Guangzhou Machinery Company naturally has no objections to the technical licensing cooperation between the two parties. Because of the licensing fee, most of the profits will belong to Guangzhou Machinery Company.
This model simply uses the on-site production base of Dangtu Machinery Company to expand its own production capacity in the short term and make a profit before other manufacturers develop high-pressure steam engine technology and increase high-pressure steam engine production capacity.
Although Dangtu Machinery Company is reluctant, on the one hand, the superiors are urging them to get more high-pressure steam engines. As a government-run enterprise, they still need to bear some responsibilities.
On the other hand, they can only stabilize themselves, saying that they can verify and improve their technical capabilities in producing high-pressure steam engines through this technical licensing cooperation.
In this way, after they come up with their own high-pressure steam engine and bypass the patents of Guangzhou Machinery Company and Tianjin Machinery Company, they can adjust the production line and directly produce their own high-pressure steam engine.
In this way, a situation was formed in which the three major domestic steam engine manufacturers all had the production capacity of high-pressure steam engines. The production capacity of high-pressure steam engines in the empire was suddenly increased to supply the naval steam engine market, which has a huge domestic demand.
In this way, the Navy can easily place orders for dozens and hundreds of steam engines.
Just as the domestic steam engine industry was booming and the navy began to put new or modified motors and sailboats into service on a large scale, a firearms test was being held at the firearms research institute on the outskirts of Jinling City.
A dozen technicians were looking ahead at the people testing the guns.
Three young Guards soldiers, each holding a slightly different style of gun, were constantly loading and shooting.
It's just that when these three Guards soldiers load and shoot, they will load a small brass-colored cap in the firing mechanism, and there is no flint when firing...
This is a musket that doesn’t require flint!
Clear gunshots kept ringing out, and the dozen or so technicians behind them became more and more happy as they watched.
This is the biggest project in their firearms research institute in recent years: a flash cap percussion gun!
The research on muskets in the Dachu Empire began when the country was officially founded. It began to produce matchlocks in its early years. The matchlocks served in the domestic regular army for ten years in Chengshun, and the formal service in the militia lasted until Chengshun. For about sixteen years, and in fact in many overseas areas, there are still many militiamen or ordinary young men who continue to use matchlocks in private.
The production of matchlocks in the Da Chu Empire has never stopped, but starting around the tenth year of Chengshun, most of the matchlocks produced were exported.
Matchlocks are the flagship export product of the Great Chu Empire and are very popular in overseas indigenous countries. Many vassal states and armies under the control of the Great Chu Empire are equipped with the export version of the matchlocks of the Great Chu Empire.
The research and production of flintlock guns took even longer. Chengshun was officially developed in the second year of the year and began small-scale production. During this period, many flintlock models appeared, and the scale of production capacity became larger and larger, and eventually It completely replaced the matchlock gun and became the standard equipment of the imperial military police and militia.
Its latest model, the Thirteen-Year-Old Suifa Rifle and its subsequent improved models, are still being continuously improved and produced, and are even the main rifles in active service of the Imperial Military.
The performance of the 13-year-old series of flintlock guns far exceeds the flintlock guns produced by their European counterparts. This performance gap is not just a little bit, but a huge difference, especially in the all-weather firing rate.
To put it bluntly, the Chu Army's Thirteen Years Type series of flintlock muskets are more than two generations ahead of European flintlock muskets in terms of performance.
However, even though the flintlock rifle far surpassed that of its European counterparts, the officials of the Ordnance Department of the Dachu Empire were still not satisfied. In the 18th year of Chengshun, they had already proposed a so-called new generation rifle research and development plan, and planned to Mercury fulminate, newly invented by professors at the Department of Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology, is used as the firing material to replace flint.
However, there was little progress at that time, mainly because mercury fulminate had poor stability and was very corrosive, which was unacceptable for military equipment with very high stability requirements.
Therefore, in the following years, they have been thinking about how to apply mercury fulminate safely, stably and efficiently.
It wasn't until the 21st year of Chengshun that the Gunpowder Research Institute successfully produced a copper flash cap, which put the development of new rifles on the fast track.
The Firearms Research Institute designed a new gun and a new firing mechanism. After a series of tests and improvements, the prototype gun currently being tested was finally produced.
The actual test results also greatly excited them.
During the test, other things like shooting accuracy, power, etc. are not important. They are all muskets anyway. They are not much better or worse.
What they really care about is firing rate!
When the Army Ordnance Department first finalized the research and development project for the new gun, the most important requirement was to significantly improve the firing rate of the new gun, which should be at least about 80% higher than that of the existing 13-year-old flintlock gun. The firing rate is a bit higher.
At the same time, there are also requirements to control costs and so on. After all, we can't make a rifle that we can't afford.
The standard rifles of the Dachu Empire were produced in quantities ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions. They are very cost-sensitive. If they are one or two yuan more expensive, then in the end it will cost one or two million more... …If it’s ten or eight yuan more expensive, then it’s an additional expense of several million or even tens of millions.
Therefore, the military has always been very tight on the cost of mass-produced standard equipment such as rifles.
This is also the direct reason why the military developed a flash cap firing rifle, because after preliminary technical demonstrations, they believed that as long as this thing was developed, it could be seamlessly modified with the 13-year-old series of rifles.
Moreover, the modification cost is not high. You only need to replace the bolt and nothing else needs to be changed.
In this way, the military can obtain a rifle with a higher firing rate at a cheaper price, instead of having to directly produce a large number of new rifles.
The question now is how high the firing rate of the new rifles currently being tested can be.
After the long test, everyone quickly compiled the test data, and finally came out with a very astonishing result: the firing rate reached 99%... or even more accurately, in the 100-round live ammunition test, only Misfired once.
This firing rate is simply an epoch-making blow for the flintlock gun!
You must know that even the latest 13-year-old improved Suifa rifle can only achieve a firing rate of 85%. This is still in a testing state... If it is actual combat, it can actually have a firing rate of 8%. Ten is pretty good.
In actual combat, the Chu Army's 13-year-old series of flintlock guns basically misfired after firing five or six rounds... Of course, this is still much better than the 70% firing rate of the matchlock gun, let alone Those early European flintlock guns can be compared.
But after using the flash cap to fire, the firing rate suddenly increased to 99%... This result directly shocked the technical research and development personnel, and even shocked the officials of the Army Ordnance Department.
Especially the officials of the Army Ordnance Department, they know that mercury fulminate is very good. It not only has a high firing rate, but also has no smoke and low flame.
There is no delay in shooting. When a flintlock gun is fired, it needs to go through three steps: crushed flint - ignition powder - propellant. There will be a delay time when the bullet comes out of the chamber when the trigger is pulled. However, if mercury fulminate is used, Because there is no ignition step, it can be fired immediately by pulling the trigger.
They also saw so many benefits that they began to develop rifles with mercury fulminate as the firing method early on. However, they still did not expect that after using a flash cap to fire, the firing rate could be as high as 99%.
This test directly shocked the top brass of the Army... because everyone knew what this high firing rate meant.
This means that even if other conditions are not considered, the firepower density during combat can be increased by at least 20%...
Well, if you remove about 20% of the duds from the flintlock gun, you can get more than 20% more firepower out of thin air.
Not to mention it can bring more benefits in actual combat.
For example, because there is no smoke when the flash cap fires, soldiers can even directly aim and fire, instead of closing their eyes or turning their heads when firing as before. This will definitely improve the hit rate.
The next day, a group of senior army generals went to the Firearms Research Institute, and they all wanted to see the live ammunition test of the flash cap firing gun in person.
So, a long live ammunition test began again... It was the same three foreign guns. Each gun fired a full 300 rounds of ammunition. Because there were so many tests, even the test soldiers changed several batches. Woolen cloth.
The recoil of this musket is quite strong, and the soldiers will not feel comfortable even if it is fired too many times!
And it’s tiring to reload repeatedly.
After the test was completed, the final firing rate statistics were even higher than yesterday's statistics, reaching 99.5%!
At this time, the army generals all had the same idea... It's it, it's it...
Place your order now and buy it now!
And all those old guns were taken and modified.
From now on, our army of the Great Chu Empire will use percussion rifles...the flintlock rifles can roll as far as they go!
The firing rate is higher, and it is an epoch-making improvement. From now on, the firing gun does not even need to consider the problem of duds in actual combat.
Because in a battle, the average number of shots fired by soldiers is only a dozen or so, and only twenty or thirty rounds at most. Within this number of shots, the probability of a few tenths of a percent duds can be simply ignored. .
While the firing rate is improved, it also has the advantages of instantaneous shooting, better protection against rain, moisture, and wind because no primer is needed. Moreover, because there is no fire and smoke emitted by the primer, the shooter can open the gun. Eye aiming and a series of other advantages.
What's more important is that it's cheap!
Compared with the flintlock gun, this kind of percussion gun actually has some changes in the bolt structure, and other parts such as the barrel have not changed. This means that a large number of existing bolts can be modified by directly modifying the bolt. The main flintlock guns currently in service have been modified into copper flash cap percussion guns.
Of course, this does not mean that there are no shortcomings. The shortcoming is that the new gun will rely more on logistics!
The core ignition component of the flintlock gun is flint, which is a mineral and can be found in many places in the world. The Dachu Empire can find flint in remote areas of the country, overseas territories and even indigenous countries, and then through simple It can be used directly after processing and shaping.
But the copper flash cap used in the percussion gun cannot be found elsewhere. It has to be mass-produced in domestic arsenals, and the technical difficulty is not small.
This means that in the future, soldiers fighting in overseas territories and remote places will have difficulty in obtaining copper flash caps through seizure and simple processing on the spot.
Everything has to be produced and shipped from domestic arsenals, which makes the dependence on logistics even more serious.
However, this kind of logistics dependence is not a big disadvantage. After all, many of the military supplies in the Dachu Empire now rely heavily on logistics.
The most obvious one is the grenade. This thing cannot be produced by seizure or simple processing on the front line. The grenade shells used in the Chu army today are all made of specially formulated iron-carbon alloy materials... Well , that is, steel.
Not only is the material difficult to obtain, but the processing is also troublesome, because the steel cartridge cases need to be prefabricated into fragments, which requires very high processing capabilities, and manual workshops simply cannot produce them in large quantities.
Only the grenade produced in this way can withstand a large enough chamber pressure. At the same time, the shell can be made as thin as possible and more explosives and steel balls can be packed in, thereby increasing the lethality.
Otherwise, the grenades produced may be the same as the grenades produced by the new army of the Ming Dynasty, the Eastern captives, and the current Europeans. The poor ability to withstand chamber pressure leads to short range and poor accuracy, and due to the small charge, The explosion power is small, and due to the lack of prefabricated fragments, the damage range is also small.
This kind of grenade, which is still in the fuse grenade period, does not have much practical value.
However, only some domestic arsenals can produce the Chu army's high-tech grenades and then transport them to fight overseas.
In addition to grenades, there are many other things that need to be transported from the mainland.
There are even various canned foods for the personnel, various processed feeds for the mules and horses, tents, blankets, medicines, etc.
In fact, the better the equipment of the army, the higher its combat effectiveness, and the higher its reliance on logistics.
This is not only true for the Chu army, but also for other armies.
The Chu army's dependence on logistics was already quite serious. Now adding a percussion gun that also relies heavily on logistics is not a big deal.
Compared with these logistical dependencies, the various advantages brought by the firing gun itself are even greater, especially the firing rate of more than 99%, which is enough for military generals to give up all concerns.
The Jinling Firearms Research Institute's live ammunition test report of the multiple-fire gun was submitted along with the Army Ordnance Department's research report.
After reading this, Luo Zhixue directly gave instructions to increase efforts in researching and producing new percussion guns and modifying existing flintlock guns so that the imperial soldiers can use the best weapons.
With Luo Zhixue's approval, the Army also acted quickly and directly issued bidding notices to major weapons companies, requiring them to develop brand-new, mass-produced new weapons based on the research results of the Jinling Firearms Research Institute. Percussion gun design.
And it’s not one type, but several types. The rifle alone has a longer length and is an Army general-purpose version that focuses on bayonet fighting;
For coastal, tropical rainforest and other areas, the tropical version requires salt resistance and corrosion resistance;
For cold areas, it is required that the northern version can still be used under extremely cold conditions;
Used by cavalry, the cavalry version with a shorter barrel;
There is no way. The Chu army is deployed from the Arctic to the equator, from desert terrain to tropical rainforest terrain, from mountains to coasts. Under the current technical conditions, it is difficult to say that the same rifle can meet all the above requirements. Therefore, The military simply split the requirements and tendered firearms with different needs based on different needs of climate and geographical location.
In addition to rifles, there are also pistols. The models of these pistols are also divided into officer pistols, ordinary pistols, cavalry pistols, etc.
Just the first batch of guns for bidding included more than ten categories of models.
Each weapons company can choose one or more of them for targeted research and development based on its own technical reserves and advantages, and ultimately participate in the military's bidding.
In addition to inviting bids for new percussion guns, the Ministry of Ordnance also asked the Jinling Firearms Research Institute to transplant the percussion mechanism from the prototype gun to the 13-year-old series of flintlock guns, and then create a 22-year-old percussion gun.
Except for the newly designed firing bolt, the rest of this thing is the basic structure of the 13-year-old series of flintlock guns. You can tell at a glance that it is a pure transitional product.
After all, we don’t know when the new percussion gun will be available. We can’t just stop producing all kinds of firearms before the new percussion gun is developed. The military needs a certain number of various firearms to replace them every year. supplementary.
However, it is not appropriate to continue to produce flintlock rifles, so the military has come up with a transitional plan. Based on the Thirteen-year-old series of rifles currently in production, after replacing it with a new firing bolt, it directly made a twenty-year-old rifle. The 2-year-old percussion gun comes out.
And this transition plan can also be highly consistent with the modified firearms plan.
Because it is expected that the modification plan of the existing flintlock gun will also adopt the test bolt action plan of the Jinling Firearms Research Institute. How should I put it? In fact, the test sample gun in the Jinling Firearms Research Institute is from the 13-year-old flintlock gun. Modified.
If the existing flintlock gun is modified directly according to the test sample gun, the technology is simple and the cost is low.
To this end, the Army directly applied this plan and also invited bids for the modification of existing rifles, preparing to successively modify more than one million of the existing 13-year-old series of rifles in the near future.
The percussion gun improved from the 13-year-old series flintlock gun directly uses the same number as the newly produced 22-year-old series percussion gun. After all, there is no difference between the two.
However, it has long been relegated to the second line. Currently, the 2-year-old series of flintlocks currently only in service in C-class garrison units, militia and other units are no longer modified. These firearms have been discontinued for many years, among which the 2-year-old series is the latest to leave the factory. The series of flintlock guns were all produced around the 15th year of Chengshun, which is seven years ago.
The 2-year-old series of flintlock guns are already being retired one after another, so there is no need to waste modification costs on them.
After the new percussion guns are put into mass production in the future, the modified 13-year-old series flintlock guns, that is, the 22-year-old percussion guns, will gradually be retired from the first-line troops, and then enter the second-line troops and militia forces, eventually replacing Second year type flintlock rifle.
On the one hand, they are developing various new types of percussion guns, on the other hand, they are directly producing transitional models of 22-year-old percussion guns, and on the other hand, they are converting the 13-year-old series of flintlock guns into 22-year-old percussion guns.
With a three-pronged approach, the Army is determined to complete a comprehensive replacement plan for the percussion guns in the shortest possible time.
This is also due to the fact that the percussion gun is a very convenient and cheap modification solution compared to the flintlock gun. If it cannot be modified, or the modification is too expensive, the Army will not be able to completely replace the percussion gun in a short time.
After the Army took quick action, the Navy and the Guards did not lag behind. The Navy was too lazy to do anything on its own and directly bid and modified a series of firearms from the Army. They even copied the bidding plan... and even copied the bidding plan. People are lazy and even change some keywords of the Army and use them directly. This makes people from major weapons companies who participated in the bidding speechless...
At one point I doubted whether I had entered or exited the door, so I ran to the bidding office of the Army Ordnance Department.
The Guards are similar, directly imitating a series of bidding plans from the Army.
However, in addition to this, the Guards has several other research and development plans for new rifles. The Guards want to use new firing technology as a support to try to develop a breech-loading rifle.
The Guards have always been very interested in breech-loading rifles.
Several generals of the Guards accompanied them more often, and Luo Zhixue often went to the Guards for inspections. This would more or less reveal some of the development of firearms in the original time and space. For example, the breech-loading rifle was Luo Zhixue. Zhixue often mentioned it, and even rifling was something Luo Zhixue told them.
Whether in order to please Luo Zhixue or to obtain better performance weapons, the Guards has not given up its research support for breech-loading rifles over the years.
There are currently only three breech-loading rifles in the country that have entered military service, all of which were developed with the support of the Guards.
One of them is the Han 457 breech-loading rifle designed by Hantian Arsenal. This breech-loading rifle is considered to have the highest technical level among a large number of domestic breech-loading rifles. It uses a tail-end screw locking solution, and it is worth it. Note that this flintlock gun is also a rifled rifle, with two spiral riflings.
To be precise, this rifle should be called the 'Han 457 breech-loading rifled flintlock rifle'.
That’s right, it’s a breech-loading rifle!
It is a pity that these three breech-loading rifles are not considered successful. They are only small-scale test equipment and have not entered the sequence of large-scale equipment at all, so that they have not even received the serial number of official military equipment!
