Chapter 266 Weapon research and development climax
There is only one straight road from the capital to the outside of the customs, passing through Shanhaiguan and extending to Shengjing.
The scenery on this road is beautiful, especially after leaving the pass, the mountains on both sides of the official road look like oil paintings.
Green pine trees, fiery red maples, and various deciduous tree species that have turned yellow are intertwined together, and the various bright color combinations shock people's vision.
This visual impact will eventually be transmitted to the brain, promoting the secretion of dopamine and giving people a pleasant feeling.
But Hermione, who was sitting in a carriage, was not in the mood to watch these beautiful scenery.
This operation against Huai Haijun used a secret agent that had been lurking for several years. In Hermione's opinion, it was a sure-fire operation.
But in the end, the success fell short because of a small thing.
Anzi's younger brother had been placed in the Old Summer Palace before, but after the Huai navy attacked the Old Summer Palace, many eunuchs and maids ran away.
Some people do it because they have stolen something, while others are simply afraid of being implicated and prosecuted.
The Anzi's younger brother also disappeared in that incident.
There are bandits everywhere now, and it is difficult to find these missing people.
Hermione didn't care about it at first, since she would give up after the secret was used up anyway. Logically speaking, this small situation had no impact on the implementation of the plan.
Naturally, the fingers that were given to Anzi before were taken by a random eunuch. Who can identify people by their fingers?
Who would have thought that Anzi's younger brother would be taken away by Dong Shuheng?
What a coincidence, I met Anzi while he was on a mission.
"Is this Dong Shuheng really blessed by destiny?" Hermione thought rebelliously.
But he quickly shook the thought out of his mind.
No matter what the master does to him, a slave must keep his duty, which is loyalty.
If you don't even have loyalty, then you may not be able to become a slave even if you want to.
Hermione's trip to Shengjing this time was very low-key and easy going.
Although the emperor didn't explicitly punish him, Hermione was very conscious that she would be punished if she didn't do her job well, and when she was punished, she had to act like she was being punished.
Hermione specially picked an old carriage and a skinny horse. However, she still chose four expert guards.
Hermione is also afraid of death. He is a murderer, so naturally he is extremely afraid of death.
Hermione still wants to retain her usefulness to serve the Emperor.
As the carriage passed through the plains, there were gradually more hills on both sides of the official road, and the scenery became more and more beautiful.
Going further, the distance between the hills and the official road becomes closer and closer.
The car is about to reach Jinzhou, and the road ahead is completely sandwiched between two mountains.
The maple leaves on the mountain are very red, as red as fire, and as red as stained with blood.
"Boom..." A violent explosion sounded out of thin air, and the sound reflected back and forth in the valley, lasting for a long time.
The blood-red maple leaves were trembling, as if they were resonating with the explosion.
Naturally, an old carriage could not withstand such a violent explosion. It turned into a pile of broken boards. The two wheels were still intact.
Driven by the air waves, it rolled dozens of meters away, bounced up, then fell down again, and then rolled twice more before stopping.
The thin old horse, bleeding from all its orifices, lay on the ground twitching, and stopped moving after a few moments.
The four masters have been turned into pieces, unable to use their martial arts skills that they have practiced for decades.
Hermione, who was loyal to her master, finally ended her sinful life.
He used his own corpse to put an end to his many years of sin.
"No. 2, No. 3, go down and confirm, others are clearing the scene and preparing to evacuate!"
Under the blood-red maple tree on the top of the mountain, a sturdy middle-aged man pushed aside the dead leaves covering his head.
Beside him, six men crawled out from under the dead leaves like him.
A person is holding a box in his hand, with a "T"-shaped handle on the box. This is an electric detonation device newly developed by Huaihai Navy.
There is a long wire connecting the box and the official road.
The wires were covered with dirt and dead leaves to camouflage them.
The team member holding the detonating device is carefully putting away the wires. The price of this thing is not cheap.
This is an assassination team from the Operations Directorate of the Intelligence Ministry.
They were taken to the sea off Jinzhou by a steam fast communication ship, and then swam ashore by boat.
After landing, these people secretly went to both sides of the pipeline to look for suitable ambush locations.
Every step was done perfectly, and they had been lying in wait on this official road for two days.
A large number of new technologies were used in this assassination, not only electronically controlled detonation devices, but also the latest explosive developed by Huai Haijun - nitroglycerin.
This kind of explosive is also called yellow gunpowder because it turns yellow after adding a stabilizer.
After nitrocellulose, Schoenbach developed another smokeless gunpowder suitable for use as explosives. It was named nitroglycerin because it was obtained through the nitration reaction of glycerin.
It is said that one road leads to another, and every road leads to another. After Schönbai found the stabilizer for nitrocellulose, he seemed to have found the way to stabilize nitrocellulose organic matter.
Huaihai Navy's arsenal has begun to gradually use nitrocellulose to replace the original black powder as propellant.
The first to be replaced were artillery and mortar propellants.
Because the Huaihai Navy's artillery was designed with strength issues in mind. Now that the propellant has been replaced, as long as the shells are modified to a certain extent, there is no need to change the structure of the artillery. With the warhead loaded with yellow powder, the Huaihai Navy's support
Firepower increased by more than one order of magnitude.
However, Huai Haijun's Type 53 rifle used to use 11mm brass black powder fixed-load bullets invented by the Prussians. Considering that the power of black powder is weak, this bullet still uses lead-coated bullets.
With smokeless gunpowder now available, Dong Shuheng has ordered the ammunition factory to develop a new bullet.
Compared with rifles, what Huai Haijun needs most urgently now is a bullet that can adapt to the new gunpowder.
Dong Shuheng did not let this bullet go to the arsenal for trial and error.
Instead, the 7.62×54mmr rifle cartridge was directly designated.
This bullet is the most mature and longest-used bullet in history.
Dong Shuheng believes that time can test the truth. Since it has passed the test of time, it means that this bullet has its unique advantages.
In addition, today's ammunition designers are accustomed to using round-nose bullets, but Dong Shuheng ordered them to design the bullet's warhead to be pointed.
Moreover, the original lead-coated bullet was directly replaced with a copper-clad steel bullet.
After the bullet was ready, a 1854-style rifle came into being.
It has no real difference from the Type 53 rifle, except that the chamber space and barrel caliber have been modified to adapt to the new bullets.
When Dong Shuheng was designing the Type 53 rifle, he never expected that smokeless gunpowder would be produced so quickly.
If I hadn't found this old man by chance, Dong Shuheng wouldn't have been able to create smokeless gunpowder just by relying on Dong Shuheng's little knowledge of chemistry.
It is possible that practical smokeless gunpowder is already available in Europe, but Dong Shuheng has not yet made it here.
Now that there is a new type of gunpowder, it must be used, although this means that the original Type 53 rifle will be eliminated in less than a year.
But this does not necessarily cause waste. Because Huaihai Navy’s manufacturing capabilities are not yet able to mass-produce new rifles and bullets quickly.
Just like before, replacing new guns is a gradual process.
And the replaced guns will also be given to the second-line troops.
Eventually, all the old guns will flow into the hands of the militia.
The Huaihai Navy's massive militia team's demand for equipment seems to be a bottomless pit that can never be filled.
Huai Haijun has combined data from the Qing court and local government officials in recent years and concluded that the current population of the country is between 450 million and 500 million.
Although there have been many wars and disasters in the past two years, the population has not decreased because the Huaihai Navy has taken in a large number of refugees.
Instead, the population continued to grow rapidly due to the policy of encouraging childbirth in the Liangjiang region and the Huaihai Navy's large-scale import of grain from Nanyang.
With such a large population base, the goal of 100 million militiamen planned by Dong Shuheng is not impossible to achieve.
Therefore, the Huaihai Navy's demand for guns is very huge. Now every more gun will give the Chinese people one more point of combat power.
Under this circumstance, Dong Shuhenghao approved the production plan for the Type 54 rifle without hesitation, and at the same time, the plan to manufacture a heavy machine gun belonging to the Huaihai Navy was also put on the agenda.
To make a heavy machine gun, you must have external power. The most common one is to use the gas power generated by the bullet when it is fired. This cannot be used when using black powder as a propellant.
But now there is smokeless gunpowder. Using the gas generated by the gunpowder propellant as power to complete loading, firing and other actions is the direction of future gun development.
Historically, gas-operated machine guns were mainly Browning, Hachikis, and Maxim. Among them, the principle of Maxim is slightly simpler, but Maxim uses a water-cooled design, which is more bulky.
However, Dong Shuheng was not very clear on the principles of the above guns. As for how to use the propellant gas, it was still up to Dong Shuheng's engineers to figure out on their own.
But there is a machine gun that Dong Shuheng knows very well. This kind of gun will appear in the American Civil War in a few years.
This is the famous Gatling. Dong Shuheng is naturally talking about the hand-operated Gatling. Even Dong Shuheng can easily draw the principle of this kind of gun.
Previously, black powder bullets were used. Dong Shuheng felt that there was no need to use machine guns because black powder jammed too easily. Having this gun would be a burden to the army.
However, he still set up a team and did some preliminary research. Now it is time to put the research results to use.
Putting aside the role of a gun, this Gatling is essentially a sophisticated machine.
The power source of this machine is the soldier's hand. The soldier turns the crank with his hand, driving several gun barrels to rotate around a common axis, thereby completing continuous shooting.
The advantages of Gatling are high rate of fire, high power, and the way the barrels work alternately allows it to maintain good continuous firepower. The main disadvantages are its large size, large mass, and high energy consumption.
For the current Huaihai Navy, Gatling is undoubtedly the best choice. And in the future, when the air guide structure matures, Gatling can also be changed to air guide power, or to electric power.
You must know that this kind of multi-tube structure is still in use in the 21st century.
Not only guns and artillery, but new gunpowder also brought revolutionary upgrades to many weapons of the Huai Navy.
After using new gunpowder, the power of grenades increased several times.
A grenade that is smaller in size and more convenient to use has also been developed by the Huaihai Navy Arsenal.
There is also the Huai Navy's secret weapon - the torpedo. Only with the yellow explosive made of nitroglycerin can the torpedo be truly effective.
Because the weight of the torpedo's explosive part has a great influence on the torpedo's speed and range. And the torpedo's explosive part must reach a certain level of power to be effective.
After changing the gunpowder, the three requirements of the torpedo being faster, farther and more powerful have obviously been met and improved.