Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

Chapter 117 82 big barrels and 50 small barrels of magic defeat magic
Yangcun.

The test site behind the mountain.

Wang Chengzhu squatted excitedly in front of the newly produced 82mm Yangcun Zaomin mortar.

Since leaving the New 1st Regiment, he has not touched his beloved mortar for a long time. In the Independent Regiment, Wang Chengzhu could only operate the gasoline barrel thunder cannon and the grenade launcher.

But neither of these two is the real artillery in Wang Chengzhu's mind.

Although it is exciting to fight the Japanese, it is definitely not as satisfying as using a mortar to take the Japanese head from thousands of meters away!
As an artilleryman, the 60mm mortar is Wang Chengzhu's last resort.

But if given a choice, Wang Chengzhu hopes the bottom line is 82mm Min !
Because the 60mm mortar can only passively take the beating when facing the Japanese Type 82 infantry gun, but with the mm Type , Wang Chengzhu can teach the Japanese artillerymen what a gunner is!

"Zhu Zi, do you know how to use this thing?" Li Yunlong approached the new mortar with a burning gaze, but he felt a little unsure.

"Captain, who are you looking down on? If you can get an Italian gun, I'll make the Japanese Type 82 mountain gun kneel down and call me daddy!" Wang Chengzhu said with a red face, "Just this mm barrel, let me try a few guns to understand the performance, and then I can beat the Type infantry gun."

As a professional gunner, Wang Chengzhu naturally has his own pride.

"Hehe, Zhuzi, if you can destroy the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun, I will reward you with half a bowl of the good wine that Brother Ren gave me!" Li Yunlong said with a silly smile.

"Captain, you better watch out. I'll definitely let you take down a few Type 92 infantry guns. Don't cheat when the time comes. One Type 92 infantry gun is half a bowl!" Wang Chengzhu licked his lips, as if he had already tasted good wine.

That’s what Boss Ren brought. It should taste much better than the group leader’s sweet potato stew, right?

"Boom!" Wang Chengzhu fired a shot at 45 degrees with the mortar! The shell whizzed through the hilltop and landed in the target area. There was no flat land of more than 2000 meters in the ravine. The place for the test gun in Yangcun had to be more than 3000 meters away, and it had to cross two hills, one big and one small.

Since this place was chosen as the artillery test site, not only were sentries deployed around it to simulate the entry of personnel, but also 100-meter interval marking lines were marked every 3000 meters with hemp ropes in advance.

So after the shell flew over, I waited for nearly a minute before the handheld radio sent back the landing point information, "It's over 2500 meters, almost between 2500 and 2600 meters, and the landing point deviated from the set center line by about 7 meters!"

"Hehe, this distance is not bad!" Li Yunlong grinned brightly. The original version of the 2850 grenade with the largest charge had a maximum range of meters. The grenade that Wang Chengzhu was testing now did not have the maximum charge, but this result was already very close to the original version.

"One more shot!" Wang Chengzhu adjusted the mortar that was deviated by vibration, aimed the barrel at the center line, adjusted the angle to about 47 degrees and fired again.

"Distance is 2420 meters, and the center line is 2 meters away!" The reply from the opposite side was reported.

"Okay, place a target at the 2450-meter center line. I want to try a precision strike!" Wang Chengzhu shouted into the walkie-talkie. Then he began to carefully adjust the position and angle of the gun.

It was only 30 meters away, and the angle only needed to be slightly lowered. The new mortar had not yet implemented a distance scale. These had to wait for someone to calculate and have Wang Chengzhu slowly test and verify before they could be marked. Otherwise, who would know how far it could hit. After the third shell was fired, there was a surprise report from the other side that it had hit the target, and a wooden frame imitating the Type infantry gun was blown to pieces!
As expected of Wang Chengzhu, the God of Artillery, he tested out the performance in just a few strokes and started to show his power.

Old Li was a little envious watching from the side, but this thing really requires talent. There are so many people in the independent regiment, and Zhuzi only picked out more than 20 talents after selecting for a long time.

"Zhu Zi, can you please popularize your method of hitting accurately?" Li Yunlong asked tentatively.

"Captain, this is aiming after ranging. As long as you get the angle right, you can shoot very accurately. There's no technical skill involved, but we have to measure the distance ourselves when we fight, and accurate measurement tests our skills. The thumb ranging method we're using now is easy to get started with but difficult to master. I've passed on the method and experience to you, but you've still got to figure it out on your own in practice. Practice more and gain more experience," said Wang Chengzhu.

Wang Chengzhu was also helpless.

Measuring distance with the thumb was like an instinct for him. He could get the exact distance with his thumb. However, this could only be understood intuitively and not explained. Wang Chengzhu himself was not very educated, so he relied on this talent.

"Hey, ask Brother Ren the next day if this distance measuring device can be used to do something useful. He has seen a lot of foreign gadgets, maybe he has something that can measure distance." Li Yunlong muttered casually.

"Commander, if we really need that thing, our artillery can fire wherever we point. But I have never heard of such a thing." Wang Chengzhu interjected.

After Wang Chengzhu's test, the performance of the new gun was quite ideal. The barrel performed stably after firing more than a dozen rounds in a row. The steel tube provided by Ren Zhong was of impeccable quality. According to Wang Chengzhu's own estimation, it was slightly stronger than the Min 20. As for the difference in maximum distance, it was probably due to the difference in quality and quantity of mortar charge. However, the newly produced shells are now very stable, both in distance and killing radius, so Wang Chengzhu did not suggest any change.

This meant that the Yangcun-made mortar could be finalized. Wang Chengzhu finally had his own new gun and began to conduct intensive training for his artillery platoon.

As a supplement to the 82mm mortar, Ren Zhong originally had his eyes on the 60mm mortar as the company firepower, but due to the serious lack of carrying capacity, Ren Zhong felt that there was no need to waste 60mm tubes from the main plane. Instead, he chose to use the 82mm mortar as the long-range firepower, while the short-range firepower continued to use the Japanese grenade launcher design.

Based on the Eighth Route Army's creative imitation and improvement of the Japanese Type 89 grenade launcher, Ren Zhong appropriately thickened and lengthened the original grenade launcher tube, improved the curve of the projectile warhead, eliminated the difficult-to-process internal rifling, and directly changed it to a smoothbore structure. This made the production process requirements much lower than the original ones.

The high-quality carbon steel produced in the open furnace is directly made into preliminary steel plates, which are then forged into "20 cm thick and 30 cm wide" steel bars, and spirally welded to make a 500 mm long launch tube. This hybrid variant of the grenade launcher has increased its weight by more than 100 mm, but its maximum range can reach 900 meters, and its performance has been greatly improved compared to the original version of the Japanese.

To a certain extent, it can replace the role of the 60mm mortar's forward projectile firepower, which is just the right way to suppress the enemy's machine gun firepower points and grenade launchers.

For Ren Zhong, it is feasible to temporarily replace the 60mm mortar at the company and platoon level.

However, this meant that the production of grenade launchers would require a lot of blacksmiths, so Zhang Wanhe and Li Yunlong had to gather all the blacksmiths near the base to Yangcun to start the production of grenade launchers.

Since the materials are completely self-produced and sold and the technology is mature, Yangcun's grenade launcher production capacity quickly soared to about 82 per month before the successful development of the 100mm mortar.

But the problem with the gunners became even more serious.

Second update
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(End of this chapter)