When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 660: Griffin Cannon and Regimental Falcon Cannon

The secret parties that were originally chattering suddenly became quiet.

It’s not that they were not shocked when the sky was falling, but they were in great confusion and didn’t know what expression to make for a moment.

That was not a country gentleman's compound, but Fort Fraser, which had been blocking the throat of the northern county for decades.

After the initial confusion, a high priest of the Ruoan Party could not help but whisper to the elder of the Shadow Society beside him: "Do you remember a spell that fell from the sky?"

"Meteor magic? But that witch has been dead for two hundred years."

"Is this the clockwork gun you mentioned? It's much more powerful than you mentioned." Thinking of the slender clockwork gun her family made, Solan couldn't help feeling ashamed and angry. These alchemists actually dared to fool her with a miniature version. Did they think she didn't dare to kill anyone?

"No, no, no." Lulos took a puff of her pipe. "This is a new weapon. It's the first time I've seen it... No wonder the secret party came to see it. Is it to establish authority?"

Recently, the Ruan Party has been quietly spreading rumors of the "Black Snake Bay Alliance".

Large secret parties like the Shadow Society naturally united quickly, but small and medium-sized secret parties were afraid and unwilling to submit.

As the saying goes, it is better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix. If we hand over power and lose our independence, won't we be controlled by the big secret party?

Intellectually, they knew that unity was necessary.

But emotionally speaking, most secret party members, especially the small leaders of the secret party, have considerable concerns about this.

When they came to Fort Fraser this time, the secret party members knew that they were going to be given a warning, but they didn't expect that the warning would be so great.

After comparing it with their own secret party stronghold, the small and medium-sized secret party members present all made hissing sounds.

Because they found that with the strength of their own small castles or earthen strongholds, they probably wouldn't even need a second shot.

"Pious! Sincere!"

After firing the clockwork cannon, Mormont walked up to Horn with great interest and said, "Your Majesty, according to the telescope, the first shot of the Griffin cannon created a gap of about 1 meter in the enemy's wall and caused a landslide with a diameter of about 2 meters."

Holding the telescope, Horn was also staring at the top of the wall. He felt a little relieved when he saw the bricks and stones flying.

Generally speaking, the main force of siege artillery is 24-pound and 48-pound guns, and 12-pound guns are mostly used as ship guns and field guns on specific battlefields.

The field gun hit its target on its first discharge, and happened to knock down a section of the wall, so Horn thought it would have to fire several more times.

After all, although the screw adjustment angle and orbit adjustment position have been increased, in the current world where there is almost no ballistics, the fired shells are still quite random.

Astrology can only determine the position and distance. During the firing process, there are also interference factors such as wind speed, air humidity and the firing rod itself. Whether the target can be hit depends on the gunner.

As a veteran of the fireball crossbow, Mormont has demonstrated unparalleled talent in operating clockwork cannons.

Horn was both satisfied and dissatisfied with the result of this first test firing.

To be precise, he was very satisfied with the effect, but he was quite dissatisfied with the prototype gun's five-meter-long barrel and weight of more than 2 tons.

Normally, even a twelve-pound siege cannon requires a long barrel, but no matter how long it is, it should not exceed 3 meters. However, the clockwork cannon made by Leonardo and Hemodine was actually 5 meters long.

According to the two men's explanation, this is because the energy released by the orichalcum spring is not released instantly. If the barrel is too short, the spring has not yet completely relaxed and the shell has already flown out prematurely.

But on the other hand, since there is no problem of gunpowder exploding, the barrel of this Griffin clockwork cannon is about 2-4 cm thinner than that of a normal cannon.

Of course, as a prototype gun, the barrel wall was thickened only for safety reasons.

If it is really put into actual combat in the future, not only will the integrated barrel not be used, the barrel wall can be made 2-3 cm thinner, and it can even be loaded from the breech.

It is precisely because the gun barrel is too long that the weight, which should have been only about 1.8 tons, has increased to more than 2 tons.

It takes six horses to pull a cannon like this, but the Falcon Cannon can be pushed by two or three people. "If we can solve the problem of the fuse and the locking wedge, we can just build a mortar and fire the hurricane shells at the top of the wall. With their densely packed positions, tut tut." Hemo Ding folded his arms across his chest and said with a tut.

"Instead of thinking about how to solve the problem of timing the unlocking of the locking wedge, it is better to think about how to develop a more solid locking wedge." Horn stood with his hands behind his back, away from the mainspring chamber being replaced, "How many mainspring chambers have been blown up along the way."

"My design is perfect. It's a material problem. It's none of my business." Heimerdine immediately put the blame on the Dragon Cult dwarves. "You should ask Kergen."

The hurricane bomb that Heimerting mentioned was actually an iron shell shell with a mountain copper spring and iron sand lead balls stuffed into it, and a locking wedge that released the spring the moment it hit the ground.

Then, under the crazy rotation and ejection of the spring, iron sand and lead will explode in all directions like a tornado.

At present, the design of this hurricane bomb is only on paper. It is unknown when it will be developed and put into production.

"Can these locking wedges and spring clips be used for the regiment's Falcon Cannon?" Horn looked at the reloaded Griffin Cannon and Leonardo who was recording the data, and continued to ask Hemodine.

In Horn's artillery design, the 12-pound gun would probably be used in defensive and positional warfare, and the real field gun was still the 3-pound Falcon gun.

Because even if the barrel of the 12-pound Griffin cannon is shortened, the weight will not be less than 1.7 tons, the maneuverability is relatively poor, and the cost is too high.

Horn's regimental artillery was the 3-pounder attached battery assigned to the corps level and the 6-pounder independent battery assigned to the battle regiment level.

Heimdine began to mutter to herself, "Hmm... the 2-pound mountain copper spring used for the regiment's falcon cannon requires about 40 pounds of carbon steel to make the spring chamber.

假设每门鹰隼炮配备15个发条仓，耗费30磅山铜和600磅的碳钢，一个军团3门鹰隼炮就是90磅山铜与1800磅碳钢，这个数字倒也不是不能接受……”

While Hemordine and Horn were chatting, the artillerymen, under the control of Mormont, smoothly replaced the 60-pound mainspring and began the second round of bombardment.

Following Mormont's order, the black shadow wrapped in the air wave leaped out again, rushing towards Fraser Castle across a distance of nearly 1500 meters.

The second shot obviously did not have as good luck as the previous one. Although it still maintained the previous angle and direction, this shot hit the bell tower head-on.

Debris and tiles wrapped around broken wood fell down and hit the foreheads of the soldiers and knights under the city wall. Some timid soldiers even screamed "devil" and "divine punishment" and began to flee in all directions.

"Go back to your places!"

"Do you want to lose your head? Get back here!"

"Buzz—Snap!"

The knight officers had to take out their whips to drive these fleeing soldiers back to their positions.

But when they looked up at the crack in the bell tower, they swallowed unconsciously.

…………

It must be said that thanks to the knights of Fort Fraser who worked here for many years and built many water wheels and windmills.

After installing the gear set and modifying and replacing the water wheel with a larger one, the remaining eight mainspring chambers took turns to fire, and the Griffin cannon could roar almost every five to ten minutes.

The Griffin cannon had been firing from morning till evening. If Horn had not been worried about the clockwork chamber exploding, he would probably have continued firing at night.

Although the city walls had been breached and cracked on the first day, Horn still did not order an attack on the city. Instead, he repeatedly tested the data from various angles.

Two days, three days, until the fourth day, the knights and soldiers in the city collapsed.

Before the city gates were blasted open by the griffin cannon, hundreds of extraordinary knights secretly fled the castle on their horses at night.

When the Joanian army entered Fort Fraser in the morning light, they looked at the soldiers kneeling in a row on both sides with flags hanging upside down, and for a moment they were a little dazed.

Their only wounded soldier was the unlucky guy who broke his leg when he ran too fast into the city.

(End of this chapter)