African Nationhood

Chapter 254 Wanhu-88 Rocket

After staying in Harbin for one night, Shi Jintang and his party continued north the next day to Molai Town, a small town 45 kilometers away from Harbin (today's Molepo Mole City, Botswana).

That is where the rocket factory of the Matabeleland Garrison Regiment Artillery Battalion is based.

Because the rocket factory needs to conduct test launches frequently, the dense population in Harbin is not conducive to confidentiality.

This place is close enough to Harbin and is the gateway to the Kalahadi Desert, so the rocket factory was placed here.

Molai Town is a typical oasis-type area, and the water source here is the only source of drinking water for nearby animals.

When the advance battalion attacked the Bechuanaland area, they found that many indigenous people gathered here and the water here was very sweet.

The reason why the first two characters of the place name here means that from here you will enter the desert area with an uncertain future. I advise you not to come.

A secondary highway has been built from Harbin to here, so there is no need to worry that the rain here will destroy the roadbed.

After all, the annual precipitation in Harbin area is similar to that in Hot Spring City, both with a 400 mm precipitation line.

Secondary roads are enough to handle daily traffic, and there is basically no need to worry too much about road maintenance.

Because there are so many deserts in the Namib and Bechuanaland regions of Southwest Africa, it saves a lot of manpower and material resources for urban infrastructure projects. At least there is basically no need to put too much effort into urban sewer construction.

The cities in Mata Administrative Office and Ronda Administrative Office must carefully consider the issue of flood discharge in urban construction during the rainy season.

Also because the infrastructure in those places is very primitive, it is easy to paint on a canvas.

Therefore, Boss Shi specifically emphasized the issue of urban sewer flood discharge at the joint meeting of inland central city construction.

At the joint meeting, several officials unanimously agreed that Nanhua Company would come forward to find experts in Germany to help design sewer projects in inland central cities. The Germans were professional in this area.

There are often jokes on the Internet in later generations of China saying that the urban sewers on the Jiaozhou Bay side have been fine for more than a hundred years, and it is all the credit of the Germans.

Some big cities in China often have the wonder of "looking at the sea" because they are not as professional as the Germans.

……

When they arrived at Molai Town, Qi Lin and several non-commissioned officers from the artillery battalion had been waiting for a long time. When they met, Qi Lin and others all stood at attention and saluted Shi Jintang.

The title is not Mr. Shi as others call him, but the group leader.

"Hello, Captain!"

Shi Jintang returned a military salute to several people. Shi Jintang was also the leader of the Matabeleland garrison, so there was no problem for him to perform a military salute.

"Captain, you are here at the right time. We have just successfully tested a new type of rocket. I would like to ask you to name this new rocket."

Shi Jintang smiled, it was because his subordinates were making fun of him.

It is very likely that this rocket has been successfully developed a long time ago, but it was not reported in time.

Just waiting for the news that he was coming to inspect, I lied to him that the experiment had just been successful.

"Well, how many spare parts do you have for your new rockets?"

When Qi Lin heard his boss' question, he didn't think much and answered directly: "There are more than 500."

After saying this, Qi Lin immediately woke up and laughed.

Shi Jintang pointed at him, "I won't do this next time!"

Qi Lin immediately put his legs together, raised his chest and raised his head and answered loudly: "Yes!"

The rocket arsenal is not large in scale, covering an area of ​​more than 50 acres, and there are not many workers, only more than 300.

A small number of these workers were British, and they were hired by Nanhua Company with high salaries.

There are three workshops in the factory.

The first thing to see is the barrel processing workshop, which mainly processes the seamless steel barrels required for rockets.

The production and processing here does not involve casting by ourselves, but purchases cast steel pipes from Europe and then cuts and thins them ourselves.

The structure of the rocket is too simple. Special attention must be paid to the weight of the missile body tube. Therefore, after calculation, it is critical to determine the thickness of the rocket body tube. Cutting it will test the skill of the technician.

This work is the specialty of white technicians, and the skills of Chinese workers are not up to this level. In addition to the barrel processing workshop, there is also a propellant preparation workshop.

In addition to the commonly used potassium nitrate, sugar is used here.

Potassium nitrate has strong reducing properties and will burn violently with organic matter.

White sugar has strong oxidizing properties and can assist combustion and accelerate the release of caloric value when burned. Therefore, white sugar is a very important strategic material.

In the era of black powder, white sugar could increase the explosive power of black powder, and now it can be used as propellant for rockets.

Nanhua Company has planned a large sugarcane plantation in the Lunda Kingdom area, and has now begun to build a sugar mill.

It won't be long before Nanhua Company will be self-sufficient in sugar.

……

After talking about the barrel and propellant, the rest is the charging workshop.

This is a workshop that assembles high explosives and contact fuses for rockets.

The artillery battalion is currently testing several types of high explosives, and two models have been identified.

The mixed explosives of picric acid and nitroglycerin are named high-explosive type 1, and the mixed explosives of picric acid and tnt are naturally high-explosive type 2.

Of these two high-energy explosives, the safer one for artillery battalions is high-explosive type II.

This kind of explosive is powerful and highly stable. Unlike the mixture of picric acid and nitroglycerin, which basically explodes on collision, it is very unsafe.

But be careful when loading picric acid. If picric acid is placed on the outer layer of the mixed explosive, accidents may occur.

The safest option is to use tnt. Although this explosive is less powerful than picric acid, it is more reliable and safer.

This is also the reason why tnt replaced picric acid as the standard for explosives after the 20th century.

……

After visiting the rocket factory, Shi Jintang followed Qi Lin to the test site.

The test site faces the Kalahadi Desert, so there is no need to clean up the test site, just launch it directly.

"The rocket launcher in front of us has a tube diameter of 16 centimeters, a length of 1.2 meters, and a total weight of 45.7 kilograms.

According to our tests, the range of this new rocket can reach 10 kilometers, and the explosion splash range reaches about 2000 meters. "

Looking at the rough launcher in front of him, Shi Jintang smiled bitterly.

"Test it, seeing is believing."

Qi Lin nodded, then took the lighter to light the fuse.

With the "chi la chi la", it soon burned to the tail tube of the rocket, and orange-red flames erupted, followed by violent rises of smoke and dust.

Then there was the sound of rockets rubbing the air, and a few minutes later, there was a booming explosion in the distance.

Shi Jintang and others got on their horses and rushed towards the location of the explosion. The distance of ten kilometers was not far and it would take some time.

When they arrived at the explosion site, they only saw a deep pit more than 20 meters in diameter.

Qi Lin and others were very experienced in searching for the sputtered body pipe fragments in the distance. After a while, most of them had gained something.

Shi Jintang also recognized this explosive effect.

But this kind of rocket is too primitive. The range can still be increased as long as the charge is piled up, but the farther the range, the less accurate it can be guaranteed.

"Let's name this rocket Wanhu-88. Next, I will raise the requirements for your research and development direction.

Increasing the charge amount randomly is not a good research and development direction. We must pursue accuracy. "

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  (End of this chapter)