I don’t know since when, the heartless cannon, a local cannon that was born in the hands of our army in the 1940s and 1950s, entered the public eye.
With many self-media describing it in exaggerated terms, the public seems to have misunderstood this object - the heartless cannon is a civilian cannon that is super easy to use, powerful, simple to build and very cheap.
To build a heartless cannon, all you need is an iron cylinder, explosive packets and gunpowder. It is economical, affordable and easy to use. It is really a good product for killing people and setting fire to when traveling at home.
No matter when and where, the Heartless Cannon can be picked up at your fingertips without any technical difficulty. As long as the Heartless Cannon is set up, it can blow up all kinds of enemies to pieces and bleed from their orifices, and then establish the victory. You can attack or defend on the battlefield. It's always bad.
But is it really so?
If the conscienceless cannon is really so useful and magical, why did it only enter the military museum after a short-lived appearance in the 1940s and 1950s?
The answer is obvious.
The heartless cannon is not that easy to use, and it is not magical. It is definitely more economical than a real cannon, but its effectiveness... is hard to say.
The heartless cannon is officially called a flying thunder tube. As the name suggests, it is a tube that makes "thunder" fly. To put it bluntly, it is a large homemade grenade, or it can also be regarded as a homemade mortar.
It is unknown when it was born, but it fully matured during the War of Liberation.
The enemy makes good use of many permanent or semi-permanent strong fortresses to guard the battlefield. However, our army lacks artillery tanks and other offensive weapons, and relies almost entirely on the brave sacrifices of the demolition suicide squads to blast and attack the fortresses one after another, resulting in huge human losses.
In order to reduce casualties, heartless cannons came into being.
It is positioned as a weapon that does not use manpower to deliver explosive packages. It appears on the battlefield to attack fortresses, blow up permanent or semi-permanent military bunkers, and reduce the casualties of our army.
The earliest heartless cannon was actually to dig a deep cylindrical pit on the ground that was tilted toward the target. At the bottom of the pit, gunpowder was placed to push the explosive package. On top of the gunpowder, the explosive package for blasting the target was placed. The thrust of the gunpowder was used to push the explosive. The package is ejected to the target point and detonates.
After all, the method of relying solely on earth pits as launch tubes is too earthy. The temporarily dug earth pits have relatively strict requirements on pit wall diameter, medicine chamber volume, and inclination angle. It is difficult to grasp the relatively strict requirements.
This brought great uncertainty to the calculation of the distance to hit the target, the amount of gunpowder and the size of the explosive package, so the flying thunder tube was born.
The calibers of thunder tubes are very different, ranging from 300 mm to 500 mm. The explosive packages used to launch are generally more than ten kilograms, and the larger ones are more than twenty kilograms. The maximum range is two to three hundred meters, but with 150 meters The lethality within this range is ideal, and it is mainly used to attack primary and secondary defense facilities such as enemy fortifications, barbed wire fences, and deer villages. It is basically incapable of dealing with infantry in motion.
Some museums have actual torpedoes on display. These torpedoes for tourists to visit are placed at a certain angle, with the front end supported by a wooden frame. This is similar to the arrangement of mortars, but it must be It is clear that this is only a display method for people to visit, and it must not be a launch state during combat.
Because of the recoil.
The explosion of gunpowder produces a huge driving force. This driving force does not first apply force to the explosive bag, but first applies force to the launch tube. The launch tube is hard enough, but the force of the gunpowder has no place, but it must go. You can only push the explosive package away, and this is the complete launch.
Similar to the thin gasoline barrel in the TV series, there is a thin layer of iron bottom behind it, and there is nothing else to hold the bottom, and then the propellant is ignited and launched - believe me, this is definitely used to commit suicide.
Everyone should be familiar with the word "bore explosion". Why does "bore explosion" occur?
To put it bluntly, the quality of the launch tube was not up to par, and it was not hard enough. It could not lock in the force generated by the gunpowder explosion, and it exploded.
So why did artillery in the past generally have thick barrels with small exits? It's just that the iron smelting industry is not well developed and cannot produce iron that can make large-caliber artillery. In order to avoid exploding the barrel and killing one of our own people, we can only reduce the caliber.
To put it bluntly, the heartless cannon is just a gasoline barrel with a thin iron sheet. How can it withstand the huge recoil caused by the gunpowder explosion?
Of course it can, because when it is actually launched, most of its body is buried firmly in the ground, and the gap between the outside of the barrel and the pit wall is filled with soil, using the solid earth to absorb the heavy pressure and recoil caused by the propellant, and Improve safety factor.
This means that the launch of a heartless cannon not only requires barrels, gunpowder and explosive packets, but also requires professional engineers to perform solid soil work, which requires a considerable period of preparation work.
Generally this time is between thirty and forty minutes.
Precisely because it takes too long and is almost immovable once ready for launch, it can only be used to attack immovable heavy targets.
And when using it, the army as a whole needs to be in a strategic offensive posture, while the enemy must be in a strategic defensive posture. Only in this way can the heartless cannon be ensured to truly play its role. Otherwise, the enemy will launch a counterattack before you have dug the hole...
The shortcomings of heartless cannons don't stop there. Mistakes in its own performance and operation can also cause tragic accidents.
For example, there is the problem of the fuse used to ignite the propellant and the explosive package. Many of the explosive packages thrown by unscrupulous cannons still use manual ignition to ignite the fuse of the explosive package. Then the problem is, if the explosive package is ignited The fuse also ignites the fuse of the propellant. But what should I do if the fuse of the propellant fails but the fuse of the explosive bag does not?
It is precisely because of the existence of this kind of safety problem that even professional engineers cannot solve that the heartless artillery gradually withdrew from the battlefield and entered the military museum after our army captured more artillery.
It is true that many simple versions of modern firearms can be made using indigenous methods, but this is not without cost.
If you want to use local methods to avoid the technical and cost issues required for formalized production and take advantage of loopholes, you will inevitably have to bear the backlash caused by the irregular operation of local methods, and the losses caused by this backlash will even exceed the benefits brought by the loopholes themselves.
Otherwise, why would humans pursue standardized large-scale industrial production?
Isn’t it good for everyone to be together?
At this point, I have to talk about the plots of many historical authors and readers. One is the plot of famous ministers, famous generals and beauties, and the other is the plot of firearms.
Both of them appeared with the gradual rise of online novels, and of course I have them too.
I feel that with famous ministers and generals in my hands and beautiful women in my arms, the world is mine. I also feel that if I travel back in time, I can produce powerful firearms in minutes without any technical difficulty, and I can defeat the natives in minutes.
But the more books I write, the more information I check, and the older I get, the less I can accept this statement.
I won’t talk about the former, but talk about the latter a little bit.
Perhaps China was too humiliated in modern times, and everyone was holding back the desire for revenge. In the early years, there was a lot of talk on the Internet that strong ships and cannons defeated the Qing army's swords and spears, so that we finally fell into defeat.
So people think that China's failure is purely due to the lack of adequate development of firearms. As long as firearms are developed in place, we can turn over in an instant and become a great power, proud and proud.
Readers and authors are affected by this and believe that it is absolutely right to develop firearms in historical novels, and it is absolutely wrong not to develop firearms or not to develop firearms immediately after traveling back in time.
If we go back in time and don't we immediately develop firearms to defeat everything? Is there something wrong with your mind?
No matter how powerful the enemy is, as long as you develop firearms, you can win immediately. If you can't win - then develop more advanced firearms. You are a time traveler!
In fact, to be honest, how many normal people can make even a matchlock or flintlock gun by hand?
Maybe, but I can’t do it anyway, so neither can the protagonist I write.
He has no system and no golden brain. All he has is a vague historical technological trend. He knows a few firearms knowledge and can draw a few decent pictures. This is considered a failure in the technology I prescribed for him.
Speaking of which, how many people would know that early gunpowder was not even powder but in the form of a paste, which burned poorly and contained a large amount of impurities?
How many people know how to granulate gunpowder?
The most powerful thing is never the Chinese traveler, but the Baidu that can connect to the Internet (so when I wrote the first Zhenguan guide, I brought a Baidu to the protagonist).
Of course firearms are good, of course I know, but I regard novels as my career, and every novel is my hard work. I don’t want to produce a matchlock gun in three chapters and a flintlock gun in six chapters, or even a tank in three hundred chapters. .
I'm not a professional either. It would be a joke to try to be professional. Moreover, many things can really only be superficial and brushed off. If you explain them in depth, problems will arise.
All I can say is that within the scope of my ability, I want to pursue reasonableness as much as possible.
Of course, I can't do it even if it's completely reasonable. I also have to use the skills that need to be used. For example, a crossbowman can be trained in three months. Basically, it takes two to three years to become proficient...
So why was the success rate of rebellion so low in ancient times?
If you can't get a reliable crossbowman, the imperial court will flood you with an army of crossbows and fire at you, which will basically result in a GG.
If you really want to be rigorous, you need the professionalism of the author. I remember reading a book called New Song Dynasty when I was in high school. It was quite rigorous, and it still leaves a deep impression on me.
But most of the time the author cannot be reasonable and rigorous in everything, and can only make a balance and choice between reasonableness and cheating.
It takes time to improve gunpowder, it also takes time to manufacture and improve firearms, it takes time to train firearms troops, and it takes time to form combat effectiveness.
Making firearms requires money, a lot of manpower and material resources, enough raw materials, enough time for craftsmen to trial and error, and trial production before moving towards mass production.
Where is saltpeter, where is sulfur, where is iron ore, where is copper ore.
What should I do if the iron smelting capabilities are not in place and the firearms produced always explode.
There are always individual differences in hand-made products by craftsmen, so it is difficult to standardize production.
If you don’t like the smoothbore and want a rifled firearm, how should you rifling it?
What should I do if I don’t feel comfortable looking at the match rope and want to flint my hair?
What should I do if I feel uncomfortable with solid bullets and want to use blooming bullets?
These are all questions that arise when I write a book, and I can’t convince myself to skip ahead and pretend that these questions don’t exist at all.
I couldn't persuade myself to ignore the protagonist's survival crisis and economic crisis. I insisted on asking him to spend money on technological innovation while surviving, and instantly turned the cold weapon army into a hot weapon for all members, and swept through thousands of armies with a single Gatling weapon.
So every time I see statements like "I've traveled so many years and yet I don't have firearms" and "Use firearms to fight cavalry", I really can't laugh or cry.
Whenever I see this statement, it makes me feel that making firearms is like Nuwa making humans by throwing a ball of soil into shape instantly. The investment in advance and subsequent maintenance and a series of technical difficulties are as if they don't exist.
Moreover, the firearm itself has become like a powerful pill. Just one pill can cure all diseases and solve all problems. Modern firearms can use local methods to create a simple version and then kill everyone...
At this point, I will briefly explain my attitude. If you agree, I warmly welcome it. If you disagree, I can't help it. Let's just get to know each other and become familiar with each other.
In addition, firearms units will inevitably come online in the future, and tactical innovations will inevitably occur.
Because even the ancient version of the Huomen Gun could deal heavy blows to the heavy armor of the Jin and Song Dynasties, which in a sense ended the era of heavy armor.
The kinetic energy generated by gunpowder and the kinetic energy of a crossbow are not on the same level. Within the effective range, projectiles can do things that crossbows absolutely cannot.
But how long it will take, I don’t know.
Sincerely, salute.
I'm going to bed.
