One hundred meters, the optimal shooting distance for a flintlock gun.
After hard training, these musketeers have high quality.
Because Yang Fan didn't care about consuming gunpowder and breaking the musket.
Because Yang Fan is not short of saltpeter.
In this era, whether in Europe or Asia, the biggest bottleneck in the use of firearms was the scarcity of saltpeter. Without saltpetre, gunpowder cannot be made.
In the early days, Europeans used to scrape urine alkali on the toilet walls, which were those white things on the toilet walls.
Dissolve these materials in water, filter them, dry them in the sun, and purify them to obtain nitrate. Because the soil contains nitrifying bacteria, it decomposes urine to produce potassium nitrate.
Friends who keep fish should be familiar with nitrifying bacteria.
Nitrifying bacteria break down mammalian urine to produce potassium nitrate, the nitrate portion of gunpowder.
Because China is one of the few countries in the world that has stone saltpeter ore, the Hanzhong area contains a large amount of saltpeter ore. Since the Tang Dynasty, large quantities of ice have been mined to make ice in summer.
There are no saltpeter mines in Europe.
Before World War I, they used sailing ships to transport saltpeter ore from Argentina and Peru to Europe. Used to make gunpowder and explosives.
The control of the sea is controlled by Britain, which means that Britain has blocked the ability of European powers to wage war.
Potassium nitrate is also required for the production of explosives in modern times. The potassium nitrate ore would be shipped from South America, so that the country with sea rights would be in control.
Until the Germans invented ammonia synthesis technology. The use of nitrogen in the air to synthesize the raw materials for explosives allowed continental European countries to achieve explosive freedom. Now that explosives can be made at will, conflicts that have been suppressed for a long time quickly intensify, and then World War I breaks out.
Europeans even organized prostitutes to collect their urine in order to obtain saltpeter. It is strictly prohibited to use wooden boards and slates in domestic toilets to avoid affecting the collection of potassium nitrate.
The amount of nitrate obtained in this way will definitely not be much higher. Until they invented the saltpeter method.
The first recorded saltpeter field was opened in Frankfurt, which appeared in 1388.
The method of making saltpeter from the field is actually very simple, which is to prepare a field and remove stones and other debris. Then dig some cellars and pits, and bury wheat straw, fallen leaves, rags and other items into the fields.
Then put lime and water into the dug cellars and pits to increase the temperature of the land and keep the temperature constant for a period of time to create an environment suitable for the growth and reproduction of nitrifying bacteria.
Water the fields with human and animal urine and wait for a while. It takes about 10 months, and saltpeter soil is usually collected in spring. Under the transformation of nitrifying bacteria, a large amount of nitrate will appear in this field.
Then dig out the nitrate soil rich in potassium nitrate, mix it with plant ash and soak it in water, and finally boil the nitrate water to obtain potassium nitrate crystals.
But Yang Fan simply didn't have the patience to do such a complicated operation. This thing is time-consuming and labor-intensive, dirty, and can easily pollute the environment and spread viruses.
He purchased thousands of tons of potassium nitrate directly from Hyundai. In modern times, potassium nitrate is the fertilizer. Usually in the form of ammonium nitrate.
Especially with the establishment of the Horn of Africa base, freedom of explosives has been achieved. No one is in charge there at all, let alone fertilizers, and direct buying and selling of arms is commonplace.
Yang Fan was very interested in the gas tank mortars on the Syrian battlefield. The scammers have been asked to figure out how to make it. And tell the scammers, as long as you can get the technology and formula, don't be stingy with spending money.
The masters there used household kitchens and woks to create explosives with four times the explosive power of TNT from sugar and fertilizers.
Then load it into a gas tank, and one gas tank mortar can blow up half a building.
As long as he got the technology, Yang Fan could make it in Ming Dynasty.
Whether it’s sugar or chemical fertilizers, you can get them all here in Daming. This kind of explosive can be fried in Daming. This is of great significance to Yang Fan's future capture of cities and territories. Just think about it, it feels good to throw Syrian gas tank mortars onto European bastions, the little devil's bastion-like castles.
Gas canisters are not a problem either. You can place an order directly on Moubao, even if you buy a used one, it will not affect the modification.
China exports more than 200 million gas cylinders to Asia, Africa and Latin America each year. At most, in the Horn of Africa, electric welding is used secretly to weld the tail fins of the missile body. Use large-diameter seamless steel pipes to make mortars and attach them to wheels.
Yang Fan owns a steel factory and has accumulated tens of thousands of tons of discarded yellow steel sheets. He has no shortage of materials for making flintlock bolts.
If the musket is broken, it can be returned to the factory for repair at any time. It’s time to change parts for parts, and change barrels for barrels. That's the benefit of having an industrial base.
As for gunpowder, it was more casual.
The ammunition factory is full of female workers, who work in three shifts day and night to produce fixed ammunition.
Now in Yang Fan's territory, female employment has truly been realized. They receive the same basic salary and piece rate as male workers. The income of female workers has become an important part of the income of new worker families.
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Women's economic independence has also brought about an improvement in their status. Girls at home are no longer ignored as before, and it is becoming easier and easier to persuade them to send them to school.
The militiamen have a half-day of intensive target training every week.
There are prizes for the top three. Usually they are rare items such as thermos bottles, kerosene lamps, and high-thread count cotton. These things are now luxuries. Most people can't afford it.
The militiamen were attracted to practice shooting one by one, as if they were beaten to blood.
Those who can be recruited into the regular army are the best in militia training. Their military quality far exceeds that of the armies of East Asian countries in this era.
Cheng Lin and Cheng Hu stood in the first row of the line. They act as shooters. The second and third groups stood behind and acted as loaders.
This section of the horizontal line is a small team. Three squads form a squadron of one hundred men.
Following the order, Cheng Lin and Cheng Hu were no longer nervous. The two of them quickly got into the mood.
The usual rigorous training has formed muscle memory. Unknowingly, as soon as he heard the order, he immediately acted according to the infantry drill. Follow the command and pull the trigger.
boom! boom! boom!
A burst of gunpowder smoke filled the air, and 3,500 rounds of lead bullets were fired.
According to regulations, when shooting from a distance of fifty to one hundred meters, there is no need to specifically aim at a person.
Because, with the impressive hit rate of a flintlock gun, at a distance of 100 meters, the person you hit will never be the person you are aiming at.
Therefore, at this distance, the rate of fire is more important. Just take a rough aim and don't waste time on aiming.
After firing a musket, I didn't even look at the results. If you don’t look, you will know whether you hit it or not.
Anyone who looked around during training received a military stick.
What needs to be done at this time is to immediately turn around and hand the empty gun to the person behind, and then take the loaded gun from his hand. A person behind the shooter, after getting the empty gun, immediately started loading it.
Cheng Lin and Cheng Hu immediately put away their guns, turned around, handed over their guns to a row behind, and then received their guns. Turn around and fire again.
Then repeat again, but this time the second row turns sideways and continues to reload. The third row and the first row completed the exchange of guns.
The flash of flintlock fire from the first row told the Mongols that they were about to suffer.
The firecrackers held by these people were different from other border troops of the Ming Dynasty. It's neither a three-eyed blunderbuss nor a magic spear. But a blunderbuss.
As for advanced firearms, the Mongols only knew blunderbuss. None of them had seen Rumi Gun. Only Jiannu had seen Rumi Gun.
There were 3,500 people on the wide front, forming a nearly 2,000-meter horizontal front, completely covering the front of the Mongolian cavalry group. With the flash of fire, 3,500 steel-cored lead bullets were fired intensively.
These Mongols were extremely poorly equipped, and they rarely had iron armor. The glorious history of having a large number of heavy cavalry is no longer the era of Genghis Khan.
Their leather armor couldn't stop lead bullets at all, let alone armor-piercing lead bullets with scrap steel balls inside.
This kind of steel-clad ammunition was designed to deal with Jiannu wearing triple armor. Used to deal with these Mongolian light cavalry, it is simply killing a chicken with a sledgehammer.
Thirty-five hundred rounds of lead bullets were fired densely, and the group of cavalry attacking at high speed seemed to have been hit by a hammer, and seemed to be paused with the naked eye visible.
The steel-core lead bullets flying at supersonic speed hit the person and directly penetrated the leather armor.
Because the lead bullet is composed of two metals with different specific gravity, once it enters the human body, it will immediately become unstable and start rolling inside the human body.
Immediately, the outer layer of lead bullets burst and exploded. It's just a small hole when you enter from the front, and a big hole when you fly out from the back.
Although the bullet is not large, it will create a huge cavity in the flesh and soft tissue.
If it is hit on the internal organs, it will directly smash the internal organs. If it hits a bone, the bone will be comminuted and fractured. Then, the broken bone stubble shattered everything around it again.
As long as a lead bullet hits, the medical conditions of this era cannot be cured. Even if you are lucky enough to survive, the lead left in the body will cause chronic lead poisoning.
The front of the entire cavalry group was in a mess. A large number of horses were shot, neighing and falling, knocking the knights off their horses. He was trampled to death by the cavalry behind him.
Some hit the knight directly, directly smashing the limbs and torso. In front of him, there was a scene of heads exploding and limbs shattering.
