Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 706 The Birth of a Generational Weapon

At the same time as the series of actions triggered by the immigration to the Nanya Province were carried out, good news came from the Military Weapons Supervisor: the Minie rifle was successfully developed.

At the beginning of the 13th year of Chongzhen, at the prompt of Zhu Youjian, the craftsmen of the Military Weapons Supervision made the spiral rifled gun after repeated tests.

Rifled guns are far superior to the smoothbore guns that are generally equipped in large quantities in various countries in the world in terms of shooting accuracy and distance. It was the rifled gun that gained the overwhelming advantage.

Now the flintlock guns used by various ministries of the Ming army have been improved twice with gunpowder and fixed paper shells. The longest range has reached [-] steps, and the effective range is about [-] steps.

A step in the ancient population is not a step taken by one leg as in later generations, but the distance that the left and right feet move once.

One foot is a step, two feet is a step.

One step of the ancients is about 1.3 meters to 1.5 meters in later generations. The longest range of the firecracker is 130 steps, which is equivalent to about 70 meters, and the distance that can effectively kill the enemy is only [-] meters.

This kind of firepower output is enough for Jiannuliu thieves who use cold weapons as their main equipment, but if you want to further maintain world peace, the shooting range and accuracy of firecrackers are far from enough.

At this time, the heavy-duty matchlock guns equipped in Europe were not vegetarian. Although the reloading was slow, the range was farther than that of the Ming army.

After the firecrackers were fired, the rifled guns made their grand debut, and the results of the final school shooting surprised everyone present.

Under exactly the same conditions, the farthest range of the rifled gun reached an astonishing distance of about three hundred paces, and the effective range was increased to about one hundred paces.

Those who shoot at the shooting range are all the firecracker experts and craftsmen in the military supervision department. Now the firecrackers used by the Ming army are all made under their supervision. They are confident in their proud treasures, but they did not expect to end up with them. It was a total defeat.

In the subsequent precision test firing, the rifled gun once again showed its amazing accuracy and power.

As a musket, the firecrackers rely entirely on concentrated fire to exert their power when outputting firepower, but the final killing effect is only one out of ten. This is why the Ming army adopted a six-stage strike formation, because only in this way can it Continuously output firepower to attack opponents.

As for rifled guns, because of the engraved rifling, when the bullets fly out, due to the effect of the spiral rifling, the ballistic trajectory is very stable. The effect is doubled that of the firecracker.

After seeing the power of rifled guns, all the military supervisors realized that rifled guns will be the future development direction of firecrackers, and they must be vigorously developed.

However, the manufacturing speed of rifled guns is much slower than that of firecrackers. The number and engraving of the yin and yang lines of the rifling have become important constraints restricting the mass production of rifled guns.

Another problem is that it is difficult to load the rifled gun.

In the first successful test firing of the rifled gun salt, the bullets used were the same as the firecrackers, but because the bullets were too small and did not fit tightly enough in the chamber, the shooting range was not much farther than the firecrackers.

Later, after being reminded by Zhu Youjian, the craftsmen used bullets as large as the mouth of the gun for loading, and the result of the experiment was that they won the fire gun.

However, because of the consideration of airtightness, when the rifled gun is loaded, because of the hindrance of the rifling, it is necessary to hammer the stick with a small wooden hammer, so that the bullet can be knocked to the point of the barrel. This process leads to The rifled gun was loaded too slowly, and it took an average of more than a minute to fire once.

According to this loading speed, although the rifled gun has advantages in all aspects, it will not bring overwhelming victory to the user on the battlefield.

After finally solving the number of rifling and engraving problems and forming a unified standard, only a hundred rifles were produced because of the body.

After the [-] new muskets were distributed to the Yongwei Battalion, although the generals were amazed at its accuracy and range, they finally thought that it was not appropriate to equip them in large quantities.

It would be best if a mid-level general had an idea and came up with a suggestion: Pick gunners with high shooting accuracy from the army to equip this batch of rifled guns, which are used to shoot and kill the mid- and senior-level generals of the enemy army when confronting the enemy.

Then this proposal was adopted and implemented. After a period of training, these marksmen shot at a distance of about [-] steps, and their hit rate reached about [-]%. This result can be regarded as a happy accident. be it.

When the military inspector submitted the relevant information about rifled guns to the palace, Zhu Youjian finally recalled the epoch-making weapon of the Minie gun while laughing and laughing.

The Minie gun is a rifled gun, and the rifled gun was renamed the Minie gun because of the birth of the Minie bullet.

Minie bullets are oval-shaped lead bullets changed to round-headed cylindrical lead bullets, but its bullet body is smaller than the gun barrel, so it can be easily loaded and then pushed to the bottom with a stick.

Minie bullets are threaded around the projectile body to match the rifling, the middle of the thread is stuffed with animal oil, and the bottom of the bullet is made of cork material.

When firing, the gunpowder gas impacts the cork, and the cork suddenly expands the bullet after being impacted instantly. Since the bullet is expanded, the chamber can be sealed by the bullet itself at the moment of firing, and the kinetic energy of the bullet will not be caused by the leakage of the gunpowder gas. lost.

The birth of the Minie bullet solved the problem of the airtightness of the chamber of the rifled gun, and greatly enhanced the rate of fire, range and safety of the gun. It was also believed that its good airtightness solved the problem of the gun barrel being blocked by gunpowder slag. question.

After learning that the Minie gun was successfully developed, Zhu Youjian immediately ordered to call the cabinet ministers, the Ministry of War, the governors of the Five Armies, and the generals above the guerrillas of the Yongwei Battalion to go to the military weapon supervision shooting range to watch this epoch-making The shocking scene brought by the weapon.

On the morning of the 13th day of September in the [-]th year of Chongzhen, the military weapons supervision shooting range located in the outer city of the imperial palace was waving flags and heavily guarded. [-] heavily armed soldiers of the Yongwei Battalion were scattered around the shooting range, closely guarding the surrounding area.

The guard mission in the shooting range was personally commanded by Li Ruolian, the commander of the Jinyi Guards. A thousand elite generals and schools drawn from various guards in Beijing were distributed in every corner of the target, ready to deal with all kinds of emergencies at any time.

Just after the deployment of the security forces was completed, a large number of brave guard battalion officers with bright armor and bright armor came galloping with their own soldiers on horseback. When they arrived outside the gate of the shooting range, they dismounted one after another. After passing through several Jinyiwei checkpoints for strict searches , was able to enter the shooting range.

(End of this chapter)