Research on metal fixed bullets also started very early in the Dachu Empire.
When the Firearms Research Institute developed the Type 17 breech-loading rifle concept rifle, Luo Zhixue asked the Firearms Research Institute to conduct research on all-metal fixed-loading bullets in order to better solve the air leakage problem of breech-loading rifles. .
After the preliminary research was conducted by the Firearms Research Institute, a series of theoretical studies were conducted.
However, in the past few years, the senior officials of the Dachu Empire discovered that there was a disconnect between research and production. To put it simply, the Firearms Research Institute, as a pure research institution, was disconnected from the actual manufacturers, that is, the five major weapons companies.
Those researchers are all paid dead wages, and their research is based on their own interests and hobbies. The research progress is lagging behind, and there are a lot of unrealistic research projects that waste money.
The same situation exists in other applied project research institutes directly under the Ministry of Industry.
As a result, many research institutes directly under the Ministry of Industry cannot compare with the research progress and results of the R&D departments directly under major enterprises.
To this end, the Chu Empire reformed the research structure directly under the Ministry of Industry and other administrative agencies.
Various administrative agencies no longer have direct jurisdiction over various research institutions. Some of the basic theoretical research institutions are assigned to universities, and some are under the leadership of the Royal Scientific Council.
Some applied research institutions were handed over to major government-run enterprises.
In this great wave of reform, the Firearms Research Institute, which has become bloated and whose research vitality has dropped significantly, has transferred all its technical achievements and patents to the five major arms companies for free, and personnel have been deployed according to their personal wishes and the wishes of the five major arms companies. .
The famous Firearms Research Institute of the past has completely withdrawn from history, and the research and development of various weapons projects in the Dachu Empire are handled by the five major weapons companies and other government-run or private enterprises undertaking national defense projects.
Realized the integration of research, production and sales.
During this process, the five major arms companies have obtained preliminary research results on metal fixed bullets from the Firearms Research Institute, but they are mainly theoretical results, but not much.
But when the Firearms Research Institute was disbanded, the metal fixed bullet project had not even completed the preliminary design.
As for Hebei Arms Company, Tianjin Firearms Factory finally took over the research on metal fixed bullets to compete with the metal fixed bullet projects of the other four weapons companies.
Now, what Luo Zhixue saw was a sample of metal fixed bullets produced by the metal fixed bullet research project team under the Tianjin Firearms Factory.
Luo Zhixue is very interested in this thing because he knows very well that if you want to solve the air leakage problem of breech-loading rifles, rubber gaskets or other ingenious designs will only treat the symptoms but not the root cause. Only using metal fixed bullets can truly solve the problem. solution.
At this time, Dai Yongyan, the general manager of Hebei Arms Company, stepped forward again and said: "Your Majesty, this is the latest research result of our company's metal fixed bullet project!"
"This is a bullet we developed for the Type 18 breech-loading rifle. The caliber is 11 mm and the length is 60 mm. The cartridge case is made of brass. The cartridge case is equipped with explosive powder, propellant and warhead."
"When shooting, it is fired by a firing pin just like the paper-cased bullets. At the same time, our firing powder is the same as the paper-cased bullets, and it is at the bottom of the cartridge case."
"We conducted a series of live ammunition tests before and found that this brass rifle bullet can almost perfectly solve the air leakage problem of breech-loading rifled rifles!"
After Luo Zhixue heard this, he asked directly without thinking, "But what?"
You don’t need to think about it to know that this thing is definitely immature and imperfect. Otherwise, when the Type 18 breech-loading rifle is introduced, paper-cased bullets will not be used, but metal bullets can be used directly.
At this time, Dai Yongyan showed embarrassment and said: "Your Majesty, during the live ammunition test, we also found some problems. It may be because the design is not perfect enough. The firing rate was not very successful during shooting, and the dud rate was relatively low. high."
After hearing this, Luo Zhixue finally understood why this thing can only be a conceptual product. The success rate of firing
If the performance is not high enough, it will be useless no matter how good the performance is...
Why did the Great Chu Empire use a flash cap to replace Suifa? It was just to increase the firing rate.
After all, you can't let the soldiers on the front line misfire when they want to fire when the enemy is rushing towards them!
At this time, Dai Yongyan also continued: "In addition, because the technology is not very mature, the overall processing and production costs are relatively high. Currently we are looking for ways to increase the firing rate and improve the process to reduce costs."
After Luo Zhixue listened, he thought for a moment, and then said to a group of defense industry and military generals: "Whether it is: "Breech-loading rifled rifles are the future development direction of individual weapons, while metal fixed bullets are It’s an important part of it.”
"Today's Type 18 rifles and brass metal bullets are very good. We will continue to increase investment in the future to further improve the breech-loading rifles, and strive to allow soldiers to use advanced weapons one day earlier."
Luo Zhixue knew that developing a complete version of a breech-loading rifle would not be a matter of a day or two. In his opinion, the current Type 18 rifle was at the level of early breech-loading rifles and was not even suitable for large-scale production at a low cost. promotion and widespread use.
But the current R&D momentum is very good.
It doesn’t matter if you can’t get it done all at once. The important thing is to keep doing it. If it doesn’t work this year, what about next year? What about another three to five years?
A more optimistic estimate is that maybe in five years' time the technology of breech-loading rifled rifles equipped with metal fixed bullets will be very mature and reliable? At the same time, can the production cost be reduced to an acceptable level?
Therefore, Luo Zhixue encouraged and supported these research projects to ensure that they could continue their research.
He looked forward to the fact that in a few years, Chu soldiers fighting overseas would be able to use good breech-loading rifles, and then form an overwhelming firepower advantage over the indigenous people.
Luo Zhixue couldn't help but look forward to it when he thought of the natives who were already being beaten by his own soldiers with weapons like Mauser 1871 rifles before they could even use their flintlock rifles.
After seeing these new weapons and equipment, Luo Zhixue also looked at some of the current weapons being produced by Hebei Arms Company.
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The front foot has just been equipped with about 20,000 Type 16 front-loading rifled rifles. It only took two or three years to add up to it. It has not even completed a comprehensive replacement. As a result, now the Type 18 breech-loading rifles have been Out.
The Guards had royal financial support and could not care less about the waste of millions of dollars, but the Army could not.
Although the total military expenditure of the Army is large, it also maintains a large number of troops and requires a huge amount of various weapons and equipment.
Therefore, we have always been very cautious and even conservative when it comes to large-scale equipment of standard weapons.
In addition to the Type 16 front-loading rifled rifle, Luo Zhixue also saw the 23-year-old flash cap percussion rifle that seemed to be technically obsolete, but was still mass-produced and was the main standard individual weapon of the army and navy.
The Type 23 flash cap rifle is improved from the Type 21 flash cap rifle. The biggest difference is that the barrel of this thing is not shiny, but black!
This is because as the steel technology and processing technology of the Dachu Empire continued to improve, steel began to be used on a large scale to make gun barrels during this period.
However, in order to control costs, and also because the quality of steel at that time was not very good, the steel barrels produced were easy to rust.
In order to prevent rust, technicians blued the barrel, so the barrel of the 23-year-old flash cap rifle is black.
This is a very important appearance identification feature.
As for other things, there is no difference. There is no difference in barrel length, caliber, even weight and accessories such as bayonet.
And except for the firing mechanism, other parts are no different from the earlier 13-year-old series flintlock guns, or even the 2-year-old series flintlock guns.
The basic structure and appearance of the muskets of the Da Chu Empire have been basically determined from the Yuan Year matchlock gun.
Especially the caliber has always been maintained at 18 mm.
Although there have been some smoothbore guns of other calibers, such as 13mm, 15mm, 20mm flintlock guns of different calibers, and even 25mm heavy-duty guns with long barrels that require two people to operate. Muskets, but these failed to become mainstream.
It has a caliber of 18 mm, weighs about 4.5 kilograms, and is between 1.4 and 1.5 meters long. These three performance indicators have hardly changed as the standard gun for army infantry. There are various improved models of rifles. , although there are some deviations in these data, the deviations are generally not large.
These eventually extended to the 23-year-old percussion rifle.
This is a very mature, simple, reliable, low-cost, but very good-performing smoothbore gun. The purchase price of a standard model with a bayonet only costs between four and five yuan each, which is very cheap.
And to a certain extent, the 23-year-old flash cap percussion gun has reached the end of the history of the development of smoothbore guns in the Chu Empire, because if it continues to be developed, it will not be a smoothbore gun, but a rifled gun.
At present, the main weapon of the Chu Empire Army and Marine Corps is the 23-year-old flash cap percussion gun. There are about 600,000 of them. Although there are many of them now, in fact, they were just emergency transition guns at the beginning. .
Because the Army's initial plan was to use the 21-type flash cap percussion rifle first. Well, it specifically refers to the 21-type percussion cap percussion rifle modified from the 13-year-old series rifles.
Because the Army felt that it was not cost-effective to produce new ones, it directly converted more than 1.5 million 13-year-old flintlock rifles in relatively good condition into 21-year-old flash cap percussion guns for main use.
The number of newly produced Type 21 percussion rifles is actually very limited, only more than 300,000 in total.
According to the Army's idea at the time, it wanted to directly use front-loading rifled rifles to take over after the service life of these 21-type flash cap percussion guns, and enter the front-loading rifled era.
But the Army did not expect that the Type 16 front-loading rifled rifle would be so expensive... In the early days, it cost more than a hundred Chu Yuan, and later it cost dozens of Chu Yuan.
Then the Army sadly discovered that it could not afford the new front-loading rifled rifle.
Shot.
what to do?
What else can we do? Just continue to use the musket!
Therefore, there is a follow-up model of the Type 21 flash cap percussion rifle, namely the Type 23 flash cap percussion rifle.
The Army plans to use this thing for emergency transitional use for a few years until the breech-loading rifled rifle comes out.
Anyway, rifled rifles are so expensive. Since you are going to bleed a lot and be slaughtered, you must want a better breech-loading rifle!
This also led to the production of a large number of 23-year-old flash cap percussion guns.
Because many of the 21-type flash cap firing rifles modified in recent years have gradually reached the end of their service life.
You can now see a 21-year flash cap percussion gun in the Chu Army that is well maintained and has a brand new appearance. Its actual service time is most likely more than ten years, and a few may even have more than fifteen years. .
Due to the long-term service of this batch of muskets, the most important thing is that the Chu army has not been idle these years. They have been fighting and training a lot, so the intensity of use of these muskets is actually very high.
Moreover, the Thirteen-year-old series of flintlock guns of that year were not very good due to technical problems at that time. The overall quality and service life could not be compared with the current newly produced smoothbore guns.
When the Army modified these flintlock guns that had been used for many years, they found that the quality of the barrels was unsatisfactory and often could not hold up after a few years of high-intensity use. When soldiers were fighting during the war, the modifications on the front line The 21-year-old flash cap percussion rifle has a particularly high scrap rate.
There is no other way but to maintain the production of Type 23 rifles and continue to replenish the losses of each unit.
After doing this for several years, a transitional flash cap fired musket was turned into the main rifle in active service of the Chu Empire Army. It would have to be produced at least hundreds of thousands a year, otherwise it would not be able to maintain the army. The navy's huge needs.
Luo Zhixue was speechless after seeing this situation. It was clear that the Chu Empire had even developed breech-loading rifled rifles, and more than half of the metal fixed-loading bullets were completed, and the results were about to be produced.
Muzzle-loading rifled rifles have been in service with the Guards for four or five years.
But the main rifles of the military are still those old-fashioned muskets!
It is estimated that in a few months, when the Type 18 breech-loading rifles begin to serve in small batches in the Guards, the Dachu Empire Army will be equipped with front-loading muskets, front-loading rifles, and breech-loading rifles at the same time. Condition!
It’s embarrassing to watch!
However, this embarrassment also proves to some extent that the technological innovation of the Chu Empire was so rapid that the army could not keep up with the pace of technology and new technologies!
