African Nationhood

Chapter 198 New Rifle Finalized
  It was already late January when he returned to Anhai Town. Shi Jintang went directly to the Anhai Town Arsenal.

Here Shi Jintang inquired about the completion status of the order from the British Army Department.

After listening to the report on the completion of the order, he began to concentrate on studying the design drawings of the new rifle sent by the Herstal Arsenal.

Last year, Shi Jintang talked to Robin Trudeau about the new rifle. At that time, Herstal had just started and there were no senior firearms designers, so the matter was delayed.

After more than half a year, Trudeau finally completed the design drawings of the new gun.

After seeing the design drawings of the new gun, Shi Jintang felt that Robin Trudeau was being clever here.

Except for the new gun case and new bolt mechanism required by Shi Jintang, the rest of this new gun completely copied the Mannlicher 1885 style.

The length of the entire gun is 1280cm, the barrel is about 76.5cm long, it uses a V-shaped front sight, and the bayonet is copied from the Mannlicher flake bayonet.

Moreover, he foolishly copied the five-rifling design of the large-caliber barrel. According to Trudeau's design, the new gun's bare weight will exceed 5kg.

This gun did not meet Shi Jintang's expectations at all. He expected that the naked weight of the new gun should not exceed 4kg, and 3.9kg was the ideal.

Before World War I, all European military powers would try to make the barrel as long as possible when designing rifles. First, it could shoot farther, and second, it could make it easier to use a bayonet.

Xiaojiazi's rifle design adheres to this concept, so several of their rifles have very long bodies, and the bayonet is almost 1.8m long.

But by World War I, trench warfare became the mainstream of war, and long-bodied rifles became the shortcomings of the soldiers.

Coupled with the rise of tanks, long gun bodies became even more useless, so European countries began to shorten the gun body. The most typical one is the chicken-eating artifact 98k.

Shi Jintang believes that the standard rifle in Southwest Africa does not need to be too long for the following reasons:

1. The main combat targets of Nanhua Company will be the indigenous people for a long time, so there is no need to waste manpower and material resources on building long gun bodies.

2. The body shape of Asians is different from that of Europeans and Americans. The gun body is too long and heavy, which is not conducive to long-distance carrying.

3. Short barrels are the future trend, so it’s a waste of effort.

As for the issue of shooting distance, there is no need to worry about it.

The power of smokeless flames is beyond imagination. Although many rifles are designed to have a scale of one or two thousand meters, the most commonly used distance in actual warfare is 450-500 meters.

It's unrealistic to go any further. The Japanese's Type 38 6.5mm small-caliber bullet requires two vent holes in the rifle.

They were just afraid that the bullet would explode and injure the soldiers. This shows how overpowering the smokeless gunpowder was.

It was not until the late World War II and beyond that countries began to pay attention to the problem of excess bullet power.

The emergence of AK47 has led to a research boom in half-power bullets and small-caliber bullets in various countries around the world.

Therefore, it is very suitable for Shi Jintang to shorten the body of this rifle and change it to 98mm length of 600k.

As for the bolt mechanism, Shi Jintang thought about making slight modifications and changed it to the wrapped bolt mechanism of the later "Liao 13-type".

As for Mauser's iconic rotating rear pull-type safety, Shi Jintang directly abandoned it and replaced it with a Japanese 38-style safety bolt structure and a rotating rear cover type.

Most of the components of the firearm are integrated like the Type 38, and the components are integrated as effectively as possible.

In this way, when soldiers disassemble it, they will feel that the rifle is simple and convenient for maintenance and repair.

The gun case uses the left and right recessed gun cases that are only used in the Mauser 1898 type.

This design was improved by Mauser from Mannlicher's missing clip magazine.

(The design of the leaky magazine is very famous. This design was adopted by the Hanyang-made magazines in the late Qing Dynasty and the old and American M1 Garand.)
  As for the shooting ruler, the horizontal ruler is used. Although the vertical ruler is more intuitive, the shooting is probably accurate.

However, the first disadvantage is that it is large in size, and the second is that the relationship between range and elevation angle is not linear.

Therefore, on the scale, the distance becomes larger as the distance increases, and the distance increases as the distance increases.

At common infantry engagement distances, the numbers on the sight are crowded together, making it easy to make mistakes.

The scale of the horizontal ruler is even, easy to use and not easy to make mistakes.

As for the front sight of the gun head, Shi Jintang plans to use a circle-wrapped front sight, which will make it easier for novices to aim.

After considering the parts on the gun body, the only thing left is the bayonet.

Regarding the bayonet, Shi Jintang prefers to use a four-sided bayonet like the Mosin Nagant with four blood grooves. After such a bayonet stabs the human body, it will not get stuck on the bone like a dagger-type bayonet.

However, considering the industrial base of Nanhua Company, the dagger-type bayonet was ultimately chosen.

The specific reference standard should be the German K98 bayonet.

After Shi Jintang recorded his modifications, he called the engineers from the Anhai Town Arsenal and asked them to redraw the new gun design according to the modifications.

After the drawings of the entire rifle are redrawn, Shi Jintang plans to let the Herstal Arsenal trial-produce the prototype gun first.

And the 7.7mm round-nose rifle bullets that have been tested and finalized here are sent over for them to test.

The reason why pointed bullets are not used is, firstly, for technical reasons, and secondly, the new rifle bullets of this era are still round-tipped.

He doesn't need to do anything special to attract attention.

This year the French Lebel 1886 rifle will be released, and there will be a good show to watch.

……

In addition to the design drawings of the new gun, Trudeau also sent 20 shell guns using new bullets.

The size of the shell gun this time completely matches the size in Shi Jintang's memory. The new shell gun uses the 7.63 mm caliber version.

Currently, it has a 10-round magazine. After finalization, it can be equipped with a 20-round magazine and a fully automatic version.

In the original time and space, the Spaniards produced this kind of firearm in a domestic copycat. The modified version was better than Mauser and almost killed Mauser's sales.

This gun will be customized according to customer requirements. The Qing people in the Far East love this kind of firearm very much and will be a big customer of Herstal Arsenal in the future.

The currently finalized gun body is 132mm long and weighs 1.2kg. The grip is also made with wood grain for easy gripping.

The matching wooden gun box can be connected and used as a gun stock. The cost of these gun boxes is not low.

The only way to reduce costs is through mass production, which is still relatively expensive for the time being.

Shi Jintang is very fond of this small-caliber shell gun. The 9 mm caliber is also a bit too powerful. As for the large-caliber guns of later generations that were modified to 11.43 mm.

Just thinking about the terrible recoil is unacceptable.

After trying a few guns, Shi Jintang called Shi Ming and asked their guard company to try this new gun. In the future, they can try to build a guard company equipped with shell guns.

……

After settling the matter of the new rifle, Shi Jintang relaxed and went directly to the principal's office of Anhai Town Middle School.

Jin Xiyue has been a bit neglected recently. I don't know what she is busy with recently.

Although the name of Anhai Town Middle School has been changed, the location remains the same.

Shi Jintang walked around the school and vaguely remembered that he came to inspect the school and interact with the students.

At that time, he asked a little fat boy to perform, and the little fat boy sang "Arirang".

Jin Xiyue also sang along with the Chinese lyrics, and then she got lost in Jin Xiyue's singing.

After careful calculation, it has been 5 or 6 years. Thinking of this, Shi Jintang couldn't help but smile bitterly.

People say that once a person becomes fond of reminiscing, it means he is old.

Putting his two lifetimes together, he is almost a middle-aged man in his forties or fifties.

Fortunately, he will have a second child soon, and should also give Jin Xiyue a child, otherwise she will definitely be lonely.

Thinking of this, Shi Jintang's pace became much firmer.

I am already 26 years old in this life. In addition to getting married, I also have a few more children.

It is best to have several sons, otherwise it will be embarrassing to have no heirs in the future.

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  (End of this chapter)