Among the competition among many weapons projects, Hebei Weapons Company is the most confident in its 75mm field guns and mountain guns.
There is even more confidence in the 75mm series of artillery than in the Type 18 rifle.
Because the Type 18 rifle looks very good and has a first-mover advantage, it has become the standard rifle of the Guards and is also equipped in small batches in the army.
However, this rifle is not without competitors. Huguang Arms Company’s Type 19 rifle is their most powerful competitor. The Army has also equipped this rifle on a small scale before, and the Navy and armed tax police have also equipped it. batch testing.
The lift-type bolt used by the Type 19 rifle can also have a higher rate of fire. At the same time, their barrel design is also very good. With the metal bullets self-developed by Huguang Arms Company, the overall shooting accuracy is very high.
High rate of fire and high accuracy are the important features of the Type 19 rifle. However, higher accuracy also requires higher production levels, resulting in higher production costs.
The higher cost brings higher selling price, which is an important reason why the Type 19 rifle failed in the Army's selection of the next-generation standard rifle... Because for the Army, in fact, each new generation of breech-loading rifled rifle The performance can meet the needs of the Army, and when the performance meets the needs, the new rifle can be obtained at the lowest possible price. This is the core appeal of the Army.
It is impossible for the Army to spend more money to purchase Type 19 rifles for some performance advantages.
As for the Type 18 rifle, the bolt mechanism is simple, the rifling design of the barrel is quite satisfactory, and even the bullets are center-fire flange bullets with the lowest process requirements.
Therefore, under the premise of achieving a certain performance, the production cost can be reduced, and finally the army can be quoted at 18 Chu yuan per unit, and a relevant agreement has been reached with the army, that is, the price will be gradually reduced according to the batch, and the production is expected to be 30 yuan. After 10,000 pieces, the price can be reduced to fifteen Chu yuan per piece.
This price... made the other four weapons companies vomit blood... If they sold the new rifles to the Army at this price, they would suffer a huge loss.
So to a certain extent, Hebei Arms Company's Type 18 rifle can win purely because of its price advantage.
But in the 75mm artillery project, Hebei Arms Company has a greater advantage, that is, currently, they are the only one in the Dachu Empire that has finished breech-loaded rifled artillery.
No more semicolons.
Most of the breech-loading rifled artillery from other companies are still in the state of research and development. Not to mention entering military service, even none of them have entered experimental equipment.
The same goes for the 75mm mountain gun project. According to Hebei Arms Company, they are currently the only company with sufficient technical reserves and corresponding models to produce finished products.
Therefore, Hebei Arms Company is very confident in the 75mm mountain gun project, and even wants to make a lot of money from this project to subsidize the early losses of the Type 18 rifle project.
But what people didn't expect was that Huguang Arms Company suddenly came up with a finished product.
During the bidding, the other party focused on cost-effectiveness and directly lowered the price significantly. It was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the products of their Hebei Arms Company... and promised that as long as the military placed an order, it would be able to provide the first batch of goods within a month. A batch of finished products.
After the final bidding, the confident Hebei Arms Company was directly defeated in the 75mm mountain gun project!
The 75mm mountain gun of Huguang Weapons Company, which received orders from the military, has also been officially designated as the '34-type 75mm light howitzer'.
The gun has a caliber of 75 mm, a barrel length of 975 mm, and a barrel diameter of thirteen times. This diameter falls within the standard range of howitzers in contemporary times.
This artillery, like other mountain cannons, focuses on mobility... but it is relatively heavier than Hebei Weapons Company's mountain cannon project.
The combat weight is only 255 kilograms, which is several kilograms higher than the lower limit of 250 kilograms required by the Army... The marching weight also reached 360 kilograms, which also exceeded the Army's previous procurement requirements. time standard.
But in the face of price, the Army chose not to see...
Of course, although the weight exceeds the standard, as a mountain cannon, the maneuverability of this artillery is naturally not bad. After all, the marching weight of this thing is only more than 300 kilograms.
The difference of one to twenty kilograms actually has little impact.
The core components of this 75mm mountain gun, such as the frame, wheels, and barrel, can also be disassembled. When necessary, the pack can be maneuvered, and even under special circumstances, multiple people can directly carry these components away. .
Launching the current Army standard 75 mm caliber cylindrical high-explosive collision fuze grenade, coupled with the maroon propellant that the military has begun to use in recent years, the maximum effective range can reach 3,500 meters, and the rate of fire can reach Two to three rounds per minute.
Of course, if you want to achieve three rounds per minute, you need a very elite gun crew.
Under normal circumstances, the rate of fire in actual combat is only about two rounds per minute.
However, even this rate of fire is quite good. Among all the artillery of the Dachu Empire, only the 32-year-old 75mm field cannon and the earlier 65mm smoothbore cannon can reach this level. This rate of fire.
The sixty-five millimeter smoothbore cannon can achieve this rate of fire because it uses paper-packed fixed-loading ammunition... Because of this high rate of fire, the Dachu Empire Army has been fond of this thing for more than thirty years!
No matter how various front-loading smoothbore guns came out later, they could not shake the status of the 65mm field gun series in the army.
Other front-loading smoothbore guns that use separate ammunition have an actual rate of fire much slower.
The current new generation of breech-loading rifled guns has actually reached the limit of a retreating cannon in terms of rate of fire. No matter how you improve the loading or propellant, it is actually useless, because with a retreating cannon, the gun will move once it is fired. position, you must reset if you want to continue firing!
Artillery reset has become the biggest factor limiting the rate of fire of artillery. Therefore, if it is further improved, the gun mount must be improved, such as a retractable artillery, commonly known as a rapid-fire artillery. That thing is beyond the technical foundation of the Chu Empire. .
After the 75mm mountain gun project was acquired by Huguang Arms Company.
The Army said that the iron was hot, and it also took advantage of the situation to invite tenders for larger-caliber breech-loaded rifled guns to serve as military-level field guns and incidentally as siege artillery.
The Army of the Dachu Empire has always relied heavily on artillery when fighting. Especially when fighting fortress, it especially likes to go out with a lot of large-caliber artillery.
This has always been the case from the early large-caliber mortars to the current short-barreled front-loading smoothbore howitzers.
In previous campaigns in India and Africa, the Army was very keen on the large-caliber front-loading rifled guns equipped by the Navy.
The navy's 150mm caliber front-loading rifled cannon fires more powerful shells than the 250mm caliber smoothbore cannon equipped by their army!
This is absolutely intolerable.
But the Army doesn't want to build a nondescript front-loading rifled gun, so it has been holding off until now.
Nowadays, the technology of breech-loading rifled steel cannons has almost been solved. The large-caliber long-barreled breech-loading artillery required by the Navy has not been developed because it is more difficult to use separate ammunition.
However, the caliber is slightly smaller, and it is not a big problem to use a medium-caliber artillery with custom-made shells.
Jiangnan Arms Company and Guangdong and Guangxi Arms Company have conducted in-depth research in this area.
After some bidding, the 120mm howitzer owned by Jiangnan Weapon Company won, and received an order for 60 artillery pieces from the Army, and received an official number: Type 34 120mm howitzer.
This gun also belongs to the category of standard howitzers, and the barrel diameter is twenty-three times!
With such a large caliber and the long barrel, this thing is destined to be heavy!
The rowing weight reached two and a half tons, and the marching weight reached nearly five tons!
This weight also determines that this kind of artillery looks like a howitzer, but in fact it is difficult to maneuver in the field. It is okay to maneuver in terrain with good domestic traffic, but it is very difficult to maneuver overseas or in complex terrain. .
The Army only purchases this thing as a military-level strategic artillery, and the quantity purchased is not large at the moment. It only purchased more than 60 guns... Of course, it is also because this thing is too expensive.
However, although this thing is heavy and expensive, it is so powerful that it cannot hold up!
The maximum effective range can reach an astonishing 6,800 meters. With this range, the army can completely blow up the cities of the natives. The natives do not even know that the Chu army has arrived.
The power of the explosion is also very amazing. It is completely incomparable to those old antique smoothbore cannons that fire spherical shells.
With this thing, the Army is ready to throw away all those equally heavy smoothbore cannons.
Because this kind of howitzer is relatively heavy and difficult to maneuver, the Army also needs a lightweight howitzer of the same caliber to match...in order to keep up with the advance of the troops and even be deployed overseas.
Therefore, a 120mm light howitzer also belonging to Jiangnan Weapons Company was purchased. The technical source of this gun is the same as that of the 120mm howitzer.
This artillery, which is typed as the 34-year-old 120mm light howitzer, has a caliber of 120mm, a barrel diameter of 11 times, a discharge weight of 1,100 kilograms, and a marching weight of 2 Thousand three hundred kilograms, the maximum effective range can reach four thousand meters.
Although the weight of this thing is much heavier than the 75mm field gun, it is still within the acceptable range. It can be pulled onto the battlefield with a few more horses.
Of course, it is still somewhat difficult to maneuver quickly in complex terrain.
The 75mm field gun, which weighs only over 800 kilograms when deployed and weighs over 1,500 kilograms when traveling, is difficult to maneuver in the poor place of Myanmar, let alone the 120mm light howitzer which weighs more than two tons. .
With the conclusion of the bidding for this type of artillery, there will be four types of breech-loading rifled artillery officially in service in the Chu Empire Army.
The 32-year-old 75mm field gun is the main artillery at the division level.
The Type 34 75mm mountain gun is also a division-level artillery. It is mainly used in complex terrain and can be decentralized to regiment-level troops for use when necessary.
Type 34 120mm howitzer, this is the main artillery at the military level.
The Type 34 120mm light howitzer is actually a military-level artillery piece, but it can be decentralized and used with division-level troops.
In addition to these four main artillery pieces, the Army is actually also looking for a lighter breech-loading rifled artillery to replace the 65mm smoothbore field gun they have used for many years.
To this end, a tender notice has been issued to the five major weapons companies, seeking a light infantry artillery that can be attached to regiment-level troops and can be strengthened for use by battalion-level troops when necessary. It is required that the combat weight should not exceed 100 kilograms and the marching weight should not exceed 200 kilograms. , the maximum effective range shall not be less than 2,500 meters.
The Hebei Arms Company, which had just failed in the 75mm mountain gun project, is also very enthusiastic about this project and has deployed technicians to carry out technical research in an attempt to make up for this project.
After all, when it comes down to it, the number of equipment this seemingly lightweight little guy will have in the future will not be much less than the 75mm series of artillery.
The Dachu Empire Army attaches great importance to battalion-level artillery.
After all, in actual combat, this kind of battalion-level artillery is actually the most used. As for the higher-level division-level artillery, to be honest, unless there is a large-scale battle, you will not see this thing on the battlefield.
Just like the current 65mm smoothbore field gun and 115mm smoothbore field gun, it seems that the 115mm smoothbore field gun is the main artillery, but in fact most of the army's regular battles, especially the battles in overseas areas, use hundreds of people. Mainly small and medium-sized battles, there is no need for a 115mm smoothbore field gun... and there is no way to carry a 115mm field gun with more than a ton everywhere.
Most of the time, when overseas armies are in combat, they actually use 65mm smoothbore field guns.
Battalion-level support artillery is used in many scenarios and frequently, so the Army naturally has many requirements for this.
Not only the performance requirements are high, but the price also needs to be cheap. Not only is the artillery itself cheap, but it also needs to be easy to maintain and use, and the shells must not be too expensive.
After all, unlike artillery such as the 120mm howitzer, which is mostly just a decoration, battalion-level support artillery is used on the battlefield every day.
In this case of frequent use, the consumption of shells will not be small.
Therefore, the cost of artillery shells should not be too expensive. If it is too expensive, the army cannot afford it...
This needs to be good and cheap, which is naturally not so easy to do.
(End of chapter)
