Because of the conditioned reflex brought about by repeated training, everyone immediately fell to the ground without thinking. It was extremely spectacular for tens of thousands of people to suddenly fall down.
There was a loud roar.
Everyone crawled on the ground as fast as possible.
Immediately afterwards, bursts of fire flickered in front, and smoke and flames spurted out from the muzzle.
Countless spherical solid bullets and shotgun shells passed by screaming in the space above the back.
The hot wind brought by it made people feel the scorching air waves from the cracks of the armor even if they were wearing plate armor.
Han Qingyuan and the others lay on the ground, covering their ears.
They were less than a hundred meters away from the enemy formation in front, and the huge noise from the muzzle came directly towards them, making their ears buzz.
These cannons were captured from the Ming Army and were equipped by the Eight Banners.
That is to say, Nurhaci stipulated in the previous article that each unit should be equipped with a number of cannons, and those artillery refers to.
These cannons all have one characteristic, which is a short and thick barrel with many iron hoops.
Most of them are less than one meter in length, generally around 70 centimeters.
The ratio of caliber to length is generally about ten to one.
The materials are mainly bronze, wrought iron and pig iron. They are made by casting or forging.
The breech of this kind of cannon is flat, just like the bottom of a jar. It does not have the bowl shape of the red cannon and has a small ball breech.
In front of the gun breech is the medicine chamber, which is enlarged like a drum. Because the gun body is short, this design can be filled with more powder to increase the range.
Different names such as Great General, Second General, Third General, Short General, Sai General, etc. refer to the caliber of the artillery.
Because the lengths are almost the same. No. 1 is the largest, then the caliber decreases, and the weight gradually decreases.
The weight of the Third General is about 95 kilograms.
The artillery of the third general and below has a built-in handle, which can be carried away in an emergency. It has good maneuverability and is easy to carry.
In use, it can be loaded with spherical solid bullets and shotgun shells.
The Ming army also liked to mix it, that is, first load it with shotgun shells, then load it with a solid spherical shell, and fire it together.
These general cannons generally need to be maneuvered on vehicles. Small ones can be carried on the shoulders of people or carried by pack horses.
Qi Jiguang made improvements to the general's cannon.
Open the bulging medicine chamber and install a blunderbuss similar to the Franco machine gun in this position. The improved gun is called the Invincible General Cannon. It is also divided into No. 1 to No. 5 according to the caliber and weight.
Ye Mengxiong, Minister of the Ministry of War, was dissatisfied with Qi Jiguang's invincible general cannon and thought it was still too heavy, so he invented the forging method of the general cannon. The weight was greatly reduced.
Ye Mengxiong said that the largest firearm in Jizhen is the Invincible General. His son's gun weighs 150 kilograms, and the mother gun is made of copper and weighs 1,000 kilograms. (The No. 1 Invincible General cannon made by Qi Jiguang. The barrel is made by Yang Fan.
The weight of a copper hairpin is the same.)
Ye Mengxiong used the design of the Invincible General's cannon to forge the cannon body and musket, lengthening it three times to reach 6 feet in length, with a total weight of only 250 kilograms.
It can fire 7-pound closed lead bullets, with 3-pound bullets and smaller "Sun bullets" with a total weight of 1 pound (a single shot only weighs 2.3 yuan (200 rounds, and the range can reach meters)).
After the invention of this kind of cannon, the size was expanded and reduced according to the actual application. It was also divided into Generals No. 1 to No. 5.
Through this actual battlefield inspection, Yang Fan has completely figured out what the cannons Jiannu mentioned are all about.
He looked at the information before and found that the "general cannon" referred to in the Ming Dynasty documents were these things with diameter ratios of about approximately 100% and 100%.
This thing was invented during the Yongle period, the so-called "magic cannon" and "magic machine gun". These also refer to this type of "general cannon" of different sizes.
In Yang Fan's opinion, these are all junk. Only long-barreled breech-loaded cannons such as Franjis of various sizes can be seen. The red cannons made by Jiannu were still in the middle and late stages of Huang Taiji.
The highly trained officers played an important role. They made a prompt decision and ordered the militia troops to lie down in time before the cannons and heavy artillery fired by the Han army flags opened fire.
These measures caused the projectiles fired by the Han Army Flag to fly one or two meters above the backs of the militiamen, greatly reducing casualties.
Only far behind, some artillery shells with a short range hit the ground, killing and wounding a dozen people lying on the ground to a limited extent.
The heavy infantrymen of the Zhenglan Banner lined up and stood behind the artillery, waiting quietly.
They planned to launch a direct assault after the artillery caused heavy casualties to the Ming army, destroying the Ming army in one fell swoop.
I have to say that their wishful thinking was very shrewd.
However, the association is very full and the reality is very skinny.
Yang Fan's command has four hundred years more battlefield experience than theirs, so he naturally has a way to deal with them. This way is to use fire blunderbuss to shoot hard, because plate armor is reliable.
If there is artillery fire from the opposite side, the officers will immediately blow the whistle and everyone will lie down.
In this way, whether it is spherical solid bullets or shotgun shells, they are useless. These are direct-fire weapons and cannot hit the ground.
This primitive gun has limited depression and elevation angles because the gun mount design is very primitive.
After the army lay down, the field artillery battalion and machine gun battalion behind them were also exposed. Yang Fan had already arranged for the artillery to come out to suppress the enemy before the cavalry was dispatched.
Because of their short barrels, these general cannons have a very poor range, generally between 100 and 200 meters. A few can reach 300 meters.
After all, Ye Mengxiong had very few cannons in Liaodong. The Jiannu did not capture many invincible general cannons and forged general cannons. Most of them were small cannons.
Moreover, the number of No. 1 generals is relatively small, and the Han military flags still do not have many. What they do have, most of them are No. 3 generals.
The process of Yang Fan's three-pound gun is that after the casting is completed, it is red-hot and forged with a hydraulic forging machine. Then a boring machine is used to dig out the gun barrel. The length-to-diameter ratio of this gun reaches 36 times the diameter.
Yang Fan has the best propellant of this era - maroon gunpowder. Coupled with the blessing of a long barrel, it can achieve extremely high muzzle velocity.
Although the caliber is not large, it has strong penetrating power and considerable power. With such a long barrel, it can even penetrate a shield vehicle.
This length-to-diameter ratio is already very large. Many modern artillery guns are 39 times the diameter. Although the mainstream ones are 45 times the diameter, the latest ones are 52 times the diameter.
Yang Fan's three-pounder cannon has a direct firing range of more than 750 meters, and its muzzle velocity far exceeds that of artillery of this era. The artillery battalion has thirty three-pounder cannons, which are deployed 500 meters away from the Han army's flag artillery.
Here, the artillery of the Han Army Banner could not reach this far.
And Yang Fan's three-pounder can definitely hit them.
After the Han army flag was fired, the field artillery battalion immediately fired back.
The general cannons of the Han army were of varying quality and performance, but they all fell behind the lying army and could not reach the three-pounder cannon positions behind them.
Immediately, the three-pounder gun opened fire.
Thirty artillery carts were behind fierce fire, thick smoke spewed out from the muzzles, and dense shells flew towards the enemy's formation.
Because the distance is far and there are people in front of us, shotgun shells cannot be used, and solid spherical shells are used.
Hot spherical bullets roared into the ranks of the Han Army Flag and the Zhenglan Flag.
It is difficult for these spherical projectiles to hit enemy artillery, but there is no problem at all when hitting people around the artillery.
The caliber of the three-gun cannon is only 76 mm, but it is enough to carve out a bloody alley in the crowd.
Four square formations and an array of 13,000 infantrymen formed a thick and dense formation. Every time a shot was fired, there were more than a dozen casualties.
Then the ricochet landed, killing more than a dozen people.
It will bounce three to five times in a row before it stops.
Thirty three-pound cannons can fire at a rate of two rounds per minute using fixed ammunition. They fire one round after another.
This chapter has been completed!