Steel Dynasty - Chapter 513

[Chapter 513: The Outlook of Rifled Guns]

In the firearms workshop, Song Changping was seriously teaching a craftsman how to pull rifling.

There was a loud noise, and he looked outside the door. When he saw it was Xiao Ming, Song Changping was startled, then turned and walked towards Xiao Ming.

“Your Highness.” Song Changping saluted Xiao Ming with a smile on his face, “I have been looking forward to His Highness’s return these days.”

“Really? So your rifle gun must have made progress, otherwise I will have to wait until I come back. “Swearing.” Xiao Ming said with a smile. He told Song Changping about the problems with the rifle before leaving and asked him to improve it. He didn’t know how Song Changping had improved it in the past two months.

Song Changping was also a person with a clumsy personality. He chuckled twice and said to Xiao Ming: “I am not idle. Your Highness, please see, these are the current rifle bullets.”

Song Changping spread his hands, and at this time he On the palm of the hand is a tapered bullet, which is the later Mini bullet. The invention of this bullet changed the shortcoming of the flintlock gun being difficult to load bullets.

“Mine bomb, have you made it?” Xiao Ming said in surprise.

Song Changping nodded, “With His Highness’s teachings and the drawings in the books, if I can’t recreate it, I can go home and farm.”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s been a long time since I’ve made progress.” Xiao Ming said: “Now bring a rifled gun over here. I want to try the power of this rifled gun plus minigun bullets.”

Song Changping immediately asked his craftsmen to get a rifled gun for Xiao Ming. Xiao Ming arrived with the rifled gun. The school yard of the military workshop.

When he was in the city of Geranze, Claire used a rifled gun to show him off, but now his rifled gun is much more advanced than theirs.

Putting the rifled gun vertically on the ground, Xiao Ming loaded the gunpowder in order, and finally successfully inserted a bullet with a caliber slightly smaller than the barrel into the barrel.

Herein lies the advantage of Miné bullets over lead bullets.

After loading the ammunition, Xiao Ming raised the rifled gun. Like the artillery, the rifled gun now also has a front sight and a rear sight. Through the rear sight and the front sight, he can aim at the target in front.

“Your Highness, our rifled gun can shoot a distance of 500 meters, and the effective range can reach 300 meters, so Your Highness can directly shoot at a target 300 meters away.” Song Changping said confidently.

“Five hundred meters.” This number made Xiao Ming happy. This range was already equivalent to half the distance of the Migne rifle. He was very satisfied with this data.

“Bang.” Aiming at the target, Xiao Ming pulled the trigger. After a burst of fire and white smoke, the bullet flew to the target three hundred meters away, and the bullet drilled a hole outside the ring.

After the gunfire, the craftsman in charge of target inspection quickly played the semaphore, one ring.

Song Changping said at this time: “Your Highness, how do you like this rifled gun?”

“It’s interesting.”

Xiao Ming picked up the bullet and loaded it again, saying this, but he was already extremely pleasantly surprised. The biggest difference between rifled guns and smoothbore guns is accuracy. .

Compared with the deviation of musket bullets, soldiers can use rifled guns to kill enemies accurately after training, which is absolutely terrifying in this era.

“Bang.” Xiao Ming’s shooting was more accurate this time, and the bullet landed outside the seventh ring.

“Your Highness, are you satisfied with this rifled gun?” Song Changping’s face became more and more confident.

Xiao Ming nodded, and had to say that the rifled gun this time had reached the standard he required. Although the range was shorter, before the gunpowder made any progress, the range could only be this.

After all, the more gunpowder explodes, the higher the requirements for the barrel’s endurance. For this reason, alloy technology must continue to improve.

Satisfied with the gun, the next focus is the production speed of the rifled gun. He said: “The gun is good, but how is the production of the bullets and the gun?”

After saying this, Song Changping’s face became a little unnatural, and he said: “Your Highness, This bullet is nothing, it can be made by just pouring the mold, but rifling is very laborious. In the past two months, Xiaguan has only produced 120 rifled guns.”

“Smoothbore guns can produce four to five thousand in a month .

Just.” Xiao Ming said, with the increase in orders, the number of craftsmen in the gun shop has increased a lot, which has also increased the production volume of the gun shop.

Compared with the number of smoothbore guns, there are really too few rifled guns.

After a pause, he continued: “But don’t worry, you will be able to overcome the rifling problem soon.”

“Overcome?” Song Changping asked doubtfully: “Does His Highness have other methods?”

Xiao Ming nodded and said Naturally, it’s the steam engine, but he doesn’t want to say it yet. After all, the use of the steam engine has to wait.

He said: “The specific method will be available soon. Let’s do this. You will send all these rifled guns to the Qingzhou Army. In addition, how many flintlock guns are there in this warehouse?”

“Back to Your Highness, since the last time I gave you After the Youzhou Army sent 3,000 flintlock muskets, Xianguan has been stepping up production according to His Highness’s instructions. Now there are 9,000 flintlock muskets in the warehouse. “

“Five thousand only for the Youzhou Army, and three .

One thousand will be given to the Dengzhou Army, and the remaining one thousand will be given to the Yunzhou Army.” Xiao Ming divided them according to order.

Now that the armies of various states are clamoring for weapons, the output of the military workshops cannot keep up. Thinking of this, he felt that the steam engine must be launched as soon as possible, otherwise the production capacity of the fiefdom would soon be out of touch with demand.

The two were talking about firearms. It seemed that they were attracted by the sound of gunfire. Chen Qi walked out of the artillery workshop.

“Your Highness.”

Seeing Xiao Ming and Song Changping together, Chen Qi immediately ran over.

Compared to two months ago, Chen Qi’s face looked a little haggard. Xiao Ming asked, “What’s wrong? Looking at you like this, it seems that you have been very hard these past two months.”

“Your Highness, let’s not let Song Changping force him. The rifled guns he produces now have a range of 500 meters. They are almost catching up with artillery. I can’t lose to him, so I have been thinking about it during this time. How to improve the range of artillery,” Chen Qi said.

“Oh? What do you think?” Xiao Ming said.

Chen Qi continued: “Your Highness, I wonder if the barrel of this gun can have rifling. Why can’t the artillery have rifling? If the artillery has rifling, can the range be improved?”

“It can definitely be improved.” Song Changping said to Chen Qi: ” The rifled gun has been proven.”

Hearing this, Chen Qi looked at Xiao Ming again.

Being stared at by Chen Qi, Xiao Ming said: “You can do some research here, maybe you can succeed.”

According to historical records, in the early 17th century, Tsarist Russia manufactured a bronze “Pishali” cannon with a caliber of 3 inches. There are 10 spiral riflings in the barrel, and throughout the eighteenth century, both Germany and Britain experimented with rifled guns, and some of them were breech-loading guns.

Although the caliber of these guns is small, their effectiveness is very good. In 1776, the British 2-pounder breech-loading rifled gun had a direction deviation of only 2 feet when firing at a distance of 1,300 yards.

Based on these records, Xiao Ming felt that Chen Qi should also study rifled guns, because some of them might have been installed in Europe.

(End of chapter)