Hearing that Shen Shuren himself had come up with some design requirements for subsequent new fire guns, Song Yingxing, Zhou Tiedan and others were still a little surprised and quickly expressed their willingness to listen carefully.
Although Shen Shuren had shown foresight in firearms technology before, he had mainly done it piecemeal, changing bayonets, bullets, bits and pieces of attachments, etc. He had never shown his talent for the overall design of firearms.
Seeing everyone's expressions and reactions, Shen Shuren could guess what they were thinking, but he didn't take it seriously. He directly took out a sketch he had recently drawn casually, along with a few text descriptions, while explaining:
"Today's Rumi gun, even if it has been repeatedly improved, is still slow to load. Originally, the ammunition was loaded separately and fired at least once every thirty or forty seconds. The old-fashioned fire gun with a match rope was available at sixty breaths.
After the Rumi gun was loaded with paper shells, it was already a lot faster, but it still needed at least twenty breaths.
In contrast, the Tatar warriors on horseback and archery shoot a flurry of arrows when the enemy breaks out. They can fire an arrow in three or four breaths, and they shoot randomly without aiming. Even if they aim slightly, they can fire an arrow in five or six breaths.
So I thought, if there is a way to improve the new fire gun, the range, firepower, and accuracy can be put aside for the time being. The first thing to solve is the rate of fire.
Facing the cavalry, crossbows and crossbows can only be used with three arrows. If the muskets cannot even reach this density, in future large-scale field battles and formation battles, if the enemy rushes forward, at least half of the power of firearms will be wasted.
I have led troops for two years, but I have to say that I was lucky before that. I never encountered a first-rate powerful enemy, nor did I fight an army with large-scale cavalry. In the future, I will not encounter Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, or even the Tatars. Er He and Liu Xiyao were so easy to deal with before, so the firearms must increase their rate of fire."
Song Yingxing and others had no objection to this direction of efforts. They also took a rough look at Shen Shuren's sketch, which was relatively abstract. Fortunately, it was drawn with a ruler, so it was not crooked.
Song Yingxing thought about it for a few seconds before he understood it, and asked: "So, the method that Daotai hopes to speed up the rate of fire is to cut off the barrel of the gun and load ammunition from the bottom? This idea is similar to that used in cannons. It’s a bit similar to the mother gun and the Buddha Langji.”
Chen Shuren originally didn't know much about the history of artillery development in the Ming Dynasty, and he had never used a Folan machine. Hearing Song Yingxing's comments, he couldn't help but be a little surprised.
He had just arrived in Huangzhou for half a year, and he accepted Zheng Chenggong as his younger brother. Zheng Chenggong gave him a red cannon. Chen Shuren was able to switch from extravagance to frugality, and he used things with better quality and more advanced ones as soon as he started. I’m too lazy to look for the Folang machine from the previous era.
He couldn't help but ask: "What? Does the Folang machine load ammunition from the back? What exactly does it look like? Then why don't you see it on the Hongyi cannon?"
Song Yingxing picked it up and drew a sketch for him, while saying: "I can't remember the details of this picture clearly. It should be like this. I also read it from Bi Shilang's "Military Illustrations"."
Chen Shuren looked at it carefully and saw that what Song Yingxing drew was similar to the structure of a later Mauser rifle. There was an opening at the top of the magazine, and the chamber (gun) preloaded with gunpowder and shells could be stuffed directly into the gun. The breech of the tube is connected to the barrel. There are also tenon locking mechanisms on it for fixation.
Behind the blunderbuss, there is a piece of solid iron cast integrally with the front barrel, which is used to prevent the blunderbuss from being bounced away by the recoil. After all, when firing, the recoil force on the blunderbuss is the same as the forward force on the cannonball. The same size requires a very strong rigid locking mechanism to resist it (no further explanation, see the picture in this paragraph).
Chen Shuren stroked his beard and pondered, and asked probingly: "It seems that this method of loading from behind is quite mature. It's just that one mother blunderbuss needs to be equipped with several more blunderbuss, and they are used interchangeably - then why are the later Why didn't Hongyi Cannon use this method?
Even for the Folangji, when He Yilong was defeated in May, our army also captured two thousand-jin Folangji that were too heavy to be taken away when the enemy retreated. We have never seen the consequences of this kind of double-and-double gun. Loading. I have heard of the sub-gun, but I always thought that the sub-gun was also inserted from the front of the barrel."
Song Yingxing shook his head proudly and took the opportunity to show off: "You don't know something. This Folang machine uses a double-and-double gun, and it can only be used on models of three hundred catties and smaller. The Thousand Jin Folang machine is no longer effective, because This kind of air leakage and fire leakage is too serious, it cannot shoot far, and it is easy to burn the gunner.
As for the Hongyi cannon, it weighs three to five thousand kilograms and has a charge of more than ten kilograms. With such great power, who dares to use a design that separates the bullet-loaded blunderbuss and the barrel mother blunderbuss? Once fired, the force of the blunderbuss being pushed back is simply not equal to that of the Hongyi cannon. If you don't stop, it's like exploding ten kilograms of gunpowder directly on the gun emplacement, and I'm afraid not even the gunner will be killed!"
Chen Shuren nodded and quickly realized: breech loading is still a problem of poor air tightness and difficult to remove the recoil.
However, it can also be deduced from Song Yingxing's words: the more powerful the gun, the more it needs the bottom of the barrel to be tightly connected and stable. The less powerful the firearm, the more relaxed it is in this regard.
After figuring this out, Shen Shuren also realized that this was the same as his original idea - it wasn't that breech-loading guns couldn't be made, but that high chamber pressures couldn't be made, while low chamber pressures could still be made. of.
Just like in the early 20th century, all countries were dealing with rifles and machine guns. The bolts at the end of the barrels of rifles and machine guns were locked at the moment of firing and would not retreat.
But at the end of World War I, when the submachine gun appeared, the tail bolt of the submachine gun was "inertially locked", that is, it was not completely locked and would slide when pushed by the recoil.
The advantage of a submachine gun is that it can fire rapidly with low recoil. The disadvantage is that it can withstand low chamber pressure, so it can only use pistol bullets with a much smaller propellant charge, and the effective range is much closer.
In the same way, when breech-loading firearms appeared in modern times, the first ones to overcome the defects of the breech were pistols and guns. For example, the old-fashioned double-barreled shotgun that looked similar to the s686 in the chicken game, and the later improved lever rifles and revolvers, which were the first varieties to load ammunition from the bottom of the barrel.
These guns do not require any technical reserves after the industrial revolution. They can already be made by relying on the industrial foundation before the Napoleonic Wars.
In contrast, many time-travelers like to use rifling to make rifled guns, which seems to be more troublesome. Self-tapping rifling bullets like Mini bullets were historically produced around the mid-19th century, during the second industrial revolution. It only comes after life, and it is much more difficult than what Chen Shuren wants.
After smoothing his train of thought during the discussion, Shen Shuren took the opportunity to formally put forward his demand: "Therefore, I don't want to build a new firearm with a large charge and a long range. As long as it can be rear-loaded, it is best to be able to pre-load it." Load multiple rounds of projectiles and supply ammunition quickly.
For example, make a circlip dial, and then make a honeycomb-shaped spring nest, with a shaft in the middle, and a circle of six gun vacancies on the side. When the trigger is pulled, it will rotate one-sixth of a turn..."
As Chen Shuren spoke, he added some drawings and drew the breech-loading spray gun and revolver in his mind.
Of course, he also knew that with today's industrial precision and steel quality, the pistols he produced would definitely be less accurate and airtight than the Western revolvers of the late 18th century.
The earliest revolvers in the West emitted billowing black and white smoke as soon as the bullet chamber was fired. When it came to this, it would not only emit thick smoke, but also directly emit fire.
It is estimated that gunmen who use revolvers will have to wear gloves with better fire protection and heat insulation to prevent the skin on their hands from being burned by the fire that erupts when the gun is fired.
Song Yingxing was obviously knowledgeable. After listening to Shen Shuren's description, he had already imagined a product that would "miniaturize a three-hundred-pound Folang machine to a three-pound weight and turn it into a revolving magazine to feed ammunition."
So he couldn't help but frown, and told Chen Shuren the above worries: "...Sir, you have to be careful about this matter. Today's bird cannons can still have an effective range of 150 steps. With shotguns, There are only seventy or eighty steps left.
This is still to deal with people without armor. If you use shotguns against heavy armor, you can only kill them within thirty steps. This is what you have concluded from your previous battle with Erhe.
Now if the breech is leaking air and fire, I will compare the power of the one-piece gunpowder machine and the two-piece gunpowder machine. At least one third of the gunpowder thrust will be leaked, or even more.
At that time, using single-point bullets will be completely useless. It has no accuracy and no range. It is completely useless. You can only use shotguns to go all the way. And the new gun is equipped with shotguns, which further weakens the range. I am afraid it can only reach 20 One step can break through heavy armor, and forty steps can damage light armor. This is less than one-third of the range of a crossbow, so what's the use?"
Song Yingxing finally figured out that with such a low chamber pressure, it was impossible to make a "rifle". All that could be made were pistols and spray guns.
But after listening to Chen Shuren, he was not disappointed at all, but rather complacent: Look, Song Yingxing had estimated that this weapon has at least 40 steps of powerful killing range for unarmored targets, and 20 steps of heavy armor killing range. This is It shows that there is great hope in creating it! This is enough!
Wouldn’t the pistols and spray guns of later generations only be able to effectively kill people at 50 meters? Wouldn’t that be equivalent to 40 steps in the Ming Dynasty?
He was not very demanding and said in a very easy-going manner: "It doesn't matter if the range is shorter. The short range is just that we won't be able to rely on this weapon to resist cavalry on foot in the future, and we won't be able to fight with the Tatar horse archers."
But what we have to deal with now is mainly rogues. It is enough to provide a few rounds of fierce firepower at the last moment before approaching the enemy in close combat. In addition, since the chamber pressure is low, the range is short, and the charge is small, I think the barrel There is no need to be as long as before.
Originally, the tube was five feet long, but the new one can be reduced to three feet, so that cavalry can use it on horseback. If it is shorter, it can even be used with one hand, which is almost like a handgun.
After it is completed in the future, we will not provide equipment for light cavalry or bow cavalry, but only equipment for cavalry that charge in close combat. Isn’t it much better than a three-eyed gun?"
The three-eyed blunderbuss of the Ming Dynasty had a very short barrel but a very long handle. Because the barrel was short, the shooting range of that thing was even worse than that of a pistol, so it was for close combat cavalry. After three shots, it became a long gun. The hammer was swung.
If the Shenshu people can produce a carbine sprayer with a medium-length barrel, or simply a revolver that fires shotgun iron sand, it will definitely be useful for melee assault.