Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 327 Cannon Making
Liu Sheng returned to Beihai Town from Fuldan City. He came back this time to participate in the artillery finalization seminar.

As the de facto second-in-command of the Beihai Navy, he stayed in Fuerdan City for almost a year. Apart from paying attention to the movements of the Qing army in the west and south directions, he also fell in love with Wu Xiha.

During the Northern Navy military exercise in August, Sahalian participated in the military parade as a guest of honor, and Liu Sheng took the opportunity to propose marriage to Sahalian.Sahalian is very satisfied with the matter of the two of them. He has already discussed with Liu Sheng that they will arrange the marriage in the spring of next year.

Wu Xiha is currently studying in the cadre school in Beihai Town, and Liu Sheng has to take her back to Fuerdan City after the meeting, and then go back with Sahalian to prepare the dowry.At that time, Liu Sheng had to take Wang Yuanfang and others as the best man to Balk Village to bring his new wife back.

Pure toss!

Back in Beihai Town, Liu Sheng gave his guard squad a holiday and took two guards to the east bank of the Xila River.

No matter how good your martial arts are, you will be afraid of kitchen knives; no matter how good your skills are, you will be defeated by a brick.Since the incidents of Manchu secret agents in Fuerdan City, Liu Sheng has been appointed as a guard, and even Wu Xiha is accompanied by two Hezhe girls who have undergone brief training.

Beihai Town is ready to build its own guns.

The arsenal manufactured a total of two imitation cannons for testing this time, one for export to the Sendai Domain and one for personal use.

If you want the Sendai Fan to fight against the shogunate, it will be unreasonable not to give some support, after all, the Sendai Fan has only a small force.Moreover, Beihai Town's loan can't be spent freely by their temperament, they have to spend part of it to buy arms from Beihai Town.

The export model is still a front-loading gun, and the reference is the M1857 12-pound field gun, but the gun body is made of manganese steel, so compared with the [-] kg bronze gun body in history, the export model is much lighter. , but also increased the difficulty of imitation.

No one in Europe knows the secret of manganese steel in this year.In the history of another time and space, 100 years later, a British magician named Robert Hadfield accidentally discovered that manganese enhanced the wear resistance of steel.

The export type is enough for the Sendai clan to deal with the shogunate army. They can make iron ball shells and cannonballs themselves. As for the blasting shells and shrapnel shells, they have to buy them from Beihai Town.

As for the self-use model of the Beihai Navy, the reference sample is an antique brought by Zhao Xin, a Krupp 75mm field gun from World War I.This is the world's first manganese steel cannon in another time and space. The cannon weighs 375 kilograms, and the ammunition cart weighs 700 kilograms, carrying 6000 rounds of ammunition.The maximum range is 8 meters, and the rate of fire is [-] rounds per minute.

Historically, in 1903, the Qing government purchased this gun from the Krupp company. Due to its excellent performance, it was used until the Anti-Japanese War.At that time, both the national government and the Japanese imitated this gun. The Hanyang Armory was called "Han Zao Ke 29 times 75 Field Gun", and the Japanese called it "[-] Type Field Gun".

The reason for choosing this model has a lot to do with Zhao Xin’s original supplier, Daniel, who accidentally discovered it while participating in a private warehouse auction.

It is said that many people in the country on the other side of the ocean like to rent warehouses to store things, but if the warehouse expires without renewal or completion procedures, then the things in these warehouses will automatically belong to the warehouse company; so the warehouse company will come to the warehouse regularly. A "warehouse auction".

There are good and bad things in the warehouses being auctioned. Before the auction, people from the warehouse company will not open the warehouse to check the things inside, so there is a strong uncertainty.This thing is like betting on stones. Some people make a fortune in an instant; some people not only lose money, but also have to pay a garbage disposal fee.

Daniel has fallen in love with this thing in the past year, so whenever he hears that there are old warehouse auctions, he will take a gamble.At an auction in the middle of the year, he spent two thousand dollars to buy a warehouse, and found such an antique inside.

Zhao Xin heard about this when he placed an order with him some time ago, so he bought the 75mm field gun.After a lot of running around, this antique gun arrived at the arsenal in Beihai Town.

Historically, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century in Europe that the steel for making large-caliber artillery really appeared after the Krupp Company developed a huge crucible.With Beihai Town's existing industrial capacity, forging low-sulfur and low-phosphorus manganese steel is actually very easy.However, the barrel of the imitation gun is still made of alloy structural steel purchased from another time and space.

It is said that in addition to producing gun steel, that factory also produces high-pressure pipe steel. Zhao Xin bought alloy steel blanks for high-pressure pipe steel; this thing is much stronger than pure manganese steel.

Although the production of modern gun steel has its own characteristics, it actually has something in common with the structural steel with strict working conditions, that is, the impurities are very low, especially low sulfur and low hydrogen, and there will be no white spots during the cooling process after forging .In the final heat treatment, even if it is quenched in water, it is not easy to crack.

At present, the Beihai Town Iron and Steel Plant uses crucibles for steelmaking. The electric arc furnace is not considered for the time being because of its high energy consumption. We will wait until the power plant is completed.Moreover, the electric arc furnace is just one of the modern steelmaking equipment, not a particularly high-end equipment, but it converts the heat source from burnt carbon to electricity.The output of the electric arc furnace is not large, and it is mainly used for refining and secondary smelting, and more importantly, it is used to smelt higher-grade alloy steel. It is a bit overkill to directly smelt manganese steel.

Half of the whale oil that Ding Guofeng asked for from Okhotsk last time was made into nitroglycerin by Fanghua, so the propellant of this 75mm artillery shell became double-based gunpowder; the burning rate was higher, and the projectile force stronger.

On the proving ground, the sound of roaring guns kept ringing one after another, but most of them were 75mm guns, and the 12-pound imitation gun only fired every 20 seconds.

There are a total of ten men in the 12-pounder gun crew.Two observers, five gunners, three ammunitionists.Because the smoke generated during shooting was too great, the observers stood on the left side of the artillery; among the three ammunition hands, two were responsible for guarding the ammunition truck, and one transported shells back and forth between the gun position and the ammunition truck.

Liu Sheng noticed that after each shot, a gunner would hold a long yellow strip and insert it into a pin on the tail of the gun while adjusting the height of the gun.

He walked over between shots and saw that it was a brass sight with a scale engraved on it and a tenon that could move up and down.

Liu Shengchong asked the gunner: "The position corresponding to the tenon is the landing point of the shell?"

The gunner saluted first, and then explained: "If there is no strong wind, it will be close to ten. This thing is very useful."

Zhao Liang pointed to the front-loading gun and introduced: "The caliber is 117 mm, the charge is 1.1 kg per charge, the effective range is 600 meters, and the weight of the whole gun is 400 kg. If the personnel are fully staffed and the operation is skilled, the rate of fire is four rounds per minute. .”

Liu Sheng nodded after hearing this, but didn't express his opinion. He also didn't know much about front-loading guns.At this time, the ammunition hand behind sent the cannonball over. The top of the cannonball was an iron ball, and a cotton bag was attached to the back; the iron ball and the cloth bag were fixed together with a metal bag and a rope.

Zhao Liang explained: "The inside is 1.1 kilograms of black powder, and a wooden disc is placed between the iron bullet and the iron bullet to separate it."

Liu Sheng noticed that when the gunner in charge of loading was cleaning the barrel, the assistant gunner pressed the thumb on the fire door with a leather finger cot. He just felt strange, and then he understood that this was to unbalance the internal and external pressure. It is convenient for the cleaner to take out the debris in the barrel.

The aiming hand starts aiming with the sight when loading the bullet, and at the same time adjusts the height rotary rod under the gun barrel.After the shells are loaded and the aiming hand has been adjusted, the assistant gunner uses an iron awl to pierce the cotton bag from the fire door, and the aiming hand inserts the trigger tube into the fire door with a rope attached to it.At this time, the assistant gunner needs to press his hand on the fire door to prevent the aiming hand from shooting by mistake; when the aiming hand retreats two meters away, he immediately pulls the rope to fire.

"Okay, that's enough." Liu Sheng turned to Zhao Liang and asked, "How much do you plan to sell?"

"Zhao Xin's suggestion is 500 taels of gold per door."

"Damn it! He's really black."

Zhao Liang said with a smile: "We are the only one, there is no other semicolon."

Liu Sheng chuckled, walked to the cannon used by Beihai Town and asked, "Is this our own?"

Zhao Liang said: "The caliber is the same, but the barrel has been changed to 500 times the caliber, the maximum range is [-] meters, and each gun group is equipped with three men."

The breech block of the 75mm gun is a screw type breech block, which can be closed by pulling it to the right after loading, which is quite simple.Liu Sheng felt itchy, so he fired a few rounds to try, and the rate of fire was really fast.

Zhao Liang said: "Right now, the processing of the shells is labor-intensive, nothing else matters."

Liu Sheng said: "Next spring we are going to attack westward, so don't lose the chain on your side."

Zhao Liang said: "If I just make cannons, I can build fifty of them this winter. But the technology for making cannonballs is still not good enough. The shell punching machine that was changed before is still being debugged. The cannonballs you are making now are all made of Zhao Liang. There are a total of one hundred pieces assembled from the newly purchased shell casings.”

The current outstanding problem of the Beihai Town Armory is still that there are not enough technicians, and there are only about 80 people who can operate machine tools.This time, Zhao Liang took fifty and a half children away from the primary school to the technical school. Right now, there are only more than [-] students in the technical school.

Among the blacksmiths among the refugees, young people are quicker to accept new things, but they still have to make up for the literacy class; while those old blacksmiths can't play at all, so they can only go to the steel factory to help.

If you want to transform the peasants who have just put down their hoes into industrial workers, there is no rush at all.

Only to hear Zhao Liang say again: "Zhao Xin has been gone for a month, right? I don't know if that golden mountain has been conquered or not."

Liu Shengdao: "The telegram came this morning, they have captured Shiluo County in the south of Jinshan. What a bad place name, they are now attacking the next door, Kuangyuan County. I heard that they also arrested a woman from the Shimadzu family. The Jin family still wants to give that girl to Zhao Xin as his wife!"

"what?"

Liu Sheng smirked and said, "Just watch. If he takes another one, it will be five."

Zhao Liang's heart of gossip suddenly arose, and he quickly whispered: "Five? Tell me quickly."

Liu Sheng snapped his fingers and said, "Needless to say about the Shen family. A Miao, Tang Xiao, and Wang Zhenyi who he asked Xu Dayong to tie up, look, one more is not exactly five."

In the temporary camp of the Northern Navy on South Kyushu Island, Zhao Xin said to Mr. Tsune and Tamura of Date Village: "Your Excellency Ishikawa sent a message that the Aoba Camp has won a big victory over the Shogunate Army in the Ma Nishima area. Now the Shogunate Army has retreated to Fukushima the city."

Tian Cunzi said: "1 people, they retreated after just one blow? It seems that Edo is pinning all their hopes on the navy on the East Road."

Yida Village's often fiefdom, Genli County, is by the sea, and he said to Zhao Xin with some concern: "Zhao Wangdian, will Jinglei or Thunder God support me, will it be more sure?"

Zhao Xindao: "The shogunate army will step on the beach and get their feet wet. Sendai Castle is fine. Watari, I know what you are worried about. But as long as you get stuck on the Oshu Road, there will be no tricks in Edo. It is already October. , The northwest wind is blowing, it is not the time to attack by sea at all. You see, it is hard to say that the Tokugawa Navy can reach Miyagi County without incident."

When he said this, the two generals of the Sendai Domain laughed.

The reason why Zhao Xin comforted the two of them was because since the coalition forces captured Kajimu, the Jinglei, Thor, and Beihai No. [-] and Beihai No. [-] had turned around and headed north.

Jinglei and Leishen were going to Kuye Island to replenish fuel, and then brought Zhang Bo and the others back to Beihai Town; Beihai No. [-] and No. [-] ships didn't even have guns, and it was more dangerous to stay on the seaside of Kajimu, so they followed them.After the Beihai Navy took down Ajiugenlu near the sea in Izusui County, Zhao Xinhui would notify them to bring supplies and people over.

That's right, Zhao Xin, a miner from Lingji Jinshan, plans to transfer people from Beihai Town. He doesn't plan to use local farmers or miners at all. Even the mined ore cannot be smelted locally, and all of them will be transported back to Beihai Town.

You must know that the grade of Lingjia gold mine is 40 grams per ton. If it is mined and refined with modern technology, the annual output will be seven to ten tons, which is enough to make people crazy.If the news leaked out and Edo found out, the shogunate would have to mobilize an army to grab the gold no matter how desperate they were.

Beihai Town will prepare to fight west next year, and the Beihai Navy currently has a total of seven regiments.

Put one on the Kyushu side, and put another one on the Sendai Fan side if the mud can't support the wall.Beihai Town and Fuldan City each had to reserve a regiment for defense, and only three regiments plus two cavalry companies could be dispatched.

The outer Northeast is too big. In this era, there are virgin forests and swamps everywhere. Not to mention the difficult roads. In winter, the temperature can reach minus [-] degrees, and the mountains are blocked by heavy snow. They cannot move their nests for several months.

Once the troops are sent out, they basically never come back.Modern weapon operations are extremely dependent on logistics, and if the traffic cannot keep up with the weapons, it will become a stick of fire.

Zhao Xin didn't want to follow him every time he played, but this was the situation right now.If he hadn't come to attack the Satsuma clan this time, the logistics of the coalition troops would not have been able to keep up.

While he was in a daze, a sentry from the Sendai Domain suddenly ran into the tent, knelt down on one knee, and said to the three of them, "Report to the three adults, the Kumamoto Domain, the Fukuoka Domain, and the Saga Domain sent troops yesterday!"

The face of Date Village changed suddenly when he heard this. These three families are all male feudal clans on Kyushu Island. Among them, the Hosokawa clan of the Kumamoto clan is 54 shi, the Kuroda clan of the Fukuoka clan is 47 geku, and the Nabeshima clan of the Saga clan is 35 shi. The table height is [-] stone.

He estimated that the reason why Edo agreed to send troops was because the current patriarch of the Fukuoka domain, Kuroda Haruyuki, was actually the fifth son of Tokugawa Soyin, the head of the Tokugawa family in Hitohashi, among the three royal ministers; The blood of the famous "Kuroda Rushui" has been cut off.

He stood up abruptly and said loudly, "How many people are here?"

"No less than twenty thousand!"

　根据庆安二年幕府发布的《庆安军役令》规定，每十万石藩主需出兵2155人。旗本的知行总高度为260万石，平均按500石一家算的话就是5200家，加上11名军役就有5万7200人，再加上御家1万7000余人的话就有7万4200人。这一数字接近所谓的“旗本八万骑”。10万石的大名的军役为2155人，如果不联合34家的话就无法与幕府直臣团较量。九州岛这三家要是总动员的话，再加上周边的小藩，最多能来三万兵马。

　　
　
(End of this chapter)