There were many awesome weapons experts in the late Ming Dynasty, such as Han Lin, Zhao Shizhen (thunder gun, lightning gun and rocket gun), Sun Yuanhua (foreign artillery expert) and Bi Maokang (China's first flintlock gun).
However, they all died at this time.
But their inventions and experience data have been left behind, and there were many skilled craftsmen in the original Firearms Bureau. In addition, Chang Yu recruited good and talented firearms experts nationwide to recruit firearms experts to the Military Industry Research Bureau, including Xu Guangqi's nephew Chen Yujie.
Chang Yu likes young people very much. They are energetic, imaginative and creative, which are also essential qualities for a research expert.
Throughout the ages, whether it is called the Firearms Bureau or the Military Industrial Institute, it has been a restricted military area, and because of its dangerous nature, it is usually built in sparsely populated areas. But now, the Military Industrial Research Bureau directly under the jurisdiction of Dongchang is far away from Beijing, and is surrounded by farmland. As well as the abandoned farm, the area is slightly smaller than that of the military hospital, but the wall is more than three feet high. Two watchtowers are built on one side and are heavily guarded. Everyone entering and leaving must be checked one by one.
Chang Yu's carriage was surrounded when it was still dozens of meters away from the gate. Dozens of bows and muskets were aimed at his carriage, but after confirming their identity, everyone was so frightened that they broke out in cold sweat. Damn it, what if there was a misfire just now? Yeah, that's...
Chang Yu was not afraid at all. Instead, he checked the guards' muskets. They were all brand-new flintlock guns. These guns can fire quickly without ignition and are very close to modern guns.
This thing was tinkered with decades ago and is not considered a new item, but the improved flintlock gun in the hands of the defenders has better performance, is lighter, faster and more practical than the previous one, and is more cost-effective. It is much lower and close to the point where it can be mass produced.
Entering the Military Industry Institute, even though it was already night, you could still hear clanking noises everywhere. This was the craftsmen developing firearms. They had their own separate dormitories and their own separate workshops. They could study on their own or develop in groups.
For example, Chen Yujie has a research and development team, and Chang Yu came to him this time, because Chang Yu had given him a task before he went to Beijing to inspect Jiubian, and he came here today to see if it was completed.
The villain met Lord Du Gong. Chen Yujie knelt down to greet him outside his laboratory. Chang Yu raised his hand and said with hope, "It's successful."
Chen Yujie nodded vigorously, turned around and entered the room, took out an object from a locked iron cabinet and handed it to Chang Yu.
Chang Yu took it with both hands and his eyes lit up. What a familiar May 4th pistol. It was actually made.
That's right, the task Chang Yu gave Chen Yujie's team before leaving was to build a modern pistol. Of course, he didn't just throw out such a sentence, but spent a night to learn all he knew about guns, and Drawings were made.
As someone who has served in the military, played with guns, and is a gun fan, I am quite familiar with the basic structure and principles of firearms, and the structure of the May 4th pistol is very simple and rough.
What seemed simple and crude in later generations has become a top technological problem in this era, or to be precise, an industrial problem.
Just like the difference between a flintlock gun and a musket, what is the industrial revolution!
The difference between handicrafts and industrial machines!
Simply put, there are no machine tools!
machine tool!
In this era, all firearms manufacturing was a handicraft industry. From the barrel to the ammunition, they were drilled and polished bit by bit by hand, which was labor-intensive, time-consuming and extremely inaccurate.
The 54 is a pistol imitated from the Soviet Union. The magazine has a small capacity of only eight bullets. It is bulky and easy to jam, and its accuracy is poor. However, its structure is simple and difficult to manufacture and the cost is not high. It has been manufactured in large quantities in our country. It has been used by the military and police for fifty years.
As firearms experts, Chen Yujie and his team had a sudden enlightenment after listening to Chang Yu's vernacular for one night. The manufacturing structure and principle of this firearm are not difficult, but the production process is difficult.
All parts need to be polished by hand and carefully crafted. The firing pin, barrel, rifling, magazine, and even the bullet head and bullet casing all need to be polished bit by bit.
The hard work paid off. After more than three months of hard work, the team finally created the first Ming Dynasty imitation May 4th pistol for Chang Yu after numerous failures.
Familiar yet so unfamiliar, touching this dark and cold gun, Chang Yu looked a little excited, turned around and walked out of the room, pointed the gun at a tree next to him, pulled the trigger, and fired all the bullets in one breath. , the tree trunk was hit with sawdust flying everywhere, and the people around were stunned. What kind of magical weapon is this!
The May 4th has many certain points, but its range is good, powerful, and penetrating. As long as it hits the vital part of the target within fifty meters, it is enough to kill with one shot, but its accurate distance is generally more than twenty meters.
However, this gun is an imitation of the May 4th Movement after all. The gunpowder ratio in the bullet is not as powerful as that of later generations. The polishing of the firearms is all done manually and is not as accurate as machines. The power and accuracy are not as good as those of later generations, but it is enough to be rampant in this era. .
I am going to be invincible, Chang Yu shouted in his heart.
The appearance of a firecracker that can fire continuously without ignition and has a long range and accuracy shocked the onlookers. If there were hundreds or even thousands of them, it would be able to dominate the world.
However, the reality is cruel!
The technology is available now, but the workshop facilities cannot keep up. It would take a team of five people more than two months to build such a gun! Even when Chang Yu asked Chen Yujie how many bullets he wanted, he was told that they were gone. The previous ones were mostly used for experiments, so he kept these eight bullets, but Chang Yu, a prodigal, shot them all out in one go.
It only takes two days to make one such bullet!
If you want to do your job well, you must have a sharp tool!
It is imperative to develop machine tools! Chang Yu stayed at the Military Factory until dawn. Oh no, he stayed at the Military Factory for three whole days. He worked hard day and night with Chen Yujie and the firearms craftsmen. His lips were chapped when he talked. He told what he knew. All the knowledge about the principles of firearms and weapons is given to these experts as a theoretical reference. I hope they can develop some cutting-edge weapons, such as machine guns, submachine guns, etc.
Chang Yu's knowledge of firearms is very shocking to the experts of this era. For example, they can't imagine that a gun can fire hundreds of bullets continuously...
But they felt that it was possible to follow the structure he said. How to create knowledge would require them to experiment step by step.
The most critical part of making a machine gun is how to make smokeless gunpowder. You must know that before 1884, all bullets were made of black powder. Even the imitation May 4 gun used by Chang Yu just now also used black powder. , and the main component of smokeless black gunpowder is nitrocellulose, which is a mixture of sulfuric acid and nitric acid plus some fiber (cotton cloth or something), also commonly known as guncotton. Of course, guncotton is not really gunpowder. Pyrotechnic powder also requires stabilizers and gels, which are then dried and cut into small pieces... The Maxim machine gun was born because of this thing.
It sounds like it is very troublesome. In fact, this thing was easily produced in later generations, but for Chen Yujie now, it is difficult because it belongs to the category of chemistry.
It doesn't matter, we also have talents in this field. Song Yingxing was still alive and was recruited by Chang Yu. Now he is preparing for the Royal Academy. Fu Qingzhu also has research in this field. Chen Yujie's uncle Xu Guangqi is also an expert in this field. Although Chen Yujie has passed away, I have studied with him, and even Li Muxian is half a chemist. After all, our local Taoism studies chemistry.
Although the gadgets of later generations are cutting-edge, the experts of this era are not useless. They can also use the technologies and materials available today to make the most cutting-edge firearms of this era. For example, a firearms craftsman specializes in mine-type firearms, and he demonstrated it to Chang Yu. The latest invention, the grenade!
Of course, it is not as advanced as the ones that exploded with one pull in later generations. It has a fire twist that needs to be ignited, and the shell is made of iron. At first glance, it is not much different from ordinary mines, but its power is more than five times greater than similar mines, and the radius of the explosion range is more than ten meters. It is not bulky at all, and is much smaller than its existing counterparts. It is about the size of two wobou heads and can be held in one hand, hence the name, grenade.
Chang Yu was full of praise for this, and immediately granted him a generous reward and ordered mass production to begin, which attracted the envy of other experts.
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