The classic M43 7.62×39㎜ bullet, which has left a strong mark on human history, was born early and has many shortcomings like the German 7.92×33㎜Kurz bullet. After all, it is a pioneering product and lacks experience.
The biggest problem is that the trajectory is curved and not straight enough, making it difficult to reset or actually shoot.
Comparing the straight laser-like trajectory with the curved peeing trajectory, it is obvious which one is better and which one is worse.
When the M43 projectile is at 100m, the ballistic trajectory is about 21cm higher than the baseline, when it is at 200m it is about 23cm higher than the baseline, and it coincides with the baseline at a distance of 290m.
There is an old saying in the research and development of firearms: "To develop a gun, you must first have ammunition, and to develop ammunition, you must first have propellant." This shows the importance of propellant to the entire small arms system.
The tip, stern, and lead core warheads have a mass of 7.6g. The armor material is galvanized steel. The projectile is in the shape of a bottomless bottle. It is loaded with 1.62g of propellant. The muzzle velocity is about 760m/s, and the muzzle kinetic energy is about 2195J.
For comparison, the warhead masses of the M43 and Kurz bullets are 7.9g and 8g respectively. It can be seen that the warhead of the intermediate-power bullet designed by the Guangzhou Arsenal is slightly lighter, and the muzzle velocity is also tens of meters per second higher.
Because the performance was too eye-catching, or far beyond the level expected in this era, Zhou Changfeng was very puzzled, and even vaguely suspicious.
how did you do that? Are the handsome guys at the Guangzhou Arsenal doing something wrong on purpose?
So he looked around and tried to find the relevant person in charge to ask.
The arsenal representative on the side saw him like this and immediately leaned over.
"Sir, does this officer have questions?"
"What's going on with your introduction? You've selectively ignored a lot of things. What kind of gun was this 777 muzzle velocity measured on?"
"It's the result of the short rifle next to it."
It was a short rifle about one meter in length, with a magazine and a gas tube. It was obviously a semi-automatic rifle.
Zhou Changfeng visually estimated that its barrel length was about fifty centimeters, which was not particularly long.
So he then asked: "What kind of propellant is used in this bomb?"
"The No. 6 drug C-6 trial-produced by our factory consists of 21% nitroglycerin, 68% nitrocellulose, 8% nitroguanidine, 2% petroleum jelly, and 1% Potassium nitrate." A young man with a high hairline replied fluently.
Aha? Three-base propellant?
After Zhou Changfeng heard this answer, he opened his mouth slightly in surprise and pondered: "This... is the ablation a bit big? The life of the barrel is not ideal."
"To tell you the truth, it's actually not bad. The measured lifespan of the gun fired with this bullet can barely reach 6,000 rounds. The difficulty is that the processing is not easy and the yield rate is low."
Smokeless gunpowder is divided into single-base, double-base, and three-base. The earliest single-base gunpowder is mainly composed of nitrocellulose. It was the first B-type gunpowder invented by the French and was used in Lebel, the world's first smokeless gunpowder cartridge. rifle.
Double-base medicine contains two main components: nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. It is characterized by fast dyeing speed and high energy, but high temperature and large ablation will affect the life of the barrel. The Cody propellant widely used by the British, also known as the "Queen's Noodles", is a double-base drug, which is in the shape of a round bar like spaghetti.
The third-base drug adds nitroguanidine to the former, which produces nitrogen during the combustion process, thereby improving the ablation problem and suppressing the muzzle flash; the disadvantage is that it is difficult to process and manufacture.
During the reform and establishment of Westernization, when a full set of Lebel rifle production lines and manufacturing technologies were introduced, the technology of B-type smokeless powder ammunition also arrived. This single-base propellant with a square sheet appearance has good performance. Xu's gunpowder, which was obtained with few improvements on its basis, is the standard bullet propellant of the Ming army. Over the past few decades, the output and inventory have been astonishingly large, and it is still available today. in widespread use.
"Is it very low? Can you guarantee a certain output?"
"After the production line is set up, we will improve it while building it. As long as we have sufficient resources, we are confident that we can produce 400 kilograms of high-quality products per day."
Zhou Changfeng frowned and said, "This is too low."
The daily output of a single production line is 200,000g, which is probably only enough to make hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, which is pitiful.
"Sir, you don't know. This mixture of medicine is indeed complicated." The young man sighed: "My master has been thinking about it for more than ten years since he was young. It is not easy to change the C medicine from No. 1 to No. 6."
"I understand your efforts, but this technology is indeed immature and cannot take on big responsibilities." Zhou Changfeng was also helpless. He thought for a while and then asked: "How much will the performance of this type of bullet be reduced if ordinary propellant is used? "
"Because tablets take up more volume, the cartridge case can only hold 1.6 grams. When the same gun is fired, the muzzle velocity will drop to 710 meters per second, and the kinetic energy will be more than 1,900 joules."
Oh, this data is on the same level as M43 bullets and Kurz bullets.
The previous data were so good purely because of the use of advanced but immature experimental propellants.
Zhou Changfeng walked around the scene again and reviewed the works of other government-owned and private enterprises one by one. The levels varied, some were eccentric, some were mediocre, and some were terrible and purely funny...
It seems that only the works of Guangzhou Arsenal are better.
But having said that, this is only thirty-eight years after all. It seems to be a very good result to reach a level similar to the classic M43 ammunition five years ahead of schedule? Zhou Changfeng felt for a while that he was a little too ambitious.
It has to be said that China is really too big and correspondingly rich in resources, including human resources.
Even if the degree of industrialization is not high and educational resources are limited, the size of the population that benefits from it is still frighteningly high. This makes today's Ming Dynasty seem underdeveloped, but it has enough spare capacity to invest in various industries.
During the same period in history, Japan was very dependent on technology transfer from Western countries. Most of the technologies had to wait until Western powers had matured their applications before they were introduced, but they themselves did not have the resources to independently develop them.
At that time, aircraft companies in Western countries disliked the Japanese because these poor people only bought one or two aircraft at a time and copied them, and were reluctant to place large orders.
In contrast, Ming Dynasty, a late-developing industrial country, has smoothed the gap in most things after decades of catching up in all walks of life. There is no way to deal with the gap in a few cutting-edge technologies, so we can only figure it out slowly. After all, they have been running hundreds of years in advance. , whether it is accumulation or capital, there must be some.
This is the macroscopic manifestation of the size advantage.
Next, as the participants arrived, the "preliminary test" began quickly.
Each manufacturer took the stage to talk about their work, followed by Q&A and scoring.
Zhou Changfeng was only moderately interested in this. The officers and officials present were all experts in this field, and their careful review and analysis were very similar. At least Zhou thought it was generally in line with reality.
The Army is more interested in the semi-automatic short rifles developed by the Guangzhou Arsenal; while the Air Force is interested in the fully automatic short rifles, also known as "assault rifles." Several paratrooper officers are confused between the two types of assault rifles.
The Ming Army actually came to join in the fun. After all, this bidding was led by the Air Force.
The remarks of the army representatives were exactly the same as those of the armies of later generations. They stubbornly insisted on several points of view and threatened that even if they had to choose, they would only choose semi-automatic rifles.
First, fully automatic uses more ammunition than semi-automatic.
Secondly, the barrel length of a fully automatic short rifle is one-fifth shorter than that of a semi-automatic, so the mid-range accuracy is bound to be unsatisfactory.
Third, soldiers are accustomed to the style of semi-automatic short rifles, while fully automatic ones have pistol-type grips, which may not be comfortable.
Fourth, fully automatic short rifles are more expensive.
ah! army!
But in fact this is not a problem.
As long as they are properly trained and under the supervision of non-commissioned officers and officers in actual combat, soldiers actually have little chance of shooting randomly.
For example, according to the regulations, the use of fully automatic mode is prohibited at medium distances. When they are several hundred meters apart, non-commissioned officers and officers have no time to stop those soldiers who get carried away. If the distance is close, it doesn't matter if you shoot randomly, it should be suppressed by firepower.
As for the accuracy, if we compare the AK47 and SKS, the latter only has a slight advantage, and it is even difficult to tell the difference - the same is the dispersion at a distance of 100m, the dispersion of the 56 punch is 10-11.6㎝, and the 56 and a half is 11.5-13.6cm .
Whether the soldiers are comfortable or not is even more nonsense. Is there any way to say that they can't adapt?
The price is somewhat counterintuitive, and there is no significant difference. Semi-automatic short rifles are often more expensive because they require more wood.
Based on the purchase price in 1975, the 56-half was 128 yuan, while the 56-half after the simplified process still costs 135 yuan.
Standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, we can conclude that the best option is to get it right in one step.
Iterate directly from bolt-action rifles with full-power bullets to automatic rifles with intermediate-power bullets, and then wait a few decades until small-caliber bullets mature, and then iterate a second time. This is the standard answer, and the other options in between are not perfect.
Zhou Changfeng knew that it was impossible to change the views of the most conservative army on his own. The navy and air force had no problem. The navy was his own people anyway, while the air force's tendency was correct because of its special needs.
So he was thinking about how to get the old diehards in the Army to change their minds, or to use crooked ways to prevent them from purchasing semi-automatic short rifles.
Referring to the fact that the Germans secretly gave the Stg44 the serial number of the submachine gun MP44 to fool the army?
This seems unlikely, because it can only replace the submachine gun. The Army will still continue to purchase semi-automatic short rifles, and the purpose is to directly replace the rifle.
"It's difficult."
Zhou Changfeng left the No. 1 conference room of the Ordnance Bureau while complaining. If he could not change the Army's intentions, it would be equivalent to watching them use their precious resources and production capacity on inefficient and cost-effective things.
This feeling is very uncomfortable and awkward.
It's like buying the accessories and assembling the computer yourself is the most cost-effective, but the family refuses to listen and goes to the computer store to buy a complete machine with an i3, GT610, and a brand-name power supply.
But no matter what, at least do your job well first.
Before leaving the Ordnance Bureau, Zhou Changfeng walked around upstairs and downstairs here. Just as the meeting in the No. 3 conference hall ended, a group of officers and officials filed out, whispering to each other.
Hearing that they were discussing tanks, Zhou Changfeng was quite curious and asked straight to the point.
Come! Let me be healthy!
As the confidentiality level allowed, the officers handed the documents to him generously without covering up, and then took out their lighters and smoked cigarettes.
After four revisions and adjustments, the trial-produced Type 37 medium-sized tank, which was tested since last year, was finally recognized and designated as the "Type 38 medium-sized tank," also known as the formation-breaking tank.
It sounds a bit outlandish, but as the name suggests, this is a tank used to break through enemy positions and is a well-balanced main assault weapon.
The Type 38 tank was designed by the Yanjing National No. 1 Heavy Machinery Company. It is 5.8 meters long, 2.42 meters wide, and 2.55 meters high. The length-to-width ratio is 2.4. It is too long because of the in-line engine.
The front armor of the car body is 24mm thick, the sides of the car body are 24mm thick, the turret front armor is 28mm thick, the turret side armor is 24mm thick, the gun mantlet is 40mm, and the commander's command tower is 20mm thick all around.
There are two types of armor steel. Only the gun mantlet uses the newly developed rolled nickel-chromium-molybdenum alloy steel with a Brinell hardness of 260HBW. It has moderate performance and is suitable for resisting larger projectiles. The rest of the parts are made of surface-hardened armor steel with a Brinell hardness of 260HBW. 520HBW, great for defending against small projectiles, but may break when faced with attacks from larger projectiles.
The total weight of the empty vehicle is 17.3 tons. It is equipped with an in-line ten-cylinder air-cooled diesel engine with an operating speed of 2,000 rpm. It can output 210 horsepower at this time, with the driving wheel at the rear. Six forward gears and two reverse gears, maximum highway speed 40km/h, maximum reverse speed 8km/h.
The suspension mechanism is a mature balanced suspension, with two road wheels in one set and three sets on one side. The steering mechanism is an ordinary differential type. The shifting mechanism can also be equipped with pneumatic auxiliary equipment, which will save effort during operation, but maintenance and inspection work will be much more troublesome.
The main weapon is a 48mm tank gun with a caliber of thirty-four times. This is a product of the Shenyang Army Artillery Factory. It fires 48×176mm ammunition. The muzzle velocity of the capped armor-piercing projectile is about 600m/s. The penetration depth at a distance of 500m is about is 40㎜.
In addition, there is a heading machine gun, a parallel machine gun, and a roof-mounted machine gun.
The crew of the vehicle is five people, including the driver, heading machine gunner, commander, gunner, and loader.
However, the Army seems to be hesitant to equip every tank with a vehicle-mounted radio as standard, because it is not cheap. Currently, it is considering only installing radio equipment on the platoon leader's vehicle of each platoon, and the platoon leader communicates through sign language and semaphore. , shout to command other tanks.
"Tsk, this car looks good. What's the diameter of the turret ring?" Zhou Changfeng asked while turning the page.
A civilian lieutenant colonel wearing glasses puffed away smoke and replied casually: "Less than five feet, more than 1,530 millimeters."
The diameter of the turret seat determines the upgrade potential of this type of tank to a large extent. If you want to upgrade to a more powerful tank gun in the future, the turret will naturally need to be larger.
If the turret seat ring is not large enough, it will be difficult to adapt to the new turret, and the production line of the car body will have to be adjusted.
The Germans modified the earliest Type A of the Panzer IV tank from 15 tons, and the most powerful Type H was as high as 25 tons. Unfortunately, it was limited by the limits of the turret seat and chassis suspension, and ultimately could not be upgraded further. .
"How many vehicles do you plan to purchase?"
"The first order is four hundred and twenty vehicles, and there may be more."
Want to add more?
hateful! The factory's production capacity is limited, how can the Army take over all the good stuff?
Zhou Changfeng immediately wiped the soles of his feet and ran away, planning to quickly let the Navy rush for the next order - such a good thing, the Marines also want it!
Hey, I’m having a gastrointestinal endoscopy tomorrow, and I’ve been drinking that disgusting electrolyte water all night. It’s really uncomfortable.
(End of chapter)
