The person responsible for the research and development of spring steel is a spring steel group at the Royal Institute of Technology, and this spring steel group is directly under the leadership of the Basic Materials Branch.
There are not many people in this spring steel team, only seven people. The most senior among them is a second-year student from the Royal Institute of Technology. His actual theoretical level, based on the previous classification of the Royal Institute of Technology and the Junior Military Camp, is roughly
It is equivalent to ninth grade, well, that is, the level of the third grade of junior high school.
The remaining six people are all first-year students at the Royal Institute of Technology!
Don't think that first-year students at the Royal Institute of Technology are just ordinary people. In fact, almost all students who can enter the Royal Institute of Technology are geniuses.
The Royal Institute of Technology only recruits dozens of students every year, and these dozens of students are recruited from military camps, middle schools and preparatory schools in various places. Each one of them can be regarded as one in a thousand.
These students who can be admitted to the Royal Institute of Technology basically have two characteristics: one is a very strong self-study ability, because the students at the Royal Institute of Technology basically focus on self-study, because so far, all the students at the Royal Institute of Technology have
There is no pure teacher, the teaching is done by senior students, and the senior students themselves are busy with self-study and various scientific researches, so there is not much time for teaching.
Therefore, self-study ability is very important at Royal Institute of Technology, otherwise, you will not be able to adapt to the learning environment of Royal Institute of Technology.
In addition, these students also have a very important characteristic, that is, they generally have high IQs!
How can you tell if they have a high IQ?
Being able to study on their own most of the time, to finish the current primary school, secondary school, and preparatory courses in just a few years, and then to be admitted to the Royal Institute of Technology in the midst of competition, is basically enough to prove their high academic qualifications.
IQ is up.
So it is not polite to say that the nearly 400 students currently at the Royal Institute of Technology are all geniuses!
And they have undoubtedly become the most valuable talents in the Tang Dynasty in Li Xuan's mind, and they are all trained as scientists.
In addition to studying more advanced courses on their own and giving lectures to lower-level students, these students also have an important task of conducting various research and development. Based on their personal interests and hobbies and the actual needs of the Tang Dynasty, they will form various groups.
Conduct research and development on various technologies.
The most famous among them are the steam engine group and the machine tool group. The former developed the steam engine, while the latter designed industrial machine tools specifically for the production of machinery, that is, industrial mother machines.
The Spring Steel Group is one of the many scientific research groups at the Royal Institute of Technology.
They spent several years conducting repeated research and finally produced qualified spring steel. Then, the flintlock research and development team at the Royal Institute of Technology immediately used this new spring steel to manufacture a new flintlock.
The bolt was tested.
After testing, the bolt of the new flintlock gun made with this spring steel as the core has a firing rate of more than 80%. Although this is still compared to the nearly 100% successful firing rate of the matchlock gun.
Big shortcomings.
However, this new technology has just been born, and it has such a high firing rate, which naturally proves the feasibility of the flintlock gun. If we continue to improve in the future, the firing rate will reach more than 95%, which is just around the corner.
.
Therefore, they asked Jiangnan Arsenal to first produce a hundred sample guns for various tests, trying to find hidden problems and then use them to improve them, mainly to increase the firing rate.
After all, the 80% firing rate is still a huge shortcoming for large-scale equipment. No army general can endure it. For every round of shooting of a hundred soldiers under his command, only 80 muskets are successfully fired.
The condition of the remaining twenty misfires.
After Li Xuan heard that the flintlock gun was going to undergo various live ammunition tests, he found an opportunity to prepare to watch this live ammunition test, because Li Xuan paid more attention to the flintlock gun than others.
At present, the generals of the Tang Army are not very enthusiastic about flintlock guns. They also know that this thing exists, but the previous flintlock guns only had a firing rate of 50%, which really disgusted them. Now
Although it has an 80% firing rate, there is still a certain distance from formal large-scale service.
Without subsequent improvements, the Army will not rashly replace flintlock muskets on a large scale.
But Li Xuan is different. He knows better than anyone in the contemporary era that flintlock guns are the future development direction. If the flintlock guns are produced and equipped on a large scale the day earlier, the Tang Dynasty will be able to obtain them.
Greater tactical advantage.
And then you don’t have to worry about large-scale imitation by enemies!
The technology of the matchlock gun is simple. For the Ming Dynasty, if they want to imitate it on a large scale, they can imitate it on a large scale. But the flintlock gun does not have spring steel. Can you imitate one and show it to me?
At that time, as long as the Tang Dynasty kept the spring steel strictly confidential and banned exports and leaks, outsiders would not be able to imitate it unless they slowly researched it on their own.
Even Li Xuan, who is very important to the flintlock gun, specifically watched the live ammunition test. His intention was not out of curiosity. If he was just curious, he could take one at any time and take a look at it.
What he wants to do actually has greater political symbolic significance!
He wants to convey a concept to those army generals: flintlock rifles are the future development direction of firearms, and I take them very seriously!
Well, at the same time, the naval generals must be aware of this future trend, because the navy also has marines, which also use muskets.
With Li Xuan's current status, if he wants to inspect a musket in person and express his approval for this musket, his influence will be huge.
After Li Xuan arrived at the Jiangnan Arsenal on the outskirts of the city with a group of important ministers, especially the army and navy generals, the first thing he saw was the huge factory building of the Jiangnan Arsenal!
This Jiangnan Arsenal was larger than the Zhaoqing Arsenal, with three times the area. Of course, the floor area of the factory did not mean anything. More importantly, he saw several highly mechanized production lines, including the artillery shell production line.
, musket production line, five-pound field gun production line, two-pound, three-pound shotgun production line.
In addition, the Jiangnan Arsenal also tried to imitate the Fo Lang robot rear-mounted artillery. Well, this kind of artillery is the same as the shotgun. It is positioned as an auxiliary artillery. It is mainly equipped on ships and used to kill personnel.
The Army stated that it was not interested in breech-loaded artillery such as the Franco machine gun. Although the loading was simple, the air tightness was too poor, the range was too short, and it was a waste of gunpowder.
With this Folan machine gun, they might as well use a two-pound or three-pound shotgun. That thing is simpler, cheaper, and not bad in power.
What the Army wants more is a howitzer, or to be more precise, a grenade that can be fired from a long-barreled artillery gun!
The Army has always wanted to put grenades into nine-pound and five-pound field guns. Unfortunately, the fuze technology is not up to standard, and the current grenades have never been able to be loaded into long-barreled artillery and fired.
Li Xuan looked at these production lines carefully. Although in the eyes of a modern person like him, these production lines are still very backward and full of a strong retro atmosphere, but it has to be said that these ordnance production lines in Jiangnan Arsenal are almost
It has reached the peak level of this era and has surpassed those workshops in Western countries at the same time.
Not to mention anything else, the dozens of huge steam engines in the Jiangnan Arsenal alone are enough to prove its technological advancement.
"In order to solve the problem of insufficient power of the original steam engine, we have continuously improved the steam engine, and now it can achieve a single engine power of ten horsepower."
"At the same time, in order to utilize these steam engines in production, our Zhaoqing Machinery Company has specially designed a complete set of power solutions for Jiangnan Arsenal, using a large number of advanced equipment to successfully apply these steam engines to these production lines!"
"Although the current main power source of factories still mainly relies on water power, steam engines can already replace water power in some areas!"
Li Xuan naturally knows that the steam power in the Jiangnan Arsenal is actually just an auxiliary power. It is almost unrealistic to completely replace water power with steam engines.
This is not even a problem of operating costs, but a technical problem. The current single-machine power of steam engines is too low, and the single-machine power is only ten horsepower, which is really too little for a large arsenal.
But this is a very good start, so Li Xuan still expressed great appreciation and encouraged them to increase and deepen the research and development and application of new technologies.
After this brief inspection of the Jiangnan Arsenal factory, Li Xuan and others headed to the shooting range, preparing to watch the live ammunition testing of flintlock guns and other new weapons.
The first thing to start testing was not the flintlock gun, but several other weapons, well, including cold weapons!
The first new weapon is a bayonet. This is a bayonet made of a new type of steel. The strength of the blade is much higher than that of previous bayonets. After the top brass of the army saw it, they immediately expressed their intention to purchase and equip it in large quantities.
Then there is an improved cavalry saber, which has been slightly adjusted on the original cavalry saber. The overall situation remains unchanged, except for some changes in details, so it did not attract much attention.
Then there is the new type of plate armor, but it is said to be a new type, but in fact it is a thicker plate armor. The full body armor tested this time, its front chest part, well, this is also the core one among all plate armor styles.
The thickest part reaches eight millimeters, and the average thickness reaches six millimeters.
This made Li Xuan quite speechless, because during the test, although the standard 14mm matchlock gun in the Tang Army had poor penetration effect.
But later on, when a few tough men who seemed to be tall and powerful at first glance started to do maneuver tests wearing this kind of full-body armor, it was unacceptable. They wore this kind of thickened full-body armor, and then picked up shields and spears.
They imitated the maneuvers of heavy armored spearmen, charging continuously on foot, forming formations, and then running for a certain distance. Everyone fell down from exhaustion on the spot.
The next test was an 18mm heavy matchlock gun. The test object happened to be this plate armor with a maximum thickness of 8mm and an average of 6mm. When it was shot at a distance of 30 meters, a big hole was discovered, which was 50 meters thick.
When it was 80 meters, I shot through it, and there was another big hole. When it was 80 meters, I shot through it, and there was still a big fucking hole!
The army generals on the side were stunned when they saw it. Several of them made extreme remarks on the spot that plate armor was useless. The army must equip such heavy muskets quickly and on a large scale!
After testing many new weapons one by one, it is now the highlight of today, the live ammunition test of the flintlock gun!