Liu Sheng returned to Beihai Town from Fuldan City. He came back this time to participate in the artillery finalization seminar.
As the de facto second-in-command of the Northern Navy, he spent most of the year in Fuldan City. In addition to paying attention to the movements of the Qing army in the west and south, he also fell in love with Ushiha.
During the military exercise of the Northern Navy in August, Saharian participated in the military parade as a guest of honor. Liu Sheng took the opportunity to propose marriage to Saharian. Saharian was very satisfied with the matter between the two of them. He had already married Liu Sheng.
It was agreed upon that the wedding would be arranged in the spring of next year.
Ushiha is currently attending the cadre school in Beihai Town. Liu Sheng has to take her back to Fuldan City after the meeting, and then follow Sahalian back to prepare the dowry. At that time, Liu Sheng will also have to bring Wang, who is the best man.
Yuanfang and others went to Balke Village to bring back the new wife.
It’s just a toss-up!
Back in Beihai Town, Liu Sheng gave his guard squad a holiday and took two guards to the east bank of the Xila River.
No matter how high his martial arts skills are, he is still afraid of kitchen knives; no matter how good his skills are, he will be knocked down by a brick. Ever since the Manchu secret agents happened in Fuldan City, Liu Sheng has also been assigned as a guard, and even Wu Xiha is accompanied by two people passing by.
The Hezhe girl who was briefly trained.
Beihai Town is preparing to build its own cannon.
For testing this time, the arsenal built a total of two imitation cannons, one for export to Sendai Domain and one for its own use.
If they want the Sendai Clan to start trouble against the shogunate, it makes no sense not to give them some support. After all, the Sendai Clan only has so few troops. Moreover, the loans from Beihai Town cannot be spent according to their whims. They must use part of it to buy arms from Beihai Town.
.
The export model is still a front-loaded artillery piece, the reference is the M1857 12-pound field gun, but the barrel is made of manganese steel, so compared with the 500 kilogram bronze barrel in history, the export model is much lighter.
, and also increases the difficulty of counterfeiting.
At this time, no one in Europe knew the secret of manganese steel. In another history of time and space, a hundred years later, a British magician named Robert Hadfield accidentally discovered the role of manganese in the wear resistance of steel.
Enhance.
The export type was enough for the Sendai clan to use against the shogunate army. They could make iron ball shells and shrapnel themselves, but as for the explosive shells and shrapnel, they had to buy them from Beihai Town.
As for the Beihai Navy's own-use model, the sample it refers to is an antique brought by Zhao Xin, a Krupp 75mm field gun from the First World War. This is the world's first manganese steel cannon in another time and space.
The total weight is 375 kilograms, the weight of the ammunition carrier is 700 kilograms, and it can carry 40 rounds of ammunition. The maximum range is 6 kilometers, and the rate of fire is 8 rounds per minute.
Historically, in 1903, the Qing government purchased this gun from the Krupp Company. Due to its excellent performance, it was used until the Anti-Japanese War. Both the National Government and the Japanese at that time imitated this gun. The one produced by Hanyang Arsenal was called "Han-made"
The K-type twenty-nine times 75 field gun", the Japanese call it the "38-type field gun".
The reason for choosing this model actually has a lot to do with Zhao Xin’s original supplier, Daniel, who accidentally discovered it while attending a private warehouse auction.
It is said that there are many people in that country on the other side of the ocean who like to rent warehouses to store things. However, if the warehouse is not renewed or completed, then the items in these warehouses will automatically belong to the warehouse company; so the warehouse company will come regularly.
A "warehouse auction".
The items in these auctioned warehouses may be good or bad. Before the auction, people from the warehouse company will not open the warehouse to check the contents, so there is a strong uncertainty. This thing is like betting on stones.
Make a fortune; not only did someone lose money on the purchase, they also had to pay for garbage disposal.
Daniel has become fond of this thing in the past year, so whenever he hears about old warehouse auctions, he takes a gamble. At an auction in the middle of the year, he spent two thousand dollars to buy a warehouse.
I found such an antique inside.
Zhao Xin heard about this when he placed an order with him some time ago, so he bought the 75mm field gun. After a lot of trouble, the antique gun arrived at the arsenal in Beihai Town.
Historically, in Europe, it was not until the late 19th century, after the Krupp Company developed the huge crucible, that steel for making large-caliber artillery really appeared. With the existing industrial capabilities of Beihai Town, low-sulfur and low-phosphorus manganese steel was forged.
It's actually very easy. However, the barrel of the imitation gun still uses alloy structural steel purchased from another time and space.
It is said that in addition to gun steel, that factory also produces high-pressure pipeline steel. What Zhao Xin bought was the alloy steel blank of high-pressure pipeline steel; this stuff is much stronger than pure manganese steel.
Although the production of modern gun steel has its own characteristics, it actually has something in common with structural steel with strict working conditions, that is, the impurities are very low, especially low sulfur and low hydrogen, and no white spots will be produced during the cooling process after forging.
.In the final heat treatment, cracks are not likely to occur even if it is quenched in water.
At present, the Beihai Town Steel Plant uses crucibles for steelmaking. Electric arc furnaces are not considered for the time being because they consume too much energy. We will wait until the power plant is completed. Moreover, electric arc furnaces are just one of the modern steelmaking equipments and are not particularly advanced.
The equipment is nothing more than converting the heat source from burnt carbon to electricity. The output of the electric arc furnace is not large, and it is mainly used for refining and secondary smelting. More importantly, it is used to smelt higher-grade alloy steel, which is directly used for smelting.
Manganese steel is a bit overkill.
Half of the whale oil that Ding Guofeng asked for from Okhotsk last time was made into nitroglycerin by Fang Hua, so the propellant of this 75mm artillery shell became double base gunpowder; the burning rate is higher and the projectile power is higher.
Stronger.
On the testing ground, the roaring sounds of artillery fired one after another, but most of them were from the 75mm cannon, and the 12-pound imitation cannon only fired every 20 seconds.
The 12-pounder gun crew consists of ten people in total. Two observers, five gunners, and three ammunition handlers. Because the smoke generated during shooting is too great, the observers stand on the left side of the artillery; the three ammunition handlers,
Two are responsible for guarding the ammunition truck, and one is responsible for transporting artillery shells back and forth between the artillery position and the ammunition truck.
Liu Sheng noticed that after each shot, a gunner would hold a long yellow bar and insert it on a pin at the rear of the gun while adjusting the height of the gun.
He walked over and took a look during the shooting break. It turned out to be a brass sight with a scale engraved on it and a tenon that could move up and down.
Liu Sheng asked the gunner: "The position corresponding to the tenon is the impact point of the cannonball?"
The gunner saluted first, and then explained: "If there is no strong wind, it will be almost the same. This thing is very useful."
Zhao Liang pointed to the front-loaded gun and introduced: "The caliber is 117 mm, each charge is 1.1 kilograms, the effective range is 1,600 meters, and the weight of the whole gun is 400 kilograms. If the personnel are fully staffed and the operation is skilled, the rate of fire can be four times per minute.
hair."
Liu Sheng nodded and did not express his opinion. He also knew little about muzzle-loading cannons. At this time, the ammunition man behind sent the cannonball over. The top of the cannonball was an iron ball, and there was a cotton bag attached to the back; the iron ball and
The bags were held together with metal bags and ropes.
Zhao Liang explained: "There is 1.1 kilograms of black powder inside, and a wooden disc is placed between it and the iron bullet."
Liu Sheng noticed that when the gunner in charge of loading was cleaning the barrel, the deputy gunner pressed his thumb on the fire door with a leather finger glove. He felt strange at first, but then he understood that this was to unbalance the internal and external pressure.
It is convenient for the chamber cleaner to take out the debris from the barrel.
The aiming hand starts to aim with the sight when loading, and at the same time adjusts the height and low rotating rod under the gun body. After the shell is loaded, the aiming hand has been adjusted, and the deputy gunner pierces the fire door with an iron awl.
Cotton bag, the aiming hand inserts the firing tube into the fire door, with a rope attached to it. The assistant gunner needs to press his hand on the fire door at this time to prevent the aiming hand from accidentally firing; when the aiming hand retreats two meters away
, then pull the rope to fire.
"Okay, that's enough." Liu Sheng turned to Zhao Liang and asked, "How much do you plan to sell each door for?"
"Zhao Xin's suggestion is five hundred taels of gold per door."
"I'll wipe it! He's really dark."
Zhao Liang smiled and said: "We are the only one in this family, there is no other semicolon."
Liu Sheng laughed, walked to the cannon used by Beihai Town and asked: "Is this for our own use?"
Zhao Liang said: "The caliber is the same, but the barrel is changed to thirty times the caliber. The maximum range is 6,500 meters. Each gun team is equipped with three people."
The breech of the 75mm gun is a screw-type breech. After loading, it can be closed by simply pulling and rotating it to the right. It is quite simple. Liu Sheng's hands were itchy, so he fired a few rounds and tried it. As expected, the rate of fire was very fast.
Zhao Liang said: "Right now, it's just the processing of the cannonballs that's laborious, but there's nothing else."
Liu Sheng said: "We will attack westward next spring, so be sure not to let your guard down."
Zhao Liang said: "If I just make cannons, I can make fifty of them this winter. But the technology of making cannonballs is not good enough now. The shell stamping machine that was modified before is still being debugged. The cannonballs you shoot now are all made of Zhao Liang.
The newly purchased shell shells were assembled, totaling only one hundred pieces."
The most prominent problem in the Beihai Town Arsenal is that there are not enough technicians. There are only about twenty people who can operate the machine tools. This time, Zhao Liang took fifty and a half boys away from the elementary school and sent them to the technical school. At present, the total number of students in the technical school is only
More than eighty.
Among the blacksmiths among the refugees, young people accept new things more quickly, but they still have to make up for the literacy class first; while the old blacksmiths are simply unable to do anything and can only go to the steel factory to help.
If you want to transform farmers who have just put down their hoes into industrial workers, you can't rush it, you can only accumulate more and more.
I heard Zhao Liang say again: "Zhao Xindu has been gone for a month, right? I don't know if the Jinshan Mountain has been captured."
Liu Shengdao: "The telegram came this morning. They have captured Shiluo County south of Jinshan. What a bad place name. Now they are attacking Kuwahara County next door. I heard that they also captured a girl from the Shimazu family. Originally, Shiro
The Jin family also wants to give that girl to Zhao Xin as his wife!"
"ah?"
Liu Sheng said with a bad smile: "Just watch. If he takes another one, it will be five."
Zhao Liang's heart suddenly became full of gossip, and he quickly whispered: "Five? Tell me quickly..."
Liu Sheng clapped his fingers and said, "Needless to mention the Shen family. A Miao, Tang Xiao, and Wang Zhenyi, who he asked Xu Da to tie up. Look, adding one more is not exactly five."
...
In the temporary camp of the Northern Navy on Minami Kyushu Island, Zhao Xin said to Date Village Tsune and Tamura Murakami: "Your Excellency Ishikawa sent news that the Aoba Battalion had a great victory over the shogunate army in the Mauninuma area, and now the shogunate army has returned to Fukushima.
The city is here."
Tamuramura said: "Ten thousand people, they retreated after just one attack? It seems that the Edo side has pinned its hopes on the navy on the east road."
Date Murasaki's fiefdom, Watari County, is right on the seaside. He said to Zhao Xin with some concern: "Wang Zhao, if Jing Lei or Thunder God can provide support, would it be more reliable?"
Zhao Xindao: "The most the shogunate army can do is step on the beach and soak their feet in water. Sendai Castle is fine. Watari Mamoru, I know what you are worried about. But as long as you are stuck on the Oshu Road, Edo will not be able to do anything. It is already October.
, the northwest wind is blowing, it is not the time to attack by sea at all. You see, it is hard to say that the Tokugawa navy can reach Miyagi County safely."
As soon as he said this, the two Sendai clan generals laughed.
The reason why Zhao Xin comforted the two of them in this way was because since the coalition forces captured Kajimu, the Thunder, Thor, and Beihai No. 1 and No. 2 had turned around and headed north.
The Thunder God and the Thunder God were going to Kuye Island to replenish fuel and then take Zhang Bo and the others back to Beihai Town; Beihai No. 1 and No. 2 ships didn't even have cannons, so it was more dangerous to stay on the beach at Kajimu, so they followed. Wait.
After the Northern Navy captured the foothills of Ajiugen near the sea in Izumi County, Zhao Xinhui notified them to bring supplies and people over.
That's right, Zhao Xin, a miner from Linggao Jinshan, plans to transfer people from Beihai Town. He doesn't plan to use the local farmers or miners at all. Even the mined ore cannot be smelted locally and will be shipped back to Beihai Town.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! You must know that the grade of Linggao gold mine is 40 grams per ton. If it is mined and refined using modern technology, the annual output is seven to ten tons, which is enough to make people
Crazy. If this news leaks out and gets known to Edo, the shogunate will have to mobilize an army to steal the gold no matter how hard it is.
Next year Beihai Town will prepare to fight westward, and the Beihai Navy currently has a total of seven regiments.
Put one on the Kyushu side, and if the mud on the Sendai side cannot hold up the wall, you will have to put another one. Hokkai Town and Fuldan City should each leave a regiment for defense, and the only three regiments that can be dispatched are three regiments plus two
Cavalry company.
The outer Northeast is too big. In this era, there are primeval forests and swamps everywhere, and the roads are difficult to navigate. In winter, the temperature can reach minus 30 degrees, and the mountains are blocked by heavy snow, making it impossible to move for several months.
Once the troops are beaten out, they basically never come back. Modern weapon warfare relies heavily on logistics. If transportation cannot keep up with the weapons, they have to burn fire sticks.
Zhao Xin didn't want to follow him every time he went to war, but this was the current situation. If he hadn't come to fight the Satsuma Domain this time, the logistics of the coalition forces would not be able to keep up.
While he was lost in thought, a sentry from Sendai Domain suddenly ran into the tent, knelt down on one knee, and said to the three of them: "I would like to report to the three adults that Kumamoto Domain, Fukuoka Domain and Saga Domain sent troops yesterday!"
Date Village Chang's face suddenly changed after hearing this. These three families are all powerful feudal lords on Kyushu Island. Among them, the Hosokawa clan of the Kumamoto clan has a height of 540,000 koku, the Kuroda clan of the Fukuoka clan has a height of 470,000 koku.
The Nabeshima clan has a height of 350,000 koku.
He estimated that the reason why Edo agreed to send troops was because the current head of the Fukuoka Domain, Haruyuki Kuroda, was actually the fifth son of Tokugawa Soin, the head of the Ichihashi Tokugawa family among the Three Imperial Lords; and that man was famous during the Warring States Period.
The bloodline of the famous "Black Field Like Water" has been severed.
He stood up immediately and said loudly: "How many people are here?"