are still being improved and produced so far, and even the main rifle in active service of the Imperial Army.

The performance of the 13-year series of flintlock guns far exceeds that of the flintlock guns produced by European counterparts. This performance gap is not 01:30 points, but a huge difference, especially in the all-weather firing rate.

To put it bluntly, Chu Jun's 13-year series of flintlock guns is more than two generations ahead of European flintlock guns in terms of performance.

However, even though the flintlock guns far surpassed their European counterparts, the officials of the Ordnance Department of the Great Chu Empire were still not satisfied. In the 18th year of Chengshun, they had already proposed the so-called new-generation rifle research and development plan, and planned to adopt The professors of the Department of Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology newly invented mercury fulminate as the firing material to replace flint.

However, little progress was made at that time, mainly because the stability of mercury fulminate was too poor and the corrosion was also very strong, which was unacceptable for military equipment that required very high stability.

Therefore, in the following years, they have been thinking about how to apply mercury fulminate safely, stably and efficiently.

It wasn't until Chengshun's 21st year that the gunpowder research institute successfully produced a copper flash cap, which put the development of new rifles on the fast track.

The Firearms Research Institute designed a new gun and a new firing mechanism. After a series of tests and improvements, it finally came up with the sample gun that is currently being tested.

The actual test results also made them very excited.

During the testing process, other shooting accuracy, power, etc. are not important, anyway, they are all smoothbore guns, and they are not too good or bad.

What they really focus on is the firing rate!
When the Ministry of Army Ordnance finalized the research and development project of the new gun, the most important requirement was to greatly increase the firing rate of the new gun, at least one point higher than the 13% firing rate of the existing 80.00-year-old flintlock gun. cut.

At the same time, it is also required to control costs and the like. After all, it is impossible to make a rifle that cannot be used.

The standard rifles of the Great Chu Empire are all produced in hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. They are very cost-sensitive, and if they cost one or two yuan more, they will cost an extra one or two million yuan in the end... If it is ten or eight yuan more expensive, then it will be several million or even tens of millions of extra expenses.

Therefore, the military has always suppressed the cost of mass-produced standard equipment such as rifles.

This is also the direct reason why the military develops the flash cap percussion rifle, because after the preliminary technical demonstration, they believe that as long as this thing is produced, it can be seamlessly modified with the 13-year series of rifles.

And the cost of modification is not high, you only need to replace the trigger, and nothing else needs to be changed.

In this way, the military can also obtain a rifle with a higher firing rate at a cheaper price, instead of directly producing a large number of new rifles.

The question now is how high the rate of fire the new rifle can be tested now.

After the long test, everyone hurriedly counted the test data, and the final result was astonishing: the firing rate reached 90.00%[-]...or even more accurately, in the [-] rounds of live ammunition tests, only one misfire .

This firing rate is simply an epoch-making blow for a flintlock!

You must know that even the latest 13-year-style improved sudden-fire rifle can only achieve a firing rate of 80.00%.

In actual combat, the 13-year-style flintlock guns of the Chu Army basically misfired after firing five or six rounds... Of course, this is much stronger than the 70.00% firing rate of arquebus guns, not to mention the early flintlock guns in Europe. Shooting guns can be compared.

But after using the flash cap to fire, the firing rate increased to 90.00% at once... This result directly shocked the technical research and development personnel, and even shocked the officials of the Army Ordnance Department.

Especially the officials of the Army Ordnance Department, they know that mercury fulminate is very good, not only has a high firing rate, but also has no smoke and dust, and the flame is small.

There is no delay in shooting. When the flintlock is fired, it needs to go through the three steps of crushed flint-priming powder-propellant powder. There will be a delay time when the trigger is pulled and the bullet is ejected from the chamber. However, if mercury fulminate is used, Because there is no step of igniting powder, it can be fired immediately when the trigger is pulled.

They also saw so many benefits, so they began to develop rifles with mercury fulminate as the firing method early on, but they still did not expect that after firing with a flash cap, the firing rate could be as high as 90.00%.

This test directly shocked the top of the army... because everyone knows what this high firing rate means.

This means that even without considering other conditions, the firepower density can be increased by at least 20.00% during combat...

Well, if you remove the 20.00% duds from the flintlock, you can get more than 20.00% more firepower out of thin air.

Not to mention that in actual combat, it can bring more benefits.

For example, because there is no smoke and dust when the cap is fired, soldiers can even aim and shoot directly, instead of closing their eyes or turning their heads when shooting as before, so the hit rate will definitely increase.

The next day, a group of senior army generals came to the firearms research institute, wanting to see the live ammunition test of the percussion gun for themselves.

So, a long live ammunition test began again... It was still the three foreign guns, each of which fired a full [-] rounds of ammunition, because there were too many tests, and even the test soldiers changed several batches Woolen cloth.

The recoil of this musket is also quite large, and the soldiers will feel uncomfortable if they shoot too many times!
And reloading is also tiring.

After the test, the final firing rate statistics came out even higher than yesterday's statistics, reaching 90.00% [-]!
At this time, the generals of the army all had the same idea...it is it, it is it...

Place your order today and get it now!
And those old guns were all taken over and refitted.

From now on, my Great Chu Empire Army will use percussion rifles... What kind of flintlock gun can roll as far as it can!

The firing rate is higher, and it is an epoch-making improvement. From now on, the firing gun does not even need to consider the dud problem in actual combat.

Because in a battle, the average number of shots fired by soldiers is just over ten rounds, and at most no more than twenty or thirty rounds. In this number of shots, the probability of a few tenths of percent of duds can be directly ignored .

While the firing rate has been improved, it also has the advantages of instant shooting, better protection against rain, moisture, and wind because it does not need primers, and because there is no fire and smoke from primers, the shooter can open his eyes. A series of advantages such as eye aiming.

What's more, it's cheap!
Compared with the flintlock gun, this kind of percussion gun actually has a change in the structure of the bolt, and other parts such as the barrel have not changed much. This means that by directly modifying the bolt, a large number of existing The main flintlock guns in active service are all converted into copper flash cap percussion guns.

Of course, it does not mean that there are no disadvantages. The disadvantage is that the new gun will be more dependent on logistics!

The core part of the ignition of the flintlock is flint. This thing is a mineral, and it can be found in many places in the world. The Great Chu Empire can find flint in remote areas, overseas territories, and even indigenous countries. After a simple It can be used directly after processing.

But the copper flash cap used in the percussion gun cannot be found in other places. It can only be mass-produced in domestic arsenals, and the technical difficulty is not small.

This means that it will be difficult for soldiers fighting in overseas territories and remote places to obtain copper fire caps by simply processing them on the spot.

All have to be produced and shipped from domestic arsenals, which makes the dependence on logistics even more serious.

However, this kind of logistics dependence is not a big disadvantage. After all, many of the military supplies in the Great Chu Empire now rely heavily on logistics.

The most notable one is the grenade, which cannot be obtained through capture or simple processing on the front line. The grenade shells used in the Chu army today are all made of iron-carbon alloy materials with a special formula... Well, That is steel.

Not only is the material difficult to handle, but the processing is also very troublesome, because the prefabricated fragments of the steel shell casings require very high processing capabilities, and manual workshops cannot mass-produce them at all.

And only the grenade produced in this way can the shell case be able to withstand a large enough chamber pressure, and at the same time make the shell case as thin as possible to load more explosives and steel balls, thereby increasing the lethality.

Otherwise, the grenade produced may be the same as the grenade produced by the new army of the Ming Dynasty, the Dongbai people, and the current Europeans. The poor ability to withstand the chamber pressure leads to short range and poor accuracy, and because of the small charge, the The explosive power is small, and because of the lack of prefabricated fragments, the killing range is also small.

This kind of grenade, which is still in the period of the match grenade, does not have much practical value.

However, this kind of high-tech grenade of the Chu army can only be produced by some domestic arsenals, and then transported overseas to fight.

In addition to grenades, there are many other things that need to be transported from the mainland.

Even all kinds of canned food for personnel, all kinds of processed feed for mules and horses, tent clothes, medicines and so on.

In fact, the better the equipment and the higher the combat effectiveness of the army, the higher the dependence on logistics.

This is true not only for the Chu army, but also for other armies.

The Chu army's logistics dependence is already serious, and now it is not a big deal to add a percussion gun that also relies heavily on logistics.

Compared with these logistical dependencies, the various advantages brought by the firing gun itself are greater, especially the firing rate of more than 90.00%, which is enough to make military generals give up all concerns.

The live-fire test report of the Jinling Firearms Research Institute was submitted together with the research report of the Army Ordnance Department.

After reading it, Luo Zhixue directly instructed that more efforts should be made to research and produce new-style percussion guns, and modify existing flintlock guns so that the soldiers of the empire can use the best weapons.

With Luo Zhixue's approval, the Army also acted quickly, directly issuing bidding notices to all major weapon companies, requiring major weapon companies to launch brand-new, mass-produced new guns based on the research results of the Jinling Firearms Research Institute. The design of the percussion gun.

And not one kind, but several kinds, just the rifle has a longer length, and the general version of the army that focuses on bayonet fighting;
For coastal areas, tropical rain forests and other areas, a tropical version that requires salt resistance and corrosion resistance;

For cold regions, the northern version that can still be used under extremely cold conditions is required;
Cavalry use, cavalry version with shorter barrel;
There is no way, the deployment of the Chu army ranges from the North Pole to the equator, from desert terrain to tropical rainforest terrain, from mountains to coastal areas, and under the current technical conditions, it is difficult to say that the same rifle can meet all the above requirements, so The military simply splits the requirements and invites bids for firearms with different needs according to the different needs of climate and geographical location.

In addition to rifles, there are also pistols. The models of this pistol are also divided into officer pistols, ordinary pistols, and cavalry pistols.

There are more than a dozen types of guns in the first batch of tenders.

Each weapon company can choose one or more of them for targeted research and development according to its own technical reserves and advantages, and finally participate in the military's bidding.

In addition to bidding for the new type of percussion gun, the Ministry of Ordnance also asked the Jinling Firearms Research Institute to transplant the firing mechanism of the prototype gun to the 13-year-style series of flintlock guns, and then came up with a 22-year-style percussion gun.

Except that the bolt is a newly designed percussion bolt, everything else is the basic structure of the 13-year series of flintlock guns. It is a pure transitional product at a glance.

After all, the new percussion gun does not know when it will be really produced. It is impossible to stop production of various firearms before the new percussion gun is developed. The military needs a certain number of various firearms to replace every year. supplementary.

However, it is inappropriate to continue to produce flintlock guns, so the military came up with a transition plan. Based on the 13-year series of rifles being produced, after switching to a new type of percussion gun, they directly made a 22-year-old series of rifles. Fire the gun out.

And this transition plan can also be highly consistent with the modified firearms plan.

Because it is expected to modify the existing flintlock gun, it also adopts the experimental bolt action scheme of Jinling Firearms Research Institute. How to say, in fact, the test sample gun in Jinling Firearms Research Institute is modified from the 13-year-old flintlock gun. came.

If the existing flintlock gun is directly modified according to the test sample gun, the technology is simple and the cost is low.

For this reason, the army directly applied this plan, and also invited bids for the modification of existing rifles, and plans to modify the existing 13-year series of rifles with more than one million units in the near future.

The percussion guns improved from the 13-year series of flintlock guns directly use the same number as the newly produced 22-year series of percussion guns. After all, the two are exactly the same, and there is no difference.

However, it has long been relegated to the second line. At present, the two-year series of flintlock guns that are only used in the C-level garrison and militia are no longer modified. These firearms have been discontinued for many years, and the latest two-year-style The series of flintlock guns were all produced in Chengshun for about 15 years, seven years ago.

The two-year series of flintlock guns are already being retired one after another, so there is no need to waste modification costs on them.

After the brand-new percussion guns are put into mass production in the future, the modified 13-year-style flintlock guns, that is, the 22-year-style percussion guns, will also be retired from the first-line troops, and then enter the second-line troops and militia troops, eventually replacing the two-year-style percussion guns. flintlock.

On the one hand, it is developing various new-style percussion guns, on the other hand, it is directly producing the transitional model of the 22-year-style percussion gun, and refitting the 13-year-style series of flintlock guns into the 22-year-style percussion gun.

With a three-pronged approach, the Army is determined to complete the comprehensive replacement plan for the percussion gun in the shortest possible time.

This is also due to the fact that the percussion gun is very convenient and cheap compared to the flintlock gun. If it cannot be modified, or if the modification is too expensive, the army will not be able to fully replace the percussion gun in a short time.

After the army moved quickly, the navy and the guards did not lag behind. The navy didn't bother to make a fuss on its own, and directly invited bids and modified a series of firearms for the army, and even copied the bidding plan...even copied the bidding plan People are lazy, even some of the army's key words are changed and used directly, which makes the people of the major weapon companies participating in the bidding very speechless...

For a while, I wondered if I was going in and out, and ran to the bidding office of the Army Ordnance Department.

The Guards did the same thing, directly imitating a series of bidding plans from the Army.

However, in addition to this, the Guards have several other research and development plans for new rifles. The Guards want to use the new firing technology as a support and try to develop a breech-loading rifle.

The Guards have always been very interested in breech-loading rifles.

Several generals of the Guards accompanied him a lot, and Luo Zhixue often went to the Guards for inspections, which more or less revealed the development of firearms in the original time and space. For example, the rear-loading rifle was Luo's Zhixue often mentioned it, and Luo Zhixue even told them about rifling.

In order to please Luo Zhixue, or to obtain better performance weapons, the Guards have not given up their research support for breech-loading rifles over the years.

At present, there are only three breech-loading rifles that have entered military service in China, all of which were developed by the Guards.

One of them is the Han 457 breech-loading rifle designed by Hantian Arsenal. This breech-loading gun is considered to be the most technically advanced among a large number of messy breech-loading rifles in China. It uses a tail-end screw locking scheme, and it is worth it. Note that this flintlock is still a rifled rifle, which has two spiral rifling.

To be precise, this rifle should be called 'Han 457 breech-loading rifle'.

That's right, it's a breech-loading rifle!
It's a pity that these three breech-loading rifles are not considered successful. There are only small-scale experimental equipment, and they have not entered the sequence of large-scale equipment at all, so that they have not even obtained the serial number of official military equipment!

(End of this chapter)