Daming Crazy Emperor

Chapter 306 Artillery Sonata
At this moment, Daming's research and development level is really not ordinary high.

It only took three days for the sample of the new artillery from drawing to making clay molds to casting and processing Sun Yuanhua.

It took only three days for Sun Yuanhua's disciples to transform a lathe into a lathe.

Taichang has not been idle for the past few days. He directly found Kuaiping land on the south side of Wubei City, and ordered someone to draw horizontal lines with lime on it. Every other mile is a horizontal line. ten.

His goal is to increase the range of the artillery to more than five miles, and it would be best if it can reach ten miles.

Therefore, drawing ten horizontal lines is almost the same.

Everything is ready, the next step is to pull the rifle to test the gun.

To be honest, Taichang didn't know how deep the rifling had to be drawn, and he didn't even know how many riflings had to be drawn.

Therefore, he ordered Sun Yuanhua's disciples to prepare many kinds of reamers for rifling.

The reamers he ordered were prepared with three sharp points and six sharp points. Some of the rifling depths were drawn out to one point, and some were pulled out to a half point depth.

Anyway, as long as you can try to find the difference, as for what kind of rifling is the most suitable, you should be able to estimate it after this test.

The process of pulling the rifling is very simple. You only need to clamp the barrel, let it rotate first, then insert the reamer from one end of the barrel, fix it on the slider, and then rotate the gear on the rack at a constant speed. Gear, just let the rifling reamer pull from one end of the gun barrel to the other end as uniformly as possible.

Of course, the speed of turning the gear by manpower will definitely not reach an absolute uniform speed. In the future, a steam engine will definitely be used instead of manpower to pull the reamer.

However, this is just a test at this time, so there is no need to be so troublesome.

After all, there is no hose at this moment, and the steam engine cannot move with the rifling reamer.

It doesn't take much time to pull the rifling, because it only takes a few blinks of an eye to pull a barrel, and it doesn't take long to fix the barrel.

Taichang ordered people to prepare reamers of four different thicknesses, and three types of artillery, two of which had the same caliber. A total of twelve rifled guns were pulled out, and the remaining three were smoothbore guns without rifling.

The rifling of the twelve cannons was completed in less than an hour. Taichang directly ordered Yuan Keli and Zhang Yuanfang to recruit a team of experienced artillerymen, and they walked to the test site with these cannons.

At this time, not only Sun Yuanhua was too excited, but even Yuan Keli and Zhang Yuanfang were too excited.

Because the range of this artillery is too important.

If the range of the artillery can exceed five miles, then they can hang other people's buildings and gunboats to fight.

If the range of the artillery can exceed ten miles, then I don't know how much fun it will be to fight.

Because there is no telescope that can see ten miles away, at least not in the European countries.

That is to say, before people could see them clearly, the shells fell over!

So how far is the range of these artillery, is there more than five miles or even ten miles?

Of course, you can only know this by trying it.

After the group transported the cannon to the place where the cannon was tested, Zhang Yuanfang couldn't wait to ask, "Your Majesty, shall we try that cannon first?"

Without hesitation, Taichang said: "Let's try the one without rifling first."

When Zhang Yuanfang heard this, he ordered his officers and soldiers to line up the three guns without rifling, and then ordered to load the cannons one by one for test firing.

There was a loud "boom", and a shell flew out.

Everyone is familiar with this loud noise, because this is the [-]-jin Thor cannon that the Navy is equipped with the most.

Everyone is familiar with the range of this kind of artillery, which is about three miles.

So, everyone turned their telescopes on the third horizontal line.

Sure enough, the shell landed near the three-mile line.

Immediately afterwards, the muzzle size is two and a half inches, and the barrel is also a five-foot-long artillery.

There was a loud "boom", and another shell flew out.

This loud noise was much duller than the loud noise just now, as if it was thunder.

The shells of this artillery flew relatively far away, anyway, there were no traces near the three-mile line.

Taichang ordered the sailors to run over and search carefully for a while, only to find that the shell had already flown near the six-mile line!

In other words, the goal of increasing the firing range to more than five miles has already been achieved, and it is only necessary to change the thickness and length of the barrel.

However, Taichang did not order people to stop the test firing.

So many samples have been made, so it is natural to try the effect. Maybe some artillery can have a range of more than ten miles.

Besides, this two-and-a-half-inch artillery shell is too small, which is equivalent to the size of a fist. In this era when the lethality of shells is basically based on smashing, such a small shell is naturally not good, and it does not have much lethality at all.

Immediately afterwards, he ordered people to try a cannon with a muzzle of five inches and a barrel length of seven and a half feet.

The roar of this kind of artillery is also relatively dull, but the shooting distance is only more than four miles, less than five miles.

This also confirms the conjecture that the proportional relationship between the gun caliber and the length of the barrel can determine the range. As expected, the larger the multiple, the farther the range.

Next came the rifled cannon.

What Taichang meant was to try the [-]-jin Thor cannon first.

Because they are most familiar with the [-]-jin Thor cannon, and they have verified the range many times before the rifling was engraved, which is about three miles.

With this base, they can accurately determine the impact of rifling on range.

Zhang Yuanfang gave an order, and the sailors directly lifted up the four Thor cannons engraved with different rifling lines.

The Thor cannon with three riflings and a depth of one point did not perform very well in test firing, and the shells only flew out for more than three miles but less than four miles.

The roar of this kind of artillery is not so violent anymore, it feels like it is leaking a little air.

This should be caused by the rifling being too deep.

The Thor cannon with three rifling lines and a depth of half an inch had a good test firing effect, and the shells actually flew near the five-mile line.

Moreover, the roar of this artillery is not much different from the original roar.

This proves that the rifling should be more appropriate to engrave half a cent, at least it will not leak air and pressure.

Sure enough, this was confirmed when the six-rifled Thor cannon was tested later.

The depth of the six rifles is one point, and it is still like a leak. The roar is not very violent, and it only shoots three miles away.

With six riflings, the depth is half a point. It's different. Once fired, it can shoot as far as five miles!
This proves that six riflings are better than three riflings.

Moreover, the five-hundred-jin Thor cannon can have a range of more than five miles as long as the rifling is re-engraved!

The result was really surprising.

Because they have already cast a lot of [-]-jin Thor cannons, and as long as they are pulled back and re-engraved the rifling, they can meet the range requirements at this stage.

In other words, they don't have to bother to cast new artillery pieces for the existing Spike and Dragonfang warships.

There are still eight cannons to try, what kind of surprises will there be next?

The next test was a rifled gun with a two-and-a-half-inch muzzle and a five-inch barrel.

Three riflings, the depth is one point, and the range increase is not very significant, and it can only shoot six miles away.

Three rifling lines, the depth is half a minute, the range is improved a bit, and the shells almost fall near the ten-mile line.

With six riflings, the depth is one point, which is still the same as leaking air, and the range is only more than six miles.

With six riflings, the depth is half a point, which is more terrifying.

With a "boom", there was a scream of "chirp" as soon as the shell flew out of the muzzle, which shocked everyone.

This is the sound brought out by the high-speed rotation of the shell!

This sound is a bit similar to the screeching sound of the cannonballs of later generations when they are ejected.

So how far did the cannon go?
The navy officers and soldiers searched for a long time before finding it, but the shell actually flew one or two miles beyond the ten-mile line!

Good guy, now Taichang understands completely.

With six riflings and a depth of half a minute, the ratio of the gun caliber to the length of the barrel is about [-] times, and the range can exceed ten miles!
In other words, as long as the gun barrel is increased to a length of one foot, a five-inch shell can be fired more than ten miles away.

In the rear, four rifled guns with five-inch muzzles and seven-and-a-half-foot barrels also testify to this.

Now, Ming's artillery is at least invincible in terms of range. They understand the role of artillery caliber, barrel length, and rifling. They want to build artillery with a range of tens of miles!

Of course, at this moment, the artillery is not as far away as possible.

Because the viewing distance of the telescope can't keep up at the moment, the Ministry of Industry doesn't know if a telescope with a viewing distance of about ten miles has been developed.

Moreover, the gun barrel at this moment cannot be infinitely long, and a length of one foot, or more than three meters, is almost the limit. If it is longer, it will be difficult to achieve mass production.

Another point is the thickness or weight of the shells.

After all, the lethality of the cannonball at this moment mainly depends on the self-weight of the cannonball, and this must also be considered when considering the range.

Therefore, Taichang finally decided to temporarily use the [-]-jin Thunder God Cannon as the main equipment of the Navy, because most of the machine tools in the Cannon Foundry are developed based on this cannon.

Moreover, as long as a suitable rifling is engraved on this kind of artillery, the range can exceed five miles, which is sufficient at this stage.

As for the artillery for long-range strikes, he decided that the caliber would remain unchanged at five inches, and the length of the barrel would be directly increased to one foot.

In this way, the shells can also be used universally, and the range can exceed ten miles.

As for the name of this new type of artillery, it is directly called Thor II.

(End of this chapter)