Thirty-nine years after Chengshun, there was a wave of efforts within the Da Chu Empire to improve the rifles in service, in an attempt to enter the era of repeating rifles.
And this can be regarded as a normal upgrading of weapons within the Dachu Empire!
After all, the Chu Empire was fighting every day, especially the overseas expansion wars that almost never stopped. The overseas front-line troops were constantly fighting, and they would naturally continue to provide feedback on the advantages and disadvantages of various weapons to the country, and at the same time put forward new weapon requirements. .
For example, there were lightweight requirements for breech-loading rifled artillery in the early years, and now there are continuous firing requirements for rifles.
The Qiming rifle is mainly used by armed tax police. It has performed very well in several armed tax operations in India. Although the range and accuracy are slightly worse, it can't stand up to others. It fires continuously and can continue to fire after one reload. Eight bullets!
Its firepower is quite fierce. After several armed tax operations, it has gained a huge advantage in infantry firepower. It has beaten the indigenous tax resisters to cry for their parents. Even because of the powerful infantry firepower, it has reduced its reliance on artillery. , and at the same time, it performed very well in small-scale combat, and very effectively reduced the casualties in small-scale combat in overseas operations.
This point has attracted great attention from the army. Why does the army have a large number of servants? It is because the contemporary Chu army has a limitation, that is, large-scale battles are very sharp, but small-scale combat effectiveness, especially when being ambushed by indigenous people, is sporadic. , sneak attacks, small-scale sporadic combat effectiveness of dozens of people or even only a dozen people, the advantages of weapons and equipment are not obvious enough.
Although the single-shot rifled rifle is already very good, its performance in this kind of sudden sporadic combat is actually not satisfactory. For example, its proud high range is actually of no use... because those natives are sneaking close to the numbers. Use flintlocks, matchlocks or bows and arrows to conduct close ambush within ten meters.
When our own single-shot rifles counterattack, the rate of fire is still insufficient... After all, in most sneak attack operations, it is difficult for the ambushed Chu army to accurately determine the specific positions of many enemies in a short period of time. They can only rely on gunshots or Other sounds may determine the enemy's location!
When counterattacking, the main purpose is to shoot suppressively at the approximate location.
This kind of suppressive shooting relies heavily on denser infantry firepower. If the firepower density is not enough, it is impossible to carry out large-scale suppressive shooting.
But the repeating rifle is different. It can quickly unleash intensive suppressive firepower, suppress the enemy's continued sneak attacks, protect itself, and even create opportunities for counterattack.
This is why the Army attaches so much importance to repeating rifles.
The excellent performance of the Qiming rifles assigned to the armed tax police has attracted great attention from the Army, Navy and Guards. Therefore, the prerequisite design research work for the next generation of small-caliber repeating rifles has been launched, and at the same time, they want to carry out research on the existing rifles. Improvement, changing the single-shot rifle into a repeating rifle.
This process is also the motivation and reason for the relatively common weapon upgrading within the Dachu Empire. On the one hand, the continuous advancement of technology can produce better weapons and equipment. On the other hand, it is also the continuous combat of the army based on the changes on the battlefield. , put forward the request for more weapons.
The previous multiple weapon updates are pretty much the same!
During the Unification War, the Chu army initially used Yuan-nian style matchlocks and spears as individual weapons. However, the military believed that this had little advantage and the infantry had insufficient firepower, so it developed the flintlock gun, which was used in the second year of the war. Type 2 flintlock musket, which pioneered line infantry tactics using the 2005 Type 2 flintlock musket.
However, there are still many flaws in the performance of the early 2-year-old flintlock guns. Front-line soldiers have many opinions on the low firing rate of this type of flintlock gun... After all, the all-weather firing rate of only more than 70% is not enough. It's okay if the weather is good on weekdays, but if there's a little wind and a little rain, the firing rate of the 2-year-old flintlock gun will drop sharply.
Therefore, when the armies of the Da Chu Empire fought, they almost always chose good weather to fight, and never took the initiative to initiate any battles in windy or rainy weather.
In response to the problem of low firing rate, the Dachu Empire made a series of improvements after years of research and development, and finally came up with the 13-year-old flintlock gun. Through a series of improvements, especially the improvement of the firing mechanism, the all-weather firing gun was The rate increased to 80%.
But this is still not enough. After all, 80% is not 100%, and there is still a lot of trouble in using it.
In the end, with the continuous advancement of the domestic chemical industry, smelting industry, and processing technology, about ten years later, the Chu Empire made a big innovation, abandoning the flintlock structure that had been used for twenty years and switching to a flash cap firing mechanism. .
First, a new model in the 13-year-old series of rifles was used for modification. After modification, it was called the 21-year-old rifle. On this basis, a new flash cap percussion gun was improved and designed.
This is the 23-year-old flash cap firing gun. After adopting the flash cap firing mechanism, the all-weather firing rate reaches an unprecedented 99%. As long as it is not an extreme and special bad situation, it can fire smoothly. Except for the firing mechanism In addition to the improvements, the manufacturing process of the barrel has also been improved, and the bluing process has been added. The color of the barrel has also changed from the bright color of the previous flintlock gun to a dark black.
The black barrel is an important feature that distinguishes the firearms manufacturing technology of the Dachu Empire. Before the Type 23 rifle, all firearms, including the Type 21 percussion rifle, were bright steel in color, but the Type 23 After the New Year's Ceremony, the barrel color was all black.
By the way, the 23-year-old flash cap percussion gun was actually a transitional weapon in the Army's previous positioning... At that time, the Army was obsessed with muzzle-loading rifled rifles, and was very optimistic about muzzle-loading rifled rifles. The technology will mature in about 25 years of Chengshun, and then be equipped in large quantities in about 27 years at most.
However, the Army underestimated the technical difficulty and price of rifled weapons... In fact, the first Type 16 front-loading rifled rifle that could be put into use was only completed in the 28th year of Chengshun, but the price was very impressive. The Army discovered new weapons I have it, but I can't afford it... I can only watch the Guards next door take the lead in equipping and using Type 16 rifles, and I can only continue to use the 23-year-old percussion rifle.
The twenty-year-old flash cap percussion gun was produced from the 23rd year of Chengshun to the 31st year of Chengshun for a full eight years. The cumulative mass production exceeded two million units. It is positioned as a transitional weapon. The flash cap percussion gun has suddenly become a new generation of main individual weapons. It is fully equipped with all the army units, the navy, the Guards, armed tax police, etc., and is the same as the previous 21-year-old percussion cap percussion gun. , constituted the era of percussion rifles of the Great Chu Empire.
Even until now in the 39th year of Chengshun, although the 23rd-type flash cap percussion rifle has long been discontinued, there is a large inventory and the early production capacity of the 18th-type breech-loading rifle rifle is limited, and it needs to be replaced. There are too many troops, so to this day, there are still a large number of militiamen and some third-line garrison troops still using the 23-year-old percussion rifle.
After the 20-year-old flash cap percussion gun, the Dachu Empire successfully developed the Type 16 front-loading rifle a few years later, in the 28th year. This thing was a transitional weapon in the true sense.
Because once the rifled technology matures, breech-loading rifled rifles can also be produced, so the Type 16 front-loading rifled rifles were only produced for two years, with a total of about 100,000 produced. They were mainly equipped with the Guards and then took a back seat.
During this process, the military has developed the Type 17 breech-loading rifle. Because it uses paper-cased bullets, the air leakage is very serious. In the test equipment, many soldiers were even injured by the air leakage and became blind. Front-line soldiers were very resistant to this kind of rifle. Some troops who planned to equip this kind of rifle even refused. After the equipment was distributed, they did not use it, but continued to use old-fashioned flash caps to fire the rifle!
Whether this thing can kill the enemy is unknown, but it can definitely kill one's own people!
Because the problem was so serious, the soldiers had strong psychological resistance, and metal bullets were actually being developed at that time, so the Type 17 rifle was dismantled after only a small amount of experimental equipment.
Next is the Type 18 rifle, which can be said to be an epoch-making product. The development time can be traced back to the early 1920s, when the flash cap was first successfully developed.
The successful development of the Type 18 rifle was also the culmination of many breakthroughs in firearms technology made by the Dachu Empire.
The successful development of the flash cap means that we have bullet primer technology, so we have paper-cased bullets. After paper-cased bullets were difficult to use, we developed full-metal bullets.
The rifled technology used on front-loading rifled rifles can also be easily transplanted to breech-loading rifled rifles.
Finally, the Type 18 rifle was developed, a single-shot breech-loading rifle that uses a rotating rear cocking mechanism to lock the front section and fire all-metal bullets. The prototype gun was developed in 30 years, and was produced in small scale in 31 years. In the second year, it began large-scale mass production of equipment and participated in a series of battles in the Indochina Peninsula, performing quite well.
Its production capacity also increased very quickly. By the 39th year of Chengshun, a total of 1.4 million units of various sub-models had been produced, but the army's comprehensive replacement was still not completed.
There are still quite a few second- and third-line troops in the army who still use old muzzle-loading rifles and even flash cap percussion guns.
The Army wants to complete the rifled rear-loading process for all regular troops. Unfortunately, the army is too large and military expenditures are limited. At the same time, there are many seemingly old-style rifles, such as the 23-year-old final improved model produced later. And the Type 16 muzzle-loading rifle hasn't been used for a few years, so it can't just be thrown away.
So this speed of replacement may seem fast, but it will still last for many years.
It started thirty years ago and has lasted nine years now. After using the equipment for such a long time, some shortcomings of the Type 18 rifle have been gradually discovered and improved.
The scheduled in-tube magazine is an important improvement, but the Hebei Arms Company responsible for the improvement directly produced a box magazine version of the 25 rifle.
To be honest, the Army is actually not satisfied with this thing. It thinks that the protruding magazine of this thing will seriously affect the tactical movements of soldiers, and it is ugly... I just ordered the equipment out of desperation, thinking about getting it first. This thing will take a few years to transition, and then when the advanced small-caliber repeating rifle is released, it will be completely replaced at once.
This situation is similar to when the Army wanted the Type 16 muzzle-loading rifle but disliked the Type 23 flash cap percussion gun... But this did not affect the production of more than 200 Type 23 percussion cap percussion guns. A famous gun from the Chu Empire.
Many times, the actual development is different from what the Army wants...
The Type 25 rifle, if nothing else, is estimated to be capable of producing millions or more. Together with the Type 18 rifle, it will comprehensively update the Army and completely complete the rifled rear loading.
Soon, Hebei Arms Company improved several Type 18 production lines of Tianjin Firearms Factory in just one month, and produced the first batch of 3,000 25 rifles, which were delivered to the Guards and Army respectively. .
This batch of 25 rifles will undergo various large-scale equipment tests, and various firearm maintenance, operation, and tactical methods will be formulated based on the new guns, laying the foundation for subsequent large-scale equipment use.
A batch of hundreds of them were sent to the Indian battlefield and handed over to an infantry battalion stationed there for replacement and direct actual combat testing.
In a series of equipment and even actual combat tests, the results are very good, at least the Guards are very satisfied.
The Type 25 rifle continues the features of the Type 18 rifle with its simple structure and reliable performance, and has upgraded the barrel technology to provide better rust resistance. At the same time, subtle adjustments have been made to the rifling, making it more accurate and certain. Solved to some extent
When using standard 11mm bullets at the same time, no big problems were found. After all, the core structure of the overall bolt and even the barrel is still the same as the Type 18 rifle, with not much change, and through the rifling adjustment, It also solves the problem of lead hanging on the barrel of the Type 18 rifle.
The production cost has not increased much, and the purchase price has increased slightly, but not by much.
The Guards were quite satisfied with the 25 rifles and directly placed an order for 50,000 more, bringing the total order to 80,000, including 15,000 short-barreled versions for equipping cavalry and sailors.
This order of 80,000 can cover almost all the troops of the Guards, and there is even a surplus as a spare, and even sailors can use one.
Well, among the more than 80,000 troops of the Guards, there are not only traditional arms such as infantry and artillery, but also a large-scale cavalry, and even a Guards fleet... so there are also sailors in the Guards.
The Guards are actually a comprehensive force with complete land, sea and air forces. They have everything from the army and navy, and they also have what the army and navy don't have, but it's just a relatively small scale.
The Guards are very satisfied with the Type 25 rifle and have decided to completely replace the Type 18 rifle with the Type 25 rifle...
The freed-up Type 18 rifles will be resold directly to the Army. The Guards has a lot of Type 18 rifles in active service and in storage, totaling more than 200,000. The Army has received such a large sum of 10 rifles. The addition of Type 8 rifles can greatly alleviate the pressure of changing equipment.
As for why the Guards of more than 80,000 people have more than 200,000 Type 18 rifles, it is because the weapons and equipment of the Guards have always been equipped on a one-to-two ratio.
That is to say, if there are 10,000 new rifles in active service, 20,000 new rifles will be simultaneously reserved as combat readiness materials for emergency expansion of military strength.
This is still talking about new guns in active service, not including a lot of junk in reserve, such as the 21/3-year-old rifle. The Guards also has hundreds of thousands of those things in reserve...
The Guards have always maintained the structure and capabilities for emergency expansion in a short period of time, including the active command structure and weapons and equipment reserves, which are all configured according to three times the strength.
In the event of any accident, the Guards can urgently recruit retired mobilization troops at the base camp of Yingtianfu, and can expand the force to more than three times the existing force within a month... To put it simply, one division becomes three division!
Moreover, the weapons used by the expanded Guards equipment are also new weapons in active service.
Of course, this is a waste of money, but the Guards will not waste money randomly. For example, after the production capacity of 25 rifles is increased, the Guards will continue to purchase 25 rifles for inventory, and at the same time, the 18 Type rifles are resold cheaply to the Army.
There are so many people in the Army, but they have not yet completed the comprehensive replacement of breech-loading rifled rifles. Even if they start to equip the Type 25 rifles, it is impossible to eliminate the Type 18 rifles.
A conservative estimate is that the Army will continue to use Type 18 rifles for more than ten years... Now they are selling a batch of Type 18 rifles to the Army at a low price, and they are happy to accept it.
The strong support of the Guards and the helpless acquiescence of the Army have also put the production of 25 rifles on the fast track. It is expected that the output will reach 150,000 in the first year and 200,000 next year.
This is talking about regular production in peacetime. In normal times, the production of weapons is actually not too large. Because it needs to maintain the production line, the military cannot spend too much money at one time for a comprehensive replacement. The military does it year by year. Pay money to purchase equipment and replace it year by year. For weapons and equipment like rifles, which can easily cost one or two million pieces, the replacement time may last for more than ten years.
In the course of these ten years, newer rifles sometimes appeared and were equipped with newer rifles.
This also led to the large-scale army of the Da Chu Empire being equipped with several rifles at the same time. As it is now, there are advanced 25 rifles that have been equipped in small batches, and the main 18 rifles, which have more than one million pieces. There are also a batch of about 100,000 Type 16 muzzle-loading rifles, and there are even hundreds of thousands of Type 23 percussion rifles.
The smooth equipment of the 25th rifle to the troops is inseparable from the military's own factors and the strong support of Luo Zhixue.
This gun was the first prototype gun produced, and Luo Zhixue saw this gun when it was being tested. The first time he saw this gun, Luo Zhixue thought of all the messy bolt-action rifles in his memory...
Although there is a relatively large magazine bulge on the lower part of the gun body, which has been criticized by many army generals and believed that it will affect the tactical movements of soldiers, this design is very reasonable in Luo Zhixue's opinion, even In line with the development trend of firearms.
Because in the pictures of many firearms that Luo Zhixue had seen in his previous life, except for some old antique magazines that did not have downward convex magazines, others had magazines. Even some improved rifles in World War II had magazines in order to hold more bullets. Convex internal magazine.
Not to mention a lot of submachine guns, machine guns, and assault rifles with detachable magazines.
Therefore, many contemporary generals in the Dachu Empire believe that rifles without convex magazines meet the standards of good guns, but Luo Zhixue's understanding is the other way around... so he initially supported the Guards' change of uniforms. This rifle.
Although this rifle still uses 11mm bullets, in Luo Zhixue's opinion, it is still an epoch-making and reliable weapon, a good thing that can change the shape of war.
As for the small-caliber repeating rifle requested by the Army, although it is better, it has not yet been developed. No matter how nice it is to talk about something that has not been developed, it is useless.
It can be said that the large-scale equipment service of the 25th rifle is inseparable from Luo Zhixue's direct support. Without Luo Zhixue's support, the Guards would not be able to directly change the equipment, and the Army would not be able to hold its nose. Got it... Until now, many generals in the army still hope to use more mature and reliable in-tube magazine technology as a transition. Well, the best is the in-tube magazine version of the Type 19 rifle!
After the mass production version of the 25 rifle was released, Luo Zhixue also carried out several live ammunition designs with this rifle. To be honest, it didn't feel very good...
This thing has too much recoil and is quite heavy.
No way, guns these days are like this. Rifles that use 11mm black powder bullets must also take into account the bayonet function and pursue a large shooting range. Therefore, the barrels of standard version rifles are generally longer and heavier.
The Type 18 rifle is 1.28 meters long and weighs 4.52 kilograms; the Type 19 rifle is 1.25 meters long and weighs 4.47 kilograms; the Type 25 rifle is 1.26 meters long and weighs 4.46 kilograms. Kilogram. (Standard infantry version)
The long barrel and large caliber not only make the rifle heavier, but also have greater recoil.
Soldiers who want to use this kind of weapon must have a relatively good body, otherwise their shoulders will be sore after a few shots.
But the rate of fire is really fast. Five bullets can be fired in just a few seconds. If you are equipped with new bullets at the same time, you can load them one by one from the top ejection port, or you can use the magazine to load them all at once. Five rounds of ammunition.
It is very convenient and fast to use magazine loading, which can effectively shorten the time between firepower and increase the continuous firepower.
I heard that the 24 rifle under development by Huguang Arms Company has a faster rate of fire... In the test, an eight-round magazine of eight-millimeter bullets was used, and a trained and skilled shooter could fire them all within eight seconds...
One bullet per second, comparable to semi-automatic rifles of later generations!
Of course, it is impossible to aim when shooting so fast, and the accuracy is naturally not good, but this is not important... because the Chu army found in many actual combats that the speed of fire is as important as accuracy, and most of the time it is more important.
Because many times, except for frontal battles...in many actual small-scale battles in daily life, the infantry actually have no clear target for shooting...they don't know or can't see the enemy.
It's not the kind of frontal battlefield. The opposite side will stand stupidly or even form a dense formation to serve as a target for you!
After all, everyone is not stupid, and the natives also know that your Chu Army's guns are good, so they will not be stupid enough to come out and use them as targets for you. They will mainly sneak up and shoot coldly, and will not come out to confront you at all.
Under such circumstances, when the soldiers of the Chu army were ambushed, they would shoot suppressively at the approximate position of the enemy based on orders or their own judgment. It might be impossible to escape at first...
Give your side time to make tactical adjustments, evacuate or pursue, encircle, and annihilate the enemy.
It's probably the same concept as the modern generation holding an AK and scanning the general direction of the suspected enemy... Killing is not the goal, suppression is the goal.
The difference is that later generations of soldiers faced greater threats, so when conducting suppressive shooting, they only stretched their guns and hid behind the bunkers.
As for the soldiers of the contemporary Chu army, because the threat they face is not too great, they will stand more calmly, half kneel, or lie on the bunker, aiming and shooting in the general direction... You can't hit me anyway!
During the suppression process, if the infantry dispatched by the Chu Army is relatively large and equipped with infantry cannons, the Chu Army's infantry will quickly deploy 70mm infantry cannons to bombard the enemy's position...
These changes on the battlefield and the extended detailed requirements also prompted the Chu army to urgently need to equip repeating rifles. The rate of fire was too low and the firepower was weak to suppress the enemies in sporadic battles.
As for the frontal battlefield... there is no demand for rate of fire. A single-shot Type 18 rifle is enough to defeat everything. You don't even need a Type 18 rifle, but use a Type 16 front-loading rifle, or even a 23-year-old flash cap percussion gun. It's enough to beat.
Anyway, the Chu army has an absolute advantage in artillery on the frontal battlefield. The infantry of the Chu army, let alone holding percussion rifles, even if they go to the frontal battlefield with waist knives and spears, it will be a one-sided crushing game...
Because in most cases, the victory can be determined by the indiscriminate bombardment of artillery, and the infantry is only used to clean the battlefield...
There is actually not much difference between cleaning the battlefield with a spear and cleaning the battlefield with a repeating rifle... both are useless!
This is also a very obvious change in the development of weapons and military theory of the Chu army in the past ten years, that is, it pays more and more attention to small and medium-sized battles, and as a result, it also developed a squad tactical system... It is very original to the twenty-first century. The feeling of the US military in the first century was that it was invincible on the frontal battlefield when fighting weak countries, but it was in trouble in the security war and had to develop a lot of new tactics and new weapons to deal with the security war.
The deployment and operations of the Chu Army in overseas areas are actually this kind of security operations most of the time, forcing the Chu Army to constantly lighten their artillery and fire rifles continuously to improve the combat capabilities of small-scale troops as much as possible.
In the 39th year of Chengshun, after the 34-year-old 70mm infantry gun, front-line troops in overseas areas put forward that they urgently needed a light artillery firepower that could be quickly deployed in complex terrain. Artillery It must be light and the cost must be low, because this thing needs to be deployed directly to the company or even platoon level.
After Luo Zhixue received feedback from the frontline troops, mortars immediately came to mind!
Mortars, this thing is actually not technically difficult for the current Chu State. For example, the Chu Empire can even make long-barreled naval guns of 200 mm and 30 times the caliber. It can build a short caliber. , it is easy to use a rifled barrel, and there is no technical difficulty.
Even if the material is inferior, it doesn't matter. Just make the barrel thicker. It will be heavier at most, but it will definitely work.
For Chu State, the technical focus of mortars is actually the shells... not the guns themselves!
Including the firing mechanism, the shell fuse, and more importantly, the missile body shape and flight attitude control.
You have to make the projectile fired from the smoothbore gun barrel fly according to a predetermined curve, and then hit the target with the warhead and cause an explosion... This is impossible to achieve with the solid spherical projectiles fired from the traditional smoothbore gun. Cannonballs are even worse.
As for you talking about adding a rifle and a breech...this way there will be no problem with the flight attitude of the artillery shell, let alone the problem of detonation after hitting the target, but...isn't this the 34-year-old 70mm infantry gun? , the Dachu Empire had already developed it and equipped it for large-scale use.
What the Army now needs is a light artillery that is lighter, has better maneuverability, can deploy faster, can be carried directly by infantry, is equipped at the company and platoon level, and can be used in complex terrain.
Faced with this demand, Luo Zhixue knew that either a small-caliber mortar, a rifle grenade, or a rocket launcher would also work...well, not to mention the grenade launcher. Although that thing is weird, it is essentially a mortar. gun.
It's just that whether it's a mortar, a rifle grenade or even a rocket launcher, it's not easy to get it... and it doesn't count once you get it, you have to consider the cost, including the cost of the artillery itself and the cost of subsequent use.
After all, this thing is planned to be a large-scale infantry support weapon, so it shouldn't be too expensive!
