Liu Sheng returned to Beihai Town from Fuldan City. He came back this time to participate in the artillery finalization seminar.
As the de facto second-in-command of the North Navy, he spent most of the year in Fuldan City. In addition to paying attention to the movements of the Qing army in the west and south, he also fell in love with Ushiha.
During the military exercises of the Northern Navy in August, Saharian participated in the military parade as a guest of honor, and Liu Sheng took the opportunity to propose marriage to Saharian. Saharian was very satisfied with the affairs between the two of them. He had already agreed with Liu Sheng to arrange the wedding in the coming spring. At that time, Liu Sheng will have to take Zhao Xin, Wang Yuanfang and others as the best man to Balke Village to bring back his new wife.
It’s just a toss-up!
Wu Xiha is currently studying at the cadre school in Beihai Town. Liu Sheng has to take her back to Fuldan City after the meeting, and then follow Saharian back to prepare the dowry.
Back in Beihai Town, Liu Sheng gave his guard squad a holiday and took two guards to the east bank of the Xila River.
Yes, no matter how high your martial arts skills are, you are still afraid of a kitchen knife; no matter how good your skills are, you will be knocked down by a brick. Ever since the Manchu spies broke out in Fuldan City, Liu Sheng had also been assigned a guard, and even Wu Xiha was accompanied by two Hezhe girls who had undergone brief training.
Liu Sheng came back this time to participate in the test firing and finalization of the imitation artillery. After all, he has the most say on whether it can be used and whether it is easy to use.
Beihai Town is preparing to build its own cannon.
For testing purposes this time, the arsenal built a total of two imitation cannons, one for export to the Sendai Domain and one for its own use.
If you want the Sendai Domain to cause trouble against the shogunate, it's unreasonable not to give them some support. After all, the Sendai Domain only has so few troops. Moreover, the loans from Beihai Town cannot be spent as they please, and part of them must be used to buy arms from Beihai Town.
The export model is still a front-loaded artillery piece, the reference is the M1857 12-pound field gun, but the barrel is made of manganese steel, so compared with the 500 kilogram bronze barrel in history, the export model is much lighter. , and also increases the difficulty of counterfeiting.
In these days, no one in Europe knew the secret of manganese steel. In the history of another time and space, a hundred years later, a British magician named Robert Hadfield accidentally discovered that manganese enhanced the wear resistance of steel.
The export type was enough for the Sendai clan to deal with the shogunate army. They could make iron ball shells and shrapnel themselves. As for the explosive shells and shrapnel, they had to buy them from Beihai Town.
As for the Beihai Navy's own-use model, the sample it refers to is an antique brought over by Zhao Xin, a Krupp 75mm field gun from the First World War. This is the world's first manganese steel cannon in another time and space. The total weight of the gun is 375 kilograms, the weight of the ammunition carrier is 700 kilograms, and it can carry 40 rounds of ammunition. The maximum range is 6,000 meters and the rate of fire is 8 rounds per minute.
Historically, in 1903, the Qing government purchased this gun from the Krupp Company. Due to its excellent performance, it was used until the Anti-Japanese War. Both the Nationalist Government and the Japanese at that time imitated this gun. The one from the Hanyang Arsenal was called the "Han-made Ke Type 29-75 Field Cannon" and the Japanese called it the "38-Type Field Cannon."
The reason for choosing this model actually has a lot to do with Zhao Xin’s original supplier, Daniel, who accidentally discovered it while attending a private warehouse auction.
It is said that there are many people in that country on the other side of the ocean who like to rent warehouses to store their things. However, if the warehouse is not renewed or completed, then the items in these warehouses will automatically belong to the warehouse company; and the warehouse company will come regularly. A "warehouse auction".
The items in these warehouses being auctioned may be good or bad. Before the auction, people from the warehouse company will not open the warehouse to check the items inside, so there is strong uncertainty. This thing is like betting on stones. Some people make a fortune in a blink of an eye; some people not only lose money, but also have to pay a garbage disposal fee.
Daniel has become fond of this thing in the past year, so whenever he hears about old warehouse auctions, he takes a gamble. At an auction in the middle of the year, he spent two thousand dollars to buy a warehouse and found such an antique inside.
Zhao Xin heard about this when he placed an order with him some time ago, so he bought the 75mm field gun. After a lot of trouble, this antique cannon arrived at the arsenal in Beihai Town.
Historically, it was not until the late 19th century in Europe that steel for making large-caliber artillery truly appeared after the Krupp Company developed the huge crucible. With the existing industrial capacity of Beihai Town, it is actually very easy to forge manganese steel with low sulfur and low phosphorus. However, the barrel of the imitation gun still uses alloy structural steel purchased from another time and space.
It is said that in addition to gun steel, that factory also produces high-pressure pipeline steel. What Zhao Xin bought was the alloy steel blank of high-pressure pipeline steel; this stuff is much stronger than pure manganese steel.
Although the production of modern gun steel has its own characteristics, it actually has something in common with structural steel with strict working conditions, that is, the impurities are very low, especially low sulfur and low hydrogen, and no white spots will be produced during the cooling process after forging. . During the final heat treatment, cracks are not likely to occur even if it is quenched in water.
At present, the Beihai Town Iron and Steel Plant uses crucibles for steelmaking. Electric arc furnaces are not considered for the time being because they consume too much energy. We will wait until the power plant is completed. Moreover, the electric arc furnace is just one of the modern steelmaking equipment. It is not a particularly high-end equipment. It just converts the heat source from burnt carbon into electricity. The output of the electric arc furnace is not large. It is mainly used for refining and secondary smelting, and more importantly, it is used to smelt higher-grade alloy steel. It is a bit overkill to directly use it to smelt manganese steel.
Half of the whale oil that Ding Guofeng asked for from Okhotsk last time was made into nitroglycerin by Fang Hua, so the propellant of this 75mm artillery shell became double base gunpowder; the burning rate is higher and the projectile power is higher. Stronger.
On the testing ground, the roaring sounds of cannons continued one after another, but most of them were the 75mm cannons, and the 12-pound imitation cannon only fired every 20 seconds.
The crew of the 12-pounder gun consisted of ten men. Two observers, five gunners, and three ammunition handlers. Because the smoke generated during shooting was too great, the observers always stood on the left side of the artillery; of the three ammunition handlers, two were responsible for guarding the ammunition truck, and one was responsible for transporting shells back and forth between the gun position and the ammunition truck.
Liu Sheng noticed that after each shot, a gunner would hold a long yellow bar and insert it on a pin at the rear of the gun while adjusting the height of the gun.
He walked over and took a look during the shooting break. It turned out to be a brass sight with a scale engraved on it and a tenon that could move up and down.
Liu Sheng asked the gunner: "The position corresponding to the tenon is the impact point of the cannonball?"
The gunner saluted first, and then explained: "If there is no strong wind, it will be almost the same. This thing is very useful."
Zhao Liang pointed to the front-loaded gun and introduced: "The caliber is 117 mm, each charge is 1.1 kilograms, the effective range is 1,600 meters, and the weight of the whole gun is 400 kilograms. If the personnel are fully staffed and the operation is skilled, the rate of fire will be four per minute. hair."
Liu Sheng nodded after hearing this and did not express his position. He also knew little about front-loading cannons. At this time, the ammunition hand from behind sent the cannonball over. The top of the cannonball was an iron ball, and a cotton bag was attached to the back. The iron ball and the cloth bag were fixed together with a metal bag and a rope.
Zhao Liang explained: "There is 1.1 kilograms of black powder inside, and a wooden disc is placed between it and the iron bullet."
Liu Sheng noticed that when the gunner in charge of loading was cleaning the barrel, the deputy gunner pressed his thumb on the fire door with a leather finger glove. He felt strange at first, but then he understood that this was to unbalance the internal and external pressure. It is convenient for the chamber cleaner to take out the debris in the barrel.
When loading the gun, the aiming hand starts to aim with the sight, and at the same time adjusts the high and low rotating rod under the gun body. After the shells were loaded and the aiming hand had been adjusted, the assistant gunner used an iron awl to pierce the cotton bag from the fire door, and the aiming hand inserted the firing tube into the fire door with a rope attached to it. At this time, the assistant gunner needs to press his hand on the fire door to prevent the aiming hand from accidentally firing; when the aiming hand retreats two meters away, he immediately pulls the rope to fire.
"Okay, that's enough." Liu Sheng turned to Zhao Liang and asked, "How much do you plan to sell each door for?"
"Zhao Xin's suggestion is five hundred taels of gold per door."
"I'll wipe it! He's really dark."
Zhao Liang smiled and said: "We are the only one in this family, there is no other semicolon."
Liu Sheng laughed, walked to the cannon used by Beihai Town and asked, "Is this for our own use?"
Zhao Liang said: "The caliber is the same, but the barrel is changed to thirty times the caliber. The maximum range is 6,500 meters. Each gun team is equipped with three people."
The breech block of the 75mm gun is a screw type breech. After loading, it can be closed by simply pulling and rotating it to the right. It is quite simple. Liu Sheng's hands were itchy, so he fired a few rounds to try. Sure enough, the rate of fire was very fast.
Zhao Liang said: "Right now it's just the processing of the cannonballs that's hard, nothing else."
Liu Sheng said: "We will attack westward next spring, so be sure not to let your guard down."
Zhao Liang said: "If I just make cannons, I can make fifty of them this winter. But the technology for making cannonballs is not good enough now. The shell stamping machine that was modified before is still being debugged. The cannonballs you shoot now are all made of Zhao Liang. There are only a hundred pieces assembled from the newly purchased shell shells."
The most prominent problem at the Beihai Town Arsenal is that there are not enough technicians. There are only about twenty people who can operate the machine tools. This time, Zhao Liang took fifty and a half boys away from the primary school and went to the technical school. At present, there are only more than eighty students in the technical school.
Among the blacksmiths among the refugees, young people accept new things more quickly, but they still have to make up for the literacy class first; while the old blacksmiths can't do it at all and can only go to the steel factory to help.
If you want to transform farmers who have just put down their hoes into industrial workers, you can't rush it. You can only accumulate more and more.
Zhao Liang said again: "Zhao Xindu has been gone for a month, right? I don't know if the Jinshan Mountain has been captured."
Liu Sheng said: "The telegram came this morning. They have captured Shiluo County south of Jinshan. What a bad place name. Now they are attacking Kuwahara County next door. I heard that they also captured a woman from the Shimazu family. Originally, Shimazu The Jin family also wants to give that girl to Zhao Xin as his wife!"
"ah?"
Liu Sheng said with a bad smile: "Just watch. If he takes another one, it will be five."
Zhao Liang suddenly became interested in gossip and whispered quickly: "Five? Tell me quickly..."
Liu Sheng clapped his fingers and said, "Needless to mention the Shen family. A Miao, Tang Xiao, and Wang Zhenyi, who he asked Xu Da to tie up. Look, adding one more is not exactly five."
...
In the temporary camp of the Northern Navy on Minami Kyushu Island, Zhao Xin said to Date Village Tsune and Tamura Murakusa: "Don't worry. Mr. Ishikawa sent news that the Aoba Battalion had a great victory over the Shogunate Army in the Mauniuma area, and now the Shogunate Army has Returned to Fukushima Castle."
Tamuramura said: "Ten thousand people, they retreated after just one attack? It seems that Edo has pinned its hopes on the navy on the east road."
The fiefdom of Ida Murasaki, Watari County, is right on the seaside. He said to Zhao Xin with some concern: "Prince Zhao Palace, would it be more reliable if Jing Lei or Thunder God can provide support?"
Zhao Xindao: "Don't worry. The most the shogunate army can do is step on the beach and get their feet wet. Sendai City will be fine. Watari Mamoru, I know what you are worried about. But as long as you are stuck on the Oshu Road, there will be no tricks on the Edo side. Right now. It's already October, and the northwest wind is blowing, so it's not the time to attack by sea. You see, it's hard to say whether the Tokugawa navy can reach Miyagi County without incident."
As soon as he said this, the two Sendai clan generals laughed.
The reason why Zhao Xin comforted the two of them in this way was because since the coalition forces captured Kajimu, the Thunder, Thor, and Beihai No. 1 and No. 2 had turned around and headed north.
The Thunderbolt and the Thunder God were going to Kuye Island to replenish fuel and then take Zhang Bo and the others back to Beihai Town. Beihai No. 1 and 2 didn't even have cannons, so it was more dangerous to stay on the seaside of Kajimu, so they followed them. After the Northern Navy captured the Ajiugen foothills near the sea in Izumi County, Zhao Xinhui would notify them to bring supplies and people over.
That's right, Zhao Xin, a miner from Linggao Jinshan, plans to transfer people from Beihai Town. He doesn't plan to use the local farmers or miners at all. Even the mined ore cannot be smelted locally and will be shipped back to Beihai Town.
You must know that the grade of Linggao gold mine is 40 grams per ton. If it is mined and refined using modern technology, the annual output will be seven to ten tons, which is enough to make people crazy. If this news leaks out and gets known to Edo, the shogunate will have to mobilize a large army to steal the gold no matter how hard it is.
Next year Beihai Town will prepare to fight westward. The Beihai Navy currently has a total of seven regiments.
Put one on the Kyushu side, and if the mud on the Sendai side cannot hold up the wall, another one will have to be placed. Beihai Town and Fuldan City each have to leave one regiment for defense, and the only ones that can be dispatched are three regiments plus two cavalry companies.
The outer Northeast is too big. In this era, there are virgin forests and swamps everywhere, and the roads are difficult to navigate. In winter, the temperature can reach minus 30 degrees, and the mountains are blocked by heavy snow, making it impossible to move for several months.
Once the troops are beaten out, they basically never come back. Modern weapon warfare relies heavily on logistics. If transportation cannot keep up with the weapons, they have to use fire sticks.
Zhao Xin doesn't want to follow him every time he goes out to fight, but this is the situation now. If he hadn't come to attack Satsuma this time, the logistics of the coalition forces would not be able to keep up.
He was lost in thought when a Sendai Clan sentry suddenly ran into the tent, knelt down on one knee, and said to the three of them: "I would like to report to you three adults that Kumamoto Clan, Fukuoka Clan and Saga Clan sent out troops yesterday!"
Date Muracao's face suddenly changed after hearing this. These three families are all powerful feudal lords on Kyushu Island. Among them, the Hosokawa clan of the Kumamoto clan has a height of 540,000 koku, the Kuroda clan of the Fukuoka clan has a height of 470,000 koku. The Nabeshima clan has a height of 350,000 koku.
He estimated that the reason why Edo agreed to send troops was because the current head of the Fukuoka Domain, Kuroda Haruyuki, was actually the fifth son of Tokugawa Soin, the head of the Ichihashi Tokugawa family among the three nobles; and that man was famous and famous during the Warring States Period. The bloodline of "Black Field Like Water" has been severed.
He stood up immediately and said loudly: "How many people are here?"
"No less than twenty thousand!"
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