Chapter 1799 The South Vietnamese who changed their guns
The ordnance currently equipped by the South Vietnamese Kingdom is much better than that equipped in the Nanyang region. In the past, they only used cold weapons and matchlock guns.
But after they arrived in Africa, according to a series of agreements they reached with the Tang Dynasty, the South Vietnamese army in Africa had abandoned matchlocks and replaced them with flintlock muskets and newer smoothbore cannons.
The quality of weapons and equipment has been greatly improved compared to before.
All the ordnance they equip, even the military uniforms, are a series of ordnance and military supplies developed and produced by Datang's defense enterprises specifically for export.
For example, the artillery equipped by the Kingdom of South Vietnam is the latest export model of the Tang Dynasty.
Although it is said to be a smoothbore gun, its performance cannot be said.
The various smoothbore cannons exported by Datang all used iron-cast barrels, which were cheaper and lower in cost than the previous bronze barrels.
Moreover, the iron and steel technology of the Tang Dynasty was unparalleled. Even if it was an iron-cast artillery, its barrel life was comparable to that of a bronze artillery, and its weight was also very light.
At the same time, the barrel is cast more precisely, which makes the firing range longer and more accurate.
Among them, the 32-year-old 120mm field gun, which was specially developed for export and is expected to be equipped for the armies of various countries, has a caliber of 120mm and a barrel that is fourteen times longer.
Its effective killing range against the infantry column can reach more than 600 meters. The concept of 600 meters is that the artillery shell can still penetrate the entire queue of enemy infantry even if it lands 600 meters away. It has extremely high kinetic energy.
You can see its power.
If we only talk about the hit accuracy and do not consider the kinetic energy of the solid shell, then its effective hit can reach between 900 meters and 1,000 meters.
The total gun weight is only about one ton. Including the front trailer and ammunition truck, the entire gun group weighs only 1.6 tons.
Although such smoothbore cannons are naturally very inferior to the series of breech-loading rifled cannons and even the old front-loading rifled cannons equipped by the Datang Army, which have a range of several kilometers, it still makes the Datang Army
Restrict the export of this new type of smooth bore.
After all, this kind of smoothbore cannon was enough to threaten the Tang Dynasty's army to some extent.
The export of this gun requires special approval from the Import and Export Committee, and it can only be exported after obtaining permission from the military, and it is a limited export. Currently, only about two hundred of this gun has been exported, most of which are concentrated on the European battlefield.
It mainly equips Spain, Portugal, France, Naples, the Kingdom of Sweden, etc. Each country has a small army, ranging from a few to more than a dozen.
The Spanish army with the most equipment only had more than thirty troops.
There are also a small number of targeted exports to several Nanyang countries that have relocated to Africa, including the Kingdom of South Vietnam, but the number is very small, only a few doors.
After all, such artillery was a typical mass killer in the era of smoothbore cannons. Its effective range and power greatly exceeded the smoothbore cannons of the same caliber in other countries. Buying too many of them could easily cause trouble for Datang itself.
The twelve-pounder guns of the same caliber cast by other contemporary countries, such as the Tatars or Europeans, even if they are made of bronze, their effective range and the lethality of the shells are far lower than this figure.
After all, the technological gap between them and Datang was too big.
It is also a smoothbore cannon, but Datang made it at a lower cost, with greater power, a longer range, and even a longer barrel life.
Most of the artillery exported by Datang in recent years is the 30-year-old 90mm smoothbore cannon. This thing has a caliber of only 90mm, a barrel 16 times the size, a moderate weight of only more than 300 kilograms, and a good effective range.
, the caliber is a little smaller, so the power is naturally a little less powerful, but it is still much stronger than the six-pound guns of other countries.
This 30-year-old 90mm smoothbore gun is also known as the Datang six-pounder among Europeans and is the protagonist in current global wars.
The Tang Dynasty six-pounder gun has a moderate weight and is highly adaptable to terrain. And most importantly, it is cheap, has good performance, and is very popular in various countries.
Even the Tatars obtained dozens of them through various channels, including smuggling, seizures on the battlefield, etc., and formed several Datang six-pounder artillery battalions.
As for imitation production!
They can imitate the appearance, but the performance of the imitated artillery is far inferior to the original products produced by Datang.
In the final analysis, it is naturally because their metallurgy and processing technology are not good, so there is no way to imitate them.
It can't be copied, but this gun is easy to use, so naturally it can only be imported.
Therefore, this 30-year-old 90mm smoothbore field gun has been the best-selling artillery in Datang in the past five or six years, and is exported in large quantities every year.
Nowadays, the Kingdom of South Vietnam's army in Africa has two artillery battalions equipped with two 90mm smoothbore cannons, with more than thirty guns.
In addition to artillery, the muskets equipped by the Kingdom of South Vietnam are also the Tang Dynasty's flintlock Xuanping 15th-year-old rifle. This 18mm caliber flintlock was formerly used by the Tang Army, Navy Guards and even domestic patrol police and other law enforcement
The standard gun used by organizations and militias. In the equipment history of more than ten years, only the official, that is, the regular army and law enforcement agencies, etc., have successively purchased equipment and have reserved about three million guns.
And this does not include private ownership!
In overseas colonies, the private stock of weapons is very large. Basically every household will have a musket. If there are a few young men in the family who are recruited into the militia, there will be several muskets.
Anyway, in overseas territories, no matter whether they are regular soldiers, militiamen or even ordinary young men, everyone has a fifteen-year-old rifle. Therefore, the overall data is very huge, and it is not even possible to count the specific number, because there are too many.
Almost all domestic companies with firearms production licenses have produced this musket. This musket once became the standard equipment of the Tang Dynasty in the eyes of indigenous people all over the world.
This musket also became the prototype for subsequent Tatar and European imitation production of flintlock muskets, with countless variations.
In the following years, although Datang was briefly equipped with Mini rifles, the number of newly built and modified Mini rifles was only a few hundred thousand, and their influence was not too great. At best, it was only used in the Second Western Expedition.
played a certain role.
Before the Mini rifles of the Tang Empire could completely replace the 15-year-old smoothbore rifles, the Tang military entered the era of breech-loading rifled guns.
During the years of the Minie rifle era, a large number of muskets began to be withdrawn from active service and then mothballed.
In the current era of breech-loading guns, the military has basically retired all muskets.
Naturally, there were so many retired muskets that could not be left to rust. Datang renovated them casually and sold these muskets all over the world.
This is how the fifteen-year-old musket of the Kingdom of South Vietnam came from.