1855 United States Tycoon

Chapter 34

At noon, after lunch, as usual, the women went upstairs to rest, while the men smoked a cigarette downstairs and talked about current affairs by the way. Lilith followed her mother upstairs along the stairs, but heard the sound of quarreling from below.

“You mean we can’t beat the Yankee?” An excited voice came over.

“Who is this?” Lilith thought, “It’s really interesting that someone dared to say something like this here.” She slowed down slightly.

“I have no intention to offend, but sir, I want to know how many times you have been to the north? How much do you know about them? As far as I know, you graduated from West Point. “It was mentioned in “Intelligence refers to all the materials we know about the enemy and the enemy country, and it is the basis of all our thoughts and actions.” I don’t know on what basis you concluded that the North is vulnerable.” A voice said. Come here.

“I know that the North is stronger than us in terms of material power. However, just like you quoted “On War”, I would also like to quote the views in “On War”. Let’s discuss the amount of mental energy? In the south, we may not have the upper hand in terms of number and material strength, but the amount of Mental Energy plays a decisive role on the battlefield! And these, you, a coward who only sees material strength, don’t see it. Arrived!”

“Things are getting more and more interesting, maybe in the next step, someone will throw the glove on another person’s face, right?” Lilith stopped her steps without realizing it.

“Lilith, keep up.” The mother’s eyes were a little scolding, as if she was saying: “This is not something Miss should be concerned about.”

“Yeah.” Lilith hurriedly followed.

The following dispute did almost lead to a duel. However, the owner’s intervention prevented the situation from deteriorating. George stopped between the two of them: “Enough! Coster, I’m sure, Joyce is not the coward you think. We are all old neighbors, and you don’t know who Joyce is. Joyce just wanted to say that war is not as simple as you think. I also think that even Mexicans are not as vulnerable as you think. Wouldn’t you think that the Yankees are even Mexicans? Why not?”

Joyce is a young junior, and it’s okay to question him. But George is different. Although he is also their peers, he is much older than them. In addition, he has been on the battlefield. He has always been a model for young people in this area before, so when he stands After coming out, the young man named Coster also quieted down.

And Joyce, who was a bit unspeculative with the young youths who always stayed in the South, also got up to apologize to George and said that he needed to go out and move around. Then he left the living room. Going to the corridor alone.

After a while, George also walked out.

“Joyce, I’m so sorry. Now these guys are too impulsive and lack real thinking.” George walked to Joyce, put his hands on the railing of the corridor, raised his head, and looked at the top of the mountain in the distance. , There, a group of egrets are flying lightly.

“George, you don’t need to say anything to me for them. In fact, I am not angry with them. Really.” Joyce looked at George. “I can understand them. A few years ago, at least when I set off. Before I went to Europe, I was no different from them. It’s just that I stayed outside for a few years and gained a little bit of knowledge… Well, how do you feel about the gun I gave you?”

“Very good, and very bad.” George replied.

“What?” Joyce asked.

“The gun is good, but the place where the gun is made is not good.” George’s answer was still very simple.

“Is our relationship with the North so bad now?” Joyce took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, handed one to George, then took one himself, and then took it out of his vest pocket. Rub a pack of matches on the match box coated with red phosphorus, and a small flame appeared. Joyce lit George a cigarette first, then lit himself, then waved his hand to extinguish the fire.

George took a deep breath, and then spit out a few smoke rings: “Anyway, it’s worse than before. Now in the House of Representatives, there are more and more Whig guys. These guys are not making noise all day long. To increase tariffs is to scream that slavery should be abolished there. In fact, what qualifications do they have to criticize our slavery? The conditions of the workers in their factories may not be comparable to our slaves.”

“I found out that the Yankees are actually very similar to the British.” Joyce said, “They want to find a high-sounding excuse for everything, but in the final analysis, it is for money. You know, India is rebelling. The British are busy suppressing them. The Yankees actually want to turn us into their India. If they can raise tariffs, they will retaliate most. European countries will also close the door to our cotton, and then we can only follow The Yankees mean to sell our cotton to them at a messy price, and they can only buy things from them that are much worse and more expensive than European things. In this way, Before long, the wealth accumulated by our generations will flow into the pockets of the greedy Yankees. Just like in India, those Indian princes defeated the wealth accumulated for thousands of years and occupied the entire territory of India from 49 years. Now, in just a few years, India has reached the point where it has to rebel. Those greedy Yankees can do everything for money.”

“We are not India.” George said. “They want to turn us into India. Beware of knocking off their big teeth. And the current president is still a Democrat.”

“The population gap between the North and the South is getting bigger and bigger. One day, the Parliament and the President will fall into the hands of the Yankee. Maybe in four years, the Whig guys will control both the legislative and executive branches. “Joyce said, “We must plan ahead and be prepared.”

“Yes. If this day is unavoidable, we must first prepare. We are few, so we have to be fully prepared. The kind of gun you brought back is good, and we’d better buy more of this kind of gun in the future. Anyway. , Can’t let the Yankee’s weapons be better than ours.”

While Joyce and the others were discussing Scrooge’s McDonald’s 1857 rifle at the ball, Scrooge was doing a mortal thing in his own secret laboratory. This secret laboratory is located on an old ship on Lake Erie. This laboratory is mainly used to test some dangerous goods, such as those powders that were mixed into Streu’s bullets-trinitrotoluene-is manufactured here through the method of laboratory preparation.The process of preparing trinitrotoluene in the laboratory is complicated, and toxic substances will be produced in the middle, which is very dangerous. Fortunately, this experiment was done by Shi Gaozhi in his previous life, so he did it without any surprises. Although the purity is not too good, the effect seems to be pretty good. Now Scrooge is carefully preparing another thing on the ship-nitrocellulose.

Compared with TNT, nitrocellulose is much safer and relatively simple to prepare, but it is not easy to make a propellant. Because nitrocellulose is not stable, it may decompose and ignite spontaneously if the temperature exceeds 40 degrees, and it is easy to decompose by itself when stored for a long time. So it is necessary to add a stabilizer, such as dissolving it in ether and ethanol, adding petroleum jelly as a stabilizer, then pressing, cutting, and drying, so that it can be used as a gun propellant.

The most suitable rifle propellant in Scrooge’s mind is more technically difficult. The general propellant burns at a slower speed, that is, it burns quickly at the beginning and produces a lot of gas, but the later combustion slows down and produces very little gunpowder gas. The power of a rifle is greater than that of a pistol, which means it uses more propellant, its barrel is longer, and the gunpowder gas has a longer action time in the barrel. This means that when the bullet is fired, the pressure at the beginning Too high, and the bullet has not yet exited the chamber, and the chamber pressure has become too low.

To solve this problem, it is necessary to use a specially shaped propellant. The burning speed of gunpowder depends on its burning area. In later generations, the hollow tube shape is used to ensure that the burning area of ​​the propellant is always the same when it burns. Ensure that the chamber pressure in the barrel is even. However, in the era of Scrooge, it seems difficult to make a propellant with such a complicated configuration. Therefore, Scrooge had to retreat and try to use a combination of fast-burning propellant and slow-burning propellant.

The rifles of this era are still immature in Scrooge’s view. Even the McDonald 1857 produced in his own factory, although it is an advanced rifle compared to this era, is still far from ideal. Far. Not to mention, because black powder is used as propellant, and black powder will have a lot of residue after burning, which makes this gun often need to clean the barrel and barrel, and because of the limited energy of black powder, the burning speed is also Limited, this makes it difficult to increase the muzzle velocity of the bullet fired by this gun. Although the muzzle velocity of the McDonald’s 1857 more than 400 meters per second was second to none at the time, it is often more than 700 meters to 9 meters compared to the rear rifle. The muzzle velocity of more than a hundred meters per second is far behind.

The first problem caused by low muzzle velocity is that in order to ensure the power, the bullet must be heavy enough. This means that the caliber of the rifle must be large enough. For example, the MacDonald 1857 rifle has a caliber as high as 11 mm, which is almost the caliber of subsequent generations of anti-material rifles. This caliber was almost the smallest among the rifles at the time, and the calibers of some other rifles were even more amazing. Some rifles even had a caliber as high as 16 mm. And such a large bullet will inevitably lead to a very low number of bullets carried by soldiers, and their ability to continue combat is insufficient.

The second problem caused by low muzzle velocity is accuracy. Low muzzle velocity brings a more curved trajectory, which makes the accuracy of the rifle when attacking long-range targets very problematic. Moreover, the low muzzle velocity also leads to a significant increase in the time required for the bullet to fly to a distant target. For example, when striking a target at a distance of 500 meters, a low muzzle velocity bullet fired by black powder takes more than two seconds to hit the target. For a long time, even if the person moves at a walking speed, it is enough to move one meter away.

Of course, Scrooge did not intend to immediately replace McDonald’s 1857 with a smaller caliber rifle that uses smokeless powder. It is a good state to be one step ahead of the times, and it is not necessary to be two steps ahead. Even things that are one step ahead may not be acceptable to others. A few days ago, McDonald’s Infantry Weapons Company tried to recommend the own McDonald’s 1857 rifle to the Federal Army, but the result was defeated, although the McDonald’s 1857 was overwhelmed by its competitor Springfield in any project test. In 1856, however, the Army insisted that they would not accept any rifle that cost more than $25, no matter how good its performance!

“Maybe we should find a way to buy more McDonald’s 1857 rifles for the Southerners, so that after the war starts, they will become the best salesmen for McDonald’s.” Scrooge thought, “It’s just a question of how to deal with the aftermath. At that time, someone will accuse myself of being’unpatriotic.’ Maybe, I can organize a security company that now provides security services for immigrants going to the West, and when the war begins, I will integrate them into a volunteer army, and then take a new generation Weapons, such as rifles with smokeless bullets, go to the battlefield to make a big advertisement.”