Wanli 1592

Chapter 1134

The development of artillery is actually a rather slow process.

The artillery that can be considered to be the closest to modern artillery that can open flower bombs will not be completed until the bombardment guns appeared in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. launch problems.

First of all, the chamber pressure is the problem, and the long-barreled artillery means high chamber pressure.

Blooming ammunition needs enough gunpowder to ensure its power, but more gunpowder means a thin shell, and a thin shell will cause an explosion in the chamber, and the artillery will explode and be useless.

The shell is thick and will not explode, but there is too little gunpowder, and it has no power when shot out. It is not as good as an iron egg.

In other words, before the appearance of French bombardment guns and reliable fuzes, the mainstream artillery in the world fired solid ammunition.

For example, during the Napoleonic Wars, more than 90.00% of the artillery ammunition of European artillery were solid ammunition and shot ammunition, not flowering ammunition.

In addition to the fact that the long-barreled cannon cannot be fired, it is very difficult to determine how the flowering bomb ignites and calculates the time to explode.

Early flowering bombs were fired with short-bodied and long-caliber guns such as mortars and howitzers, and they were ignited in two steps. First, the lead wire of the flowering bomb was ignited and put into the muzzle, and then the propellant of the artillery was ignited, so as to launch the flowering bomb. bomb.

But there is a serious problem with this.

In case the propellant is too late to ignite and launch, the flower bomb may explode in the chamber, causing the chamber to explode, thus directly killing the entire gun crew.

Therefore, the artillery crew members who used mortars and howitzers in the early days were jokingly called the people closest to God in the West.

Until the invention of wooden fuzes and wooden soft supports, flowering bullets were extremely unstable battlefield killers, not only hurting the enemy, but also hurting themselves.

So not only the Qing army at the same time didn't like to use it, but Europeans also didn't like to use it.

Wooden fuzes and wooden soft supports shined brilliantly in the American Civil War era, and before that, they had appeared to enhance the air-tightness of large-caliber howitzers, increase the range of howitzers to open flower bombs, and increase the range of flower bombs power.

The so-called wooden soft support is to install a cork with the same shape and the inner diameter of the gun bore on the bottom of the spherical flower shell, and connect the wooden soft support and the shell with an iron plate to form a whole.

Adding a wooden soft support to the tail of the shell can not only effectively seal the gas leakage, but also play a buffer role on the shell when it is fired.

Moreover, due to the reason of the wooden support, the fired bullets will cause the "badminton principle" of heavy head and light tail, forming a self-stabilizing structure, making the trajectory more accurate and the range longer, which can achieve the effect of rifling to a certain extent.

In the same way, this kind of wooden soft support can also be used on solid bullets, so that the solid bullets have a longer and more accurate range, and enhance the power. Before the blooming bullets cannot have enough power, it is also good to enhance the power of the solid bullets.

In order to increase the power of the flowering bomb, a complete set of industrial systems and chemical foundations are needed. As far as the current situation is concerned, the conditions are not yet available.

Although Xiao Ruxun looked at Xu Guangqi and the others doing things with great fanfare, the progress was not obvious.

Most of the time, Xiao Ruxun knows what is going on, but he doesn't know why, so he can only provide them with research directions and final results. As for the process, it depends on these professionals themselves.

The firearms department of the Ministry of Military Industry has concentrated more than 600 firearms experts, which is currently the strongest firearms research lineup in Daqin.

Xiao Ruxun has reasons to believe that they can do something that he didn't expect, even if it can't be mass-produced, at least make a sample first and come up with a standard.

It is precisely because of this that when Xiao Ruxun was observing the test firing of the artillery, he suddenly remembered the wooden soft support, so he asked someone to draw the wooden soft support in his memory, and gave the drawing to Xu Guangqi, telling Xu Guangqi to make it first. A few wooden soft supports that can be fired with the Hongyi cannon come out.

When Xu Guangqi saw this drawing, he immediately remembered that the principle of the bullets used in his Guangqi-style flintlock gun was the same as that of this wooden soft support.

However, it looks simple on the blueprints, but it is not easy to actually make it. How to make this wooden soft support fit the shells and perfectly fit the barrel of the Hongyi cannon.

All of this requires precise measurement and calculation. Thanks to the dimensional vernier caliper that Xiao Ruxun handed over to him in Myanmar, the measurement and calculation do not seem to be difficult.

It took seven or eight days for Xu Guangqi to lead people to produce five solid bullets connected to wooden soft supports, and started the first round of experiments.

In order to ensure safety, the person in charge of security arranged them to a relatively distant place, and then arranged for several gunners to try to launch.

As a result, the cannon exploded.

None of the four gunners survived, and all were blown to pieces, and this is obviously not the first time an accident has occurred.

In Myanmar, there have been countless such accidents. There are 56 Burmese researchers who died due to experimental accidents. Later, Xiao Ruxun was replaced by prisoners of war or criminals on death row to conduct experiments on their behalf.

But it is dangerous to let these guys conduct experiments, because they are afraid that they will get into trouble and do something with the firearms in their hands, so later they specially arranged soldiers with light-activated flintlock guns to strictly monitor the whole process, and immediately fired if something went wrong. Shot dead.

Because of such risks, Xu Guangqi still arranged for professional gunners to help with the experiment this time, but it turned out that people and ghosts went the same way after one experiment.

Immediately after the accident, Xu Guangqi filed an apology form, and then organized manpower to improve the size of the wooden soft support and polish the edges to a certain extent.

He knew very well that the wooden soft support must have failed to fire, causing the artillery to explode, and the problem lay with the soft support.

After Xiao Ruxun learned about it, he decreed to reprimand Xu Guangqi, saying that he did not regard the lives of soldiers as his own, and that he could use death-row prisoners and prisoners of war instead, but chose gunners. To their parents?

A sum of pensions was handed out, and some preferential treatment policies were given to the parents and families of the four soldiers, and some compensation was given to the army, which stabilized the relationship between the army and the Ministry of Military Industry, otherwise the artillery team would have to bring people to the military industry There is trouble.

Xiao Ruxun ordered Xu Guangqi to use death row prisoners or prisoners of war in all experiments in the future. Soldiers holding Guangqi flintlock guns would strictly monitor them and shoot them immediately if they found something wrong. However, no matter what, the soldiers should not die in vain.

In view of his contribution to the country, I will not go into details, but Xu Guangqi was fined one year's salary, and was demoted to three ranks to keep his original position. Several entourages were also fined half a year's salary. accept punishment.

However, his research did not stop, and Xiao Ruxun did not allow him to stop.

After several times of polishing, he took out a solid ammunition with a wooden support produced by brand new data, operated it with a death row prisoner, and successfully fired three rounds. Compared with another Hongyi cannon that did not use a wooden support, it not only had a range It is nearly one-fifth farther away, and the ballistic trajectory is also much more correct.

It is really like what Xiao Ruxun said, the head is heavy and the tail is light, the overall shell becomes stable, the shooting path is relatively straight, and it is farther and more powerful.

(End of this chapter)